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Find a special place in nature to do something you enjoy: read a book, play a musical instrument, play a game, draw a picture.

Spending time in nature fosters awareness of environmental issues.  Falling in love with one spot in nature often leads to care of all creation.

Reflect on your experience:

• Journal or draw a picture about your time in nature
• I wonder how this time in nature brought you closer to creation?
• I wonder where you saw, heard, or felt God?
• Share your experience on Social Media using #Episcopal #30Days

Throw a potluck and invite participants to bring their favorite meal with a catch. Ask them to incorporate low carbon, seasonal and local substitutes in place of high carbon footprint ingredients. During the meal, talk about the changes you each made and share where the different ingredients of your meal came from.

Five Steps Towards a Low Carbon Meal

1. Include more fruits and vegetables. Use less meat and dairy.
2. Refer back to the Eat Low Carbon Quiz diet tips: www.eatlowcarbon.org/diet-tips/
3. Shop at local farmer’s market, farm stand, or grocery store that provides seasonal and regionally grown/processed foods. Find a local community garden, backyard garden, or church garden that you can glean or buy your veggies from.
4. Purchase items that use little to no packaging.
5. Enjoy your meal with friends and family who have walked, carpooled, or taken public transportation to join the feast.
6. (Extra) Remember, these activities are meant to create awareness, opportunities for conversation and grow new relationships within your community, so have fun exploring!

For more information on Low Carbon Diets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_carbon_diet

Prayer

Creator God, we can choose to live differently.  Inspire us as we make choices so that we will recognize the impact our lives have on our environment and our human family around the globe.

We pray to the Lord:  Lord, help us reclaim the present moment and future.

Loving God, encourage us to be people of hope as we look forward in faith, knowing that we can build a world of justice and peace.

Research from ground to altar the journey of the bread/wafer/wine/grape juice that your congregation uses for Eucharist each week.

Food is God’s love made edible. The Eucharist, or Communion, is a sacrament that every branch of Christianity holds with special regard.  Speak with your pastor so that your church uses communion bread and wine that are produced in a way that honors God’s creative work.  Also, as Spring approaches, have church members sign up to bring flowers from their gardens, or plan to grow some flowers on the church property.  This can not only save money and use fewer fossil fuels, but can make worship more meaningful (make sure to testify in worship if your church does this!)

– from the 2015 Ecumenical Lent Carbon Fast

Example of one Episcopal Priest thinking about Farm to Altar Table: http://whatsupwithwheat.com/why-im-blogging/

Listen to 11 year-old Birke Baehr of Asheville, North Carolina, share where he finds brokenness in our food system. Where do you feel or witness the crosses of global food production, distribution, and consumption?

Our food system is meant to bring life and nourishment to all, but in reality it has many victims.  Our Earth, God’s great gift to us as our source of food, water, and air, is losing precious topsoil for growing food from industrial grain and soy production, waterways are contaminated from industrial contained animal feeding operations waste run off, and contaminated air from industrial processing centers brings respiratory illness to our brothers and sisters.  Despite industrial efforts to overproduce crops like grain and soy to help feed the world, people are still hungry and others are overfed but undernourished and suffer from obesity related illness.  We often sit behind the veil of our food system and don’t witness Earth’s suffering, don’t witness communities plagued by hunger or obesity sickness, don’t witness farm workers who toil to harvest for our families.  We don’t witness the crosses that are borne in our food system.

– from The Abundant Table Earth Day Stations of the Cross by Erynn Smith and The Rev. Julie Morris

Prayer

God of gift and abundance, Jesus took up the cross so that a broken system could be transformed.  Yet, the crosses we bear in our food system perpetuate its brokenness. Help us bear witness to the crosses taken by Earth and our brothers and sisters who suffer in our food system.  Help our hearts feel the weight of these crosses so that we may bring light into the system and make choices to support a healthy food system that can shatter the unjust crosses. Amen.

“Eating is an environmental act. No matter how insulated we might be in office cubicles and urban streets, no matter how little time we spend outdoors, each and every one of us is tied to the earth by the food we eat. The simple act of breaking bread together in church could link us to erosion problems on a wheat farm in the Midwest or pesticide poisoning among grape farmers in Chile. A quick pick-up from a fast food restaurant can put us in touch with the shrinking number of potato varieties grown in the U.S. and the excess manure produced by a factory farm. Every time we buy food, we participate in environmental degradation or support practices that sustain God’s creation or, perhaps, we do some of each.”

– Just Eating: Practicing our Faith at the Table by Jennifer Halteman Schrock, M.Div

Every Friday during these 30 Days of Actions, we invite you to explore how the growing and sharing of food in your family, community and culture bring you closer God’s invitation to all of us to “till and keep” the earth.

Take the “Eat Low Carbon” Quiz – http://www.eatlowcarbon.org/ .

The food system is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Learn how to reduce your carbon “foodprint.”

Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year B

Scripture: John 17:6-19

Jesus reports to God. Jesus has done the work given him to do. A little band of believers is trained to do the work Jesus has given them to do. Jesus lifts these people up to God. As he does so, we, and our ministries are also lifted up. We are not immune to pain, suffering, or even defeat. But God offers protection from the evil one, in all we do. And, in all we do, Jesus asks, “that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.”

Download the lesson plans for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

LPTW Easter 7, Year B, Younger Children
LPTW Easter 7, Year B, Older Children
LPTW Easter 7, Year B, Adults
LPTW Easter 7, Year B, All

Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B

Scripture: John 15:9-17

God’s love: God’s love for us, enabling us to love God. God’s joy in us making joy complete. We are invited into this vast collaboration of love, invited to be part of God’s team, considered friends, no longer servants. God has, so to speak, looked each one of us in the eye and said, “You did not choose me but I chose you.” Chosen, by God, to bear the fruit of love.

Download the lesson plans for the Sixth Sunday of Easter

LPTW Easter 6, Year B, Younger Children
LPTW Easter 6, Year B, Older Children
LPTW Easter 6, Year B, Adults
LPTW Easter 6, Year B, All

Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B

Scripture: John 15:1-8

We have work to do, but not as lone rangers. We are called to stay connected to the vine, faithfully and courageously reaching out, securely connected to the vine of life. We will probably experience some very painful pruning. Later, often much later, we will experience the fruit. Abiding in that vine, trusting in it, and accepting its confines, we will learn to want the appropriate things and be free to ask for them. The work we are given to do, we will be able to do joyfully to the glory of God.

Download the lesson plans for the Fifth Sunday of Easter

LPTW Easter 5, Year B, Younger Children
LPTW Easter 5, Year B, Older Children
LPTW Easter 5, Year B, Adults
LPTW Easter 5, Year B, All

Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B

Scripture: John 10:11-18

For the rest of the Easter Season, we have stories Jesus shared before the crucifixion. Now, in the light of the resurrection, they take on a powerful new value. Jesus is portrayed as the Good Shepherd. Even though sheep are not part of our lives like sheep were for the people who first heard these stories, we can resonate to the concept of a shepherd who knows his own and whose own know him. We belong to this shepherd. Yet, if, as Jesus tells us, he has other sheep that are not of this fold that he must bring also, we have work to do – work given to us by the Good Shepherd.

Download the Lesson Plans for the Fourth Sunday of Easter

LPTW Easter 4, Year B, Younger Children
LPTW Easter 4, Year B, Older Children
LPTW Easter 4, Year B, Adults
LPTW Easter 4, Year B, All

Third Sunday of Easter, Year B

Scripture: Luke 24:36b-48

Words tumble from the mouths of the excited disciples as they try to convey what happened on the road to Emmaus. In mid-sentence, they hear “Peace be with you.” Jesus is in their midst. Jesus encourages them to touch him and see that it is he. As they scramble to believe what they are seeing, Jesus casually asks them if, by any chance, they have anything to eat! They have broiled fish, which is shared all around.

Download the lesson plan for the Third Week of Easter

LPTW Easter 3, Year B, Younger Children
LPTW Easter 3, Year B, Older Children
LPTW Easter 3, Year B, Adults
LPTW Easter 3, Year B, All