"Now the green blade rises from the buried grain" | |
An online publication of the EcoFaith Network NE-MN Synod with Saint Paul Area Synod Care of Creation | |
Follow Tammy Walhof, Lutheran Advocacy-MN, at COP28 | |
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Tammy Walhof, director of Lutheran Advocacy-Minnesota, has been chosen as one of four representatives from the ELCA Churchwide Organization to attend COP28, the UN Climate Change Conference, which will be held in Dubai, UAE, from November 30th to December 12th. Lutheran Advocacy-Minnesota is a State Public Policy Office of ELCA Advocacy.
Follow her journey here on the Lutheran Advocacy-MN Facebook Page.
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Loving Your Neighborhood in West Duluth
Spirit of God Neighborhood Creation Care Outreach
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As you may know, chemicals in the commercial cleaning products we use affect our water and soil. Shifting what we use for cleaning to non-toxic and biodegradable products can make a big difference.
So how would a congregation share this awareness while reaching out to their neighbors?
This Fall, Spirit of God Lutheran Church, a congregation serving what is known as West Duluth, used a $500 microgrant from the NE MN Synod EcoFaith Team to support a successful neighborhood event. This was their fourth year participating in “Love Your Block”, an annual city-wide cleanup effort, and this year they expanded it to focus on cleaning with the whole creation in mind.
Read the full story here
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Greenland Then and Now: Witnessing Climate Change
Lonnie Dupre's Visit to St. Andrew's Mahtomedi
by Laurie Windisch, Saint Paul Area Care of Creation
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What makes a person become an explorer? For Lonnie Dupre, it seems it was mainly curiosity. Growing up on a farm in Minnesota, he loved winter, perhaps partly because it was a break from working on his dad’s farm on hot summer days. He thought he lived in about the coldest place on Earth, so when he found out there were people who lived much farther north, he had to learn more about them. He started to study the Inuit and learn about their culture, then he took those learnings with him on his expeditions...
The dog sled culture defines life in Greenland; it is their main mode of transportation for getting to their hunting grounds. It has defined their life together for their remembered history. At the current rate of change that culture will end with this generation, as dog sledging becomes impossible. For native Greenlanders, this leaves a future that is impossible to imagine.
Read the full summary here
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Thank you to NE-MN Synod EcoFaith 2023 Partner Congregations | |
As we come to the end of the year, EcoFaith NE-MN Synod offers our deep gratitude for the 2023 Congregation Partners who have supported EcoFaith in the past year: | |
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Baptism River, Finland
Bethel-Trinity, Bovey
Calvary, Mora
Faith United, Iron
First, Aitkin
First, Duluth
First, Hibbing
Gloria Dei, Duluth
Immanuel, Princeton
Holden, Isle
Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa
Our Savior’s, Outing
Trinity, Hovland
Zion WELCA, Grand Rapids
Zion, Milaca
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Thank you for your financial support and your leadership in EcoFaith Network
as we live out God’s call to be stewards of the earth for the sake of the whole creation!
Curious about becoming a partner congregation for 2024? Learn more here
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Advent Reflection
by Pastor Bob Lehrer, Chairperson Sain Paul Area Care of Creation
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As we approach winter, I thought it might be timely to talk about falling snowflakes instead of green blades rising. And so I ask this question. Do we dare to dream today that maybe there is just one more word or action needed to make good and loving creation care a reality? At this moment what we are doing is more like a bunch of snowflakes falling on the branch-nothing more than nothing-as the dove said. Still, the branch would not have broken except for the 3,741,952 snowflakes that had fallen on it before the last snowflake broke the branch..
Read the full reflection here
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This Month's Green Tips
Use these in your congregation's bulletins, Facebook pages, websites, or newsletters!
Here are Laura Raedeke's Green Tips from Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa
Reversing Biodiversity Collapse and Slowing Climate Change: In Saving the Earth, We Save Ourselves
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Worshipping with the Whole Creation | |
Green Blades Preaching Roundtable | |
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The Green Blades Preaching Roundtable weekly reflections by a variety of preaching writers on the ecological implications of each Sunday’s lectionary.
The Roundtable editor, Kristin Foster will be scheduling writers for 2024 and she welcomes new ones! Please email her if interested at revkristinfoster@gmail.com.
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Tyler Bublitz, Bemidji, Minnesota
First Sunday of Advent
December 3, 2023
Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37
It is surprising that the word “prepare” never appears in any of these texts. When I think about Advent, I think of it as a season of preparation. These texts remind us of the importance of preparing and equipping ourselves. Do we really prepare? I know that being the midwestern person that I am, I have spent months preparing for the incoming winter that should arrive at any time, but how well do we prepare for something that we struggle to see?
Read the full reflection here
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Pastor Karen Behling, Chippewa Falls, WI
Second Sunday of Advent
December 10, 2023
Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8
“Ready or not! Here I come!” When that cry comes in a game of Hide-and-Seek, time is up, and a new course of action is about to begin. John the Baptist’s cry in the wilderness has similar intensity. Ready or not, God is coming. Ready or not - and if not, it’s not yet too late, and there’s still time to get ready - but be warned that everything is about to change.
Read the full reflection here
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Rev. Kristin Foster, Cook, Minnesota
Third and Fourth Sundays of Advent
December 17 and 24, 2023
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Psalm 126 or Luke 1:46b-55; Luke 1:46b-55 or Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26
I Thessalonians 5:16-24; Romans 16:19=27
John 1:6-8, 19-28; Luke 1:26-38
We typically read the story of Mary’s pregnancy as miraculous in the sense of being supernatural, a divine intervention which contravened nature’s process of procreation. Believing in the virgin birth becomes a warrant for a theology which finds God not in what is natural but in what is supernatural. God acts not through nature itself, but in specific acts of undoing nature, of transcending or contravening it. When we do this, locating God in the supernatural, when we define miracles as supernatural events which disrupt the processes of nature, we drain nature of God. God is not in nature, God is in the supernatural. We consign God to an ever-diminishing arena of what we do not understand, of the unnatural.
In so doing, we miss the miracle, the miracle of nature, and the miracle of the gospel. This Advent, I am pondering a very different read.
Read the full reflection here
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Melinda Quivik, St. Paul, Minnesota
Christmas Eve
December 24, 2023
Isaiah 9:2–7
Psalm 96
Titus 2:11–14
Luke 2:1–14 [15–20]
On Christmas Eve, of course, we hear the story of the angels coming to the shepherds who are with their flocks of sheep. The shepherds are suddenly terrified –– a very strong word but understandable! –– by the sight of first one angel and then a whole lot of angels. It is a "terrific" scene.
The words terrify (probably something suggesting danger) and terrific (what we normally name something that is good) are linked by their roots in sixteenth and seventeenth century Latin. Experiencing something "terrific," in other words, may be so outside of our normal encounters that it, in fact, frightens us. We behold a new realm of sensibility. We are lifted out of our ordinary expectations and transported to a place that changes us and changes those around us.
Read the full reflection here
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Pastor John Dietz, Hibbing, Minnesota
Christmas III
Isaiah 52:7-10
Psalm 98
Hebrews 1:1-12
+ John 1:1-14
Too often it seems like, especially in the season of Advent, we focus on welcoming Christ into our world, preparing a place for him, getting ready to receive him … and yet it is Christ who receives us, and from the very beginning, was speaking this world we live in into existence —preparing a home in which to welcome us. Could Christmas remind us that this world is his, it is the home he has prepared, and we are his guests here?
Read the full reflection here
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Rev. Emily Meyer, Minneapolis, Minnesota
First Sunday after Christmas
December 31, 2023
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Psalm 148
Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 2:22-40
Isaiah. This is a powerful text of promise and hope that many - if not all - of us need to hear. Tragically, our desperation for it may make it difficult to accept: with climate crises galore, wars raging and threatening to escalate at any moment, with division and depression on the rise locally and globally, God’s words of promise may feel out of touch or even useless.
Where can prophetic promises bring hope to the hopeless and joy to those who grieve losses - personal, communal, and global - time and time again?
Read the full reflection here
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Connections with Creation
November
December 3 – First Sunday in Advent
Because they transcend human powers, natural disasters like earthquake and wildfire evoke God’s own ability to disturb the order of things. But the mention of the unsettling of the sun, moon, stars, and mountains and the fragility of the leaf and brushwood also reminds us that we humans exist in a worlded way, and that our planetary dwelling place is itself finite and malleable. How does it matter for the well-being of creation itself that heaven and earth will pass away but Jesus’ words will remain? What knowledge and speech of every kind is enriching the church even now, as we learn the lesson of the fig tree and remain alert for the coming of the One who judges and renews the earth?
Read all Connections with Creation for December and January
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Check out the Green Lectionary Podcast!
Creation Justice Ministries produces a podcast that it describes as "a conversation on scripture with a creation justice lens." Check it out here!
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Trying to figure out how Faith and Science work together every week?
Listen to The Faith and Science Podcast, following the Revised Common Lectionary each week and try to answer that question. It can be found at wherever podcasts are found or at
https://thefaithandsciencepodcast.podbean.com/
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EcoFaith Book of the Month
Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet
by Thich Nhat Hanh
I was introduced to Thich Nhat Hanh’s thinking several years ago when I read Living Buddha, Living Christ. So what can a Buddhist monk teach us who identify as Christian about saving the planet? It turns out that Thay, as his comrades call him, wants to not only save the planet, but also change our minds about how we conduct ourselves toward ourselves, each other, and the planet. His underlying thesis is that understand how to live in this world without destroying it and our very existence, we will continue doing those very things. We need to take personal stock on how we live our lives and relate to each other. Taking care of the planet will naturally follow. It seems to me that the message of Jesus Christ is in concert with that way of thinking.
Read the full review here
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This book review is by John Hanson, a retired pastor living on Turtle Lake, north of Grand Rapids, with his wife, Linda. He is a member of the NE MN Synod EcoFaith Leadership Team.
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Through the College of St. Scholastica, Pastor Dave Carlson of Gloria Dei in Duluth facilitates two monthly book discussion groups, to which all are welcome:
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Earth Harmony, Thursday, December 14 - The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg (2023). Meeting 8:00-9:00 a.m. in person at Chester Creek Cafe in Duluth.
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Religion & Science, Wednesday, December 20 - Laudate Deum (2023) and Laudato Si (2015), by Pope Francis. Meeting 8:00-9:00 a.m. via Zoom. Contact Pastor Carlson for the link or for more information, pastor@gloriadeiduluth.org
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Read. Watch. Listen. Share! | |
The EcoFaith Network NEMN Synod
Living out God's call to be stewards of the earth for the sake of the whole creation.
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SPAS Care of Creation
We are called to care for God's creation as a central part of our Christian faith and identity.
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