Service Day at Gallup Park
On Sunday, July 24, FUMC got out into the world to serve at Gallup Park! About 15- 20 of us shoveled, moved and spread mulch on trails and cleaned up trash. Pastor Sarah opened our
service in prayer. A big thanks to Ann Arbor Parks & Rec who partnered with us and to our FUMC friends for showing up and making this happen!
Creation Care at FUMC is planning another event in fall with the parks and hope you can all join in!
Forest fire smoke
Recently, our area experienced poor air quality due to forest fires in Canada, which at one point was some of the worst air quality in the world! As Pastor Nancy prayed in church a couple of weekends back, we should pray for the people impacted by forest fire smoke. We remember both those with underlying lung or other health conditions such as asthma and those less able to shield themselves from smoke due to working outside and/or lacking air conditioning.
As we pray for our neighbors who have been impacted by poor air quality, we should also admit that our actions as a country and world community are partly responsible for events like
this. We contribute to larger carbon footprints that generate greenhouse gasses through our lifestyles, such as having bigger houses with larger electric and gas demands (e.g. for air conditioning, heating, lights), driving bigger and often less gas efficient cars, not using public transport, walking or biking, and through our demand for certain foods when we want them and generation of food waste. It is well known that that greenhouse gasses have increased the temperature of our planet; higher levels of greenhouse gasses have also resulted in more frequent extreme events such as droughts and floods. The more frequent droughts and higher temperatures together have increased the intensity and frequency of natural events such as forest fires.
It seems strange that fires in Canada impacting the air quality in Michigan (I am not a atmospheric scientists and do not completely understand it). Although I did not grow up in Michigan, several of my friends living in Michigan for most of their lives do not remember forest fire impacts while they were growing up. Thus, I think we need to be sensitive, pray and reach out to people who are especially hard-hit by the smoke, and at the same time look again at our lifestyles and see what we can do to minimize our contribution to this problem and to take care of God’s Creation.
