On Tuesday, May 30, we have arranged for a tour of the Belfast Transfer Station at 1 p.m. This will be an inside look at how the station operates and how we can help ensure that our efforts at recycling are worthwhile and helping to reduce our impact on landfills. The manager welcomes our questions, preferably submitted in advance. There is no limit on the numbers who may take part, but we would like to have some idea of how many may be interested. If you think you would like to come, please sign up on the sheet in the Parish House (near the bookcase with Creation Care reading materials).  If possible, let’s plan to carpool from St. Margaret’s to the transfer station.   

WATER FILLING STATIONS HAVE BEEN ORDERED!
We have raised over $16,000, enough to purchase the stations. While we wait for their manufacture and shipment to Belfast (arriving by mid-June), we will continue to raise the funds for installation. We thank everyone who has contributed and/or passed the word about this major effort. With just a bit more help, we can finish the job. Please take a few flyers/donation forms, available on the table at the rear of the church and in the parish house, (or this link to the flyer to print), to pass out to friends and neighbors.

The Creation Care Team has planned two events for parishioners over the next few weeks:

• On Sunday, May 21, as part of Coffee Hour after the 9:30 service, we will show the recent PBS program, Chasing Carbon Zero, hosted by the PBS Science Correspondent, Miles O’Brien. Not only does he introduce some of the game-changing technologies that can bring us to that elusive target by 2050, about a quarter of the program was filmed in Maine.
• On Tuesday, May 30, we have arranged for a tour of the Belfast Transfer Station at 1 p.m. This will be an inside look at how the station operates and how we can help ensure that our efforts at recycling are worthwhile and helping to reduce our impact on landfills. The manager welcomes our questions, preferably submitted in advance. There is no limit on the numbers who may take part, but we would like to have some idea of how many may be interested and will post a sign-up sheet in the parish house.

Finally, you should know about a public meeting taking place in Searsport on Saturday morning May 20. It will be an opportunity to hear at least one side of the controversy about using Searsport as the assembly point and launch station for ocean-based wind platforms.

HELP WANTED FOR EARTH DAY PLANNING
The Committee is making plans for Earth Day, Saturday, April 22. We invite all parishioners to help plan activities for the day, the week, and the month of April. If you have ideas to share, or have participated in Earth Day activities here or elsewhere, or just want to be involved in something worthwhile and fun for a few hours with no long-term commitment, we would love to hear from you. Please let the office know or call or email Mary Rackmales.

WATER-FILLING STATIONS for Belfast. On Tuesday evening the Belfast City Council unanimously approved a proposal from the St. Margaret’s Creation Care team to purchase and install up to 3 water filling stations in downtown Belfast.
(click link to see rest of article).

The Rev. Barbara Briggs and Fr. Nathan March joined together to bless pets from parishioners of St. Margaret’s and St. Francis of Assisi on October 4th, Feastday of St. Francis of Assisi.

The “Songs of Taizé” published in different languages are simple, but preparation is required to use them in prayer. Short songs, repeated again and again, give the time of prayer a meditative character. As the words are sung over many times, it becomes a way of listening to God. It allows everyone to remain together in attentive waiting on God. See below for more on this way of praying together:

1. October 4 at 4:00PM* we are hosting a pet-blessing together with St. Francis Church at the entry to our sanctuary. (At the bottom of the steps near the sunflowers). Please do bring your scaly, furry or feathered friends! * note the time change 
2. October 4 at 5:00PM we will be hosting an ecumenical song practice. If you can sing, PLEASE come to help us! We will be preparing the 5:30 Prayer Vigil for the Care of Creation. We need your presence. We need your prayer. We need your voice. 
3. October 4 at 5:30PM we will gather with people from many different congregations in our area for a Prayer Vigil for the Care of Creation.

        The Season of Creation is a world-wide ecumenical celebration of God’s gift of our earthly home and an acknowledgement of our responsibility to care for it. It began on September 1 and ends on October 4, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. (On October 4th, St. Margaret’s will have the Blessing of the Animals @ 4:30PM with the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi Taize service @ 5:30PM.)
        The Rev. Steven Alspach, pastor of Sandy Point Congregational Church, inaugurated our local observance with an ecumenical prayer service, “Listen to the Voice of Creation,” on Thursday, September 1, 12 noon, at Belfast City Park Pavilion.
        On the Tuesdays of September, Sept. 6, 13, 20, and 27, St. Margaret’s and St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church are sponsoring weekly “Community Conversations,” also at noon in the pavilion at Belfast City Park, featuring speakers with a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives, to stimulate discussion about what we value in our natural environment, changes we observe, and our reactions. You are invited to bring a brown bag lunch.
        See a detailed description of the speakers for “Community Conversations” in this first issue of “Creation Care,” St. Margaret’s newsletter about our natural world, what we value, threats we perceive, and how we are reacting.

Here are a few titles relating to the appreciation and Care of Creation for winter reading and/or gift giving.  All have been verified as ‘read and recommended’.   Most or all can be ordered from Left Bank Books.  Sarah Lincoln-Harrison for the Creation Care committee

From Juliet B:  The Overstory, by Richard Powers, W.W. Norton & Co., 2018. The important message of Powers twelfth novel is how the passion and zeal of outspoken rage is transformed by a group of nine environmentalists on behalf of our desecrated forests.  Metaphorically, the journey of this committed group of activists is channeled by an arduous climb to a vantage point high in the canopy of the forest from which to view the world as it was intended to be – a breathtaking and transformative view.  I loved this book and believe it is a favorite for many people.

From Sarah L-H:  Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty, Milkweed Editions, 2020, a prize-winning memoir by a 14-year-old lad.  Passionate and intense curiosity about the natural world as experienced and articulated through the curtain of autism, reminding me of the substantial gifts given to those whom we consider “limited”.  A humbling and transformative read.  Excellent choice as a gift for a young person, Dara is also designated as a member of Young Ambassadors for the Jane Goodall Institute.

Couple the above selection with natural scientist Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams’ A Book of Hope, A Survival Guide for Trying Times, Celadon Books 2021. In interview format, it presents Jane’s personal story and rationale for living hopefully with a sense of the evolutionary possibilities.   Conversational and very accessible for all ages.

From John N:  One that really drew me in when I first read it about eight years ago is The Forest Unseen, A Year’s Watch in Nature by David George Haskell, Penguin Books, 2013.  The author is professor of biology at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN.  This book, though, is not academic. It’s beautifully written, eye-opening, and inspiring.

From Richard H:  Underland, A Deep Time Journey, by Robert Macfarlane, W.W. Norton & Company, 2019. The author describes his extraordinary journeys over the world exploring in person underground caves, carved-out rock “cities”, glacial caverns and more. He explores England, Paris underground Italy, Norway, Greenland, and Finland. He takes hair-raising risks, for example hiking solo in winter over mountains to locate prehistoric cave art. His ecological adventures kept me turning the pages, and I gained a new appreciation for so much of what we don’t see.

From Cindy F:  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, Harper, 2008, is part memoir, part journalistic investigation, and is full of original recipes that celebrate healthy eating, sustainability, and the pleasures of good food.  Barbara Kingsolver opens her home to us, as she and her family attempt a year of eating only local food, much of it from their own garden. Inspired by the flavors and culinary arts of a local food culture, they explore many farmers markets and diversified organic farms, most within a 100-mile radius of their home. They also grow and or raise (chickens, etc.) much of the food they eat. With characteristic warmth, Kingsolver shows us how to put food back at the center of the political and family agenda. I particularly enjoyed the saga of her family’s efforts in turkey breeding and raising, something I’m not likely to take on myself but informative and exciting.

From Kristen B:  Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our Worlds, Change our Minds, and Shape our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake, Random House, 2021.  An incredible write-up about mycelium in all their glory: and the way their partnerships with other plants — and species, including us — absolutely informs not only how we live, but who we are. This book is full of science and research, but Sheldrake is also a poet and a dreamer, and asks really fascinating questions that make you see God’s creation very differently.

From Sarah L-H:  Dawnland Voices, An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New England, Siobhan Senior (Editor), Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2014. This is a broad survey of writings from all ten indigenous nations in New England over the past 400 years.  These readings give me new respect and appreciation for the creative, wise, resilient, and generally overlooked “natural” teachers among us.  I especially liked the editor’s inclusion of young contemporary indigenous writers.

From Sarah L-H:  This Day, Collected and New Sabbath Poems, by Wendell Berry, Counterpoint 2013.  A collection spanning the years from 1979-2013.  Berry invites you to share in his passionate and humble relationship with his personal space on this earth.  His poems are like a ‘soaking prayer’.  Read on and reflect!  And feel at home.

From Richard H:  Swimme, Brian T., Hidden Heart of the Cosmos, Orbis Books, 2019. “Brian Swimme invites us to wake up and surrender to the power of relationships that pervade our cosmos.  If we understand this new universe story, we will begin to see that each of us is an originating center of the universe, arising together from the heart of the cosmos.”  (Ilia Delio, author, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love.)   This book was important to me because it updated the ideas that Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry first introduced in 1996 in The Universe Story.  It provides the basis for the evolution of our Earth: animal, vegetable, and mineral.

From Richard H:  Pope Francis, Laudate Si On Care For Our Common Home, Encyclical Letter – Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2015. “Laudato Si (Praise be to you): On Care for Our Common Home draws all Christians into a dialogue with every person on the planet about our common home. We as human beings are united by the concern for our planet and every living thing that dwells on it, especially the poorest and most vulnerable. Pope Francis’ … joins the body of the Church’s social and moral teaching and draws on the best scientific research, providing the foundation for the ethical and spiritual itinerary that follows.”   As the titular leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis represents 1.2 billion Catholics as well as being an influential leader in the community at large. His voice as a vigorous advocate for the healing our planet should be read by many and will influence many.

From Mary R: The Trees in My Forest, by Bernd Heinrich, hardcover edition published 1997 by Cliff Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers; Ecco paperback edition published 2003, one of the first books I bought when we moved to Maine in 2004.  I knew nothing of Heinrich’s background and writing, just as I knew little about the Maine woods that were around us, but the squibs on the back cover convinced me that this would be an excellent introduction to both. The Washington Post review: “. . . an engaging primer on the complex biological economics of the woods themselves . . . In Heinrich’s hands, the lives of trees are as noble and as dramatic as the lives of men.” I was not mistaken in my choice. Heinrich’s prose is straightforward and clear, often poetic; the illustrations match the beauty of the words. It was a fine introduction to the Maine woods and has been a delightful companion in the intervening years, making re-reading richly rewarding.