The floods in Texas and elsewhere in the past couple of weeks have been on my mind a lot. I’m guessing they’ve tugged at your emotions, anxieties, and perhaps even your faith as well. Disasters have a way of raising all sorts of questions for us: practical ones about our own insurance coverage and readiness, ethical ones about our way of life that contributes to the disasters, political ones about how we can move in different directions, parenting questions about how to talk with kids about all of this, and so many more.
As a person of faith, one question rises to the top: What are we going to do to help each other? This always feels like the most relevant question to ask, whether we’re discussing disasters that are “natural” or caused through government action and inaction. It’s the question that communities of faith hear again and again in their sacred texts, the one that’s at the heart of everything from annual stewardship campaigns to ongoing service projects.
In about 6 weeks, our first “Climate-informed Clergy Cohort” will be launching. About a dozen clergy from around the state will be learning from climate-related books, developing congregational projects, hearing from experts, and more. One of our speakers will be Vanessa Burnett, who brings to the table a wealth of experience from her years of work in FEMA and other government agencies. She has given us permission to share one of her recent posts here, which reflects on the political, climate and other crises around us. We hope it inspires you to think anew about the question in the title of this post, along with how it connects with both your own faith and any community of faith you’re a part of.
Here’s a quick note just as a reminder that humans will survive through this. Overall. That doesn’t mean it’s going to go well for all of us. Yet at least some of us will get through.
So what are we going to do to help the most of us get through who can?
What are we going to do to help each other, as everything unfolds?
I don’t know the answer to that for you anymore than anyone else does.
We all have to figure this out ourselves. Sometimes we’re going to have to figure it out in the moment. 
That’s going to work really well sometimes, and it’s going to fail big-time sometimes. We’re going to get a mix.
There’s going to be tragedy and trauma. That’s how this stuff goes.
But there’s also going to be big heart stuff and deep humanity stuff. And both heartwarming and heart-wrenching things. And big courage. And deep fear. And deep connection. And big sacrifice. And deep loss. Huge joy. Big love. Hard sadness.
And a feeling of incapacity to be able to do more things in the midst of so much traumatic stuff happening.
Yet we will be able to do at least some things.
We have to manage our own capacity and resilience as we go forward. This is going to be long.
I also offer this…
More of society is still functioning than not. 
There are a lot of people saying everything is falling apart… and yeah lots of things are getting deliberately taken apart and some things are falling apart.
But a whole heck of a lot of our society is still quite functional.
We need to pay better attention to what’s working and what’s not.
We need to do more to hold together the pieces we want to hold together.
^^ That’s going to become more and more important as this unfolds.
Effects are starting to become more obvious to the general population, but it’s still going to take a lot of time for more of the damage to really show up. That’s a fact.
Yet we know for certain big disruption is coming. You cannot change so many aspects of government and society and expect that it won’t.
For those people paying attention to all of this now, you can be more ready.
You can be more ready to help yourself and to help other people as things intensify.
You can.
We all have more strength and abilities than we think.
We’re going to learn a heck of a lot more about those as we go.
Get creative. Have tough talks. Let stuff go from The Before Times. Grieve. Process. Be angry.
But also do some things to get more resilient and get more ready.
Big change is here.
Now the question is… what are we going to do with all of this as we go through?
You can find lots more from Vanessa at her Substack, Fierce Community. Vanessa also has done a presentation for us previously, entitled Big Disaster Risks & What Churches Can Do About Them Locally.
If you’re looking for ways to begin having those “tough talks” in your faith community, we can help. Here are 5 possibilities.
- Download our free 6-week Bible study on creation care and the parables. Plan to use it in your church this fall.
- Download our free resource on climate storytelling. Use it in a public setting like your local library. See where the conversations lead!
- Encourage your whole congregation to sign up for our emails.
- Invite Irene, Tim or a member of our new Speaker’s Bureau (details coming soon!) to speak to your congregation.
- Send us your questions about climate conversations, congregational resilience, and so on. We’ll address them in future posts and/or new resources we create.