The latest episode of Language of God features a discussion with Reverend Sally Bingham, founder of Interfaith Power and Light and an environmental pioneer among faith communities, about how churches are stepping up to care for our planet.
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This was a good listen. I am impressed with her tenacity to start her college education in her 40s and eventually carry it through to ordination! Wow!
I like her willingness to find allies wherever they are and to combine her knowledge and organizational skills with her passions.
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Love the bit about getting lost in the woods! We had I think ten acres of our own woods that butted right up against state forest, and in it we established points of reference – “Marker Tree”, which was the farthest point we could reach in a day’s out-and-back hike, where we put what now could be called a geocache with a little notebook and pencil so anyone who found the tree could sign it (which we never expected to happen, but then one day we hiked there and went to sign our names with the date, and there were the names of two neighbor kids, older than we were by four or five years, and another time there were two names we didn’t recognize at all along with a note that this was a wonderful idea; after that those names kept showing up again plus names of people they brought along); “Super Stump”, the stump of a tree that had been so big we could have pitched the family 8-person tent on one side and a 6-person tent on the other and still have room for a campfire; “Brine Maple”, a joke on “vine maple” where if we were really quiet we were certain we could hear the surf; “Down Run”, a hillside with about a 60° slope that got its name from when we encountered a swarm of hornets that started attacking us, and someone pointed straight down the slope and hollered, “Down! RUN!” (which didn’t save us from the hornets; a fair number pursued us all the way to our back yard so we sprinted across to the big “swimming pool” our dad had helped us set up a few weeks earlier [3’ deep, 16’ across], hurtled the side and submerged as long as we could hold our breath – the hornets gave up after maybe five minutes with us popping up a few times for breath). Then there was the trail we cut through brush and vines from our back yard to the neighbors after our dad said no more walking on the highway with its narrow shoulder; that took three days and when the neighbors in the other direction heard of it they started from their end and we from ours and we actually managed to meet in the middle (more or less; our trail was uphill from theirs about eight feet when we sighted each other’s flags).
And of course the creek that we built dams in, once even a series of five dams with sets of locks around each one so we could float our model boats up from the pond and back down, and which we once diverted into the highest mole hill in the upper field to drown the moles (had to switch mole hills three times but eventually every mole hill on the gentle slope had collapsed with water gushing out; had to repeat the process when a new mole hill popped up, but after that second time they were dead or gone). Oh – the pond was artificial; our dad borrowed a bulldozer from a neighbor a mile or so away and carved it out for the calves we were keeping in the upper field because no one was willing to haul water to fill troughs – it was also a great place to pick blackberries because vines grew down on the steep side an hung over the water . . . friends were envious that we could pick blackberries from floating inner tubes.
Anyway, we got to know those woods well enough that we found we couldn’t get lost – she’s right; it’s fun getting lost and figuring your way back!
Solar on the church roof is a great idea, but looking across the now-empty lot across the street I can see that the church there has a roof that faces east/west, a bad situation for solar, though the attached parsonage has a nice south-facing roof . . . . I should suggest this to the pastor!
I’ve always said that our purpose as humans is to take care of this garden, not to destroy it.
I felt that long before I encountered any idea of stewardship of nature! (My mom told me it was my Indian blood.)
Good podcast!
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