Social Justice Saturday: Dorchester Community Food Co-op Update
“We challenge the traditional food system by building a community and worker-owned asset that
nourishes, employs, and reinvests in the local community.” (Mission statement of the Dorchester Community Food Co-op.)
The website further explains: The Co-op envisions a diverse inclusive community with opportunities for employment, ownership, and access to healthy food. As a food co-op, we will serve and reflect the wide variety of cultural, racial, and socio-economic groups that make up the neighborhoods of Boston.
The Co-op is building its membership, as they expect to open at the corner of Bowdoin and Topliff Streets in Dorchester in 2022. The 1100 current members have set a goal of 1150 by the end of November. Become a member of the new Dorchester Community Food Co-op and support their mission.
Membership is $100, payable as one full payment, or smaller payments during the year. To learn more and join/donate, visit:
Monday Music: Taize - Jesus, Remember Me
Social Justice Saturday: Resources to Advocate for Creation Care Justice
Advocate
Watch and discuss this 30-minute video: “Christians Advocate for Climate Health.
Participate in a COP26 (UN Climate Talks) event, such as the Global Prayer and Action Chain for Climate Justice or Green Faith’s Faiths 4 Climate Justice campaign.
Other ways to support local, state and national climate efforts are listed here.
Monday Music: Hallelujiah
Social Justice Saturday: A Reminder About AntiRacism
Ibram X. Kendi reminds us: "It's a pretty massive step from awareness to antiracist action. We haven't, as a society, taken that step." Kendi goes on to say, "It's not enough for people to say or believe that they're not racist, they must be loud and radical about it, and actively involved in building a more equitable society. To allow anything to persist is to be complicit in its persistence."
Speaking of Abolitionism as the model for imagining an antiracist future, he adds, "Abolitionists were loud, radical, and persistent. ...Abolitionists believed it was up to them to dismantle slavery, because if they didn't, no one else would. That's a mindset that needs to take hold today."
Reflection question: What steps will you take this week, with your finances, your actions, or your voice, to challenge racist actions and policies?
—Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research and cofounder of The Emancipator, a partnership between The Boston Globe and the Center, made these comments at the Boston Globe Summit, Sept. 24, 2021.
Monday Music: Taste and See
Social Justice Saturday: Urban Heat Islands explained for kids
“An urban heat island occurs when a city experiences much warmer temperatures than nearby rural areas. The difference in temperature between urban and less-developed rural areas has to do with how well the surfaces in each environment absorb and hold heat.”
Read the rest of the article from NASA Climate Kids here then talk to the child. Is this fair for the folks in the urban environments?
For adults, here is some basic info on Urban Heat Islands from the EPA.
Monday Music: I look to you.
Social Justice Saturday: John Wesley on Creation Care
“By acquainting ourselves with subjects in natural philosophy, we enter into a kind of association with nature’s works, and unite in the general concert of her extensive choir. By thus acquainting and familiarizing ourselves with the works of nature, we become as it were a member of her family, a participant in her felicities; but while we remain ignorant, we are like strangers and sojourners in a foreign land, unknowing and unknown.”
Monday Music: Oh The Life of The World
Social Justice Saturday: Fire and Flood-Movie and Discussion
Social Justice Saturday: A Prayer for Creation
Gracious God,
It is the task of our generation to leave this Sacred Earth, in all its wisdom and beauty, to the generations to come.
Help us to recognize the interdependence of all life, and to stand side by side in an acknowledgement of our responsibility to sustain our world.
Help us commit ourselves to simple acts of love, compassion, and gratitude for the vast web of life.
Inspired by the Religious Leaders at Illulissat, Greenland September 7, 2007
Social Justice Saturday: Sustainable Food for All
Low-income and marginalized communities often have inequitable access to fresh, wholesome food. The climate crisis affect on food production and access will continue to worsen these inequities. Two programs that are responding to this situation to learn about and support are:
MISSION FARM and SOUL FIRE FARM
Mission Farm is a project of the Episcopal Church. The foundation of the Farm is love. . Our work is to care for and nurture Creation. The ecological crisis of our time calls us to understand the interconnection of all things and the value of biodiversity. This guides our vision of our future at Mission Farm.
We are responding to our local food crisis by creating a sustainable, regenerative plan for growing food at Mission Farm. Like all good things, this will take time. In the meantime, we are working on our churchyard garden with help from the community.
Join us at Mission Farm and Church of Our Saviour as we live into the intersection of faith, justice and ecology.
Soul Fire Farm is an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm committed to uprooting racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system. We raise and distribute life-giving food as a means to end food apartheid. With deep reverence for the land and wisdom of our ancestors, we work to reclaim our collective right to belong to the earth and to have agency in the food system. We bring diverse communities together on this healing land to share skills on sustainable agriculture, natural building, spiritual activism, health, and environmental justice. We are training the next generation of activist-farmers and strengthening the movements for food sovereignty and community self-determination.
Monday Music: All Creatures of Our God and King
Social Justice Saturday: Sing for the Planet
"Season of Creation" Begins September 1
From Sept. 1 to Oct. 4, Christians around the world in celebrating a special season of prayer and action to protect God’s creation.
“Season of Creation” begins on September 1, a date chosen in 1989 by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church -- and now embraced by the wider ecumenical family -- as the World Day of Prayer for Creation. Creation Season ends on October 4 with the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, the man who is often called the patron saint of ecology.
We observe this special season in the hope that caring for Creation will increasingly be woven into every aspect of congregational life. Through preaching and prayer, and in sacrificial acts of generosity and bold public witness, we hope to strengthen our Christian response to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.
An invitation from The Rev. Dr.) Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Missioner for Creation Care
What will your congregation do this Creation Season?
What will you do? Here’s one thing that is happening as part of this Season:
SING FOR THE PLANET!!
The Climate Emergency means we need to make our voices heard. We’ve marched, we’ve voted, we’ve petitioned, and now we are going to sing, and sing in one large choir, the #HouseOnFireChoir with A Passion for the Planet: Join us in singing for the UN Climate Summit. You will be part of the finale of the COP26 on-line performance of Geoffrey Hudson’s A Passion for the Planet.
Record yourself, your friends, your family or your choir, send in your performance, and we’ll (literally) bring your voices to Glasgow, Scotland this November! The deadline for sending in your performance is October 11th.
Explore this website for more details on how to participate.
Social Justice Saturday: A Season of Creation
"Hope Beyond the Heat":
2021 Season of Creation, Sept. 1-Oct. 4
The Creation Care Justice Network in the Diocese of Massachusetts invites you to use the Season of Creation as a time to celebrate, grieve, pray and get engaged with creation and climate issues.
After a summer of record-breaking heat waves and wildfires, violent storms and floods, and continued inequities suffered by vulnerable low-income communities and people of color, we are called to look for the "Hope Beyond the Heat."
What is our faithful response? To paraphrase 1 Thessalonians 4:13, even in the face of death, we are not like those who have no hope. We magnify our hope as we worship, pray and act together. The Season of Creation is our opportunity to lean into the groaning of God's creation and God's people, and lean on our Lord for forgiveness, guidance, community building and strength.
For more information and invitations to action for individuals and congregations, click here:
https://www.diomass.org/creation-care
Monday Music: We Are One - The Acappella Company
Social Justice Saturday: Poem - Boy Breaking Glass by Gwendolyn Brooks
Whose broken window is a cry of art
(success, that winks aware
as elegance, as a treasonable faith)
is raw: is sonic: is old-eyed première.
Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament.
Our barbarous and metal little man.
“I shall create! If not a note, a hole.
If not an overture, a desecration.”
Full of pepper and light
and Salt and night and cargoes.
“Don’t go down the plank
if you see there’s no extension.
Each to his grief, each to
his loneliness and fidgety revenge.
Nobody knew where I was and now I am no longer there.”
The only sanity is a cup of tea.
The music is in minors.
Each one other
is having different weather.
“It was you, it was you who threw away my name!
And this is everything I have for me.”
Who has not Congress, lobster, love, luau,
the Regency Room, the Statue of Liberty,
runs. A sloppy amalgamation.
A mistake.
A cliff.
A hymn, a snare, and an exceeding sun.
Social Justice Saturday: Cheryl Holder on Why Climate Issues are Human Rights Issues
For the poor and vulnerable, the health impacts of climate change are already here, says physician Cheryl Holder. Unseasonably hot temperatures, disease-carrying mosquitoes and climate gentrification threaten those with existing health conditions, while wealthier people move to higher ground. In an impassioned talk, Holder proposes impactful ways clinicians can protect their patients from climate-related health challenges — and calls on doctors, politicians and others to build a care system that incorporates economic and social justice.