Presented to the congregation at the RRUU worship service on June 23, 2002

By Linn Cates, Social Action Committee member

7^th principle of Unitarian Universalism:

"We covenant together and agree to promote respect for the web of life of which we are a part."

With our 7^th principle we UU’s agree to involve ourselves respectfully and intelligently in understanding environmental issues and acting in a way to help with solutions to environmental problems. Some of the ways we humans currently go about our lives have damaged our land, water, and air. We have depleted or will soon deplete some resources we are now dependent on. Many individuals, groups, and agencies are working on solutions to more responsibly manage earth’s resources. One such action promoted locally and worldwide as a significant contribution to both the management of waste and the resulting health of our planet is COMPOSTING. 

Composting saves landfill space. Using it improves the health of our soils, the plants that it grows, and consequently the food we eat and ultimately our own health. Keeping it out of the landfills helps directly with the shortage of landfill space, and indirectly keeps the land, water and air cleaner by reducing the amount of contaminated leachate and toxic gas produced by the decomposition process occurring in the landfills. And composting can keep us mindful of our unity with and dependence on the cycle of decay and growth.

 By composting yard and food wastes we participate in an action that will significantly address pressing environmental issue. Let’s us at Red River Unitarian Universalist Church become a Composting Congregation! Each household will need to commit to turn its kitchen garbage and plant trimmings into compost. The way you choose to do it will depend on your time, budget, physical ability, housing situation and landscaping. RRUU members, who are already knowledgeable and experienced composters, could help others get started, solve problems, or even change methods. As a composting congregation the children and adults in our church will know why we compost, how to compost, and what happens in this process. We’ll be able to enable others to compost, perhaps a neighbor or friend, or a business. Perhaps we can actively get our communities to ordinance citywide composting or our legislators to make composting into state law. When our national governments write it into federal law and the United Nations sign an agreement to compost, then the human family will come to live a little more in harmony with nature.

We acknowledge in our 7^th principle that we are a part of an interdependent system of life and that we will strive to live in a way to promote respect for life and he systems that support it. You might want to think of composting as a spiritual practice or discipline. As you collect and put your kitchen garbage and plant trimmings into the compost pile, you may want to think of it as an offering, a seemingly meager one, but one that is in Nature’s currency. We know that as a composting congregation we have taken one small step together. Our composting, even in concert with the entire global human family’s composting, is not by itself going to remove the threat facing our planet’s capability to sustain life. But it is a step in the right direction.

A Composting Commitment Form for members and friends of RRUU to fill out and return. to Linn Cates by Sunday July 14^th.