June 5, 2021

Blessings in Solidarity Water Protectors for our Earth:

New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light, hundreds of faith communities, and thousands of people of faith and conscience, in the Land of Enchantment stand in solidarity with you to stop the building of the Line 3 replacement pipeline.  We send prayers and continue to pray with you these days and into the future. However, our prayers also motivate us to sacred action with you and in our own state, which is one of the largest producers of oil and gas in the Permian Basin in South East New Mexico and in the San Juan Basin in the Northwest of our state.

We have been working alongside frontline communities, including many of our Native American brothers and sisters for many years to address extractivism, legacy clean up, water, and related economic transition and health concerns in our state, which suffers with many sacrifice zones.

All of our diverse spiritual traditions hold water as sacred and as life. The pipeline is destroying so much, which cannot be recovered.  We stand at a moral juncture facing a different future with oil and gas extraction. For too long pollution has compromised the lifeways of us all and especially our Native American brothers and sisters in Minnesota and beyond.

The days of tars sands are over, we must stand with you to protect the treaties, to protect sister water, and to protect the climate in order to sustain life to all on this is earth and nation.  As written to President Biden on May 26, this is a battle for the Soul of Our Nation. We rise with you for the treaties, for climate and for water.

We rise together for one another and all creation, to stand for justice and dignity for our sacred creation and humanity—against a backdrop of long years and many lifetimes of colonial terror, injustice, and broken trust. We join ourselves with all who are here to stop the pipeline, knowing that in standing united we are powerful enough to change the tide of greed, waste, and profit, which can no longer govern the hearts of those who govern us. We believe that the spiritual foundations of our paths empower us for this hard work.

NM IPL believes that we have an ethical, moral and spiritual responsibility to address this injustice from spiritual roots to make alive spiritual activism. President Biden is a devote Catholic and a spiritual man and we call upon him from his spiritual foundations and the Catholic Social teachings to not ignore the cry to stop the pipeline.

Thank you for inviting us to join in this gathering of resistance to stand for life and for all you have done to protect all that is sacred for all generations of life here now and to come.

With peace, good and prayers of solidarity,

With peace, good and prayers of solidarity,

Sr. Joan Brown,osf, Executive Director, NM IPL

Emily Syal, staff team

Carlos Navarro, staff team

Terry Sloan, Board member, Catholic, Navajo/Hopi

Stephen Picha, Board member, Presbyterian, Catholic

Ann McCartney, Board member, Spiritual

Ruth Striegel, Board member, United Church of Christ

Judy Smith, Board member, Jewish

Tom Stark, Board member, Unitarian Universalist

Necip Orhan, Board member, Muslim

Arcelia Isais-Gastelum, Board member, Catholic Young Adult

Charlotte Smith, Board member, Bahai

Larry Rasmussen, Author, Advisor

Rev. Anita Amstutz, Mennonite, Advisor

Sr. Rose Marie Cecchinni, mm, Advisor, Office of Life Justice Peace and Creation Stewardship, Gallup Catholic Diocese