45: In a Crisis, We Need Each Other
USA
A Climate Pollinator story by Sierra Ross Richer
Sierra Ross Richer is the writer for the Climate Pollinator series. She shares lessons she learned this spring about climate change and community.
When I started working on this series in November, I was about as far away from my Mennonite community as I could get.
I had just finished a season building trails with AmeriCorps in the mountains of Colorado. I was living part time at a hostel in the small town of Salida, USA, working part time for a local newspaper called the Mountain Mail, and enjoying the independence of being out of college and alone in the mountains with a little green Prius just big enough to cozily fit me and my belongings.
I felt I was living my dream: I was reasonably self-sufficient, I could hike whenever I wanted, (which was often), and I was even learning to ski.
It was all marvelous, until I lost control on a ski slope and landed with an alarming pain in my right knee.
A couple of weeks and a complete ACL replacement later, I found myself back in the Mennonite hub of Goshen Indiana, barely able to crutch to the bathroom.
In those weeks after my injury, I needed a lot of help. The first few nights, my mom woke up at 3am to give me my pain medications. My dad faithfully stocked my icing machine with blocks he froze in paper cups. My siblings cooked and served me meals. They carried my stuff, brought me coffee and drove my car on the trip back East. My grandmother even stepped in to help me with the medical bills I couldn’t afford.
Three months later, I can walk normally again. And I am beginning to make plans for new adventures. But I can’t forget that I’ve only made it to this point because of my family and community that stepped in to help when I couldn’t take care of myself.
Moments of crisis remind us how much we need each other. Climate change is a global crisis.
This spring, I’ve interviewed 43 individuals in 15 countries about your experiences with climate change. While some of you told me that you have yet to experience significant effects, others shared how your daily lives are affected by drought, floods and unpredictable weather patterns.
It is well known that the impacts of climate change are not equally distributed, with the worst effects often felt in rural areas and developing countries.
In the coming decades, the most vulnerable locations are predicted to see even more destructive storms, intense heat, longer droughts, larger floods, and more drastic changes in seasonal weather patterns.
Many Anabaptists will find themselves in crises they can’t get through on their own.
My conversations with you this spring have given me a glimpse of the breadth and diversity of the global Anabaptist community. You have given me hope that Anabaptists do care what happens to our planet and do want to take action to protect it.
The church I want to be a part of is one that takes care of each other and the planet the way my family took care of me this spring.
Let’s work together. I believe that is the only hope we have for surviving the climate crisis.
Easter is three days away…
…And so is the end of the Climate Pollinator series. To wrap up, over the next three days we will share a trilogy of stories that offer a radical vision for the Anabaptist Church from one of its indigenous constituents.
The stories come from an interview with Julian Guaman, secretary for Iglesia Cristiana Menonita de Ecuador (ICME), an almost entirely indigenous conference in Ecuador currently in the process of joining Mennonite World Conference.
A Kichwa Mennonite and scholar, Julian shares insights from his people that may help guide the Anabaptist church into a new, healing way of relating with the earth.