Okay, so if Amos was to show up today and deliver his poetic-prophetics in the body of a skinny, pale, spectacled, over-educated English environmental analyst, he might look something like the amazing Danny Chivers.
Danny helpfully reminds us that at COP15 many will engage in greenwash, counting on our apathy and ignorance to ignore how they have avoided the kind of real change that will manifest climate justice. Many will try and distract us with the violence of protestors, which pales in significance compared to the violence of the systems that have vested interests in seeing real climate justice aborted and replaced with band-aid solutions. Danny, in this poem and others, in 21st-century slam poetry parlance, picks up the sentiment of that great prophetic figure of the 18th century, itinerant Quaker preacher John Woolman, who wrote in his “Plea for the Poor”:
May we look upon our treasures, the furniture of our houses, and our garments, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions.
We too must look around and see in our lives the seeds of climate change in our “treasures” and let God’s grace lead us on the exodus from all oppression. In this ecological crisis we too can hear the call to pick up our cross and follow the crucified and resurrected One into a sustainable, simple, and joyful future.
SERIES INTRO: This year alone, EPYC has run nonviolent climate justice workshops with more than 8,000 young people (most with little or no contact with Christianity), inviting them amid our ecological crisis to become [eco]prophets and introducing them to an understanding of Christianity that provides a spirituality of compassionate engagement modeled on Jesus (rather than indifferent escapism dressed up in Jesus-drag that simply reflects the patterns of the world). In the countdown to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15), these are some of the most popular, inspiring, informative, and provocative video clips we have used in our workshops.
Feel free to post them on your blog, send them to friends, share them in your sermons, small groups, and Bible studies. Let them help you “think critically, plot creatively, and act compassionately” in witnessing to the gospel’s message of good news to our warming world — not a lubricant for the destruction of God’s good creation.
And join us in praying with Tim Costello and Brian McLaren for climate justice for the poor at Copenhagen.
Jarrod McKenna is seeking to live God’s love as a dad, husband, brother, activist trainer, and [eco]evangelist. He is a co-founder of the Peace Tree Community serving with the marginalised in one of the poorest of areas in his city, in Western Australia heads up an award-winning multi-faith youth service initiative called Together for Humanity, and is the founder and creative director of Empowering Peacemakers (E.P.Y.C.), for which he has received an Australian peace award in his work for empowering a generation of [eco]evangelists and peace prophets.
