The United Church of Canada is grieving the loss of one of its beloved moderators, the Very Rev. George Tuttle. George died on Saturday morning, in his 97th year.

Since our highly successful live, interactive Earth Day webcast on Sunday, there have been lots of enthusiastic additional comments and ripples that I’m just catching up on this morning. (At the end of this post I’ll tell you what I’ve been up to since Sunday.)

I arrived home from Kootenay presbytery at midnight last night, bursting with resurrection soul-energy for God’s wonderful world and wonderful church. The packed choir loft of Kimberley United Church in Kimberley B.C. yesterday couldn’t contain the harmonies of trumpet and voice in singing and playing What a Wonderful World (music and lyrics by Weiss and Thiele, arranged by Russ Robinson.)

Our worship this year has been framed by a Good Friday that fell on Earth Day last year and a Sunday in Easter that will fall on Earth Day this year. (I wrote about this in the Toronto Star on Good Friday 2011.

I took advantage of this coincidence to plan an Easter celebration of Earth Day involving

When the angel Gabriel told Mary that she would bear the Son of God, “For nothing will be impossible with God,” Mary answered, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

What an amazingly powerful response to God’s hope for the world. With Mary’s response, Christ was born and the world came to know God’s love in new form.

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:

As I prepare to join faith leaders from around the world at the United Nations climate change conference in South Africa (COP17), I am watching the cascading effect of our Canadian faith leaders’ statement and efforts of last month. Here are a few of the things that have happened since then:

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.

Like so many Canadian celebrities, it had to go make it big in the United States before it could come back to Canada and be welcomed. I’m talking about the Occupy Wall Street movement, which was born in Vancouver at Adbusters magazine. 
 

Beginning Oct. 11, Moderator Mardi Tindal is launching a new round of Spirit Express townhall meetings on climate and ocean change in Hamilton and London Conferences.