"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 | |
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"If we don't act wisely now to slow down the heating of our planet and the loss of plant and animal life, it may be too late."
-Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times
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NE-MN Synod EcoFaith Partner Congregations 2025 | |
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Dear companions in care for the whole Creation,
The signs are all around us. From the disastrous floods early summer and the hottest summer and early Fall on record in Minnesota and globally, to the devastation of Hurricane Helene for our neighbors in the United States’ Southeast ~ and so much more ~ we can see that this is a Kairos moment, a decisive turning point, for the Church of Jesus Christ to respond to the climate and biodiversity crisis with faith active in love.
At our 2023 Northeastern Minnesota Synod’s assembly, we resolved to respond to “this Kairos moment of the climate crisis as a synod and as congregations”. Together as a synod, as congregations, camps, and WELCA, we ARE responding to this Kairos moment! We have become a Pollinator Synod, and 49 congregations have become or are on the way to becoming Pollinator Sanctuaries, growing a web of healthy habitat for these endangered species across northeastern Minnesota. We continue to host the annual EcoFaith Summit, which this year featured Larry Rasmussen and drew 300 people in person and online for Cross Currents in the Flood: Building Arcs Together for a Livable Planet.
Thank you for your partnership in all that is germinating in our synod for the care of creation! And thank you to this year’s twenty-two EcoFaith Network Partner Congregations, who, along with individual Donors and the synod’s budgeted commitment to the EcoFaith Network, make all this possible.
We invite you to join with your sibling congregations as a 2025 EcoFaith Network Congregation Partner by praying for the Creation and those who work to repair it, sharing with us your creation care story and making a financial contribution of any amount.Your Partner contribution helps fund EcoFaith micro-grants, the EcoFaith Summit, the Green Blades Rising Newsletter, the ecofaithnetwork.org website, and the stipend for the EcoFaith Network Communication Coordinator.
We cannot do this work alone. Thank God we do not need to do it alone. Let us turn to one another in Christ for the sake of the whole Creation! Please join your sibling congregations in the Northeastern Minnesota Synod by becoming a 2025 EcoFaith Partner Congregation!
In Christ, Green Blades Rising +
David Carlson and Kristin Foster
On behalf of the NE MN Synod EcoFaith Network Leadership
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The EcoFaith Network is hiring a Communication Coordinator! Our current communication coordinator, Rachel Wyffels, will conclude her time with EcoFaith on February 1, 2025, to pursue a very full spring semester at Luther Seminary. We are grateful for all the gifts she has brought during her time with EcoFaith.
The EcoFaith Network Communication Coordinator is a part-time, shared position of the Northeastern Minnesota Synod’s EcoFaith Network with the St. Paul Area Synod’s Care of Creation Work Group. The Communication Coordinator coordinates all forms of online communication and publicity, and maintains databases. They are invited to participate in group meetings as their schedule permits. The full position description is available here.
Inquiries and résumé preferred by December 15, 2024. Please email pastor@gloriadeiduluth.org and revkristinfoster@gmail.com.
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Stories from Congregations and Synods | |
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Christiania Lutheran Church and Urban Ventures Part 2
Growing Together – Farm & Nutrition
By Kris Grangaard, Saint Paul Area Care of Creation
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Last month, we learned about the unique and complementary partnership
between Christiania Lutheran Church, Lakeville and Urban Ventures,
Minneapolis.
Attending to the Synod's Care of Creation Work Group table at the annual
Congregational Toolkit and the annual Synod assembly, we've been able to
listen to many stories about creation care in congregations. Several actions
have been enthusiastically told to us over the years by members of
Christiania Lutheran in Lakeville. Many of them, like bee hives on site,
chickens in coops, and vegetable farming, are all in conjunction with Urban
Ventures, a Minneapolis not-for-profit organization.
Last month, Green Blades Rising printed the Urban Ventures annual report
(also reprinted in Christiania's newsletter) which describes the
partnership. This month, we can describe the specifics about the adventures
and goings-on at Christiania. For the actual articles and for photos of the
operation and some of the folks involved, please go visit Urban Ventures here on pg. 14 or Christiania Lutheran Church here with a reprint on pg. 10.
It was natural to think that the Urban Ventures relationship would take
Sustainability and Creation Care from Christiania members. That would be
understandable and would be a great, sufficient service to the community.
What more could be done when they are such responsible stewards of their
property?
Pastors Joy and Jon, Communications Coordinator Sue, and SPAS Care of
Creation Work Group member Sharon Thompson all gave wonderful impressions of other Christiania actions. There is no single oversight committee or group for all of the creation care activities at Christiania; the volunteers who organize the activities are all eager and effective in their respective actions.
Beyond the farming led by Urban Ventures, Christiania members have their
own, large congregational vegetable garden. Garden produce collected and is
generously donated to food shelves in three different counties.
A different group of members turned an unused ball field into a wildflower
pollinator space. That plot has since been sold, but has been beautiful and
supportive to many butterflies, bugs, and other creatures!
The congregation has hired a custodian who acts with the Properties folks to
oversee practical actions like recycling, composting, LED replacement bulbs,
and other maintenance projects related to energy efficiency and waste
management.
A major recent project undertaken by Christiania included new, improved
insulation, window replacements, and other building efficiency upgrades.
One Christiania member started a strategy to collecting plastics from
members and staff. When they reach the appropriate volume, the company that received the plastic will donate a park bench to Camp Onamia.
There are congregations in our synods which have active, energetic Creation
Care groups that work together and take on various sustainability actions.
There are other congregations whose members who care for creation through
many different formal committees and informal groups and individuals
unaffiliated with one Creation Care group. There is no one right way to do
this work! Know that our synods consider this work to be very important and
have resources to help you either way, if you'd like to take action!
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Farming and Spring Water around Chippewa Falls
“The way things are is not how they have to be.”
A firsthand account from the Rev. Greg Kaufmann, Northwest Synod of Wisconsin, retired pastor and member of the EcoFaith Summit 2025 Planning Team. Excerpted from his Green Blades Preaching Roundtable reflections for Advent 3.
"In 1980, my wife and I purchased a small farm 7 miles to the west of Chippewa Falls in northwestern Wisconsin. Since we planned to set up a sheep milking dairy operation, we had to have our water tested annually. Thankfully, the water table in the Chippewa Falls area was pristine. In fact, Chippewa Falls bottled and sold its water, claiming it was the purest spring water in the country. Every year for 20 years, the results were the same. Pure spring water.
We did set up the sheep dairy, based on rotational grazing. We were organic and sustainable (not the same things!) Due to my wife’s declining health, we ended up selling our dairy business after 20 years. Currently our daughter and her family continue to rotationally graze livestock on our pastures.
Imagine my surprise when I received a letter from the county a few months ago, informing me (and all residents in the surrounding agricultural area), that our pure spring water was now so contaminated by nitrates that it is unsafe to drink without expensive filters being installed. What had changed? How could this be? What did I not understand?
Their solution to the problem of too many nitrates in our groundwater? The township installed a filtration system at the centrally located fire station and provides to township residents free filtered drinking water! All you have to do is drive there and fill your water jugs…
“The way things are is not how they have to be.”
To take a page out of our Gospel lesson for Advent 3, it would be like the tax collector telling the person they have overcharged, that they can go to the temple and ask for assistance to help them afford to buy food.
What does repent look like in an agricultural system that has ignored the cries of the earth, and now is ignoring the warning shout of the water table? As I talked with area farmers, we realized that the one thing that has changed is that a massive confinement dairy (1000s of cows) with a gigantic slurry containment pond was developed in the past 25 years. The amount of slurry waste is so great that the farm doesn’t have enough acreage to spread the slurry on. The soil can’t absorb it and it heads straight on down to the water table, which is relatively shallow in our township. Our well is only 100 feet deep.
These Advent 3 texts call me to look closely at my own farming practices, and to challenge the agricultural system that encourages 'get big or get out.'"
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Lutherans Restoring Creation Study Group
December 17th, 7pm CT
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In June 2024, the ELCA released “Our Kairos Moment: A Study Guide on Earth’s Climate Crisis.” Over the next four months, Lutherans Restoring Creation will facilitate a study group on this guide during our connections call time, each hour focusing on one part (of four) of the study guide. We hope that by going through the guide ourselves, that participants will gain familiarity and confidence with the study guide and will be able to implement it in their own congregations and communities.
During Part Two, our theme is “Climate Change as a Public Health Crisis.” We will think about how climate change affects our community and global “neighbors,” emphasizing the need for solidarity and intergenerational work. We will also discuss worker safety and heat protections for outdoor workers, leading to direct policy action!
Learn more and register here
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MNIPL Rise & Repair Alliance 2025 Kickoff and Fundraiser!
New City Center / Walker Methodist Church in South Minneapolis
December 7, 2024 from 6:30pm - 8:30pm
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Join MNIPL at the New City Center / Walker Methodist Church in South Minneapolis for an in-person kickoff to the 2025 legislative session with the Rise & Repair Alliance!
MNIPL writes, "we'll hear from alliance organizers and partners about the upcoming 2025 legislative session in Minnesota, top priority issues and opportunities around climate justice & indigenous sovereignty, the alliance goals & questions, and how to stay engaged as an individual and/or a community group."
Learn more and RSVP here
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EcoFaith Summit of the Upper Midwest 2025 | |
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Earth’s Cries, Earth’s Call
Becoming Midwives of Hope for the Healing of Creation
Saturday, April 5, 2025
First Lutheran, Duluth and online
Lead speaker: Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda
Presenter: Dr. Kelly Sherman-Conroy
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Green Blades Rising Book Discussions beginning January 2025
Just published!
Building a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage
Author: Cynthia Moe-Lobeda
Lead Speaker at the EcoFaith Summit 2025
EARTH’S CRIES, EARTH’S CALL: Becoming Midwives of Hope for the Healing of Creation.
A schedule of discussion groups for On Building a Moral Economy will be published in the January edition of Green Blades Rising.
And author of Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Economic and Ecological Vocation, Nautilus award winning book 2013
Early praise for Building a Moral Economy
“Cynthia Moe-Lobeda welcomes us, her readers, into a personal conversation about despair and hope, drawing us close with her own honest voice. This poetic volume resonates with emotional intelligence about readers’ feelings about extreme inequality and the accelerating climate crisis, and offers prompts for reflection and action. It’s an enlivening and empowering read, joyfully offering stories and voices of people of many faiths and nations who are carrying out varied efforts for planetary healing.”
Betsy Leondar-Wright,
Author of Missing Class: Strenghtening Social Movement Groups by Seeing Class Cultures and The Color of Money: The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide
“Economics has famously been called “the dismal science”. Who knew, then, that a book about building a moral economy could be engaging, inviting, inspiring, constructive, pastoral, prophetic, therapeutic, and rich with stories? This one is, and it’s Moe-Lobeda’s finest writing and most important project to date.”
Larry Rasmussen, Lead speaker at the 2024 EcoFaith Summit
Author of The Planet You Inherit: Letters to My Grandchildren When Uncertainty’s a Sure Thing
TO PURCHASE CYNTHIA MOE-LOBEDA’S NEW BOOK: Available through Barnes and Noble, or available here through Fortress Press. Can be purchased in print form or electronically with Nook. For information about a special pre-EcoFaith Summit discount, contact Summit planning team chairperson, Kristin Foster, revkristinfoster@gmail.com.
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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 writing schedule for the Green Blades Preaching Roundtable in 2025 is now open. Please email revkristinfoster@gmail.com if you would like to write for a Sunday. Here are the guidelines for writing reflections.
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First Sunday of Advent
December 1, 2024
Pastor Paul Brown, Princeton, MN
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25:1-10
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36
I’m not sure why it is that I should be surprised every year when the First Sunday of Advent rolls around when I come across the gospel readings in the Revised Common Lectionary (A, B, C). They all have to do with apocalypse and Jesus’ second coming. Perhaps it is because my mind has already jumped ahead to the Annunciation, the Magnificat, or the Nativity itself. In our year of Luke, much like in Mark, we hear about signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, distress among the nations, the roaring of the sea and the waves, and people fainting from fear and foreboding of the things that are coming.
Read the full reflection here
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Third Sunday of Advent
December 15, 2024
The Rev. Greg Kaufmann, Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Isaiah 12:2-6
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18
Philippians is regarded as the most joy filled of all Paul’s letters (rejoice occurs 9 times and joy 5 times). After reading these verses several times, my focus was drawn to these words: “Let your gentleness be known to everyone.” It caused me to wonder what it would mean to apply this not only to the humans on the planet, but also to the planet and the rest of the flora and fauna that share it with us. In this I am echoing Dr. Craig Nessan, who, in his 2022 Fortress Press book titled “Free in Deed: The Heart of Lutheran Ethics” made a strong case for including all creation in our definition of neighbor! In fact, based on my count, Dr. Nessan includes all of creation in his understanding of neighbor love on 24 of the 131 pages of his short book! I’ve chosen to follow Dr. Nessan’s lead, and from this point forward, when I think/write/speak of neighbor, I am included all of creation!
Read the full reflection here
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Christmas Eve
December 24, 2024
Pastor Jonathan Dodson, Ebenezer, Minnesota
Isaiah 9:2-7
Psalm 96
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14
Christ’s incaration is not just about individual salvation; it’s about the renewal of all things. Just as God brought new life into the world through Jesus, we are called to nurture and protect the life that surrounds us. This can be as simple as advocating for sustainable practices, reducing waste during the holiday season, or teaching our communities to cherish the natural world.
In a season often marked by excess, Christmas Eve reminds us of the beauty of simplicity and the sacredness of Creation. Peace, Joy, Hope. By caring for the earth, we participate in the ongoing work of renewal, echoing the angelic refrain: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace” (Luke 2:14). Our prayer is that congregations see the care of Creation for what it is – the faithful response to the miracle of Christmas.
Read the full reflection here
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First Sunday after Christmas Day
December 29, 2024
The Rev. Emily Meyer, Minneapolis, MN
1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26
Psalm 148
Colossians 3:12-17
Luke 2:41-52
In this Sunday after Christmas, this story centers the gut-wrenching, heart-stopping pain and fear of loss God experiences as humanity loses its way and walks away from Love, too eager to return to the familiar comforts of what has been ‘home’ - and invites us to return to the Divine house, where rest and new learning prepare us for the road of healing, repair, and restoration.
Read the full reflection here
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Connections with Creation
December
December 8 – Second Sunday of Advent
This week’s readings are flush with natural imagery and complicated metaphors. For instance, in the current era of mountaintop-removal mining that destroys habitats and poisons rivers, how can we help congregants hear Luke’s proclamation of lowering hills as good news? How can contemporary hearers understand the value of dawn breaking from on high when light pollution already makes the deep of night as bright as day? Take time this week to establish the context of the original audiences so that your audience can appreciate how the entire world turns to welcome the coming Christ.
Read all Connections with Creation for December and January
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Book Discussion Opportunities | |
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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 12 - Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological Economic Vocation by Cynthia Moe-Lobeda (2013). Meeting 8:00-9:00 a.m. in person at Chester Creek Cafe in Duluth.
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Religion & Science, Wednesday, December 18 - The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust by Francis Collins (2024). 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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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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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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