By: Steve McCloskey, Pastor of Taftsville Chapel Mennonite Fellowship
Heather Wolfe with the Climate Ribbon Project. Heather has served at Taftsville Chapel and to other churches around North America in engaging the Climate Crisis with creativity. Photo credit: Jan Collins
Churches around the world observe “Season of Creation” on the liturgical calendar between the period of September 1-October 4. This is a time in which Christians of various traditions celebrate the creativity of God and the role that we believe the Creator has called humans to play in stewardship of the natural world. This season is marked on the calendar because it is around the same time as Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish new year commemorating the creation of the world) and culminates on October 4 as it is the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi—the patron saint of ecology (among other things).
Locally, Taftsville Chapel Mennonite Fellowship is engaging in a number of practices during this time (a tradition that goes back for at least eight years at Taftsville Chapel). On Sunday October 6, from 11:30 to 2 PM, our church will be hosting a “solar tour” as part of a partnership with the American Solar Energy Society and Interfaith Power and Light’s National Solar Tour (October 4-6), sharing with those who are curious about the benefits and opportunities that have come with our chapel’s solar array on the roof—including ways we’ve been able to give to the community as a result.
Gabriel Duncan, Jennifer Driscoll, and Jacob McCloskey plant seeds at Taftsville Chapel– partnering with the Earth in healing and restoration of one another and the land. Photo Credit: Carmeleta Beidler
On October 4, Taftsville Chapel will honor the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi with a screening of Franco Zeffirelli’s film “Brother Sun, Sister Moon”. The movie recounts the story of how Francis, born into a wealthy Italian family and ecclesial extravagance renounces the materialism, excess, and militarism of his time to follow the way of Jesus into simplicity, humility, poverty, and obedience to God; churches were ornate and wielded significant influence while also neglecting the poor—yet Francis rejects the garments and wealth he inherited and instead publicly disrobes as a renunciation of these comforts. Anyone from the community is welcome to attend the screening of the film, beginning at 7 PM on Friday October 4 at Taftsville Chapel. Discussion on the life of St. Francis and how he can speak to our time will follow. This event is co-hosted with Our Lady of the Snows in Woodstock and St Francis of Assisi in Windsor.
This year’s Season of Creation theme of “Hope and Act” encouraged us to put hope into action. On Sunday September 22 our church engaged in “The Climate Ribbon Project” (https://www.theclimateribbon.org/project#home). This invited us into a practice of writing on fabric ribbon what we hope to never lose as a result of the current climate chaos and then tying our ribbon to a tree, as a sign of hope. This is something you are welcome to engage in too, whether at your own home or if you’d like to stop by at our chapel’s lawn and add to our tree.
