He's Got The Whole World In His Hands...

The video below is not new. I've seen it before a few times, and I'm sure so have many others. I just happened upon it today, and it started me thinking (I know. I know. You may want to sit down for this.).

I'll bet you that there are probably as many people out there who have a great dislike of Reverend Al Sharpton (or, at least a dislike of what he stands for) as there are who dislike Reverend Pat Robertson &/or what he stands for. Now, if any of you have ever ready anything I've ever written here, or elsewhere in the worldwide web, you can probably guess where I stand on the Rev. Al vs. Rev. Pat question. This post, however, is not about which of these men courageously & publicly supports GLBTQI people & our human & civil rights & which of them delights in whipping up unfounded fears & manufacturing outright lies to fight tooth-and-nail against people who seek only to love whom their hearts direct.

Truth is that--their respective personalities, faults & manifold detractors notwithstanding--these two men (combined) have a pretty significant following, and most of those people will follow these men where they think God is leading them, and--on global warming, at least--both Al & Pat feel that God is calling on them to fight this good fight together as true brothers-in-arms.

Of course, this glaringly obvious fact was the reason that Repower America created this Public Service Announcement in the first place.

Seeing the ad again just reminds me of the actual good that can be done when we decide we love the world more than we hate each other.

The Go By Bike Challenge

Believe it or not, it's not ALL bad news about the price of fuel these days! Of course, for many Americans, it means having to use the car less, but it also means that most of us may get the chance to walk or bike more...which is a win-win-win-win situation!

The nation wins by lessening our nation's dependence on fossil fuels;

The environment gets a break from the ever-increasing CO2 emissions (footprints) that we each produce prodigiously in our current, fast-paced drive-thru lifestyle;

Your wallet wins, of course, because you don't have to take so many depressing trips to the "filling station" (as they used to call it on The Andy Griffith Show);

Your health wins because finding methods of transport that don't even involve fuel (i.e. your tennis shoes &/or your bike) and the resultant exercise gives you a chance to keep your cardiovascular system in tip-top shape.

The Trek Bike Company estimates that 40% of our trips in fuel-driven vehicles are of distances of 2 miles or less!!! So biking when you can (especially on these short trips from home) is just a nice little thing we can all do with probably only a minimum of sacrifice to help take better care of this fragile planet, as well as those of us who call it home.

Trek--in what is obviously a gimmick to sell more of their products (I already own a Trek Bike & I love it)--has created a website called "1 World 2 Wheels" (http://www.1world2wheels.org/), where you can go & pledge to bike to as many places as it is feasible for you to do. You can visit their website from time to time to see how the pledges are going & Trek has even created a little widget that you can post on your blog to keep track of how many miles of non-fuel-generated traveling we're all pledging (even if it's not done on a Trek bike)! I even have one of their widgets at the bottom of this blog, if you want to take a look.

As of the writing of this post (7/25), over 12,500 people have pledged nearly 4 million biking miles--saving nearly as many pounds of Carbon Dioxide from being released in the atmosphere, burning over 187 million calories & saving over $875,000 in gas money.

So, considering how painful it is to have to face another gas pump & boosting Big Oil's bottom line, you can turn that frown upside down by getting up & getting your (human) motor running and taking the "Go By Bike" Challenge.

As Nike always says, "Just Do It."

Christians who are out to save MORE than just your soul...

I recently watched an online video from the American News Project called "Greening the Evangelicals" that I thought was pretty interesting. One of my favorite parts is about 5 and a half minutes into it, when one of the leaders of the progressive Christian group Sojourners describes the old (right-wing) guard of Christian Evangelicals who want to either deny or embrace the destruction of our planet through global warming as standing in the middle of a river with their hands held up saying "STOP! There are only 2 issues that matter to Christian Evangelicals: abortion & gay marriage!" According to the Sojourners representative, because the vast majority of Evangelicals, apparently, has already made up its mind that fighting global warming is a moral issue worth fighting for, it's like these old men are standing there trying to hold back a river that has already swept past them! It really is a very interesting & hopeful video, even if it's not totally about gay rights/marriage/equality.

As a gay man & a believer in Christ (if not a Christian), I'm glad to see that more & more Christians are understanding that there are REAL & ACTUAL threats to their physical & spiritual worlds, and not just the contrived threat that people like me are supposed to represent. I'm not naive & I understand that there are still many out there who see both global warming & "the homosexual agenda" as equally destructive to the "natural order", but--as a human who has to live on the same planet that the Evangelicals do--I'm just happy that there are sizable numbers of Christians who are at least also paying attention to & wanting to fight a REAL enemy!