Church shines light on environment, community | The Bennington Banner

By Elodie Reed, Banner correspondent

BENNINGTON — Even with the crosses lining the the bustling lunchroom, the collar tucked beneath Rev. Mark Blank’s rainbow-painted face and the steeple rising above the bat, tick and polar bear displays, it was easy to walk around last weekend’s Sun and Fun Festival and forget it was at a church.

Blank, who arrived at the Bennington’s Second Congregational Church in January after graduating from the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, said that’s kind of the point.

“It’s important that church be a real community,” he said. “It’s a place of intersection.”

All kinds came together for Saturday’s free event. At one end of the building, Southern Vermont Natural History Museum assistant director Michael Clough held aloft a barred owl and explained the raptor’s hyper-sensitive eyes and ears.

“If my eyes were this size, they would be the size of grapefruits,” Clough said. He added that the owl’s ear holes, on a human scale, would be big enough to stick a fist into.

“It would be gross, yes, but you could do it,” he pointed out.

Just down the hall, Jen Clarkson-Smith taught a “parachute yoga” class. In between ruffling up a multi-colored, nylon circle, participants imitated with their bodies various animals, structures and natural features: cat, cobra, down dog, river, rock.

Other nearby rooms offered seminars on things like permaculture, solar panel financing, wind power, energy efficiency and bees.

Outside in the church’s grassy front yard, participants could meander a triangular path and check out a couple dozen tents. They could watch crayfish and mayflies swim around a bucket at the Battenkill Conservancy’s “picky bug table,” look inside a Rubbermaid bin full of composting worms, and compare the tight grain of old wood planks to the looser grain of newer lumber at Jane Radoccia’s “Building to the Weather” display.

Anyone who wandered behind the church building could ride inside the bike-like, lime green, pod-shaped Organic Transit ELF – a solar and pedal powered electric vehicle.

In the middle of everything was the “kids zone.” Young people could run through a curtain of rainbow streamers and jump into hula-hooping, bubble-blowing and the “Pie Face,” a whipped-cream-smacked-on-your-nose-machine.

The Sun and Fun Festival has grown in size since its debut four years ago. The church originally put on the event to celebrate its new 72-panel solar array, which was installed in 2015 with the help of a matching grant program.

Solar Pro company owner Karen Lee said Green Mountain Power opened up the grant in 2014 to non-profit institutions. This was a special opportunity, Lee said, since tax-exempt organizations like churches and schools aren’t incentivized by solar power’s tax-credit benefits like businesses or individuals.

“Coincidentally, the Second Congregational Church was looking for a partner — a solar power contractor,” Lee said. “The church was already involved in energy efficiency and sustainability efforts.”

The church is considered a “Green Justice” congregation by the United Church of Christ denomination. In addition to using solar panels for power, the church recycles, promotes practices like cleaning with non-toxic products and runs an environmental activism group called Eaarth Advocates.

Similarly, Sun and Fun Festival chairperson Kathy Shaw said the event has evolved over the years to emphasize nature and the environment.

“We try to do as many green things as we can,” Shaw said. This year, Bennington’s Second Congregational Church was nationally recognized as a “Cool Congregation” by Interfaith Power and Light, a religious group focused on global warming.

Shaw, who has lived and worked in Bennington for more than a decade as a veterinarian, said that she joined the church five years ago for its various efforts on social issues, including climate change.

“This church attracted me because they’re involved in the community,” she said.

Blank, who is 40, said he sees community outreach as a way to revitalize church for younger generations interested in social justice.

“We need to be relevant,” he said. “It is the great issue of our time — we have to do something about climate change. The church has to be speaking to that.”

Blank added, “These are things that bring people together.”