Social Justice Saturday: A Season of Creation

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"Hope Beyond the Heat":
2021 Season of Creation, Sept. 1-Oct. 4

The Creation Care Justice Network in the Diocese of Massachusetts invites you to use the Season of Creation as a time to celebrate, grieve, pray and get engaged with creation and climate issues.

After a summer of record-breaking heat waves and wildfires, violent storms and floods, and continued inequities suffered by vulnerable low-income communities and people of color, we are called to look for the "Hope Beyond the Heat."

What is our faithful response?  To paraphrase 1 Thessalonians 4:13, even in the face of death, we are not like those who have no hope.  We magnify our hope as we worship, pray and act together.  The Season of Creation is our opportunity to lean into the groaning of God's creation and God's people, and lean on our Lord for forgiveness, guidance, community building and strength.

For more information and invitations to action for individuals and congregations, click here:
https://www.diomass.org/creation-care

Social Justice Saturday: Poem - Boy Breaking Glass by Gwendolyn Brooks

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Whose broken window is a cry of art
(success, that winks aware
as elegance, as a treasonable faith)
is raw: is sonic: is old-eyed première.
Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament.
Our barbarous and metal little man.

“I shall create! If not a note, a hole.
If not an overture, a desecration.”


Full of pepper and light
and Salt and night and cargoes.


“Don’t go down the plank
if you see there’s no extension.
Each to his grief, each to
his loneliness and fidgety revenge.
Nobody knew where I was and now I am no longer there.”


The only sanity is a cup of tea.
The music is in minors.

Each one other
is having different weather.


“It was you, it was you who threw away my name!

And this is everything I have for me.”


Who has not Congress, lobster, love, luau,
the Regency Room, the Statue of Liberty,
runs. A sloppy amalgamation.
A mistake.
A cliff.
A hymn, a snare, and an exceeding sun.

Social Justice Saturday: Cheryl Holder on Why Climate Issues are Human Rights Issues

For the poor and vulnerable, the health impacts of climate change are already here, says physician Cheryl Holder. Unseasonably hot temperatures, disease-carrying mosquitoes and climate gentrification threaten those with existing health conditions, while wealthier people move to higher ground. In an impassioned talk, Holder proposes impactful ways clinicians can protect their patients from climate-related health challenges — and calls on doctors, politicians and others to build a care system that incorporates economic and social justice.

Social Justice Saturday: Responding to the Climate Emergency-Learn

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The Bishops of Massachusetts are urging us to respond to the Climate Emergency with four steps:

Pray—Learn—Act—Advocate. Today we highlight LEARN.

Congregations are encouraged to convene conversations and educational events around such topics as:

how tackling the climate crisis connects with efforts to alleviate poverty, fight racial and social injustice, and defend human life;

how eco-theology and eco-spirituality can guide us in the days ahead;

how to cultivate the values and practices that liberate us from the consumerism, hyper-individualism, and violence of the dominant culture.

Social Justice Saturday: Responding to the Climate Emergency--PRAY

The Bishops of Massachusetts are urging us to respond to the Climate Emergency with four steps:

Pray—Learn—Act—Advocate. Today we highlight PRAYER.

TO ALL THE CHILDREN 

To the children who swim beneath

The waves of the sea, to those who live in

The soils of the Earth, to the children of the flowers

In the meadows and the trees in the forest, to

 

All those children who roam over the land

And the winged ones who fly with the winds,

To the human children too, that all the children

 

May go together into the future in the full

Diversity of their regional communities.

            Thomas Berry

Social Justice Saturday: Climate Justice

When the bishops of the Episcopal dioceses in Massachusetts recently declared a climate emergency, their declaration read in part:  

“We honor the call of our church’s presiding bishop, the Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, to care for God’s beloved world.  We recognize that accelerating global warming and mass extinctions are destroying God’s creation, threatening to make our planet uninhabitable.  We likewise recognize that the climate crisis affects low-income communities and communities of color first and hardest…” 

They continue, “We strongly urge congregations across Massachusetts to pray, learn, act, and advocate as we build a bold and faith-filled response to the greatest moral challenge of our time.”

This summer’s floods, extreme temperatures, wildfires, and intense storms underscore the reality of this climate emergency. We will be highlighting in future Social Justice Saturday posts specific ways we as individuals and as congregations can respond to this emergency as we pray, learn, act, and advocate.

Social Justice Saturday: A Small Needful Fact

Ross Gay is the author of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Award.

Ross Gay is the author of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Award.

A Small Needful Fact

Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.

Ross Gay

Social Justice Saturday: John A. Powell - Beloved Community

As humanity faces global environmental and social collapse, our fear of the “Other” can be magnified by unstable contracting economies, radically shifting demographics, and new social norms. Can humanity overcome these divisions and come together to protect our common home? john a. powell, a nationally respected voice on race and ethnicity, leads UC Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, holds the Robert D. Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion, serves on the UC Berkeley School of Law faculty, and is author of Racing to Justice.
This speech was given at the 2014 Bioneers Annual Conference. Since 1990, Bioneers has acted as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges.
For more information on Bioneers, please visit http://www.bioneers.org.

Social Justice Saturday: Podcast - Sounds Like Hate

Sounds Like Hate

An audio documentary series from the Southern Poverty Law Center, that tells the stories of people and communities grappling with hate and searching for solutions. Focuses on people who have been personally touched by hate, to hear their voices and be immersed in the sounds of their world. Explores the power of people to change — or to succumb to their worst instincts and takes a deep dive into the realities of hate in modern America: how it functions, how it spreads, who is affected and what people are doing about it. Learn more.

Illustration by Zoë van Dijk

Illustration by Zoë van Dijk

Social Justice Saturday: 103 Things White People Can Do For Racial Justice

The Social Justice Saturday posts, as part of the Red Door, began a year ago, in June 2020. Early on we posted a list of 75 Things White People Can Do For Racial Justice. Today that site has expanded to 103 Things White People Can Do. Want to take an action that supports police reform efforts? Are you an educator looking for additional ways to take meaningful action? Want to buy books from black bookstores or support black businesses? Links in these areas and much more!

We invite you to check out the list and determine what new, specific actions you can take this summer!

103 Things White People Can Do For Racial Justice