So- what’s next?

by Tori

I have been away from Madrid for just over a week now, and stateside for a week today. I am still unpacking what my experience at COP25 means for my future and where God is calling me, but I can tell you what resonated the most: hope.

Even in places where the urgency of the present moment was tangible as we marched and others participated in protests inside the venue, alongside our despair walked hope. Entering this opportunity, I was physically exhausted from the toll of the work I had undertaken while trying to fully repair my brain, and I was unsure of what my academic research future would be. In this past week, not only have I been able to recover from much of the exhaustion, but I can also tell you what my research for the next couple of years will look like, beginning with a field campaign at a DOE research site this summer. (If you want to talk nitrogen and cloud formation/particle seeding, let me know.) When God opens a window, the whole wall goes out.

My dear priest in Boulder and I spent some time together before I went to Madrid (she grew up down the road from where I did, coincidentally), and she planted a seed. Rather, she saw a seed that I had not acknowledged: that perhaps going into full time ministry was in the cards. It’s a small opportunity, but she suggested I look at the upcoming readings and see if anything resonates and can be tied to creation care and my experience in Madrid. Where God sees your heart walls will break for opportunity.

I am in Maine now, working on tying up loose ends from Madrid & letters I promised to send (and I am working on them, I promise!) and more opportunities keep entering my life, some for the near future and some further abroad (and hopefully abroad). I cannot tell you where those paths will lead yet, but I can tell you that I am in the midst of a discernment process. Figuring out how to make money with passion, how to love my neighbor well, and likely most important, how to heed callings. I cannot give you answers to any of those questions, but the sense I have is that that is what is most exciting about this coming year. So, what’s next? Walking through the open doors and seeing where that leads me. 

How you can be praying for me in the meantime:

• To not become complacent in wrestling with what it means to be a good neighbor, not only locally but globally

• To hold each opportunity with open hands; if it sticks, great, but if not to let it go with grace.

• A peaceful transition back into higher education; to have focus for coursework and the quickness on my feet needed for this semester's lab work

Thank you to each one of you who walked alongside me in this process.

Until I next have a blog, xoT

Caring a Whole Lot at COP25

I am coming from the event #UniteBehindTheScience where Greta Thunberg and Luisa Neubauer, youth activists, interviewed a panel of top climate scientists. This inspires hope; approximately 150 people were listening, amazed by the voice of scientists and young climate activists despite as Luisa put it, “the growing disparity between the negotiators and the people.” This COP is one of measured hope and louder desperation.

As it stands, I have attended panels on ocean, gender, and interfaith dialogue within the framework of climate policy, and even had the opportunity to be in a meeting with the Climate Action Network and the US delegation. I have laughed and I have cried, but most importantly, I am increasingly finding the ability to hope.

Coming here I was in a place of ecodepression and ecoanger, unconvinced anything I could do would help. Monday’s group devotional reminded and challenged each each of us to look for the pearls, not just the emergency, of COP25, and to have faith. Even if it is as small as a mustard seed, to hope in these small pearls. There is so much more I could and will write, but know this: good work is happening on the ground and pray that the route forward is just for all.

Until I next check in, Tori.

10 days out: what I’m hoping to learn at COP25

Hello, dear reader:

I want to tell you all about what I’m hoping to learn at COP25, but I would like to begin with an anecdote (it may be longer than you anticipate, but soon it won’t only be my anecdotes). I was 15 when I first experienced being allergic to the environment I was in, this due to the fact that I spent the beginning of pollen season in a different country with different pollen and it was just long enough for me to need environmental allergy medicine for the next three years (now it only takes a week at the beginning of pollen season for me to adjust to wherever I have moved to). My next allergy experience occurred at 20; I ate a strawberry while watching the solar eclipse in Nashville and my lips swelled. I spent the better part of that year sick, trying to figure out what was wrong; cutting gluten, dairy, and soy seemed to eliminate most symptoms. The past two falls, those of 21st and 22nd years have brought inconsistent, wild weather patterns, and with it come wild mood patterns. What does this have to do with climate change and policy, you might be asking?

 Pollen season has become a wildly fluctuating entity, each year anecdotally we (or at least I) hear how it is the worst one yet. Farming practices have become increasingly more reliant on pesticides, and in the case of many larger productions in the US, have become reliant on genetically modified plants that can withstand the herbicides used to remove weeds (one only needs to be reminded of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and shudder when they see “no dumping, drains to river, ocean” realizing that we are poisoning our planet). Though as a scientist I should not make a hypothesis as to why I was so sick without being able to test it, maintaining an avoidance of foods that are commonly contaminated with pesticides has led to a largely full recovery that no medical professional can explain (to be fair, they couldn’t explain why I was sick either). And with more variable weather patterns come more symptoms of seasonal affective disorder (I note that this is from anecdotal evidence, as research is lacking on SAD). 

What is concerning is that these extremes will only continue to spiral, each being affected by the other, and by the one link between the three: a variable and more intense seasonal pattern created by climate change. And this is what I want to spend my career addressing, through informative research and potentially transitioning into policy so science can be communicated effectively to those who do not have a scientific background. This is what COP25 is letting my dip my toes into. I have begun coordinating my schedule for Madrid, with a training in religious environmental movement making, a summit on global climate and health, and the opportunity to sit in on meetings establishing policy that dictates the future. (Though I shouldn’t get too fatalistic, and Rebecca Solnit, a favorite author of mine, writes hopefully about the climate crisis here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/14/climate-change-taking-action-rebecca-solnit). What is most exciting, though, is the opportunity I have to share my experiences and perspectives with people who do not have the chance to be in the room like I do. And the people I am traveling with have spent years to lifetimes learning how to do what I aspire to do, giving me valuable connections in climate activism while helping me refine communication in boldness and hope.

I leave a week from Thursday. I chat with one of my priests tomorrow about getting connected to the climate activism group at my church, and will have the opportunity to share my experience and learn from their perspective in turn after I am back. Pray for discernment, for clarity, and for refreshment; this season of self-employment has been exhausting, and I will stop running for three weeks in Maine before returning to Colorado to start graduate studies in atmospheric chemistry. Pray for the team I’m traveling with, and for the first contingent who will be in Madrid this coming Friday. I am so thankful and excited for this opportunity, and that you have decided to follow along.

Thank you,
Tori Arau

From the Perspective of a Christian Environmental Chemist

by Tori

I recently graduated from Gordon College, a small evangelical (christian) college in August 2019, with a zeal for explaining science to lay people and the intention to make the world a better place. Initially the post-graduation plan was to move to Boulder, Colorado and start graduate school in atmospheric chemistry, so I could begin building instruments to help inform climate policy. (Ambitious, I am aware.) I moved to Boulder area, but the plan changed after a car accident which caused me to defer graduate school until January 2020. Coincidentally, one of the professors who had been on my thesis committee suggested that I could participate in this program, and see international climate policy talks in action. I applied, and now, here I am. I am looking forward to bring you on this journey with me, as I learn more about what happens at the United Nation's COP25 (conference of the party) and walk alongside activists within my christian perspective, experiencing the last meeting before the Paris Agreement comes into effect.