Many have seen this already in the Post and elsewhere (including the snarky column in this week's City Paper), but in case you missed it, Sioban asked me to pass this on to you all.Dear Friends,
Many treasure Washington's National Cathedral Greenhouse -but it is being closed down by June 29th and all the staff have been sacked despite an enormous outpouring of community support to keep it open! Please help us get this shortsighted decision reversed!
Sign the petition at: http://www.savethegreenhouse.org/
For some it is a peaceful sanctuary, for others a spiritual haven, for others it still offers the best quality herbs and plants anywhere around the city. The stated mission of this, the people's national church is to cater to all peoples of all religions and none and what is more universal than plants/nature?If you can help please send your emails throughout the network from the grass roots to the very highest boughs. There is a outpouring of heartfelt grief that we are about to loose the greenhouse forever and that future generations will be unable to benefit from in the same ways that it has so significantly shaped the lives of so many here today.
Thank you in advance for anything you feel you can offer-we have little time to achieve much in the coming short weeks before it is lost forever. It has been part of the city for sixty years and has been designated as 'from another era' and no longer needed given our 'ability to now buy plants at Home Depot' by the Associate Dean for Development. This to me shows the Cathedral is vastly missing the point and needs to hear just why it is important to so many people who have environmental respect and appreciation and want to keep DC (sustainably) green!
Thank you in advance on behalf of a rapidly growing community of people who want the 'Nation's Church for all people of all religions and none' to take a real leadership role in the environmental stewardship/sustainability movement, and not just pay it lip service. In their strategic report online they claim they want to address peace and social justice issues broadly-well it the environment is central to these goals! I ask them that they merely practice what they preach. As in this link to the 'Starthrower' sermon, a call to protect the environment by the Rev. Lloyd given in 2006. Beautiful words..now they need to be applied.
~ Sioban Farey
Founder
Savethegreenhouse.org
For my own part I have written a letter and signed the petition. I urge you to do the same.
Obviously, the good people at the National Cathedral missed the Pat Robertson/Al Sharpton commercial (my current favorite commercial, absolute genius). The environment is an interfaith cause today, just as much as Civil Rights was in the 50s and 60s. Thanks for the link to the petition.
ReplyDeletejb
The irony is here they THINK they are "green" and even invited me to a eco-faith talk there a few weeks before this hit. (I had another event that night so missed it.) It is clear that this is about money and a new conference center they want to build onproperty. They need to examine their souls - what really IS their mission as the "Nation's Church."
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