We believe that care of our earth is a moral and spiritual imperative.
Our mission is
to celebrate the sacredness of all creation and to inspire and mobilize our
congregation to play a leadership role in building a just and sustainable
world.
The Sacred Earth Group is a fellowship of individuals who love God’s creation and wish to actively interconnect
it with their spiritual journey. Over the past several years we have participated in outdoor restoration activities,
Earth Sunday worship services and the UCUCC Elementary education program. We are a Greening Congregation and
participate in Community Supported Agriculture.
We began a new initiative in 2007 to engage and inform
our congregation about global climate change, and to help individuals understand ways to make a difference. Sacred
Earth Matters aims to provide useful tools to deal with these pressing issues.
Join us -
We welcome new members who might be interested in working with us. We meet the
second Sunday of each month after the morning service, and often share a
light lunch.
Contact: Call Mary Ellen Smith (206)525-0494 or
E-mail MaryEllen.
The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, 2006 Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert, 2006 Animals, Vegetables and Miracles by Barbara Kingsolver & Steven L.
Hopp, 2007 The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson, 2002
A Sacred Earth Matters
Book Review by Michael Clarke
E. O. Wilson is the
Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus and Honorary Curator in
Entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.
His preface in The Future of Life is an
imaginary letter to Thoreau. He thanks Thoreau for putting the environmental ethic in place.
He envisions an environmental Armageddon due to human overpopulation and wasteful consumption.
He thinks the situation is desperate but there is hope that the “planetary killer” will mend
its ways.
Wilson discusses the
multiple problems of habitat destruction, water shortages, invasion by
foreign species, and extinction of animals and plants. He emphasizes that
the environment is very important but economists and governments tend to
ignore numbers that count, such as the global population and the ecological
footprint, Defined as the average amount of land that a person needs for
food production, housing, water, waste absorption, etc.
Wilson also talks about
bacteria, tigers, trees, birds and the general effect of declining
biodiversity. He poses the question “How much is the Biosphere Worth?” The
greatest ongoing damage is the destruction of tropical forests. He points
out how many useful drugs and other products have been found in the tropical
forests such as the Amazon, yet these are being destroyed by logging and
ranching.
According to Wilson, progress towards
global conservation will depend upon cooperation between three secular
stanchions of civilized existence, i.e. government, the private sector, and
science and technology. Non-government organizations such as World Wildlife
Fund and Nature Conservancy also play an extremely important part in
conservation together with cooperation with local people.
The book includes copious notes for
each of the seven chapters and a useful glossary.
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