EJC Voices

“Woman of the Year”

August 25, 2016 By chris

We are thrilled to share that Penny J. Hopper has been awarded “Woman of the Year” by the League of Women Voters of Carteret County, NC. Penny joined NC Interfaith […]

“Woman of the Year”

August 25, 2016 by chris

We are thrilled to share that Penny J. Hopper has been awarded “Woman of the Year” by the League of Women Voters of Carteret County, NC.

Penny joined NC Interfaith Power & Light in 2008 as a Steering Committee Member. A year later, she became the Secretary and in 2014 was elected to Vice-Chair. Her roles beyond NCIPL’s Executive Committee include chairing the Leadership Council, serving on the Worship Working Group, as well as serving as the coastal liaison between NCIPL and the Sierra Club, and being actively involved in her Unitarian Coastal Fellowship Green Sanctuary Committee. She retired from teaching Biology at Carteret Community College in 2010 and has been a full time volunteer environmental activist since that time.

Click here to read Penny’s story sketched in last year’s Coastal Review publication.

We are blessed to have Penny’s leadership as part of our state-wide Creation Care initiatives and I hope you will join me in congratulating her for this well deserved recognition!

Penny Hooper’s acceptance for “Woman of the Year” Award – August 25, 2016

A big THANK YOU to the League of Women Voters for organizing this competition!

This is an opportunity to highlight on Women’s Equality Day the good works done throughout our community by many different women over the years.

I was honored just to be nominated for the award, and I was totally surprised to hear from Carol Geer that when the votes were counted this year, I had won. I am so sorry that I cannot be with you to celebrate, but I am in Indiana attending my 50^th High School Reunion, which obviously only happens once in 50 years! Thanks to Lucy Bond who nominated me for delivering these brief remarks.

I feel very strongly that this award is a recognition of the work each of us does in our community. It is not about us as individual women, but it is about being involved and active in our places of business, in our churches, in our civic groups, and in our community in general. I realize that Carteret County is a better place because all of us are working together to make this a better place for all. As we approach Labor Day, let me say thank you to each of you for the work you do.

Some folks might ask the question, “Why bother going to meetings, making phone calls, organizing folks, and volunteering your time and energy? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to just relax and enjoy life on our beautiful Crystal Coast?” I came across this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson which captures one of the reasons we all do what we do. I have taken the liberty of changing his pronouns to the feminine gender since this is Women’s Equality Day.

Here’s what Emerson had to say:

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no woman can seriously help another without helping herself.

We are all richly blessed by the work we do and the connections we make through that work.

As I worked this past year with a group of folks gathered under the banner of “Concerned Citizens” to stop offshore oil drilling on the mid-Atlantic Coast, I came to realize once again, that the important things in life are not your political party, the color of your skin, your gender, your age, your religion, or any of those things. The important thing for each of us is to act out of a place of love, not hate, and to share that love with others for the sake of our children and grandchildren.

We all CAN and DO make a difference by working together in our community.

Thank you for all that each of you do. And thank you again to the League of Women Voters for providing this wonderful recognition every year. I am truly honored!

Penny Hooper
pjhooper@ec.rr.com

The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan education and advocacy organization encouraging informed and active participation in government. To conduct voter service and citizen education activities funds come from the League of Women Voters Education Fund, which is a 501(c)(3) corporation, a nonprofit educational organization. The League of Women Voters, a membership organization, conducts action and advocacy and is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) corporation.

Summer is a great time to be emPOWERed!

July 25, 2016 By chris

Energy usage is soaring in NC as we all try and stay cool during the long days of heat & humidity this summer. It’s a great time to highlight an […]

Summer is a great time to be emPOWERed!

July 25, 2016 by chris

Energy usage is soaring in NC as we all try and stay cool during the long days of heat & humidity this summer. It’s a great time to highlight an opportunity for your congregation to work with NC Interfaith Power & Light’s emPOWERerd program.

NCIPL is currently working to strengthen the community of faith-based organizations in North Carolina that focus on energy efficiency and sustainable energy use so they can more easily learn from and help each other. NCIPL offers support to congregations in the form of energy audits and energy data assessments to help congregations find opportunities to improve their energy efficiency. NCIPL offers the energy savings analysis at no charge to faith communities.

Many congregations in North Carolina have already done a great deal already to improve their energy efficiency, which reduces pollution and supports human health. But, we’ve seen that continual efficiency improvements are possible as equipment and strategies improve, and that significant dollars can be recovered for the ministries and missions of the faith community.

This summer we launched a new campaign helping congregations to more easily access easy-to-read energy data reports. The program is called TEAM Spirit, a collaborative program with NC faith communities, NC Interfaith Power and Light, and NC Sustainable Energy Association.

In partnership we can provide a portfolio of services that educate and empower NC congregations about energy use, efficiency, and their relationship with their utility providers. The TEAM Spirit program incorporates tools, resources, utility data collection and analysis, and energy advisor services to educate and empower congregations to take action, reduce energy use, and save money.

The goal is to provide a professional perspective on how your building uses energy and provide you with educational material about low and no-cost changes your congregation can make to reduce its carbon footprint and utility bills.

The way we power our world harms the earth as well as ourselves. We can be better stewards of our resources by producing electricity sustainably and investing in energy efficiency so we use less electricity.

Please reach out to NCIPL Program Director, Susannah Tuttle at susannah@ncipl.org to connect, share your work, and ask for any help benchmarking your energy use. www.ncipl.org.

Thank you for for your interest in connecting, together WE WILL create a cleaner, safer, healthy future for all!

LIGHT UP – Reflections on the Summer Solstice

June 20, 2016 By chris

We don’t need a calendar to tell us that summer has arrived in North Carolina. The rocketing heat and steamy humidity are all the notice we require. The sun’s ascending […]

LIGHT UP – Reflections on the Summer Solstice

June 20, 2016 by chris

We don’t need a calendar to tell us that summer has arrived in North Carolina. The rocketing heat and steamy humidity are all the notice we require. The sun’s ascending song has charmed the trees into full display, beckoned the squash to blossom and the kale to bolt. At the Farmer’s Market, strawberries have yielded to peaches heaped in bright baskets next to tables of tomatoes flushed and fat. Summer reigns as a beloved queen who freely bestows her lavish favors until fall’s frugal chamberlain stays her hand.

The Summer Solstice reveals the sun in all her glory in the northern hemisphere. She will never be higher in the sky nor grant more daylight than at the moment she stills above the Tropic of Cancer, just before earth’s angling pushes her south to her winter rendezvous with the Tropic of Capricorn. This is the range of expression of life on earth. Everything that has evolved over billions of years comes alive, creates, and expires within this measured frame.

Without the sun (at its precise distance from us) there would be no life on earth. Without the tilt of our axis, there would be no seasons. These are the cosmic truths within which we have our life, our breath, our being. All that occurs within the course of a year is but an outworking of this relationship with the light of life. Her waxing warms the leaf out of its winter home in spring, her fullness swells the fruits of summer, and her waning drains the grass of its green in the fall. July’s melon becomes January’s frozen turf, light gone dark by its dying only to shape-shift as spring disposes come March or May

Doesn’t it seem fitting that our ancestors worshiped the sun? That they would erect megalithic edifices precisely aligned to amplify the arc of her illumination? But our western scientific and religious world views have rather rolled a stone over the portal that allows us to experience the sacred within us and around us; our very natural sense of awe, reverence, and gratitude for the earth and sun, moon and stars judged as naive or even hazardous to our material and spiritual well-being.

I was raised a Catholic thanks to the insistence of my Irish grandmother. Though my mother’s heart was not in it, she dutifully dragged us three kids to the classes and Masses weekend after weekend until we achieved the sacrament of Confirmation at around the age of thirteen. Following the example of my two older siblings, and receiving little resistance from my mother, I stopped going to church soon after.

There was much received in those early years that I am grateful for. But one enduring legacy is the fact that I still flinch when I hear the words “pagan,” “heretic,” or “heathen,” for I learned that to believe that the divine is manifest in matter as well as in mind is definitely a punishable offense. It is not my purpose here to define these terms with any precision, nor to trounce or endorse any way of being or believing. It is time, however, for me to break the spell that these words have cast on me.

I just need to declare, straight from my heart, that the Earth (nay, the universe) is sacred to me. That watching a time-lapse video of a pea seed plunge a searching taproot deep into the soil and push up a sprout that opens to the sky is an experience of true wonder. That tasting a sweet and supple lettuce leaf torn from a plant settled in the soil feels like a miracle. That the beauty of the natural world seems holy, and the infinite variety of creation – whatever or whomever we believe is responsible – is marvelous in my eyes.

It’s amazing to me that I still hesitate to say this after all these years. I feel sheepish even now, fearing judgment, scorn, or dismissal by peers who set their sights by hard science or by the star of Bethlehem. I feel I don’t have a leg to stand on. Until I look down and see that the Earth is the only place TO stand. And stand by. And stand up for. And stand with.

Mosaic bench, Chapel Hill Community Center — Mosaic on a sculpted bench, Chapel Hill Community Center

In a commencement speech at Yale University in May, Ambassador Samantha Powers offered this: If you want to have a deep impact on what matters to you, don’t do things at remove. Invest yourself fully. Get close.* In this spirit, I want to cultivate partnership with the creative forces of the natural world. I want to commune with the plants and animals and receive intelligence from the ground beneath me. I want to be a part of the forging of a new type of existence rooted in the dust of eons come before but which meets the exigencies of this time and place. I want to sing songs that move my heart. And I want to participate in vibrant community with people who are committed to working it all out. This is not theoretical. I don’t want to just talk about this. I want to DO it.

The sun deserves our most profound and total gratitude for the fact of our continued existence on this blue dot. But life does not come with a promise or a guarantee for more. Whatever matters most to you this Solstice season, start now by saying thank-you for this day. Then feel it all light up.

*With thanks to Carol Henderson and Heidi Gessner for this prompt, offered at Writing for Resilience, UNC Hospital

We are grateful to share LIGHT UP – Reflections on the Summer Solstice written by Hope Horton, a member of NCIPL’s spiritual network.

You can read more of Hope’s writings on her blog page: https://hopematrix.wordpress.com/

To contact Hope email: hopematrix@fastmail.com

NCIPL Welcomes EDF Climate Corp Fellow

June 9, 2016 By chris

Hello! My name is Jennifer Cole and I am excited to be part of the Environmental Defense Fund Climate Corps program this summer, matched to work with North Carolina Interfaith Power & Light. I have just graduated with my Master of Environmental Management degree from Duke, and I have a Bachelor of Arts in psychology with a minor in energy and water sustainability. I will be starting my PhD in environmental psychology at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the fall.

NCIPL Welcomes EDF Climate Corp Fellow

June 9, 2016 by chris

Screen Shot 2016-06-09 at 11.56.53 AM
Hello! My name is Jennifer Cole and I am excited to be part of the Environmental Defense Fund Climate Corps program this summer, matched to work with North Carolina Interfaith Power & Light. I have just graduated with my Master of Environmental Management degree from Duke, and I have a Bachelor of Arts in psychology with a minor in energy and water sustainability. I will be starting my PhD in environmental psychology at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the fall. My interests lie at the intersection of sustainability and behavioral science, and I am excited to explore how this intersects with NCIPL’s work.

Through my career I seek to engage as many individuals and organizations in sustainability and climate mitigation as possible, which is why it’s perfect for me to work with NCIPL this summer. I can’t wait to hep NCIPL work towards the goal of responding to climate change with hope, to meet our moral imperative of protecting the environment. Climate change is the largest problem faced by our generation, and if we act quickly, we can overcome it – but we need as many hands on deck as possible. I look forward to working with everyone in the NCIPL network this summer!

I will be working on engaging and empowering congregations to improve their energy efficiency by entering and analyzing their energy data in the TEAM Spirit database. This is a congregation energy data management platform managed in collaboration with the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association. The data gathered through this system will help NCIPL and NCSEA advise congregations on how to improve their energy efficiency. If you or anyone you know is involved in a congregation in NC that wants to improve its energy efficiency (or a congregation that doesn’t know the importance of energy efficiency yet), please reach out to me at jennifer@ncipl.org

Community UCC Solar Project

May 18, 2016 By chris

Community UCC is a relatively small (about 120 active members) congregation located in Raleigh, NC, that has long had an active interest in environmental stewardship. We created our Justice in a Changing Climate initiative (JCC) in 2007, recognizing that climate change will affect those with the fewest resources more adversely and sooner than the rest of us.

Community UCC Solar Project

May 18, 2016 by chris

Bringing Community Solar to Your Church
– Here’s One Way

In 2012, the congregation held a retreat at which members requested that the JCC investigate installing solar panels. The JCC explored various funding models, talking with and visiting a number of churches and synagogues that had already installed an array. We got help and advice from non-profit groups with experience and expertise in renewable energy installations. We solicited bids from three vendors. Throughout the research phase we kept the congregation in the loop.

To enable broad participation, we decided to use a direct donation model to fund the project. We realized that our array might serve as a pilot project testing community-funded solar, and be an inspiration for other non-profits. Ours is a small church, and if we could pull this off, others could as well. Throughout our research phase we had heard from neighbors and friends who wanted do something to combat climate change and to offset their personal output of CO¬2, but who were not able to install solar at their homes or afford an entire array. They could achieve some of their environmental goals by contributing to a project such as ours, and, in many cases, receive tax benefits as well.

In January 2015 we were ready to seek the congregation’s approval for the fundraising campaign. Our proposal included information about the array and installer, including the environmental and economic justice impacts for the equipment producers and installers. We also had in-hand pledges covering 15% of the cost from a mix of members and friends who had approached us including the offer of a seed grant from Temple Emanuel in Greensboro who had advised us. The JCC’s passionate message that climate change is real, severely impacts the poor, that we must reduce our fossil fuel consumption to combat it, and that the solar installation would help brought the buy-in from the church to go ahead. With the congregation’s approval, we solicited donations from church members, friends and family members. We set a schedule for raising the total we needed and each JCC member used fundraising methods that felt comfortable for her or him. We wrote emails, talked to fellow bus commuters, reached out to friends in local environmental groups and a book club, suggested a donation in lieu of Christmas gifts, and organized an honorarium for a family member. At mid-point in our timeline, we launched a one-week social network campaign (our youth group played a big role here) and reached our goal two months early. Throughout the process we kept the congregation informed by adding a sparkly solar panel to a worship banner (see photo) each time we raised enough to pay for another panel; this kept energy high and was another way for children to be involved. In the end we actually exceeded our goal. The excess is being used to seed solar projects undertaken by other non-profits (two churches, a school, and an affordable housing quadruplex) continuing the Temple’s “pay it forward” gift to us.

Keys to fundraising included our passion for the project and opening the opportunity to the community. Breaking the funding goal into chewable amounts – for example, the cost of one kW of energy or one solar panel – helped donors see how they could have specific impact on the project. And the 35% NC income tax credit to donors of non-profit renewable energy installations (terminated in Dec 2015) enabled some donors to give more.

Blessed by our God and our community, we now have a 28-panel, 10kW solar array on the south-facing roof of our fellowship hall. We estimate that it is cutting our main building’s electricity bill in half; the money saved is being put toward other work of the church. It’s like an extra shot in the church budget. True to our goal to serve as a pilot project, we continue to provide best practice suggestions to congregations and non-profits, and to share the story with North Carolina’s administrative and legislative leaders.

Learn more about the project, fund raising, system performance, see photos, and find links to other solar projects accepting donations at cuccsolarproject.blogspot.com. Questions: contact Gary Smith (smithgk@mindspring.com).

Visit Community UCC online at: http://www.communityucc.org/

NCIPL Advocacy Day at the NC General Assembly

May 13, 2016 By chris

On May 11th NCIPL hosted the 2nd Annual Faith Voices for Clean Energy Advocacy Day. Members of faith communities from across the state met with representatives of the NC General […]

NCIPL Advocacy Day at the NC General Assembly

May 13, 2016 by chris

On May 11^th NCIPL hosted the 2^nd Annual Faith Voices for Clean Energy Advocacy Day. Members of faith communities from across the state met with representatives of the NC General Assembly to hear their vision for North Carolina’s energy future and to express our support for new and existing clean energy policies.

Throughout the legislative session you can participate virtually in the Faith Voices for Clean Energy campaign by sending emails to your members of the NC General Assembly through NCIPL’s online system.

Clean energy policies in NC are generating billions of dollars for the economy and creating thousands of full time jobs across the state. There are currently over 26,000 full time equivalent (FTE) clean energy employees in NC who are generating $7 billion (45% increase since 2014) in gross revenues for our state’s economy. North Carolina’s clean energy policies are also saving ratepayers money. A 2015 study by RTI International and ScottMadden found that North Carolina’s Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard (REPS) policy has saved customers $162 million since 2007 and will save them an estimated additional $489 million by 2029.

North Carolina’s clean energy polices help to care for Creation by significantly reducing pollution across the state, which contributes to healthier communities and a better quality of life for all North Carolinians.

CLICK HERE to let your legislator know you support new and existing clean energy policies in North Carolina.