When we hear the word delta, we think of the Louisiana delta, the Mississippi River flowing into marsh lands and finally into the Gulf of Mexico or the Nile delta flowing into the Mediterranean. A delta is a marshy wetland where one river flows into another body of water, not necessarily an ocean. The word was coined by the Greek historian Herodotus about the Nile because the river fanned out, looking like the Greek letter delta.
Last week Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Reinhold Mangundu, an environmental activist wrote an op-ed about proposed oil drilling in the Okavango Delta, which threatens the ecosystem of two countries, Botswana and Namibia. As they ask: shouldn’t we be moving away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy?
The same question faces us here in the United States. We have the potential to use our resources to transform our reliance on fossil fuels. And although it’s true that not every house can have solar panels, the energy stored from one house can be used to heat another. What we need to do is transform our thinking.
Prayer for the Day
Transfiguring God, we fear the light of your face,
And offer only reasoned hopes and measured faith;
Serving the spirit of timidity, we build shrines of isolation,
And shade possibilities offered us and others.
Turn us around to see your light in the world,
Transforming us into bold new images of your face.
In the name of him who was your face on earth,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
If we keep pulling death from the ground, we will reap death from the skies.
Val Jones, from The Green Collar Economy
The route to renewal runs through reckoning and repair: reckoning with our past and repairing relationships with the people who paid the steepest price of the first industrial revolution.
Naomi Klein, from The Green New Deal
By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
And by the breath of God’s mouth all their array.
God gathers like a mound the sea’s waters; puts in treasure houses the deeps.
All the earth fears the Lord, all the world’s dwellers dread God
For God did speak and it came t be, God commanded and it stood.
Psalm 33: 6-9