Your Story
Learning and practicing respect for the earth
The book, Serve God Save the Planet, has helped teach me some things. I read the first chapter and set the book aside for over a month. I wasn’t ready to change and I didn’t want to be convicted about my lifestyle. I thought I was living a life with a relatively low carbon footprint. I didn’t think I really needed to change things. When I picked it up again, I read it like a novel until I came across … Continue reading
How the Blessed Earth Series Changed My Life
I first watched the presentation about Sabbath rest by Matthew Sleeth about a year ago (Session #7 in the Blessed Earth Film Series). At that time I knew it was something I should take seriously but instead I continued with my hectic pace. A few months later, I watched the video again as I was preparing to teach the session on Sabbath rest. This time I was struck by how much I had really not been taking a Sabbath. I … Continue reading
Save Our Hemlocks
“I go among trees and sit still.” Thus begins Wendell Berry’s cycle of “Sabbath Poems,” conceived and written, according to Berry, in silence, solitude, and often in the outdoors. Berry’s reflection flows naturally from the directive of Psalm 46 to “be still and know that I am God.” On October 22, 2011, a small group of teens and adults from the St. Paul Parish youth group traveled to Kentucky Ridge State Forest in Bell County. There we partnered with the … Continue reading
Blessing the Animals as They Bless Us
Living in central Texas these days means heat, drought, and wildfires. The last month was particularly devastating as fires ravaged areas around Austin where we have lived years. As a person deeply involved in dog rescue, considering the plight of pets in homes threatened by wildfires is agonizing. Sometimes the fires come so quickly there is no opportunity to get back home; roads are blocked before you can make it back to save your pets from what could end up … Continue reading
Reaching out in the Namibian Desert
First of all, let me please thank Blessed Earth for the incredible work that you are allowing our precious Creator to do through you!! Ever since I was a child, God has called me to see Him in his Creation and to make a difference in the world. I have been living permanently outside the USA since 2005, with the last 4 years being in Namibia. In Namibia, much of God’s Creation is still wild and natural as He designed … Continue reading
Carpool Prayers
Recently I organized a United Methodist Women’s Retreat on the theme of creation care. Nancy Sleeth was our retreat leader, and through discussion of the Blessed Earth Hope for Creation film series, we had time to swap stories and share ideas. I told the group about how living green through carpooling allowed me to pray with a new colleague who had lost touch with God. At the time of the retreat, I relayed how ride sharing opened a wonderful opportunity … Continue reading
Sharing the Stuff We Have
I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Texas in the spring of 2008, and proceeded directly into graduate school in Asian Cultures and Languages. As I was finishing up school that May, I had been helping my college ministry put on some different events when a somewhat regular experience launched me onto a slightly different road than I had planned. Going by a friend’s house to put up, of all things, a dry erase board, I noticed five … Continue reading
Practical Ways to be a Christian Each Day
God started tugging on my heart two and a half years ago when I read Dr. Sleeth’s book Serve God, Save the Planet. It was one of the quarterly books assigned to the Sierra Pacific Conference (the Free Methodist conference of Northern California), and I had never been really interested in any of the books they assigned until this one popped up. When I asked my husband Jaymes what this one was about, he quite truthfully said that he didn’t … Continue reading
Falling in Love with Our Green God
I fell in love with our green God in an unlikely place: theology class. Seminary was an unlikely place because it’s not typically where people fall in love–fall asleep, maybe, but not in love. But history and theology were an invitation to me. I heard Martin Luther pounding the nail into the Wittenberg Church door, I smelled the fragrant sacrifices burning on ancient altars, and I sat in horror with Mary at the foot of the cross. I developed an … Continue reading
The Great Omission
I was born and raised in wild and wonderful Hedgesville, West Virginia. We had plenty of greenery, a creek in the backyard, and plenty of old dirt roads; it was a country boy’s heaven. Yet even with all that natural beauty around me, I thought it wasn’t for me. See, I thought living out in the “sticks” was boring. Nowadays, though, I’ve changed my mind; it’s like the old saying–you never know what you have until you lose it. One … Continue reading
Genetically Modified or God’s Perfect Organism?
That’s a question that I now ponder on a daily basis, but for most of my life prior to this year, I never thought about what I ate. What changed in between then and now is that I am relying on food for my livelihood. Last year, my husband and I moved back to his family farm to raise grass-fed beef and grow vegetables, and we are striving to do this in a way that is pleasing to God. Daily, … Continue reading
Eating Mercifully
Christians today find it easier to perceive the bread and wine in Holy Communion as the body of Christ than as food. Yet, Holy Communion is based on an actual meal Jesus ate with His disciples. While the liturgical elements of Holy Communion are surely important, we should not forget its humble beginnings as a repast. It is also significant that sharing a meal of thanks was among the first things Jesus’ followers did together, and therefore one of the … Continue reading
The Glorious Demise of Squealy the Pig
It was a cruel thing, perhaps, to do to Liam, our six-year-old son. His whole life to that point had been urban, as in the inner-city of Washington, D.C. Living in the broken places of the world and the city had been Tara’s and my past for a long time, and we expected it to be our lifetime. Then unexpected but not unwelcome, God surprised us with an invitation to move to a small farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. And … Continue reading
Green Jesus, the Meaning of Easter
Last month, I was fortunate to hear Dr. Matthew Sleeth speak at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Afterwards, I spoke with his wife, Nancy, and she encouraged me to share this reflection on the meaning of Easter. The essay, originally written for the young people in a friend’s mixed Christian-Jewish congregation, appeared in the April 2010 issue of Friends Journal. I hope you enjoy it, too: In the fall of every year, as each day grows shorter and darkness … Continue reading
Where Faith Meets Fair Trade
“One soy-latte decaf Irish cream coming right up.” It’s my second time into Come Together Trading and already barista/owner Terry Marshall remembers my order. Easing into a comfortable chair, I sip coffee from the Ecotainer compostable cup and soak in my surroundings. Students cluster at one table; writers use free Wi-Fi at another. Piles of hand-woven beads and baskets and racks of colorful apparel line the shelves. It’s like some place out of Boulder, Colorado–not Canton, Texas. The location isn’t the … Continue reading
From the Third World to the Corporate Office
My workplace has changed in the last eight years from a very hot, open-air room of my house in the Dominican Republic to an old repurposed furniture warehouse that became the first LEED Platinum office in North Carolina. I transitioned from working with poor teenagers in both countries on the island of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) to running a foundation focused on brownfield remediation as a means of promoting environmental sustainability and funding poverty alleviation. Both experiences, along … Continue reading
Call Me a Beginner
Call me a beginner. Having been raised in the densely populated city of Manila, I grew up with a vivid awareness of the myriad of human need, urgent and seemingly eclipsing of environmental concerns. As with triage, crises that called for immediate help rightfully take priority. I couldn’t help wondering if passionate concern for the environment might be the luxurious (and somewhat indulgent) outgrowth of a society largely unencumbered by disease, starvation, and squalor. Perhaps the sheer magnitude of the … Continue reading
An Earth Day Connection
I’m not a big Facebooker, but I think I understand the psychology of why 500 million people have a Facebook account. It comes down to one word: Connection. Even if a Facebook friend isn’t necessarily a real friend, in an age of technology, people want to feel connected. Last year’s Blessed Earth Simulcast created a connection for Christians to be united all over the globe for a common cause. My church was one of the 2,200 groups around the globe … Continue reading
The Question That Haunts Me
[reposted with permission from the blog Alien Nation by Reverend Darin Collins] “When asked by pollsters, 90 percent of Americans identify themselves as ‘kinder than average.’ If we say we care about the least in the kingdom, if we identify ourselves as ‘kinder than average,’ if we see ourselves as responsible stewards of nature, then we are content. Contentment does not result in change. The content mind is one of the greatest obstacles to a rich spiritual life. The content … Continue reading
Technology, Social Networking, and Babel Tower
[reposted with permission from the blog Alien Nation by Reverend Darin Collins] “We have forgotten that we have far more in common with the honeybee than we do with our SUV of DVD…Do you know in which direction the Milky Way traverses the sky? As the phases of the moon progress, does the light go from right to left, or left to right? Can you identify a greater number of trees or cars? If the Bible says God knows every … Continue reading