Yesterday was Laity Sunday at my church, the United Methodist Church of Northfield. Three of us - myself, Ron Griffith, and Rev. Mary Keen - were asked to prepare short talks that would take no more than five minutes to read - in effect, mini-sermons. Here is what I said:

I was asked to comment on the topic of my discipleship and the care for creation, and I want to relate that to our reading, the parable of the ten lepers (Luke 17: 11-20). I take several lessons from the parable: first, it is God who makes us well, but to be completely well, to receive all of God’s gifts, we must have faith; our faith makes us well. Second, God asks us to give thanks and praise for his gifts. Third, God heals and cares for all people, even the foreigner, the stranger, in this case the Samaritan. Here as always, Jesus is an example to us; we are asked to love and care for the alien, that strange other who is also our neighbor, though we often resist seeing him or her that way.

Now I relate this to our care for God’s creation in this way: We are to give thanks and praise for creation, to make our faith in God central to our lives, and to follow the example of Jesus as healer – healer not just of our immediate neighbors, not just the members of our nation, but the people of all nations.

Now I ask, are we acting as healers today in the way we live? In many ways we are not, I believe. And here I extend our notion of care for the stranger to our care for God’s creation, which sustains all of us. The food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, these are part of creation. They sustain all of us, and to the extent that we endanger them, we endanger our neighbors; and when we care for them, we care for our neighbors. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning I read an article in the StarTribune about today being Blog Action Day, during which all bloggers are invited to address a common issue of concern - in this case, the environment. That topic comes up regularly in this blog, and I had already planned on addressing one aspect of it.

I was pleased that the Norwegian Nobel Committee gave its Peace Prize to the scientists of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore for their work on global warming. During the past year I’ve commented about the most recent IPCC reports (see posts on February 26, May 4, and May 11), which predict disastrous consequences if humanity does not take steps to mitigate global warming. Fortunately, we’re seeing more action on this issue every day. Read the rest of this entry »

The Northfield Middle School participated in Walk to School Day last Wednesday, October 3. Organizers counted 123 walkers in the morning out of a student population that numbers over 900.

The weather was splendid that day, particularly in the afternoon, as you can tell from the photos above and below.

The event was organized by the Task Force on Nonmotorized Transportation, on which I serve as chair, in cooperation with the Northfield Public Schools. I participated on the day of the event as well, monitoring one of the designated routes in the morning and surveying things more generally in the afternoon.

In the morning I was struck by this impression as I rode my bike to my post at Truman Park: so many cars! I was on the lookout for walkers and bikers, but there were very few in the area I was in. The commuters were on their way to work or school, and the car was the overwhelming transportation mode of choice. When I got to the Park I did see some people out for an early morning walk, and two students walked through talking on their cell phones, but my park post was clearly the quietest of the Walk to School routes.

It shouldn’t be surprising that people largely get around in cars here, but when you sit and watch it and are roughly tallying people’s transportation choices, it really sinks in: the car is king.

It’s been too long since my last post. I was preoccupied with work connected to our city’s Task Force on Nonmotorized Transportation, which I chair. The group organized two October 3 events: Walk to School Day at the Northfield Middle School and a community meeting on biking and walking that evening.

I’ll report more on those events in another post shortly.