Fields notes are spaces to collect observations from the natural world. They often include artistic sketches or written descriptions of particular phenomena, along with reflective questions or ideas about the meaning of what's been observed, possible implications, and directions for further inquiry.

Garrett’s Center for Ecological Regeneration (CER) publishes quarterly notes from the field to support our mission to spread ecological theological understandings, earth-based religious practices, and cooperative solidarities for the healing of creation and the just flourishing of all. 

In this fall issue, we're excited to share more about the Midwest Bioregional Hub curriculum, insights from our ongoing partnership with Hennepin Avenue UMC, an alumni spotlight featuring reflections on ecological regeneration in ministry, along with additional updates and a word from our Director. 

The Creation Collective at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church enters its second year 

By Benjamin Perry 

“We believe that Christian communities are called to engage in deeper reflection and venture bolder action to support the just healing of creation for the flourishing of all. In partnership with Garrett Seminary and the Center for Ecological Regeneration, we're committed to drawing on theological, ethical, scientific, and practical ecological resources as we seek to live into a hopeful vision of congregational and personal action in a climate changed world.” 

These words open the Creation Collective’s mission statement. Last year, congregants at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church in Minneapolis began meeting with Dr. Timothy Eberhart, Garrett Seminary’s Robert and Marilyn Degler McClean Associate Professor of Ecological Theology and Practice and Director of the Center for Ecological Regeneration. In a class called “Hope for Creation in a Climate Changed World,” they worked to discern how the church could root more deeply in theological reflection and ecological repair. “We focused on better understanding the range of environmental crises that we’re facing, along with some of the causes and unfolding implications,” Eberhart explains. “That includes understanding how Christian beliefs and spiritual practices have contributed to ecological harm, but also how we might recover and re-orient Christian spirituality, worship, discipleship formation, and missional action for the sake of planetary healing.” 

Over the spring months, the class engaged a set of regenerative design principles to help members embrace Hennepin’s place in the local geography, its historical commitments to education and justice, and its unique assets as part of discerning a congregational vision for regenerative ministry. As a result of that process, the class claimed the following:  

“Hennepin Avenue embraces its vocation as a ‘Cathedral for All Creation,’ bringing together and supporting various denominational, ecumenical/interfaith, and public efforts for the just healing of the world. As a meeting place of confluent social, cultural, and educational systems, in a region ripe with diverse environmental assets, wisdoms, and efforts, Hennepin is a model and catalyst for regenerative convergences that flow inward for deep congregational change and outward for widespread systemic transformation.”       

In support of this vision for the congregation, the class proposed the formation of the Creation Collective, which is organized into six different “bee hives,” each dedicated to different aspects of regenerative ministry—buildings and energy, land use, food and agriculture, worship and spirituality, Christian education and formation, and political advocacy, organizing, and outreach. While this scope of this organization and incipient action is impressive, members are clear that this energy would not be possible without the theological reflection that preceded it. “We had been searching for a way to do creation care before the pandemic, had actually formed a green team that met a couple times, but it never got traction,” says Dan Dahm, a member of Hennepin since 1990 and one of the Collective’s initial organizers. “The approach our partnership with Garrett brought us was what we needed to lay the foundation.” Ginger Sisco, another decades-long Hennepin member, concurs with Dan’s assessment. “Churches can go for the shiny object for a year’s time and say, ‘Well, we’ve done that,’” she observes. “What our partnership with a seminary brings is the theological formation and grounding that keeps it alive and attracts others.” 

Sandy Christie was surprised by how much this process enriched her understanding. A retired architect whose firm specialized in sustainable design, she was familiar with much of the science presented but found that the connections to her faith facilitated new understanding. “Talking through the theology and learning the history of nature-engaged Christianity was really enlightening for me,” she says. “It makes it feel more possible to nurture a different relationship to creation because that has happened in the past.” For Hennepin’s lead pastor, Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay, it was Dr. Eberhart’s process that helped the collective grow its own agency. “What I’ve really loved about the way that Tim has handled this is that he doesn’t push it, he lets it evolve ecologically,” she says. “He’s done good farming—trusting that what will take root will be what is indigenous to this time, this place, this church, this people.” 

 One blessing the Creation Collective has already bestowed on the Hennepin community is greater connectedness between its members. “My circle of people at church has easily doubled in size,” Dan says with joy. “We had 30-40 participants every week and, initially, I didn’t know a lot of these people beyond their faces and their names,” Sandy agrees. “Learning people’s background and what they bring to this work is such a great bonding process.” As connections within the class deepened, that spirit began to spread throughout the church community. “Yesterday, a woman was walking through the communal area where coffee is served in compostable cups and noticed that the church is not part of a system where compost gets picked up,” Ginger says. “So, she picked up the cups, saying, ‘Between church and home is a drop off place for compost.’ She’s not actively in any of our hives, but she’s been paying attention.” Last year was Rev. Macaulay’s first at Hennepin, and she is quick to name how the collective’s flourishing has aided her own transition. “Honest to Pete, any pastor who could walk into a new appointment with this group being nurtured—it feels like I must have done something good in life,” she laughs. “I actually came out of retirement to serve and had become a little jaded about church—not sure that I had the heart and passion to do this work anymore—for this to be born in the middle of my own sense of possibility has been such a gift.” 

This use of theological scholarship to strengthen local churches is one of Garrett Seminary’s broader commitments. “If our work stops being connected to the life of real communities of faith, it becomes an academic exercise and we lose the spirit and lifeblood of why we exist,” says Garrett President Javier Viera. “We all know Tim to be a serious thinker and ethicist, but he’s also a serious leader who seeks to kindle justice, compassion, and hope in the world.” For Eberhart, this interplay between church and academy is what makes the Center for Ecological Regeneration’s work distinct. “There’s sometimes a faulty assumption within our seminaries, and in our churches, that rigorous theological and moral conversations aren’t of interest in congregational spaces,” he says. “What I have always found is that laity are eager, in many ways desperately longing, to engage the depth of theological, spiritual, and moral reflection that happens in a seminary context.” 

 In fact, Dan was so moved that he shared resources from the class with colleagues at the Science Museum of Minnesota. “I pulled together a group from our green team here at the museum to read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass,” he says. “The reaction was so positive! The resources Tim brought to us let me bring a part of myself to work that I had never been able to bring before.” For President Viera, this interplay between churches and their community is an integral part of revitalizing both congregations and our broader culture. “Too often, we still think about the church in a very specific way, as what happens within the walls on a particular hour, on a particular day of the week,” he says. “But when we also consider influencing leaders, civic organizations, and government to think more critically and ethically about the work they do—when we inspire greater moral seriousness—that’s the full work of the church.”

 The Collective’s leaders treat planting hope beyond Hennepin’s walls as a core part of how the church can foster ecological repair. “If all we do is worry about the future and feel like we’re doomed, it’s almost impossible to move forward with any action,” Sandy reflects. “You have to believe you can make a difference.” As part of embodying this promise, the Collective planted a Three Sisters Garden outside the church. Drawing on Indigenous knowledge about environmental symbiosis, the corn, beans and squash represent the possibility of communities shaped by reciprocity and interdependence. “It’s a proclamation,” Rev. Macaulay says about the garden. “There are people who are church resistant, or church agnostic at best—unsure that the church can be trusted—who have become deeply engaged in this process because the Collective’s method fits its meaning.” 

Indeed, one of the Center for Ecological Regeneration’s core convictions is that congregations can play a pivotal role in nurturing climate resiliency and ecological repair. “Our congregations contain spiritual resources that are uniquely fitted to dealing with hard realities – like injustice, pain, death, despair – while at the same time cultivating compassionate and restorative responses,” Eberhart says. “It’s not an accident that some within the scientific community are turning to the world’s religious and wisdom traditions at this moment, recognizing that we’re going to need the kind of moral clarity, spiritual commitment, and collective action that religious communities have often provided at moments of historical crisis.” 

For members of the Collective, their experience reflects the fruit of this approach. “The excitement that I hear from people who want to dig in and start doing things is making me feel so optimistic,” Sandy confesses. For Ginger, it’s changed her relationship to the land. “Connecting this work to my spiritual life is really significant,” she says. “It’s a deeper appreciation of the way you’re raised and where you live.” Dan emphasizes the wonder he feels about life’s interconnectedness. “I’ve been spending time in my backyard watching the bumblebees, but it’s never just the bumblebees doing their thing. It’s the bees and the flowers growing over a season, the fungi that live in the soil and distribute fluids, the minerals moving from one plant to another,” he says. “The more time you spend with it, the more awesome it is.” The vitality of a congregation is intimately tied to the vitality of these pollinators, the vitality of a community inextricable from the vitality of the land. As the Center for Ecological Regeneration expands its work with congregations in the coming years, drawing on Garrett’s partnership with Hennepin, one can’t help but notice the reciprocal benefits. “We can always do more together than we can do alone,” Eberhart says. “We discover and generate hope in and through each other.”   

The more I learn about the courageous, bold actions that our activists are engaging in globally, the more I know my work is important—no matter how insignificant it may seem in the moment when I am working from my comfortable home. All justice, activism, and ministry demands gifted administrators who keep the behind-the-scenes projects running smoothly. 

At the same time, I also get to sing in a band, The Many, which is an intentionally diverse music and liturgy collective providing resources to navigate justice issues in Christian and deconstructing spaces. We address all kinds of justice issues, but I have especially loved working with The BTS Center on a series of “Lament with Earth” programs that allow people to experience their eco-grief in a supportive community. I believe that our deepest theological beliefs are solidified in music and liturgy, and I am grateful to help build a liturgical vocabulary around ecological regeneration.  

Are there particular aspects of the environmental crisis you feel called to address?   

While there are so many major environmental crises to address, I feel particularly convicted to address the alienation so many of us have from the Earth. Of course, this necessarily involves interrogating the intersecting issues of materialism, colonialism and white supremacy. Taking an informed, anti-racist, anti-colonial approach, I am loving experiencing, participating in, and guiding others toward reacquaintance with Mother Earth through regenerative practices such as gardening, habitat restoration, and reducing consumption through in-kind mutual aid networks such as Buy Nothing groups (these are an awesome way to build hyperlocal community, buy less and share in abundance!). 

Just as our personal care for creation takes place through the sowing of small seeds that may take a while to come to fruition, I’ll reiterate what I shared above regarding our theological approach to the environmental crises. So many of us have had theologies of alienation from the Earth ingrained in us via escapist Christian hymns and ideologies. Writing, praying, singing, and sharing new, constructive resources is a way to sow those seeds in our hearts and spirits, so that a positive theology for creation will eventually take root and bear fruit in us.  

How are you drawing on your ecological regeneration education at Garrett in your work/ministry? 

I am constantly drawing on core teachings of authors I read while at Garrett to provide the foundations of sermons, liturgies, songs and even social media content. While translating academic work to worship and nonprofit settings can be difficult, the core teachings are not complex: the Earth is the body of God (McFague), God is communal and salvation comes from below (Boff), mind, body, dust and soil must come together for us to truly know God (Baker-Fletcher), we are part of the cosmos, and we are the universe reflecting on its own spiritual nature (T. Berry). These teachings aren’t just intellectual truths, but lived-out realities. Through my ecological regeneration education at Garrett, I have the words to point out these realities to others. 

What’s a favorite memory you have from your time at Garrett?  

I loved a lot of things about my time at Garrett, but I especially loved a field trip we took with a Regenerative Ethics class to a permaculture garden in Chicago. I had taken many classes online, so the in-person, hands-on field trip made a particular impact on my memory of my time at Garrett. Even a few years later, I’m inspired by that trip and am hoping to plant a small permaculture garden next spring!  

What theological convictions and spiritual practices help you to nurture hope?    

Ah, the ever-elusive hope. When I first visited Garrett on March 12, 2020, I met with Dr. Eberhart and asked him this same question. Things were looking pretty bleak back then—the week that the NBA canceled games and churches were cancelling Easter and everyone was coming to understand what the next months and years would look like in a COVID-19 world. 

As I remember it, Dr. E told me that it was us students that gave him hope. I wasn’t too pleased with that answer because, once I thought about it, it meant I had to be the one to do something and make that hope come to fruition! That’s a bit of a gnawing, needling feeling in a society that pushes comfort and convenience over healing and hope. Well, hope finds its way into my consciousness the same way today. It’s the little voice calling through scripture, song, friends’ conversations, and the tiny pauses in the midst of the endless news cycle that invite us to say, “it doesn’t have to be this way.” 

A few years back I encouraged myself to push beyond that phrase. It’s easy to say “it doesn’t have to be this way.” It’s harder to say “there is another way,” and then go find it and share it with the world. While I don’t have an answer for what that looks like, I find strength in the meditation on these lines from the song “Waiting for You.” 

Let us be a sign of hope 

Let us be your arms of love 

Let us be the ones that say 

There is another way 

What role(s) would you love to see faith communities play in the just healing of the world?  

Faith communities have so much potential to do so much good. Once we get out of our own way as congregations and denominations, let’s dive deep into healing, and let’s get really good at one thing. I grew up in a congregation that was a haven for youth—weird kids, cool kids, everyone in between—and healed the world through justice-focused musicals that youth performed every summer. Some churches feed whole communities every week. Others are out in the streets speaking up whenever voices are being silenced. I’d love for faith communities to 1. stop doing harm relationally, spiritually, environmentally, and then 2. use principles of emergent strategy to organically organize & generate healing around a certain local issue. 

What’s one book and one environmental organization you’d recommend to others?  

Book: I really loved the 2022 anthology All We Can Save, a collection of poems, essays and art by 60 women who are leading the climate justice movement. Edited by Katharine Wilkinson and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. 

Organization: There are so many, but perhaps at this time a great one to lift up is Environmental Voter Project. They identify politically-inactive but environmentally-minded folks and encourage them to become consistent voters to build the climate justice movement. This fall, I plan to phonebank and perhaps canvass with them to turn swing states blue (or, rather, green)! 

O Mother Earth (tune of How Great Thou Art)

New lyrics by Kristina Sinks

Verse 1:

O Mother Earth! When we, in awesome wonder

Consider all you nurture in your care.

We see the stars, we hear the rolling thunder,

We taste the fruits of sun, and soil, and air

Verse 2:

By waters deep, the source of all that’s breathing, 

We find your rest, though waves swell o’er the shores 

In lake and sea, with mighty creatures teeming, 

And babbling brook, and rain that on us pours 

Refrain:

Our souls cry out, remembering our home

O Mother Earth, O Mother Earth

She needs us now, she needs all we can give

For all to live, for all to live

Verse 3:

In dark of night, the sky abounds with beauty, 

With moon and stars, so much beyond our reach 

When we look up t’ward all this glimmering grandeur 

We find our way; stars point to what we seek 

Verse 4:

We wander through our watersheds, our homeland,

We learn the names of creatures, plants, and streams.

Our power now, to hurt, to heal, to plant,

Determine if and how our children dream.

Refrain

Verse 5:

With calloused hands, these humble servants offer 

All we can give, our energy and time 

Restoring earth to all we still envision 

Abounding life, all healed and intertwined.  

Refrain

With the turning to fall, we at the center are looking back on the summer months in a spirit of gratitude for an abundant season and in a spirit of reflection on what lies ahead. In June, we began preparations for a room at Garrett for the center, which will serve as our primary gathering and workspace on campus to support the CER’s mission. In July, we met with a host of external partner organizations to explore possibilities for collaboration, began a strategic planning process that will continue over the coming months, and celebrated associate director geran lorraine’s move with their family to the Chicago area. In August, I was able to represent the center at the Oxford Institute for Methodist Theological Studies in Oxford, England, presenting a paper on the ecological implications of John Wesley’s understandings of entire sanctification when placed in mutual conversation with Lakota affirmations that “we are all related.” As a moderator of a panel on the environment at the Institute, and then as a presenter on a climate change panel the following week at the International Association of Methodist Schools, Colleges, and Universities meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden, I was both encouraged by the inspiring responses of Methodists worldwide to the planetary crises of our time and sobered by the many accounts of ecological degradation and disaster from every region around the globe.  

With the start of a new semester, amidst the signs and sighs of a climate changed world all around, I am particularly grateful to be working with several students who are completing their certificate in ecological regeneration and several others who are just beginning. The depth of their theological insights, moral courage, and practical creativity is a confirmation to me of the importance of our work at the CER and a spur to continue helping our churches and faith-based organizations prepare for the growing number of spiritual leaders for whom the just healing of the earth is at the heart of their vocation.  

Over the fall season, in addition to starting year two of the center’s partnership with Hennepin Avenue UMC in Minneapolis, MN, the center is providing leadership at a gathering of North Central Jurisdiction UM Bishops, a MN Hopeful Earthkeepers workshop on Creation Justice, a UM Creation Justice Movement Café, a virtual form at Garrett related to the seminary’s Indigenous Study Committee Report, and the annual meeting of AAR/SBL.  

Amidst this busy season, we are also making time – and hope you are too – for contemplative introspection, joyful play with loved ones, and practices of thanksgiving that remind us of Spirit’s wisdom at work in the cycles of ripening and releasement as an inherent part of creation’s renewal.