The history of Second Church’s attention to energy conservation, environmental stewardship and the global environmental crisis may have started with our 2010 energy conservation analysis, which led attention given to some of our energy issues with both financial and environmental implications.  Then in 2014, we engaged in a months-long information sharing and thoughtful, heartfelt discussion and vote, over whether to divest from petroleum stocks held in our endowment portfolio.  As we know, the vote to divest did not pass.  But our shared concern about the care of our home – planet Earth -  has kept our differences on divestment from being road blocks to caring for one another, and working together to consider what we can and what we must do to assure a sustainable world environment.

The most recent evidence of our congregational commitment to the now urgent environmental situations is the response and support given to the recent Environmental Speakers’ Series.  This response includes the Green Initiatives Forum (Sunday, Nov. 8) in which the charge to action was firmly set in theologies of responsibility, forgiveness, action and hope.

At the forum, as part of considering examples and concrete ideas for action, the following set of questions was offered as a way to help each of us start to concretely focus on our part as stewards of the Earth.  This work cannot be top down; each of us individually and, even more importantly, together in community, is needed and we need one another.