"The KWH Challenge" by Vivian Shortreed

[Memos from Rev. Barbara Merritt and Rev. Tom Schade]

G U E S T   M E M O

“The KWH Challenge”

It was a mid-October Sunday morning. The sun was streaming through the
lovely clear windowpanes in the sanctuary. Tom was preaching. Did you
notice? The electric lights were off during the entire service. Our
beautiful sanctuary lighting brings comfort and inspiration on dark days and
nights, but we have been in the habit of turning on the lights during the
service every Sunday. On that day, we just enjoyed the sunshine.

The next time you enter the dining room, look up. The 300-watt light bulbs
have been replaced by energy efficient bulbs.

The Building and Grounds committee, working together with staff and the
Environment Committee, has initiated an effort to bring down the amount of
electricity used in the church. This is, in part, because our bills for
electricity are huge, and the cost per kilowatt hour (kwh) promises to get
much higher. It is also because the members of the Building and Grounds
Committee are acutely aware of the need to conserve energy because of the
cost of its production to the environment.

This effort to conserve has been joined by one couple, concerned members of
the church, who have pledged to double the amount we save by conserving
electricity during the coming year. Each month the kwh used will be compared
with the same month in the previous year, and the cost savings recorded. At
the end of the year, these generous donors will give the total amount, in
addition to their annual pledge, to the church. (And they have offered to
start the challenge in November, to take full advantage of the change in the
lighting in the dining room.)

This is a challenge we all need to take up. It’s up to each of us to help
the church conserve, to turn off lights when they are not needed, to use
appliances efficiently. We’ll start a labeling project, to identify lights
that need to be left on for safety. Give us your suggestions for labeling,
and for other possibilities for conserving.
This is a challenge we need to take home. One of the real advantages of
working with the Environment Committee is that over time our discussions
have given me ideas about saving, and raised issues I hadn’t even thought
of. Conserving electricity has become a game, like my daily game of Spider
Solitaire. Can I fill the oven and avoid using the top of the stove, or
using the oven again later? Will cold water do the job as well as hot? Etc.
The family plays, too, of course. Prompted by the KWH Challenge to the
church, I checked our National Grid bills for the past year and found our
kwh usage has been consistently smaller. Our current bill shows a savings of
61 kwh, about 10%. Since we changed to low energy bulbs long before the year
I checked, surely our daily game counts for much of the reduction. It’s not
big, but the little stuff counts.

This challenge is about saving kilowatt hours, yes, but more importantly it
is about mindfulness. It is about the dailiness. It is about doing the small
things in our lives with awareness: awareness of the extraordinary gift of
electrical power, awareness that using it more conservatively will make a
difference. It is about reducing the size of our footprint on the earth.

We are beginners, as Denise Levertov says so eloquently in the poem we read
responsively, in the practice of loving the earth. We read these lines
together: “We have only begun to know the power that is in us if we would
join our solitudes in the communion of struggle.” Take up the KWH Challenge
with us. It’s about the daily stuff, and the joining.

                            Vivian Shortreed
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