“GOOD TIDINGS”

The Earth, Spirit, Action Team Newsletter

St Matthew’s United Church

 

January 25, 2026                      Epiphany Issue                                    No. 33  

The Earth Spirit Action Team is pleased to present our Epiphany 2026 issue. Good Tidings is a newsletter that discusses local and global environmental and climate change issues; offers suggestions for personal and political actions to build a healthy planet; shares information from other environment and climate change organizations; and presents faith reflections as stewards of creation.

We welcome your feedback at earthspiritaction016@gmail.com.

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Editorial                                                                          Margaret Machum

Epiphany offers the opportunity to ponder our realities. With extreme turmoil in our world, and the unravelling of known world order, there is a lot to contemplate. It is our hope that feelings of distress and anxiety can be channeled into pathways of hope and meaningful actions, to reframe our emotions as a divine invitation to right relations with creation, and thereby rediscover meaning and purpose as a vocation made by love.

            We can continue to commit to buying local, to support Canadian companies and products, and to build a stronger green Canada to mitigate climate change and to adapt our lifestyles for a sustainable future.

            This newsletter focuses on plastic and what our use of it is doing to the land, water, and all living creatures including us.

            I hope this reading will inspire actions and provide you with Epiphany moments as we work together for a better future.

 

Plastics                                                                          Margaret Machum  

In Grade 11, an executive from DuPont came to speak to our school about the modern invention of synthetics that were being added to clothing. He praised these new materials that would save us time with easy washing and no ironing. Then in 1968, in The Graduate, plastics were glorified as the new career. We are beginning to realize that we should have continued to wear clothing made from wool, cotton, or linen and to use glass, china, and pottery for our dishes and storage of food and water.

            Plastic is everywhere, even finding its way into the remote regions of the planet, travelling on ocean currents and falling to the ocean’s depths. Human activities are pushing the ecosystems we rely on to the brink of collapse.

            The petroleum industry is primarily responsible for climate change and solely responsible for the plastic crisis. As more sustainable energy sources are being developed to combat climate change, oil producers are shifting from fuel toward the plastic industry. The International Energy Agency projects that the production of plastic and petrochemicals will drive oil demand toward 2050. But the direct link between plastic production and greenhouse gas emissions seems to have been ignored. Plastic contributes almost a billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year, and, if we continue on this path, those emissions will triple by 2050.

            The solution to the plastic crisis has to be tackled on several fronts. We must find viable alternatives to plastic, change policy and regulations to ones that support a healthy planet, and that promote a deepened understanding of what is at stake. Recycling helps with plastic waste but it is not the final solution. Many plastics cannot be recycled, nor do they break down into natural constituents but break down into microplastics. The New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, launched in 2018, has a vision based on three tenets: to eliminate plastics we do not need; to innovate so that the plastics we do need are manufactured to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable; and to circulate to keep all the plastics we use in the economy and out of the environment. This circular economy is regenerative and restorative by design.

            We need a commitment to the planet, where humans and wilderness are treated with empathy and respect. Humans have created this plastic problem, but we are also the solution. People generally want to do the right thing. We just have to know what that is.

            To make meaningful headway, we must first understand the magnitude of the plastic problem and its effect on the planet; that combating climate change also means combating plastic production. The natural world has met its match with plastic. It is not something that can be adapted to, and it never goes away. We should be hopeful but not complacent. Alternatives to plastic are available. We must find a way to end plastic pollution. Countries are working on this through treaties. Each of us need to work on this too.

 

Suggestions:

Read Message in a Bottle: Ocean Dispatches from A Seabird Biologist by Holly Hogan.

Reduce your use of plastic and recycle when possible.

Support 2St Matthew’s program to eliminate the use of plastic in the church. Details about this program and tips to help us do so will be offered during Lent.

 

Local Action                                                                   Anne Marie Dalton

Two very important city programs are at risk of having their municipal funding cut, and you can help to save them. Our mayor and councillors are considering cutting funding for HalifACT which is HRM’s pretty awesome climate plan andThe Urban Tree Planting Program is also at risk of losing their funding.

 

In a worsening climate emergency, these are the last programs that should be on the chopping block. It is crucial that HRM continues to provide money to meet our city’s climate goals and to prepare our communities to deal with climate impacts. Urban trees provide shade and help to cool neighbourhoods during extreme heat. Every dollar spent on these preventative measures now will save the municipality much more money in mitigating climate impacts later. Please call or write to your councillor before the final budget debate on Wednesday, March 19 and urge them to support continued funding for these two vital city programs. Your councillors contact information can be found at: https://www.halifax.ca/city-hall/districts-councillors. In your email be sure to CC: mayor@halifax.ca and clerks@halifax.ca.

 

Excerpts from a Sermon                                                  Anne Fay

Preached by Rev George M Grant, Minister of St Matthew’s Church 1865-1877, on the 1st Sunday of January, 1866 on the passage from Galatians, verse 1: “Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free”.

 

Rev Grant’s sermon begins with an exposition on the subject of liberty, culminating in the following passage:

P.10     This Christian liberty … puts [man] right not only with his God, but also with nature and his fellows, with time as well as eternity. Nature is no longer a means of corrupting the soul; but as much as God’s grace is, and the two kingdoms are seen to fit into each other and so make one. For nature’s religion was always true, if men only read it aright. It speaks more impressively than ever words could speak of freedom and law; of irreversible punishments and sure rewards; of beauty and goodness; of death and resurrection; of bounty and sacrifice.

            Oh! We could not more do without nature than without the Bible. The one is the living key to and the living commentary on the other. Dwarfed and meagre is that man’s religion who divorces himself from nature, - from the glory of the rising sun, of the groves and hills, of the rain and the resounding sea; or from his own kind, to whom converge all the lines of nature, in whole we have its representative and mouthpiece.

P.11     For the whole universe is one: not a great collation of bits or spheres of life. There is the one great tree of life, reaching unto the heaven of heavens, its laws uniform, and its life God. And the free, happy soul goes out into all its Father’s broad domain, the religion of love sanctifying his joy in it, and making inquiry without limit safe.

P.13     …religion includes the realm of nature revelling in its boundless beauty and force and melodies … “All things gathered together in one, even in Christ”.

P.15     I hope and believe that Christ is in most of your hearts … Know well that whatever sorrow or sin, whatever desires are a higher purity and holiness, whatever truth and justice, whatever mercy and forbearance are in your hearts, are Christ in you; and as you encourage those, you encourage Him to dwell in you more richly.

p.16     Go forth then to the work given you to do, and in virtue of the liberty wherewith Christ makes you free, follow your nature, and Christ will give to each seed “his own body”.

            Think and examine fearlessly, speak honestly, act fairly, and may God make this unto you A HAPPY NEW YEAR.

 

Bible Quote Match-up:                                                                  Anne Fay

Identify which Book of the Bible each quote is from. Chapter and verse numbers are provided if you want to check your answers! (There are hints below)

• How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. _________________ 104:24
• See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. ______________ 6:28-29
• But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. ______________ 12:7-8         
• For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - his external power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. __________________ 1:20
• Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the hand of the fowler. Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! _____________ 6:5-6
• The nations were angry, and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and your people who revere your name, both great and small - and for destroying those who destroy the earth. ______________ 11:18
• There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens. ______________ 3:1

 

Hint: There is one passage taken from each of the following books: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Matthew, Romans, Revelation.

Extra Hint: You can easily search biblical passages in any version of the Bible at BibleGateway.co.

 

This Month’s Recipe                                                       Margaret Machum

Flourless Chocolate Cake for Valentine’s Day

Ingredients for Cake: 

I cup                semisweet chocolate chips    

1/2 cup            butter, unsalted                                  

3/4 cup            sugar

1/4 tsp             salt

1 tsp                vanilla extract

3                      eggs, large

1/2 cup            cocoa powder

Ingredients for Chocolate Ganache:

1 cup               semisweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup heavy cream

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 375F.
2. Grease a heart-shaped pan; place parchment to fit the bottom and grease.
3. Place chocolate and butter in saucepan and heat until butter is melted and the chips are soft, about 1 minute. Stir.
4. Add sugar, salt and vanilla extract and stir to combine.
5. Add eggs and stir until smooth.
6. Add chocolate power stirring until mixed.
7. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake the cake in oven for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.
8. Let the cake cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes then loosen the edges with a knife and carefully turn the pan upside down onto a serving plate.
9. While the cake cools, make the chocolate ganache by combining the chocolate chips and cream in a small saucepan. Place over low heat until chips are melted. Stir until the mixture is smooth.
10. Spread ganache over the cooled cake. Serve when glaze is set.

 

Thought for the Day

The prosperity of the community grows from the flow of relationships, not the accumulation of goods.                                                                                                              - Robin Wall Kimmerer