This morning as I finish packing for Durban, South Africa, where the United Nations climate talks will take place over the next two weeks, I’m cherishing the encouraging words in a message from one of our United Church ministers:

Over the past several days I have been in Ottawa speaking with other faith leaders and political leaders about the moral and spiritual challenge of climate change. On Sunday evening I participated in such a panel at a fully public event hosted at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, and the following morning, in a full-day Interfaith Forum.

 So, my car is really telling me it needs replacing.  It needs to go to a home that doesn't demand a reliable car.

As I rolled into Toronto’s Union Station yesterday, I felt too overwhelmed by stories and reflections to pull them apart for telling quite yet. After 52 discrete events or gatherings in 27 days, they will take some time to sift and sort. Visits throughout Alberta and Northwest Conference were as extraordinary as the others, and different of course. 

Spirit prompted me to reflect on the nature of hope during my final offering of theological reflection at this past weekend’s national justice-making Turn! gathering in Pinawa, Manitoba. 

As the stars were gathering in Hollywood on Sunday, another group of stars was gathering at Eastminster United Church to celebrate how churches and other communities of faith are turning deeper and deeper green. It was fun to be there.

Hope-filled conversations about my letter of January 17 continue, and I am deeply grateful for your dozens of blog comments, other blog postings, hundreds of e-mails, and many newspaper articles and letters to the editor. Here’s the opening to an opinion piece (“Let’s bring some hope to our fragile planet”) published just last Saturday, February 20, in the Kamloops Daily News (Kamloops), page A12, written by Dawne Taylor:

With you, I continue to pray and act from a deep sense of relationship with the people of Haiti. It’s also been a week of responding to enthusiastic (mostly) response to my letter, “Where Is the Hope after Copenhagen?” within media interviews, correspondence, and conversation.

You may have heard about the letter by this title that I have written as an open letter to all Canadians, to be read in pulpits across the United Church this Sunday (January 17th) and personally delivered to the Governor General, the Prime Minister, and other party leaders on Jan. 18th. Others, including all parliamentarians, will also receive it.

My last message from Copenhagen was over a week ago. Daily blogs were planned to end on December 18th, but it’s time to renew my regular (normally weekly) correspondence.