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Tuesday, December 08, 2009 |
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SOCIAL JUSTICE: Advent and the Copenhagen Conference
By St Mary Administrator @ 9:25 AM :: 198 Views ::  :: Social Justice
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May this Advent season be a time of spiritual renewal and hope in an often bleak world of continuing war, hunger, joblessness, material and spiritual poverty. May Christ be born anew in our hearts and may they be conformed to God’s love and peace.
One of the greatest issues facing our planet, human generated climate change, is a spiritual issue. The Abrahamic faith traditions, which includes Christianity, the Buddhist traditions, the Hindu faith, First Nations spirituality, and animistic religions all recognized the sacredness of creation and humankind’s responsibility to care for the earth. It is a matter of peace, of salaam, of Karma, of justice.
This month, the Copenhagen Climate Conference will take place and it looks as though our President will be attending this important event. We pray and hope for an extension of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, or, at the very least, a binding agreement on climate change which will encourage a change in lifestyles for many Western nations. The poorer nations of the world are already suffering from the warming of Earth, drought, deforestation and seemingly endless war. Earth scholars Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry declaim in their book The Universe Story:
“The future of Earth will be dependent on human decisions to an extent never dreamed of in previous times. We are deciding what species will live or perish, we are determining the chemical structure of the soil, and the air and the water, we are mapping out the areas of wilderness that will be allowed to function in their own natural modalities… Every living being of Earth is cousin to every other living being.”
To keep you abreast on what is occurring in Copenhagen, the Alternatives for Simple Living website www.simpleliving.org, will post online video briefs of the Copenhagen Climate Conference, covering important interfaith events and interviews with conference participants about how the world’s faith leaders are getting their message to the world’s political leaders. Two minutes of highlights will be posted every day and a link will be provided to Odyssey Networks to access the entire footage. A link is located on the resource page and at the bottom center of the home page at www.simpleliving.org.
Thanks to: JustPeace newsletter, Sisters of St. Agnes, and the Alternatives for
Simple Living website.
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