We understand your frustration.
We feel it, too.
We know what it’s like to feel the sense of urgency and not be able to reverse climate change on our own.
If you’re like us, you’re aware of the devastating effects climate change is wreaking on our planet. You’ve likely wondered if there was a significant action you could take or words you could speak that would create bigger results. We know you want to become a voice for positive change, and there is no time to waste.
We are committed to helping you find the words to speak, the actions to take, and the community of support you need so you can stop feeling so frustrated and overwhelmed. The process is simple – become informed, make small changes, and share what you learn with others. When you join us today, you’ll have taken the first step on the journey.
Yes, we can institute stricter laws. We can stipulate, legislate, and demonstrate, and these are good and necessary, and must be done immediately! But much more is required of us. Something deeper, more profound, personal, and life changing. It is what we are called to do and it is what we are called to be. We must change, discard that which has proven to lead to death, and seek that which leads to hope, joy, peace, and life for all of God’s Creation.
We believe that if we are to make a difference, we need to work together. We will help you become informed by sending you climate change information and insights from various fields of study. We will help you make change by taking practical actions. And your words and your actions will serve to teach others. With the steps which we offer, your sense of anxiety and hopelessness will be reduced for you will know that you are not just standing idly by, but making a significant difference by bringing about life-giving change, and hope to a world in need.
Join us today so we can get started.
Meet Beth Frigard
My concern with issues of the Environment began with reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring while a student at Russell Sage College in Troy NY. Later it was the writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau which in turn led me to Native American Spirituality
and what is now called Spiritual Ecology.
When poetry entered my life and became my passion, and a business I called The Poetry Workshop, I found that the world of Nature as a topic for reflection resonated deeply with people of all ages, from four year old children in Tucson AZ talking about butterflies, to a lovely 104 years old woman residing in a care facility in Natick MA remembering a tree in her yard in Ireland.
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My appreciation for the value and potential of poetry led to my writing three books: Let the Celebration Begin, a how-to manual for activity directors and recreational therapists; A Celebration in Poetry, a collection of collaborative poems from residents of nursing homes and care facilities which I visited, and Celebrating the Spirit with Poetry, a resource for caregivers to use with their loved ones dealing with issues of body, mind or spirit. The natural world was a theme that ran through each book.
When I received a grant to lead a poetry program in a school in my town of Holliston MA, Creation was chosen as the educational thread. The children’s observational skills and their poetry were profoundly moving and insightful. The book that resulted from those weeks was titled Listen to the Children.
Upon the sudden and unexpected death of my husband, I moved from the East to Tucson AZ. The beauty and fragility of the desert led to a love and a concern for the ecology of the Sonoran Desert. My essay “Showering with a Scorpion” about adapting to desert life and appreciating the lessons the desert inhabitants can teach, was published in The Desert Leaf, a local magazine. While in Tucson I also attended the Tacheria School of Spiritual Direction. It was that school which afforded me the opportunity to spend a day with a horse named Vince on a ranch in Sonoita AZ. That experience led to my appreciation for the wisdom and profound lessons those dear and noble creatures can teach. It was shortly thereafter that I knew it was time to return to Massachusetts to attend Andover Newton Theological School.
While in Seminary I served on the Environmental Board of the UCC, (United Church of Christ, a denomination on the forefront of addressing Climate Change) and volunteered with the Massachusetts Interfaith Power and Light. I also had the opportunity to present a sermon at an environmental seminar at Harvard Divinity School.
After receiving my Masters of Divinity in 2010 I returned to Tucson where I volunteered on the campaign for a candidate pledged to oppose Rosemont Copper and its efforts to drill in the Santa Rita Mountains. Unfortunately, my candidate lost and I recently learned that the third largest copper mine in the world will be located in that lovely mountain range.
In Tucson I also led an Environmental Bible Study at Rincon Congregational Church UCC and an Environmental Workshop on World Religions for the Tacheria School. But with the birth of my grandson in Massachusetts I returned East, choosing to settle in my hometown of Elmira NY, where my mother and sister reside. Here I have had the opportunity to be ordained as a UCC minister, to serve as a chaplain, to attend Transitional Ministry Training at Princeton Seminary, and to serve as an Interim Minister. I have also led poetry workshops for churches in discernment, and for burned out environmental activists at the Interfaith Center For Action and Healing in Ithaca New York.
At the close of my recent position as an Interim Minister, I promised myself that I would focus my attention on the environmental crisis. While in Seminary I had planned on having an Environmental Ministry, now I am certain that time has arrived, indeed it is past time. So the question for me was how to make this a reality. Now I have begun PreachingGreen.com. I do hope it will be useful, that it will be a support and a resource for those who understand the need for our churches, our families, our communities to seriously, thoughtfully, courageously, and optimistically address the issue of Climate Change, its effects and its causes, and to seek paths to hope for future generations.
I hope that you will join with me, that you will find the words and shout them from the mountaintops, by sermon, by poem, by essay, by speech. Words have power to change lives and save the world as we know it. We are running out of time. The world needs your voice, your actions and your love for this our planet home and for all of its inhabitants.