“They Thought They Could Bury Us…” The Church and the Climate Crisis

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“They thought they could bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”

These words were on the front cover of a small publication someone had left behind at the coffee shop where I was engaged in conversation. The words became sweeter than the latte I was sipping. They are about resilience, yes, but even more—they speak the language of resurrection.

“It’s the story of Jesus—buried and rising. It’s the call of the Church—resilient and rising.” And if ever there was a time to be called out—to be the ekklesia—it’s now.

The Greek word ekklesia doesn’t mean a building or a denomination. It means a people called out from wherever they are into public assembly—to talk about a crisis in the community, or even the cosmos. That’s what the early church did. That’s what we are supposed to do.

And what could be more of a cosmic crisis than climate change?

Now I know—I can hear the objection: “The church shouldn’t get political.” But honestly, when has the church not been involved in the crises of its time, at least when it’s been at its best? Abolition. Civil rights. Peace movements. The call to care for the poor. These weren’t distractions from the gospel. They were the gospel, lived out loud.

So here we are again. The planet is groaning, quite literally. Wildfires, floods, rising seas, vanishing species—not warnings of some distant apocalypse, but signs of one already unfolding. This is not a drill. And yet, this is not a moment without hope.

I want to be clear: the church is still here. Even if people don’t hear about us much anymore. Even if our voice has been drowned out by louder ones that claim Jesus for their own political agenda. Even if some days we wonder if our voice matters at all.

It does. It must.

This is not just a scientific issue, though science is crucial. This is a moral issue. A justice issue. A spiritual issue. The people harmed first and worst by climate disruption are the poor, the young, the marginalized, the voiceless—just the ones Jesus always seemed to be drawn to. And we must not forget the non-human species with whom we share the planet.

If we believe in love of neighbor,
we cannot ignore this.
If we believe the earth is God’s creation,
we cannot treat it like a landfill.
If we believe resurrection is real,
then we must believe that even now, new life can rise from the ash.

The church still gathers every week. We still sing, and pray, and listen. What if we listened to the cries of the earth? What if our prayers included the forests, the coral reefs, the farmers in drought, the children yet unborn? What if we looked at our budgets, our buildings, our energy use—and asked, “What would love do here?”

It’s time to reclaim our voice—not in fear or anger, but in courage and faith.

Let us be the seeds.
Let us be the saints.
Let us be the ekklesia the world needs right now. We’ve been buried long enough.

Let’s rise.

– Rev. Harry Eberts

 

We Are Earth: A Faithful Response to the Climate Crisis

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As leaders in Washington D.C. push harmful climate policies, they endanger us all—including themselves. In our recent newsletter, our Executive Director, Desirée Bernard, calls us to walk together toward justice, healing, and hope. Read her full statement below.

Dear NM & El Paso IPL Community,

Across our beautiful planet and region we are witnessing the impacts of the climate crisis. Each day we struggle to metabolize information about new disasters, threats, and diminishments to our sacred creation. We see extractivist worldviews driving leaders in Washington D.C. to push policies that don’t just harm the planet – they endanger everyone, including the people advancing them. So many of the truths we are called to witness in this moment are weighing upon and breaking our hearts.

“They tried to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds.”

And still we the people–we are Earth! If we had forgotten, we are increasingly waking up to this reality. When we harm that which sustains us, we harm ourselves. And when we rise to protect that, we are protecting ourselves and our loved ones. Arising to protect. This, too, is who we are.

We the people cannot be stopped in our widespread and still-emerging movements to care for ourselves, one another, and our common home.

We invite you to join our efforts at New Mexico and El Paso Interfaith Power and Light. We are already mobilizing and planning to further mobilize projects that put our faith in action to protect our climate, lands, waters, and people.

Are you or your faith community ready to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions, collaborate on land and water based projects, or advocate for helpful policies? We are here to support you in your desire to do something!

Together we are choosing and will keep walking a path of justice, healing, and hope.

Together, rooted in courage and love, we can and will shape a future where all beings may thrive.

In faith and solidarity,

Desirée Bernard

Executive Director, NM and El Paso Interfaith Power and Light

A New Year’s Message from Our New Executive Director

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Greetings!

Here in the dawning days of 2025, I am full of gratitude to find myself right here, writing to you as the new Executive Director of our New Mexico and El Paso chapter of Interfaith Power and Light (IPL). I am deeply honored to join this remarkable community of people who care so deeply for our Earth and continue to rise to chart a path forward in these extraordinary times. Your commitment to all of creation inspires and uplifts me, and I am eager to engage with you in this transformative journey.

It is a deep honor to follow in the footsteps of Sister Joan Brown, who co-founded the New Mexico chapter of Interfaith Power and Light almost twenty years ago and faithfully sustained its bold voice and witness over these years. Joan’s embodied love and commitment to just action in the face of the reality of climate change shines a bright light in our region. Thank you, Joan!

We are blessed to have Clara Sims continuing as the Assistant Executive Director of IPL (NM and El Paso). Clara’s inclusive leadership has been such an inspiration and tremendous support during this time of organizational transition. I personally am excited and grateful to work with her. Her kindness provides a natural balm in every place she is present.

A little about me: I’m a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and until recently I applied myself to work in the fields of housing, homelessness, and behavioral health. This was work I found deeply meaningful; and yet I recognized an emerging calling to do more about climate change. Since college environmental science classes in the late 1990s, the climate crisis has been the framing matter of my perspective on life. Folding all justice matters into one global situation. Pressing all nations and peoples on earth to work together as one family to solve it. In sessions with my spiritual director and on my own, I was praying to be able to do climate work in a way that would be spiritually and emotionally rooted for me. I was praying for vocational guidance and opened myself widely to how that might arise.

Amidst this spaciousness, late in the summer of 2024, Sister Joan and I reconnected on a camping trip in the Jemez Mountains and, in short, this chance encounter brought an invitation to serve that felt like an answer to my very intimate prayer. This mission. With all of you. 

Interfaith Power and Light has articulated a vital mission and vision. The mission is to inspire and mobilize people of faith and conscience to take bold and just action on global warming (climate change). The vision is of a stable climate where humans live in right and just relationship interconnected with a healthy, thriving natural world. 

At a time when, as we all know, the US federal government will be shrinking into denial of and irresponsibility toward the serious climate challenge at hand (even as the United States, historically, has emitted more greenhouse gases than any other nation on Earth), such grassroots communities within which we are rooted will provide creative and vital avenues for us to move forward. We will be like the sacred water that flows around obstacles. We can and will show the global community that people in this region are committed to doing our part in this critical time.

In New Mexico, especially, where the Permian Basin spreads deeply into our southeast region, burdening this small state with one of the most intense areas of fossil fuel extraction in the world, we are poised to lead in profound and prophetic ways.

I will close with inspiration from Joanna Macy, whose ‘Work That Reconnects’ provides a powerful frame for our ongoing engagement. Macy articulates work that unfolds as a ‘spiral journey,’ articulated in four parts. The work begins with gratitude, recognizing what nourishes and sustains us in this life. Then we honor our pain for the world. We get in touch with anger, sadness, recognize our numbness, etc. This part is essential. What we can experience in the presence of compassionate eyes alchemizes and allows us to move to see with new eyes. From this place we go forth, we commit to action from this new and transformed place. And we continue the spiral journey, around and around again, continuing to renew ourselves and recommit to transformed action.

Thank you for joining us in a transformative journey, beloved community! We will stay in touch with you and invite you to stay in touch with us as we move forward. There will be lots of different ways to get involved, share your own voices, and join with others in action that shines with the light of justice and care for all of creation. In the following section of this newsletter, we have information to help you prepare to be voices of and for the Earth in the upcoming legislative session. 

We ourselves are truly the ones we have been waiting for; and now is our time.

In gratitude, 

Desirée Bernard