Romans 8:17-27
January 31, 2021
“We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now…”
The apostle Paul wrote in brilliant, vivid and sometimes convoluted language as he tried to help the early church in Rome make sense of their experience. They were living in complicated times, full of suffering and groaning. Paul assured them that their suffering was not meaningless. It was part of something new being born, something bigger than they could imagine—the transformation of God’s creation.
Paul wrote these words about 2000 years ago. Just this last year, Valarie Kaur, a Sikh author and activist, used equally brilliant and vivid language—perhaps less convoluted—to put the suffering and groaning of our world today in a larger context. We are part of something new being born, she writes. She likens the times we are in to “the darkness of the womb” and compares the pain to the labor of giving birth. In her book, See No Stranger, she points out that the final stage of labor is called “transition.” It is the most dangerous part. Giving birth requires every ounce of the mother’s strength, as she breathes and pushes new life into being.
I heard Valarie Kaur speak as part of the People’s Inauguration last Thursday. As she talked about the time of transition we are in, I found myself thinking of Paul’s vision of a world in transition, of all creation being reborn. I thought of the changes we have seen in the natural world—the animals that began flourishing as human activity slowed down, the air that has grown cleaner. Something is changing. Is it a momentary pause in our human race to destroy our planet? Or could this be the beginning of a genuine transformation of our human relationship with the rest of creation? How do we choose to go home by another way, to learn from this strange time so that the world around us can flourish?
I decided, again this week, to draw upon the wisdom of the Framingham community. I reached out to three people who have been leaders in Transition Framingham, a group that has partnered with Edwards Church in many ways, including the creation of the Edible Forest Garden in front of Edwards Hall. I was struck by the synchronicity between Paul and Valarie Kaur’s visions and the name and mission of the Transition movement. Jenny Allen, Mike Croci, and Mary Memmott graciously agreed to add a conversation with me to their respective zoom dance cards.
Jenny was one of the founders of Transition Framingham. She first heard about the idea at the library. When she learned that her hometown of Bristol, England had a Transition group and that the movement began in a nearby town, it brought her back to the roots of her own passion for the environment. As a child, her mother and father instilled in her a love of the natural world, helping store her treasures like sycamore seeds and acorns on cotton balls in egg boxes. Her grandfather taught her to compost.
The Transition movement, for Jenny, “felt very practical and downright sensible.” The word transition refers to moving away from dependence on fossil fuels and toward sustainable, livable local communities. Jenny defined it this way: “moving away from what was normal because normal wasn’t working.”
Mary Memmott was also involved in the founding of Transition Framingham. Her interest in the group reflects the intersection of two arenas of her life: her fascination with the natural world and her experience of the power of grassroots movements to make a difference. The first began with a high school biology teacher, Mrs. Turek, who inspired her. She went on to study biology in college, which led her to summer jobs pollinating milkweed and chasing spiders. “It hooked me for life,” she said.
The other impetus for her environmental activism started in college, when she was involved in a small way in efforts to divest from South Africa. It worked: apartheid fell. “I couldn’t believe this,” she said, “the power of a movement.” In later years, as she worked to counter climate change, she felt the frustration of a movement that wasn’t having an impact fast enough. Part of the appeal of the Transition movement was its positive approach and local emphasis. “Here’s something you can do that’s local,” she said, “that’s positive, that no matter what happens, it’s good.”
Mike Croci came into the fold a little later. Until then, his environmentalism had been expressed in his home life—gardening, composting, solar panels. One day he and his partner attended a brainstorming workshop called Fresh Food for Framingham. Mike was hooked.
“I found my tribe,” he said. “That is one of the coolest things about the human experience…when you find the people you are looking for.” The idea for the Edible Forest Garden was born that day. So was the Framingham Garden Starters—Mike’s idea—, which provides encouragement and assistance to help people start their own gardens. “My personal passion for the environment is local, sustainable, resilient food sources,” Mike says. “I think it’s what I was put on the planet to do.”
Mike dove head-first into Transition Framingham. He also dove head-first into the Framingham Earth Day Festival, and he spent several years as its coordinator. Meanwhile his job, working with Andrew Whittaker at Green Abundance by Design, grew to more than full time. He was busy all the time—too busy.
Then the pandemic hit. After having spent at least 400 hours planning the Earth Day Festival, he convened the planning group and they canceled it. In a Zoom meeting, they brainstormed what they could do to fulfill its mission. One idea stood out in its simplicity—Clean Up Framingham. No schedules, no planning meetings, just a Facebook page encouraging people to pick up trash when they went out on their walks. It took off. Even in the cold of January, die-hards are out there almost every day. It is “overwhelmingly inspiring,” Mike says. “It is part of the blessing coming out of COVID; we had to think creatively.”
Another blessing for Mike was the opportunity to slow down and assess how he was spending his time. “What I want is to dive deeper into ecological landscaping and local food sources,” he says. “I narrowed my focus to the things I think can make the most impact.”
Ironically, focusing in has allowed a different kind of expansion. Increased awareness of the importance of pollinators intersected with people spending more time at home, at a time when Green Abundance by Design was ready to grow. In the midst of a pandemic, when so many things stopped, Green Abundance by Design has been planting pollinator gardens, creating beauty in backyards and enabling bees and butterflies to thrive. “It felt like a divine alignment,” Mike muses.
Jenny has a similar sense of the blessings that have emerged from the pandemic. In addition to Transition Framingham, Jenny has been involved with Extinction Rebellion, whose purpose includes raising awareness about the climate emergency we are in, using creative means like street theater. Extinction Rebellion recognizes that just raising an alarm is not enough; we need to create what Jenny calls a “regenerative culture”—taking care of the planet, each other and ourselves.
This year, Jenny says, “the pandemic was doing the work of waking people up.” She has become increasingly aware of wildlife in her back yard and more attuned to the natural growing season. She has also come to see how over-stimulating our culture had become. “There is a lot of joy to be had,” she says, “just by reducing the outer stimuli.”
In her own life, Jenny is treasuring walks and zooms with friends and finding satisfaction in shrinking down. We talked about the societal changes we need to make to carry the learnings of this time into the future. Jenny talks about the need for a more robust safety net; deeper than that, she says, we need “a better definition of success.”
Mary sees both an opportunity and a daunting challenge emerging from the pandemic. “It’s an opportunity—you can see that you can get by with a lot less fossil fuel; it’s okay.” She continues: “But if it doesn’t cause any system change, it doesn’t help much.” Mary is part of a New England Transition hub group that is asking how we can impact those systems.
Mary has seen the ways our society’s inequities have been exposed during this time; she is more convinced than ever that “we have to bring everyone along.” She says, “We need to care for the environment, and we need to care for people.”
Mary and I talked about a project Mike had mentioned: a collaboration with Daniel’s Table to plant hundreds of fruit trees in South Framingham—a long term approach to remove carbon from the atmosphere and provide fresh fruit for people to eat. The Community Gardens Working Group of Transition Framingham is also talking with Daniel’s Table about offering raised garden beds for anyone who wants one. The idea is not to raise vegetables for the food pantry, but to raise vegetables so people don’t need to go to the food pantry.
It’s an exciting idea, and Mary acknowledges, a complicated one. “You have to get to know people,” she says. Maybe someone would rather have pots than a raised bed, or maybe they want to grow the eggplant variety that is indigenous to their home country. The project is about growing food locally; it’s also about listening to one another and building relationships.
We are living in a time of transition. Like the transition of childbirth, it is fraught—with pain and danger, and also with wonder and possibility. It is a holy moment, for God is at work creating new possibility and new life. It is bigger than us, this transition, and it needs every ounce of our effort to breathe and push it into being. In this time of reduced human activity, there are ways the earth is healing. How can we use our time and energy and God-given creativity in the service of that healing?
Our three local climate activists offer us guidance. Find your tribe. Dive deep into what brings you joy; focus on the way you can have the greatest impact. Slow down and pay attention to the birds and the changing of the seasons. Treasure relationships and let go of excess things and excess busyness. Discover the joy of reducing outer stimuli. Remember that the well-being of our neighbors is intertwined with the well-being of the planet. Trust the power of a movement to make a difference. Keep trying. Have fun.
That is a lot of wisdom. What one or two pieces speak to you today?
A final story: Early in the pandemic, Mike and his son Tanner, who lives in Holliston, agreed to spend time together outdoors. They went on walks through nearby conservation lands. Mike taught Tanner about the plants. They found huckleberries, watched them ripen and ate them. They discovered that the interconnecting conservation areas led to Holliston High School. Now, when Tanner walks home from school, he doesn’t walk along Route 16; he goes through the woods. He goes home by another way.
May God bless us with family and friends, wisdom and inspiration that lead us home by another way, home to the restoration of our planet. Amen.