"MDG #7 - Ensure Environmental Sustainability" -- by John Miers

"After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished,
he said (in order to fulfill the scripture),
'I thirst.'"
John 19:28

Many people are thirsty. Much of our environment is in trouble. Our planet is suffering. What should people do? What should nations do? What should Christians do?

Like the old song reminds us: “Problems, we’ve got problems; we’ve got stacks and stacks of problems…..”

Well, the world has problems, too. Big problems. These problems are bigger than one geographic area – bigger than a city. Larger than a county, state, or even a multi-state area. These problems affect our entire country, our continent, even the whole wide world. What kind of problems? Well, it’s getting warmer, our ice is melting, it is harder to grow stuff, more expensive to move stuff, and the wells are going dry, just to name a few concerns.

This set of problems is like a big mobile, like the one I hang over my patio every spring. It is wide, and has many arms, all delicately balanced, awaiting the slightest breeze. When the breeze comes, and it always does, the mobile swerves, dances, and swings around, always in harmony. But go ahead and pull on one of these arms, and something happens: Almost everything moves, somehow. Yes, it may be possible to affect only one other arm, but that’s very hard to do. Pull on one, and there is a widespread effect. One moves, and then another, and still another. Pretty soon, all are impacted. This movement spreads from one place to another, all around the system.

It’s sometime hard to understand – or even believe – that what you do in Maryland will have an effect on someone in North Dakota, or Somalia, or Venezuela, or even New Zealand. But it will; just like pulling one arm on the mobile.

What we do to preserve our environment will have an effect somewhere, sometime, somehow. These effects are often not easy to discern or to understand. Sometimes they are not economically logical But they usually make sense when you look at the bigger picture, and investigate just what will happen – or what will NOT happen if this action is undertaken. Education and imagination and boldness are all essential.

Sometimes what is done here means that something will NOT have to be done over there, leading to another movement in their arm of the mobile. If you don’t need the paper, maybe a tree in Canada won’t be cut down, and then the wood won’t have to be cut and sawed up. The pulp won’t have to be made into paper, and the wood and the paper won’t have to be shipped thousands of miles. Less energy will be needed, so maybe the electricity generating station won’t need to be started up today, with less coal being burned and less pollution being expelled into the sky. Maybe. Perhaps if it isn’t quite as warm in Nigeria today, someone will not have to buy a coat, and can use that money instead on a goat, which will give milk to his family for years to come. Maybe. Maybe if the coal consumption falls below the “magic level,” a new mine won’t have to be dug. Maybe. All of these are little slivers of “maybes”, but lots of them add up to something significant. Absolutely.

The Christian way does not do things any old way; it seeks to do things “the right way.” We see ourselves as stewards, not just for our immediate relatives, but for the rest of the world, as well as for those who will be future inhabitants. What better way to be “right” than to try to leave things better off than they were when we found them. This is what sustainability is all about. We should not just do things to benefit ourselves, but to also benefit others. The best way to ensure this sustainability is to be careful and judicious in our use of our resources. Using them wisely will mean that there will be more to “go around” and that there will be more available in the future. One of the most exciting and important uses for our modern technology is to allow this wise use to become a way of our lives. We can use less, and we can use things better – things that can be used again, and things that can be easily replaced.

It is amazing how inter-connected we are in “this fragile Earth, our island home.” That is to be discussed next month, when I turn to MDG 8, which is “Create a Global Partnership for Development.”

John Miers is from Bethesda, Maryland, where he was employed at the National Institutes of Health from 1968 to 2005. He serves on the board of St. Luke’s House, a halfway house for persons recovering from mental illness and also serves as Jubilee Officer for the Diocese of Washington. He was a member of National Commission on Science, Technology and Faith for the Episcopal Church and is active in his local church, where he is in the choir, worship committee, pastoral care committee, and the prayer team, and he also visits patients in a local hospital on behalf of the Chaplain.

"Millennium Development Goal #6 - Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases" - by John G. Miers

"Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people." - Matthew 4:23

Curing every disease and every sickness among the people……

When I read this Bible verse, I naturally thought of my career in the federal service. I worked for the National Institutes of Health for nearly forty years. Others in my family have worked there and some still do. My mother was a nurse. Health is in my family. Health is important to me. When I read the text about “curing EVERY disease” I am stunned as to how large a task that must have been. I am continually overwhelmed by what it must be like to be a member of a medical team in a foreign country. There are so many diseases in evidence. HIV/AIDS and malaria are cited in this goal, but so are “other diseases.”

Other diseases, too. There are infectious diseases, life-threatening diseases, disfiguring diseases, childhood diseases, easily diagnosed diseases, hard-to-diagnose ones, visible ones, and invisible ones. How do we prioritize just what to treat? How are conditions different in developing countries? What can we do here in the developed world to try to assist others? I still am astounded that the Millennium Development Goals were agreed to in 2000 by 189 heads of state and government -- including the United States. This was in response to the deepest material brokenness in the world today. Poverty the likes of which we just don't see within the United States. Poverty levels that lead to a child under 5 dying every three seconds from preventable, treatable causes, and 8,000 people (more than died in the September 11 attacks) dying each day of HIV/AIDS.

When I visit doctors here in the US I always give thanks for what we have here for our medical care. But I also worry about what other people don’t have. This is why this is such a crucial MDG goal. Medical care must be made available in all parts of the world. This is not a complicated project, but it is both expensive and hard to attain. I think of invisible diseases. These are the really tricky set of those “other diseases.” These include addictions, mental illness, heart disease, diabetes, malnutrition, vitamin deficiencies, and other illnesses and disorders that often go unnoticed by both the patients and medical staff. Each can lead to long-term illness and incapacitation, but medical teams often have their hands full with the gruesome and visible disabilities. All must be addressed.

The MDGs seek to provide treatment to all people in the developing world who suffer from these diseases, both visible and invisible. Jesus healed “every disease and sickness.” We can do no less. Jesus was obviously capable of doing this; we need to provide needed resources so his example can be followed.

John Miers is from Bethesda, Maryland, where he was employed at the National Institutes of Health from 1968 to 2005. He serves on the board of St. Luke’s House, a halfway house for persons recovering from mental illness and also serves as Jubilee Officer for the Diocese of Washington. He is a member of National Commission on Science, Technology and Faith for the Episcopal Church and is active in his local church, where he is in the choir, worship committee, pastoral care committee, and the prayer team, and he also visits patients in a local hospital on behalf of the Chaplain.

"The Missional Dimension of Life" -- by the Micah Challenge

Today's post is from the Micah Challenge, a global Christian campaign to achieve the MDGs. Part of their mission is a weekly prayer emailing like the one you see below. You can receive it in your email box every week send a blank email to regine.nagel@micahchallenge.org with the words 'subscribe prayer' in the subject line.

Reflection

‘All too quickly, certain issues in society are associated with certain political directions without the realisation that it is, in the first place, the biblical-theological question that Christians need to discuss. Reason for that lies in the failure to realise that Christian faith is relevant for public and social matters’, argues Andreas Kusch.

We are called to honour God by doing whatever we do for the triune God and this will always have a ‘missional dimension’.

In John 16: 5-16 we are reminded that the Holy Spirit is there to guide us.

‘Under the leadership of the Holy Spirit it becomes clear to the individual and to the church when comforting words, practical love, political involvement, prayer and fasting, social projects or evangelistic preaching are necessary. The Holy Spirit helps us to do the right thing in the most varied situations.’

Prayer

Let us pray:

• For the guidance of the Holy Spirit as we seek to be available to God.
• Our prayer focus this week is for Micah Challenge Haiti:

Jean Valery Vital-Herne from Haiti writes: We are busy working towards lobbying our President and Prime Minister ahead of their attendance at the UN High-level meeting on the MDGs in September.

Please pray for us as we inform churches about this important meeting and encourage them to hold their leaders to account. I would love our churches in Haiti to wake up to their responsibility towards their fellow Christians and non-Christians; please pray that Micah Challenge in Haiti can be a prophetic voice in our country.

• Reflecting on the statistic below: we pray for all these men and women who arrive in cities with the hope for a better life and more opportunities to make a living.
  
  We pray for city planners and other policy makers that they will have wisdom while developing clear strategies to improve urban infrastructure.

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Meditate on the Statistics

As you spend time in prayer and reflection, you may like to take a moment to silently understand with your heart the focus statistic we include each week (see below). Our hope is that you will find this series of statistics a useful resource in preparing presentations.

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

Target 11: By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers

‘Half of Asia's population will be living in cities by 2020, as some 1.1 billion people move to urban environments over the next 20 years. This is more than 100,000 people each day…Already more than half a billion Asians currently live in slums.’

Source: World Bank; June 2008

The Growing Connection

This post on food security from Ann Fontaine's excellent Green Lent blog:

Here is a site for a grassroots project developed by the UN and American Horticultural Society. A way to grow locally and support others around the world to improve nutrition.

The Growing Connection links people and cultures in a revolutionary campaign that introduces low-cost water efficient and sustainable food growing innovations hand in hand with wireless IT connectivity. It provides a sound educational foundation, and offers hundreds of families, both in America and abroad, a concrete opportunity to earn income and climb out of desperation. Perhaps most important, The Growing Connection engages people – a network of committed individuals - in an elegant solution to one of mankind’s fundamental challenges.

How does it work? School gardening programs and community gardens in the U.S., Ghana, Mexico and Nicaragua grow vegetables in an EarthBox system. that becomes a common growing platform for all participants. Students grow food, conduct horticultural experiments and share their lessons and experiences with each other using IT connectivity. Through modern IT installations, The Growing Connection participants in U.S.,, Ghana, Mexico and Nicaragua are directly linked. And importantly, they are also connected to sources of vital information and advice on growing food. Those once the most isolated can now grow, learn, and chose their own opportunities and destinies.