Rector of the Church of the Holy Comforter
The Rev. Jon Strand is the Rector of the Church of the Holy Comforter in Vienna, VA. His first awareness of the urgency of climate issues came from meeting and reading Bill McKibben’s work, the founder of 350.org, which was established to help the world organize around 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere as the sustainable way forward for our planet. Recent readings are at 427 ppm, well past numbers sustaining ordinary life as we have known it! His second awareness came as an amateur astronomer, gazing at other planets nearby and considering their atmospheres. When you start to realize these small points of light are what our planet looks like in space, you realize what a precious, unique gem it is; with none others we know of yet able to sustain life. We truly have no backup planet available to us!
Holy Comforter has been very active in creation care, recently installing a solar array providing 110% of the congregation’s electrical needs and actively re-wilding a 7 acre forest on the property. Each new AC compressor and heating unit is turning toward heat pumps to further electrify and green the campus.