I was blessed this summer with a month of spiritual renewal leave in Portugal. I explored the country, rested deeply, and worked on writing projects. While there, I also reveled in nature. I sat on the beaches of Nazaré where 70-80-foot waves regularly draw the best surfers in the world. I went to the Algarve and marveled at blue skies, white sand, the beauty of rocky outcroppings jutting off shore. At times I wept at the beauty that was around me.
But there were also moments that were bitter sweet--moments that made me reflect on my relationship to the earth. As we made our way down Portugal’s highways to the Algarve, I saw stands and stands of trees that were heat stressed and dying. The Algarve, in addition to being a tourist destination, is considered Portugal’s bread basket. And that July, they were in the midst of a heat wave and a long running drought. Indeed, July of 2022 was the hottest month in Portugal since they started keeping records in 1931. Extreme drought plagued 45 percent of the mainland, and fires raged in the interior of the country. I was on the coast, fairly distant from those fires. But the heat was everywhere.
I have for so long thought of what is happening to our environment intellectually. I’ve known about climate change. But did I really? I now realize that I did not know, because my intellectual engagement was not an engagement of the heart. It was not a knowing of the heart.
But seeing what was happening around me this summer, finally broke my heart. And, I wept for the trees. I wept for the rushes of dying grass. I wept for the farmers who were finding it hard to make their living without sufficient water for their plants. I wept for the people who lived in the countryside, who had depended on the land and the water for sustenance for generations, and whose cultures and ways of life were receding. I wept for the families of the more than 1700 people who have died because of the heat in Portugal and Spain. I wept for the ways in which we have not listened, have not heard in our hearts, the cries of the whole of creation.
I continue to be gratified by the commitment to climate justice that is a part of our social witness. As our Social Principles remind us, “All creation is the Lord’s, and we are responsible for the ways in which we use and abuse it,” (¶160, The Natural World). United Methodists across our connection are trying to use it wisely and mitigate decades and decades of harm.
Our agencies, led by Wespath, have committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. United Women of Faith have long made climate justice central to their ministry. Indeed, they featured the topic at their most recent Assembly. At the Connectional Table, we have and will continue to try to reduce travel. Annual Conferences and local churches have taken action. But I know for myself that I must do more. I must work to reorient my life so that the creation, of which we all are a part, can thrive. Of course, that kind of change requires a change in heart. And, maybe, that change began for me this summer with tears.
My prayer for all of us on behalf of our environment is the prayer of the psalmist, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10