A Letter from Lindy April 26

Happy Earth Day Pilgrims,
 
I know you will be reading this message after the actual 50th anniversary celebration on April 22, but that is when I am writing this to you. How did you mark Earth Day in the midst of stay-at-home orders because of the pandemic? Trying always to honor the twin nature of my call, the Wood family answered the UCC Earth Day challenge of "planting trees to help the planet restore itself" In fact, we planted four tiny Japanese maples to stake the corners of our front and back yards. And our maples were NC locally sourced, to boot :)
 
I didn't get outside, sadly. My Wednesday was comprised of back to back zoom meetings, but Lanny spent the day moving plants and dirt to help us honor, on our small patch of land, the importance of today. How did you mark this 50th anniversary?
 
An article I read preparing for Earth Day prompted my imagination about how Pilgrim might create intentional steps to lead us toward becoming a Creation Care/Justice Congregation--another UCC invitation and challenge of bearing witness. A call for us to claim responsibility of stewarding the healing of God's creation. The author reminisced about this day in 1970, as his seven year old self could not understand why just one day was being set aside to honor the health of our planet. "Shouldn't every day be earth day?"
 
His innocent query should be our siren call. As should the photographs from this day in 1970 with folks across our country donning masks while outside because, from Los Angeles through the Rust Belt to New York, the pollution was so bad, people had trouble breathing! Bodies of waters everywhere so toxic, people were barred from entering them. If this pandemic has prompted but one good turn, it is the renewed healing of our global air and water, as we see from cities around the world where fog has dissipated to an unprecedented level and fish returning to waters as never before. Just as did the Clean Air and Water Acts that the inaugural Earth Day birthed into being. 
 
As our air and water begin healing, because of our sequestering in place, I wonder how we, as beloved community might aid and accelerate the healing process? What small individual steps might we take, that together will have a collective impact? And perhaps help us put them into practice as routine discipline? And how then might they inform how we advocate for peoples and policies that share in, make priority, these efforts?
 
Not wanting to compete with Camille's leave taking this Sunday, Pilgrim's Council made the decision to kick off our Earth Day efforts the first Sunday in May, moving through the entire month with weekly invitations to augment our environmental efforts to heal our planet. Since Jesus instructed his disciples to let the children lead, Pilgrim's Youth Group will be brainstorming some of our initial challenges, just as they led us toward communal composting. As they should not be doing the heavy lifting alone, if you have thoughts or suggestions for the good of Pilgrim, send your ideas to Felix and me, so we can add them to the queue.
 
Along the way, we will be working to develop a Pilgrim Creation Care Covenant that we pledge to live by. It will guide our decisions moving forward. The seeds for this movement were planted well before I arrived when you undertook an environmental impact assessment of our campus to learn the ways in which we might lessen our carbon footprint. Many of these recommendations have come to fruition, with the capstone being the installation of our solar panels. As April showers bring May flowers, so will they bring the next leg of our journey.
 
I can't wait.... to see where it takes us... and to be with you virtually on Sunday.
Pastor Lindy