Taking on Coronavirus, Climate Change, and World Leaders
Producing two different podcast episodes this past week gave me a chance to process the many strong feelings I have around the current Coronavirus outbreak.
Through Citizens Climate Radio, I spoke to three experts who helped me better understand and similarities and differences between the Coronavirus and climate change. How local and national government responds, the need for an engaged and active imagination, and the role of empathy come up in our conversation.
I chat with Dr. Natasha DeJarnett, the interim Associate Director of Program & Partnership Development at the National Environmental Health Association, Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, the director of the Sustainable Finance Center at the World Resources Institute, and Alice. C Hill, a senior fellow for Climate Change Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.
It is an incredibly helpful discussion for anyone doing climate work who feels derailed by this immediate existential threat upending all our lives.
The other podcast doesn’t speak directly to the current Covid-19 crisis, but does focus on the vital role of prophets to call out leaders who lead us down a deadly path.
In the current Bible Bash podcastt you will hear Rev. Scott Kershner, chaplain at Susquehanna University, and I talk about John the Baptist from the Matthew 3 narrative. While Scott gives us the historical context of the story and its significance, I connect it to contemporary times and the roles performance artists play to use costume and setting to deepen the message they want to communicate.
This is seen most dramatically and effectively in the work of the young Swedish activist, Greta Thunberg.
Like John the Baptist, she made a spectacle of herself, sailing to America, then she stood on the world stage and addressed the rich and powerful. Her directness offended many who deemed her disrespectful and even rude. By dismissing the messenger, they attempted to shift focus away from her message.
Talking about these weighty issues can be helpful right now. That said, sometimes silence is the best response. I appreciate what fellow Quaker, Mark Russ tweeted earlier today:
I need Liberal #Quakers to stop trying to find meaning or silver-linings in the global pandemic. I need a community to cry and rage with, or sit in silent unknowing with the midst of uncertainty.
— Mark Russ (@MarkDRuss) March 30, 2020
(Featured Photo by Gavin Tyte on Unsplash)
I live dab smack in the middle of nowhere in rural Central Pennsylvania. Although we are only three hours or less from some of the greatest cities in America, the Susquehanna Valley is cut off in lots of ways. Wwe are centrally isolated.
Although I retired the Homo No Mo play in 2008, I have continued to perform the opening scene (and will feature it in the next episode of 
As someone who experienced trauma and is surviving it, I understood there was a time to move on to other work that was not directly related to my own story. That history though–both the trauma and the overcoming–are essential to my life today, and still comes up in my work around climate change and queer Bible scholarship. Last year I connected my wacky conversion therapy sordid past with my climate work today. I wrote an essay, 
More and more though that conversion therapy past and the ways I addressed it through art and activism are a biographical footnote. Stil, I know I could never be doing the work I do today if it weren’t for the many lessons I learned through Doin’ Time speaking out about conversion therapy.