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Fallen From The Desk of Pastor Wayne |
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As a sailor, I love the
feeling of traveling long distances without polluting, simply using the power of
the wind to propel my small vessel across the vast sea. A few weeks back I carpooled to a
fundraising dinner with three friends in a Toyota Prius, one of the new
hybrid cars designed to save both gas and the environment. I’m not saying we put a stop to global
warming, but that night one ice cube-size bit of glacier did not melt. With the
amount of driving I do in performing my pastoral tasks I do feel a I was so
inspired by the guilt-free experience I enjoyed in that Prius that I followed
up on a rumor I had once heard that diesel engines can run on other types of
oil than petroleum. I found the three
local fuel stations that offer biodiesel fuel (Ventura, Marina Del Rey and Pacific Palisades) and have been
faithfully using 100% biodiesel for the past three months. It looks and smells just like cooking oil, produces NO greenhouse gases and actually performs better in my Mercedes Benz than
petroleum-based diesel. The financial
cost of biodiesel is no different than petrodiesel, but the
ethical cost is almost incalculable if you believe that the blood of people
halfway around the world is commercial needs of the first world. Tragically, the proposed oil laws being
considered by the new Iraqi parliament will redirect the oil revenues
historically owned by the public sector for the benefit of all Iraqis to
foreign oil companies which will then I recall driving through the beautiful mountains of Pennsylvania years ago while I was in seminary. I drove past a small abandoned factory whose toxic gases had stripped all of the surrounding trees bare of their foliage by the poisonous gases spewed out from their smokestacks. In light of the testimony of those dead trees surrounding that factory, I shudder to think of the impact on the lungs of those people that had worked daily in that toxic environment for all of those years. We sincerely and soberly need to consider the full consequences of our industrial |
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revolution couched in Scriptural language that gave
humankind ‘dominion’ over the earth rather than the more appropriate term of
‘cultivating’ the earth. We are not
called to the use and abuse of the earth’s resources, but to responsible
stewardship. A few years back
I met the owner of Allen’s Recycling Company in Baldwin Park, one of the largest
employers and recycling companies in the San Gabriel Valley and he explained
that his own business was birthed by a recycling project done at their
Lutheran church by the youth group on Earth Day in 1970. My own home church in Brooklyn, NY
celebrated that first Earth Day in 1970 and this tradition continues to gain
strength within many faith communities today.
Earth Day is set for We recognize that God is the giver of all life. As Christians, we affirm that all that we
have God has given to us as gifts because God loves us; we are to care for
these gifts as the precious symbols of God's love. Our Lord commanded humankind to "keep
the earth" (Genesis 2:15) and we believe that it is our responsibility
to learn to do just this. There are a wide range of resources and
educational WIN-WIN-WIN!
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