Eco-Spirituality and its relevance to the Christian faith

What is Eco-Spirituality?

Led by Mercy nun, Sister Veronica Lawson.

Held at St Matthew's Anglican Church, Wendouree

To-morrow, #Ballarat let's #Paris know it means business....

Picture from here

Think of it as pilgrimage - a #Ballarat pilgrimage - if you will.
The worldwide People's Climate March
comes to Ballarat to-morrow.
We gather at the corner of Sturt and Armstrong Streets
at 2pm Saturday 28 November.
Then we will walk the short distance
down to Camp Street where there will be speakers.
Let #Paris know that #Ballarat
is serious about getting a good deal for our planet,
a safe future for the people of the world. 

A change must occur deep in our souls .....

"It is clear that there will be little development of life here in the future if we do not protect and foster the living...
Posted by Spiritual Ecology on Friday, 16 October 2015

Ecological aspects of war: religious perspectives from Australia

THE ENCYCLICAL OF POPE FRANCIS - PRAISE BE TO YOU - ON CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME

The latest papal encyclical was released to-day, 19 June 2015 AEST - 18 June in The Vatican.  The encyclical will take time to read closely and carefully, to digest it, and comment thoughtfully upon it.

Advocacy is indebted to Crux in providing the encyclical in a number of formats to make it easily accessible to people.  Advocacy has embedded the encyclical in this post where it can be read on-line or downloaded.  However, it is also available on Crux here in linked chapter by chapter outline for easy access and reading. Linked here is the encyclical as it was posted on The Vatican website.  Crux also contains recent commentary.

Comment

ABC - Australia: Key excerpts from the Pope's encyclical on the environment

The Age - Neil Ormerod: Pope Francis's views on global warming cold comfort for Canberra

The Guardian: The pope's encyclical on climate change - as it happened

The Washington Post: Ten key excerpts 

The Sydney Morning Herald:  

Papal environment encyclical a win for the Greens, challenge for Abbott

Threatened animals from the Book of Genesis

The EPA recently announced its most aggressive plan ever 
to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the United States: 30% by 2030. 
Cutting the poisonous greenhouse gas is the first of three objectives outlined in 
Obama's Climate Action Plan (CAP)
 and forms part of what Obama calls 
"a moral obligation to leave our children a planet that's not polluted." 
According to The Nature Conservancy, if climate change continues at its current rate, 
a quarter of the earth's species could be extinct by the year 2015.

Bushfires and response-ability - a re-think needed?

The article below is from the pen - oops, the keyboard - of Bronwyn Lay, daughter of B.I.N. member Margaret Lay. It is worthy of consideration.

Bushfires demand response-ability

Bronwyn Lay |  22 October 2013

I've never felt the earth move but have sniffed smoke, ashes and the aftermath of bushfires. The fright of inferno is akin to the world being taken away in an instant. It makes bodies tremble and language vanish. In front of violent nature, who are we but helpless and mute?

In bushfires, tsunamis and earthquakes, our relationship to the 'natural' world comes at us like an alive nightmare, and hurts. The natural world might not possess emotions like anger and revenge, but asks violent questions about meaning and action and responsibility. Many ask us to draw a line in our mourning, and only think about the humans. This is repression, for on such occasions humans and nature are bound in a dangerous dance.

In Lisbon 1755 the Western world changed direction. The ground literally moved as the biggest earthquake recorded in Western history hit the Portuguese coast and decimated Lisbon. A tsunami and fires followed. It was All Saints day and many people were at Mass when the earthquake hit. The monarchy fled to the hills to live as nomads, and thousands died.

To read more please go to Eureka Street magazine on line.

Faith knowledge informs not only ecological knowledge but our universe

The Shifting Mandala

By ANNA HITCHCOCK

Published: September 27, 2013 

RACING through our school lobby on the way to recess, my sixth-grade classmates and I stopped short. Usually, we would barrel onto the street for our 20 minutes of sunlight, but a Buddhist monk dressed in brilliant saffron robes caught our attention. He was creating a mandala. In this ancient art form developed by Tibetan Buddhist monks, millions of grains of multicolored sand are painstakingly poured into complex patterns. After hours of work, the sand painting is only one square meter yet symbolically portrays our entire universe in its shifting complexities.

Katie Scott

To find out more about Mandalas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala

http://www.mandalaproject.org/What/

Three years later, I thought of the mandala when I began an internship with Ellen Pehek, a principal research ecologist in the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. For months, I helped her measure the diameter of trees in Inwood Hill Park as part of a study on the effects that invasive plant species — threatening, nonnative ones — have on forest health.

To read more please go here