Steadfast

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Yesterday, the Supreme Court told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “We also find it highly unlikely that Congress would leave to agency discretion the decision of how much coal-based generation there should be over the coming decades”. It is their judgement that the U.S. constitution reserves that duty for a working legislature.

There is little chance that a world that requires unity to save itself will ever survive if left to any secular institutions. Even the most noble ones theorized by our nation’s founders.

This is a good time to reiterate and mark carefully the difference between Environmentalism and an Earth Ministry.

The St. Benedict Earth Ministry is not an environmental organization, it is a Christian ministry dedicated to stewardship and celebration of God’s Creation. 

As such, our works are more important than ever.

It is exactly-when every part of the planet we’ve fought to save for future generations is cashed in by others for profit that we need to stop being environmentalists and remember who’s in charge here…on bended knee if possible.

Beating the Bounds

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Four corners of a Saint Benedict Episcopal Parish Boundary (bounds) were visited over Rogation week and the quaint ceremony of hitting the spot with a stick was acted out...with enthusiasm.

While the need for beating the bounds may seem arcane, it still feels “Right and Meet to do so” because of the interdependence we have with our surrounding environment.  We should visit it periodically.  Like any relative we depend upon and who depends on us, occasional visits to pay respect, ask after and to enjoy each other’s company is formative and its own reward.

And so it was.

Vernal Equinox

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At 8:30 A.M. on Sunday, March 20th the Earth will be at the exact midpoint between the Winter and Summer Solstices and the day will be roughly the same number of hours as night. We call this the Vernal Equinox. We’ll have another equinox in September as we move back into Winter from the Summer.

For those of us tired of darkness however, it’s real importance is as the beginning of Spring when light brings bounty and everything is vernal (young) again.

The word Vernal itself derives from the Latin Vernus meaning “of or related to Spring”.

In Ukrainian, the word Vernus (BEPHYCb) means “I will return”.

Overshoot Day

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The Earth

Can handle pollution and still support us… but its capacity is limited.

It’s the balance between how much we can pollute and consume and what the earth can support that is at the heart of being ecologically minded.

On July 11th we’ll observe the Feast Day of St. Benedict and on-or-around that time, the world’s population will have consumed and polluted to the limit of Earth’s ability to withstand in a year. Any consumption or pollution done, from that date till New Year’s eve will be at the expense of irreplaceable resources and beyond the capacity of natural systems to compensate for.

We call this Earth Overshoot Day.

As resident’s of Lacey and Olympia however, our personal “Overshoot Day” is much closer to the Ides of March.

If you would like to calculate your own household’s Overshoot day and see the ecological footprint your daily life leaves, you can use the online calculator at https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en

Surveys

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  • Amphibian Egg Mass Survey - Training on January 22, 2022 between 10:00 and 11:30 AM online HERE

  • Purple Martin monitoring - Training to be announced in March for surveys in April and May. Find out more HERE.

  • Pigeon Guilmont monitoring - Training in March for spring nesting in April. Find out more HERE

  • Forage Fish survey - Scour the beach for the main food source of Salish Sea fish and mammals. Find out more HERE.

  • Plankton Surveys - count the many types of plankton in the lower Sound. Find out more HERE.

  • Water Quality Surveys - We did this last year. For a refresher see our video HERE.

2021 State of the Sound Report

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The Puget Sound Partnership has released the 2021 State of the Sound Report which quantifies the progress that has been made in 25 measures of environmental health. Each of these has been summarized by a stop-light measure from getting bad to getting worse and whether we’ve met the goals set in the 2020 plan.

In most cases the results are disappointing but in several categories it reveals that our collective efforts have, in fact, made a real difference. In addition to the 25 measures already being monitored, the Puget Sound Council has recognized that the human and social justice impacts of the environment are just as important to measure as the scientific, and economic impacts. They have added these as measures for future reports and will be measuring our progress on these elements of our shared stewardship of this treasured resource.

You may find the full report online at: https://stateofthesound.wa.gov/

Happy Creationtide!!

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In the Anglican Lectionary, the period between September first and October 4th is called “Creationtide” or the Season of Creation by the Church of England.

This lectionary was first established by the Orthodox Church in 1989 and later became part of an Ecumenical movement with its adoption by Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2019. 

This lectionary is dedicated to God as Creator and sustainer of all life and renewing the “Oikos” (translated as both “home” and “family” *) of God.

It culminates on October 4th with the Feast of St. Francis.

It is also propitious that this year, it encompasses Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year which uses a lunar calendar).  Every seven years, Rosh Hashanah is a special year called “Shmita” or Sabbatical year in which fields are to remain fallow and all debts are forgiven.  Any food that grows naturally is to be left to sustain others and what is stored is to be shared with those struggling to survive.  2021 is such a year.

How powerful would it be if we simply made ourselves aware of how much we consume that exceeds what we need to survive while making it harder for others to survive.  How poignant would it be if we set aside days to stop consuming and tempered our “all consuming” urges.

 

* “Oikos” is the Greek root of the English words “Economics” and “Ecology”

For Everything There is a Season

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“For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted”

- Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

If you followed our visit to the Observatory last April, you’ll have seen that seasons of the year come about because of the tilt of the Earth as it rotates around the sun each year. But that doesn’t explain everything we see during the changing seasons.

One of the most well known symbols of seasonal change is the bright red colors in the leaves of deciduous trees (trees with leaves) each Fall.

The chemicals that make the bright colors in Fall leaves were always there but were dominated by the green chlorophyll of Spring and Summer. In the Fall, the energy it takes for the plants to stay green moves to providing sugars to the seeds that will propagate new growth. These enriched seeds are often what we harvest in the Fall or that are sown to flower next Spring.

There’s something quintessentially Christian about an endless cycle that has beautiful beginnings born of its end and a beautiful end latent within that same beginning.

Global Warming

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Hot.jpg

On Saturday, June 26th we were supposed to finish the work we’d started at our Garden Work Party the week before but temperatures climbed to record levels and we had to call it off.

You may have noticed that meteorologists were careful to say “It probably would not have been this bad without Global Warming”. Why such a mealy-mouthed explanation? Why not just say “It was hot because of Global Warming”?

The reason is because meteorologists depend on statistics for predicting what the temperature should have been on that day. Some meteorologists believe that temperatures above 100 degrees are rare but should not be unexpected and others say the recent frequency of these events adds credibility to forecast models that include Global Warming as a factor.

Statistical models use the logic of inference so one qualifies one’s conclusions to be accurate; not because the findings might be wrong.