The Green Team 2022 Summer Update

Let me introduce myself is you don’t know me. I am Ruth Fugee, and, together with my husband, Tom, joined Saint James’ two years ago (virtually). Now we attend the 10:15, sitting up front, right side with Gerry and Anita. I am retired from a career in nursing with culminated as a professor at Germanna. I am a master gardener. I have accepted the lead on the Green Team. I share my love of native gardening with Elaine Dublin, my daughter, and our brilliant grandchildren, Oscar and Marie, attend SJES. Contact me at

ruth.fugee@gmail.com

We can all name what we love about our part of Virginia, this town, this church and school campus, and our homes, yards, and farms.  We have this love of the land and our place on it in common.

The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, at the 227th Convention in November 2021, passed R-6, a Declaration of Climate Emergency and called for Net-Zero Emissions by 2045.  This includes all parish buildings and campuses.  This declaration was brought forward by the Creation Care Task Force whose mission is to be a sustainable and inclusive network of Episcopalians in the Diocese of Virginia committed to faithfully uplifting, stewarding and protecting God’s Creation.  The Creation Care Task Force called for each parish to form Green Teams.  This is common ground for all of us.

The Green Team’s mission is:  With God’s help, the Green Team is dedicated to educating and mobilizing the congregation, school, and community to care for this fragile earth, our island home.  This is also common ground for all of us.

The Green Team has been faithfully caring out this mission under Kathy Ellis’ leadership during a very challenging time of pandemic restrictions to gatherings.  Kathy has earned our deep gratitude for responding to this call.

St. James’ Green Team is broadening its response to the call, with God’s help, and with your help. We want to tie our common threads together.  It’s like taking thin rope and weaving it together to make a net to protect the load.  The more “reeds” we have, the stronger becomes our basket.

The Diocese delegates three task forces on the Green Team: a Gardening Working Group, a Net-Zero Working Group, and an Eco-Grief Working Group.

Gardening Group:  We have a great start with our new SJES Wildlife Garden.  Have you looked over the fence to the school playground lately?  It’s quite amazing!  This is under the leadership of Elaine Dubin.  Let’s expand our outdoor worship opportunities on this beautiful campus and nearby spots of beauty and peace.  Let’s expand opportunities to experience the healing power of nature through hikes, a memorial garden for urns, outdoor celebrations, and other activities you are going to suggest.  We need gardeners, and garden club members.

Net-Zero Working Group

The Diocese is going to give us a guidebook for implementation. But the concept of net-zero includes both the carbon an organization produces and its balancing oxygen production (carbon sequestration).  For example, you might choose to turn your thermostat to 65 in the winter and wear a hat indoors to reduce your carbon consumption or you could choose to plant trees to increase your removal of carbon.  Complicated, yes.  Uses computer modeling.  We need people interested in computer modeling.

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*Eco-Grief Working Group *(our diocesan chair is our own Kathy Ellis):  Life is changing quickly, isn’t it?  Things that seemed stable and predictable aren’t so much now.  Whether it’s the changing climate, war fears, increasing polarity and negativity, rising prices and supply chain threats, what once seemed dependable no longer is so.  t’s traumatic, even though we may do our best to cope.  But this can also be a catalyst to open into new levels of personal awareness—“spiritual” levels of your Nature while you’re living in this physical body. Our own Dr. Gerry Eitner is launching our efforts with the gift of a workshop, in the autumn; Gerry is the president/founder of Communities of Peace.  She has been a mentor to a number of international experts in the field of psychological trauma and has created diverse nature workshops and retreats.  She has a long background in developing peace, both inner and outer.  Is this reflective process your area?

Certainly, as these task forces develop their responses to R-6, we will all support them in our common lives together.  Through the summer, we will have many occasions for you to meet us, at the mini cafe and coffee hours.

Where do you best fit?