Sun-Up Our Sanctuaries! The Compassion Games Solar Challenge

by | Sep 18, 2014 | Earth Week, Sun Up Our Sanctuaries, Ways to Play

A truly unfathomable amount of energy showers down on us freely at every moment of our lives, granting life to you, me, and every living creature on this planet. The giving star, our Sun, is not just the symbol of hope, light, and spirit in every world religion. It is – in the face of our addiction to fossil fuels – our most promising path toward a just and sustainable future for ourselves and our children.

If all flora on Earth can harness this essential cosmological power source, then why can’t we humans seem to do it? Plants are, after all, biological ancestors to humans. As it turns out, we can harness the power of the sun, and we can do it pretty well considering we weren’t given the gift of photosynthesis at birth!

Right now, solar technology has never been so efficient, inexpensive, and accessible to our society. That’s why now is the perfect time to let our values be our guide and change our energy direction for good: to demonstrate the moral imperative by having compassion for our Mother Earth and inspiring us to bring clean, solar energy to sacred spaces, our places of worship! Here’s how.

Announcing the Sun-Up Our Sanctuaries Solar Challenge!

A new community challenge has emerged during this years Compassion Games. Silicon Valley, Santa Monica, and Seattle have just initiated the “Sun-Up Our Sanctuaries Solar Challenge”, committing to each other and inviting places around the world to take on the challenge to bring renewable solar energy to their places of worship by next year’s Compassion Games.

Every house of worship, anywhere on earth, from every faith is welcome to play!

Here’s how the Sun-Up Our Sanctuaries Solar Challenge works:

  1. Cities, towns, and communities from around the world will commit to collaborate to bring solar energy to their places of worship, to set an unprecedented example of how people can co-create positive change in their local communities for a sustainable future.
  2. With the cost of solar energy dropping, these installations are increasingly becoming affordable for communities willing to make an investment into solar.
  3. Compassion Games International will help teams work with their local faith and interfaith sanctuaries and provide resources to help them work with solar vendors and get the very best prices for their houses of worship.
  4. When a group of houses of worship commit, the cost of solar for that community will decrease from the benefit of a bulk purchase. This is a collective venture; the more collaboration that takes place between all faiths and congregations, the better the outcome will be, and the brighter the light will shine! It is therefore a way to build bridges between people of all spiritual paths as we Sun-Up Our Sanctuaries.

The goal of this challenge – starting with Santa Monica, Seattle, or Silicon Valley – is for each place to bring solar energy to 20% of sanctuaries and places of worship in each respective area. For example, Seattle has 600 congregations of all faiths in its city’s limits. This means 120 of the sanctuaries in Seattle must commit and work together to bring solar to their sanctuaries!

By next year’s Compassion Games, starting on September 11th, 2015, a place of worship will qualify if they a) Have begun installing or have already installed solar energy, or b) Have contracted a solar company to begin installation before year end.

Are you interested in organizing a team to participate in the Sun-Up Our Sanctuaries Solar Challenge?  If so, email Jon Ramer at jon@compassiongames.org!

It’s time – in the dawn of this new era of clean energy – to make like a tree and “leaf” fossil fuel energy in the ground where it belongs!

The Sun-Up Our Sanctuaries Solar Challenge has begun! Game on!