Climate is Catalyst
A catalyst is something—an energy or a body—that sparks a change.
A catalyst is something—an energy or a body—that sparks a change. The change could be for bad, like bacteria causing illness, or for good – like yeast causing dough to rise (with which someone bakes something to share). Some catalysts (including bacteria and yeast) have both good and bad effects.
In church speak, “inspiration” applies to what a catalyst does, and “transformation” applies to the change that an inspiration sparks. Every day, we live around catalysts/inspirations: a story, a text, a teaching, a person, a memory, a spirit, a dreaming, an ancestor, a trauma, a struggle, etcetera. Those can spark change, for good and for bad – depending on how we engage them.
In the recent past, we heard debates on the causes and effects of climate change. What and who is responsible? How do we mitigate? Who should foot the bill? What do we leave for our kids and grandkids?
YES, the effects of climate change are devastating and evolving, and traumatic. But climate change is also a catalyst. It causes change; and it can inspire us to think and do things – differently.
At the 2024 Pacific Islands Forum held in Tonga, UN Secretary-General António Guterres identified the way humanity “treated [the sea] like a sewer” as part of the problem. He called on “big emitters” to “step up and lead, by phasing out the production and consumption of fossil fuels and stopping their expansion immediately.”
How do we in the cluster of islands now known as Australia, if we are serious about being part of the “Pacific family” (a popular assertion by the Australian federal government), respond to this call? And how do we in the Uniting Church take this call as a catalyst/inspiration?
In October, I will join Uniting Mission and Education (UME) in the role of “Mission Catalyst: Stewardship of the Earth.” In this role, I will encourage the NSW-ACT Synod to be church, and to do church, under the influence of climate is catalyst. I accordingly plan to resource the Synod in three areas: worship (using the Lectionary as catalyst for climate justice), conviction (through talanoa: conversations, workshops), and education (through fono: seminars, publications).
But first, why Mission? Simply, in solidarity with indigenous bodies and minds that suffer(ed) “the mission” that Church and State built, maintained, and masked. Mission also because we have much to learn from indigenous wisdom on being inspired and transformed by, because they come from ancestors who knew that, climate is catalyst?
Watch this space.
How do we in the cluster of islands now known as Australia, if we are serious about being part of the “Pacific family” (a popular assertion by the Australian federal government), respond to this call? And how do we in the Uniting Church take this call as a catalyst/inspiration?
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