The Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas will give the keynote address, "Climate Change: An Emergency of the Heart," at an interfaith forum on the environment Oct. 30 from 2 to 5 p.m. at First Church of Christ of Longmeadow.
SPRINGFIELD - The Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas is a woman with many titles - Episcopal priest, author, retreat leader, lecturer and teacher - that all converge around the issue of climate change.
She will deliver the keynote address, "Climate Change: An Emergency of the Heart," at an interfaith forum on Oct. 30, 2 to 5 p.m., at First Church of Christ of Longmeadow.
Her advocacy work earned her the 2016 "Steward of God's Creation Award" from the National Religious Coalition on Creation Care.
Convergence is a theme in Bullitt-Jonas' life as an early love of literature, Divine help in facing an eating disorder and call to priesthood at the time of growing awareness of global warming helped put her on the path of climate activism.
"I've always been interested in how our inner life - our visceral response to beauty, images, words, and stories - relates to the world outside us," Bullitt-Jonas said.
"As a teenager and young adult I was fascinated by the relationship between literature and social justice. In college I majored in Russian literature and wrote an honors thesis about the failed effort by the Soviet Union to use art to advance social change."
She said it was in graduate school that her life took "an unexpected turn" as "after a long struggle with an eating disorder, I finally got into recovery."
"Through the grace of God, I made peace with my body," Bullitt-Jonas said.
"I was so surprised by the divine love that saved my life that I headed to seminary. I was ordained in the Episcopal Church in June 1988, the same spring that the New York Times was reporting on what scientists were saying about the threat of global warming. I wondered: if it's possible for a crazy addict like myself to make peace with her body, might it not be possible for human beings to make peace with the body of the Earth?"
Bullitt-Jonas, who will preached at all three services on Sunday, Oct. 23, at Christ Church Cathedral, notes that in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, God gives human beings "dominion" over the Earth.
"Dominion has unfortunately been misinterpreted as being the license to dominate and destroy. However, the Bible is very clear that the Earth does not belong to us. It belongs to God - 'The Earth is the Lord's, and all that is in,' says Psalm 24,'" Bullitt-Jonas said.
"Our role as human beings is to tend and care for the Earth as stewards entrusted with an enormous gift. The word 'dominion' comes from the root word 'Dominus' - Lord - so I interpret 'dominion' to mean that we are called to love the world as our Lord God loves it."
The first sermon Bullitt-Jonas ever preached was on the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, which sent 11 million gallons, or 257,000 barrels, of oil along 1,100 miles of Alaskan coastline.
She is knowledgeable about both the scientific as well as spiritual implications of climate preservation efforts, ranging from the 2015 Paris Agreement aimed at preventing Earth from "warming more than an average of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels," she notes, to Governor Charlie Baker's executive order for "his administration to cut back greenhouse gas emissions."
Still, Bullitt-Jonas says if individuals are serious "about wanting to preserve a habitable world," and end dependence on fossil fuels, "we'll have to work for it - to organize, lobby, vote, pray, invent, create, protest, and push - to do it together and do it fast."
The Paris Agreement, signed by nearly 200 nations, is estimated to curb greenhouse gas emissions whose excess traps too much heat in Earth's atmosphere, by about half of what is needed to stop the consequences of human induced climate change. According to government statistics, greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, from the burning of such fuels as gas and coal for heat, transportation and electricity, have increased by seven percent since 1990.
Bullitt-Jonas received her undergraduate degree from California's Stanford University, a doctorate in comparative literature from Harvard University and a master of divinity degree from Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge.
Since 2014 the former parish priest has served as missioner for creation care for the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts and, since this year, as well as for the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ.
"I feel like a walking sign of the possibility of Christian unity in the face of the climate crisis, and I give thanks for people of other faiths who walk beside me," Bullitt-Jonas said.
"For many of us, the great obstacle to thinking about climate change is fear: fear that if we admit how much we care, we'll be overwhelmed by grief; fear that it's too late for meaningful action - we're already cooked; fear that our efforts won't make a difference; fear that we're incapable of changing our ways and finding a more life-sustaining path; fear that the solutions to climate change require sacrifice; fear that if we don't cling tightly to what we have and grab for more, we'll lose it all."
She calls climate change "an existential crisis, for it threatens everything we love: the health and safety of our children, the well-being of the poor and vulnerable, the ongoing existence of our brother and sister species, even the stability and ongoing existence of human civilization."
"Climate change presents difficult moral questions," Bullitt-Jonas said.
"By continuing to burn fossil fuels, we are stealing a habitable world from our children. Do we have the moral right to leave a ruined world to those who come after us? Do we have the moral right to harm the poor, who are the people hurt first and hardest by the effects of climate change? Do we have the moral right to decimate our brother and sister species in what scientists call the world's sixth major extinction event? If we don't have the moral right to do these things, how do we forgive ourselves and set a new course?"
She said in her work she tries to "convey God's love for the natural world and to evoke our God-given yearning to protect the web of life."
"I've organized prayer vigils, spoken at rallies and conferences, lobbied locally and in D.C., and been arrested twice for non-violent civil disobedience," Bullitt-Jonas said.
"When we understand how much God cherishes the Earth and its communities, human and other-than-human, we receive strength to join the struggle to transform society so that it no longer devours and exploits the Earth and the poor. Love is ultimately what motivates us, not grief, rage, or fear."
Bullitt-Jonas feels "we can do a lot as individuals to reduce our personal carbon footprint - drive less, use public transportation, put on a sweater and turn down the heat, ditch the dryer and hang laundry outside to dry, eat local foods, support our local land trusts and farms, and so on."
"But the scope and pace of the climate crisis require change on a much broader scale. We need to keep fossil fuels in the ground and to stop building fossil fuel infrastructure, such as new oil and gas pipelines," Bullitt-Jonas said.
"We need public policies, such as a fair and rising price on carbon, which will accelerate the transition to clean energy sources, like sun and wind. We need to exercise our right to vote and to support candidates who understand the emergency and who will move us toward solutions that benefit all communities, including the poor and historically under-served. Our country needs to address the climate crisis with the same fervor and clarity of purpose that Americans demonstrated when they mobilized to transform the economy during World War II."
Bullitt-Jonas said she is "grateful for the efforts that the Obama administration has made to push for climate solutions."
"I am grateful for the Clean Power Plan, which takes an historic and important step toward reducing carbon pollution from power plants, and I appreciate his desire to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," said Bullitt-Jonas who was arrested and released after paying a fine for taking part in a 2001 interfaith "witness" at the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. against further drilling in the refuge.
On Saturday, 170 countries meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, agreed to cut the use of hydrofluorocarbons that are used in air conditioners and refrigerators. HFCs gases have a much greater ability than carbon dioxide to trap heat in Earth's atmosphere. The Kigali amendment to the 1987 Montreal Protocol is legally binding, and its successful negotiated is attributed in part to the efforts of President Obama.
Bullitt-Jonas called Pope Francis' 2015 encyclical, "Laudato Si: On Care For Our Common Home," a "thrilling document."
"It is short, but in its pages Pope Francis gives a wonderfully comprehensive vision of the world. He understands that everything is connected. The same mindset that allows us to dominate and exploit the earth is also the mindset that allows us to dominate and exploit the poor and the vulnerable, including women, people of color, immigrants, and refugees." Bullitt-Jonas said.
"The cry of the earth is inseparable from the cry of the poor. To put it another way, the struggle for a livable world is the same as the struggle for a just and peaceful world."
Bullitt-Jonas said "one of the first things" she did as in the newly created position of missioner for creation care was "to launch a Season of Creation in our diocese, a period of about six weeks that begins on the Feast Day of St. Francis" on Oct. 4. She noted St. Francis is often referred to as the "patron saint of ecologists."
"During this special period, congregations are invited to pay particular attention to our Christian call to honor the Earth. Through sermons, special worship services, and educational experiences, Christians have a chance to renew their relationship with the God who loves and redeems the world and who sends us out to follow Jesus in his mission of justice, mercy, and hope," Bullitt-Jonas said.
She added she keeps a "framed image of St. Francis, painted by the Maine artist, Nancy Earle, in a prominent place in my house" and has been empowered in her own climate activism by the saint's life.
"In the painting, St. Francis is accompanied - even interpenetrated - by other living creatures, such as a wolf and a whale, and by wind, sun, water, and fire. He knows that his boundaries do not stop with his skin. He knows that human beings do not exist in isolation, but only in communion with other creatures and with the Earth upon which all life depends," Bullitt-Jonas said.
She added that she and her husband are currently living in the Berkshires while building an energy efficient home in Northampton.
"I am grateful to be living right now in an old farmhouse beside a pond. Every morning I can step outside and see what God is up to in the wind and trees and water. When I spend time in nature and my mind grows prayerful and quiet, I begin to experience my interconnection with everything that is," Bullitt-Jonas said.
"The prophet Isaiah advises, 'Do not turn your back on your own kin,' and I'm coming to realize that our 'kin' extend way beyond human beings. Several years ago I changed my car's license plate to KINSHP. "