"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

EcoFaith Summit 2024

The 2024 EcoFaith Summit: Cross+Currents in the Flood: Building Arcs Together for a Livable Planet with keynote speaker Larry Rasmussen will be held at First Lutheran, Duluth, on Saturday, April 6th.

The opening of registration has been moved to February 12th, which will arrive in a separate mailing. Find more information on our website here.

Luther Seminary to Host Rutlen Lecture on Faith and Creation

On February 27, 2024 at 7pm, Professor Rick Lindroth will deliver the 2024 Rutlen Lecture on Faith and Creation, “Science, Truth, and Christian Faith in a Time of Eco-Crisis.” Professor Lindroth currently serves as a distinguished research fellow with The Lumen Center, a community of scholars working at the intersection of Christianity and culture.

The Rutlen lecture is a biannual lecture series designed to examine the intersection between faith and eco-justice. The event description reads, "The ecological polycrisis confronting the world today is unparalleled in human history and threatens to unravel, within decades, the very fabric of civilization. Long battered by the “dominion” theology of Christianity, the global environment has suffered further in recent decades...Rick Lindroth argues for a re-wilding of the Christian ethic of creation care—one that promotes enchantment, connection, reciprocity, and justice—for the betterment of humanity and flourishing of the living world."

This event is free and open to the public, with no registration required. The lecture will be livestreamed via YouTube for those unable to attend in person.

More details are available here on the Luther Seminary website.

COP28 Conversation with ELCA Representative

On Tuesday, March 5th at 7pm, Christ the King Lutheran Church in New Brighton will host Tammy Walhof, director of Lutheran Advocacy Minnesota, for a presentation on her experience at COP28 in Dubai. Walhof was one of four representatives from the ELCA to attend the climate summit in Dubai.

Lutheran Advocacy Minnesota is a ministry of the six ELCA synods in Minnesota.

Watch an interview with the ELCA Delegates to COP28 here

Luther Seminary EcoFaith Team Hosts "Stuff Exchange"

by Rachel Wyffels, Luther Seminary EcoFaith Team

From January 6th-12th, the Luther Seminary EcoFaith Team hosted their second annual stuff exchange.

The premise of the "stuff exchange" was simple: students, faculty, and staff were invited to bring in items in gently used condition that they no longer use or need. Items were displayed on tables in the campus center during the January Residential Focus Sessions, a time when many students are on campus, and anyone was invited to take things that they could use.

The stuff exchange has been beneficial to students. Items donated included albs and stoles, textbooks, clothes, electronics, and household items.

The Luther EcoFaith Team hopes to reduce consumption, bring awareness to consumerism, and provide quality items for those who could use them through the annual stuff exchange. Another major goal is to increase awareness of the EcoFaith Team's presence on campus and encourage participation in EcoFaith initiatives. Other priorities for the EcoFaith team include composting, waste reduction, and buckthorn removal.

The Team found that the stuff exchange provides a good opportunity to open up conversations throughout the student body about creation care. If your creation care team is looking for ways to engage new people, something as simple as a stuff exchange could be a good way to get the conversation going.

The Luther EcoFaith Team is grateful to the facilities department for making this event possible.

Updates from the NE-MN Synod Pollinator Project!

Bethlehem Lutheran Twig

After selecting a site on the church property Bethlehem Lutheran roto-tilled the area to prepare for planting earlier in the year....A long narrow swath was tilled and in June, the Drama Camp kids helped to plant seeds and water the plot. They haven’t needed to continue watering this summer, as rain was sufficient and growth was good. Last week the Theo Thursday kids (aka “Sunday” school/Drama school) went to see it and were impressed. This fit with their lessons about God’s creation. They have marked the section as a “no mow.”

First Lutheran, Duluth

The old gardens on the church property had junipers that needed to be pulled out, a big job. The team is working with Shoreview Natives and have put plastic on the ground to kill the weeds and in the spring they will be seeding...First Lutheran has purchased a bench just like Our Savior's of Outing. At a window just outside the pollinator garden, they will have a low table with picture books and a journal so that children ages 3-5 can read about the plants and creatures in the garden, write down their observations and draw pictures.

Your Congregation can Become a Pollinator Sanctuary Too!

Here are guidelines and suggestions for becoming a Pollinator Sanctuary Congregation.

In order to raise awareness and support in your congregation for participating in this Pollinator Sanctuary movement, we encourage you to consider bringing it to your congregation council or annual meeting.

The Pollinator Project Steering Committee is currently in touch with 39 congregations in varying stages of becoming Pollinator Sanctuaries.

Is your congregation interested in this possibility too? Email pollinator project steering committee chairperson Tom Uecker at tomuecker1946@gmail.com and ecofaith@nemnsynod.org.

Free Pollinator Sanctuary Yard Signs and Pollinator Sanctuary Fliers are available at the NE-MN synod office, 1111 London Road, Duluth, MN 55802. Call ahead at 218-724-4424.

Invitation to NE-MN Congregations to Become 2024 EcoFaith Congregation Partners

Green blades of care and concern for the creation are arising in congregations throughout our synod and beyond! The EcoFaith Network of the Northeastern Minnesota Synod is nurturing these green blades in a growing web of relationships. In this critical time, God’s call to be stewards of the earth for the sake of the whole creation is germinating among us!

Many congregations such as yours are doing EcoFaith ministry. They pray regularly for the creation and the movement to care for it, God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. They seek to integrate stewardship of the earth into every faith practice and facet of ministry.

We invite you to help us nurture this growing ministry by becoming an EcoFaith Network Partner Congregation in 2024. The EcoFaith ministry of our synod is financially supported by congregational and individual donations. We receive no funds through the synod’s budget. Please consider becoming an EcoFaith Partner Congregation in 2024 and make a financial contribution of any amount.

Learn more and find congregation partner forms here

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

How to Spot the Misleading Advertising Labeling an Item or Action as Eco-friendly or Sustainable (Greenwashing)

Worshipping with the Whole Creation

Green Blades Preaching Roundtable

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 has some remaining openings for writers in 2024 and would welcome new and returning writers for these Sundays. Please email her if interested at revkristinfoster@gmail.com.

Season of Epiphany

January 7-February 11, 2024

Pastor Mark Dittmanson, Grand Marais, MN

Pastor Mark Dittmanson has written preaching reflections for each week of the season of Epiphany. He introduces his preaching reflections, writing:

If advent is the season of longing and waiting for the presence of God to come into our hearts and homes and this troubled world; and if Christmas in the event of the incarnation of God in the swaddled and embraced Christ child is the season of the answer to that longing; then Epiphany strikes me as a particularly Lutheran season for asking, “What does this mean?”

Epiphany is upon us and for me the arrival of these three seekers longing to know more fully what this means, that in the ‘fullness of time God sent his son,’ to be born, swaddled and loved as every child deserves. Incarnation leads me into a journey of seeking, or perhaps more accurately, being open to epiphanies of further revelation.

Read the full preaching reflections for Epiphany here

Epiphany 5 B

February 4, 2024

Isaiah 40:21-31, 1 Corinthians 9:16-23, Mark 1:29-39

We all encounter from time to time, moments when our powers to control outcomes seems small to negligible. The longer we live the more aware we become of powers beyond our finite scope. You don’t have to look far...That might feel more than discouraging, if humanity is all we had to go upon. But there is a higher authority. And it is to that higher court that we are going in prayer for our friends and family. We have come to understand what was revealed to Elijah, that the “still small voice” he needed to listen to was not inside him, it was a gift from God, guidance from a loving creator.

Transfiguration Sunday

February 11, 2024

2 Kings 2:1-12, 2 Corinthians 4:3-6, Mark 9: 2-9

This event in the gospel story was memorable; all three of the synoptic gospels, Mark, Matthew and Luke, tell this story with very little variation. Later in his life Peter would write to fellow Christians and describe that day on which he saw Jesus transfigured before him. As Peter related his memory he talked about the meaning of that day in terms of an affirmation that everything they learned from Jesus and learned about Jesus was pure revelation from God on High. The experience must have carried strength with it to affirm his faith. Moreover, I would speculate that every time he started to run on empty in his spirit and begin to doubt either himself or his faith he would go back to his memory closet pull out one of those experiences to give him strength.

Rev. Emily Meyer, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Ash Wednesday

February 14, 2024

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 or Isaiah 58:1-12

Psalm 51:1-17

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

It is astounding how familiar both Joel’s and Isaiah’s concerns are.

In their respective writing, both prophets sound an alarm: ‘Blow the trumpet’, Joel bellows; ‘Shout out’, cries isaiah. On God’s behalf, they desperately, urgently want our attention. And not ‘our’, as in some inner circle of leadership or power or membership, nor some marginalized scapegoat group, either, but everyone’s attention: all ages, all identities, all walks of life. Their aim is a communal one - the community is in peril and it is through the community that healing will come. To realize our healing, the prophets call Individuals and communities - all people - to turn from paths of destruction and return to ways of Love.

Read the full reflection here

Rev. Dr. Benjamin M. Stewart, Two Harbors, Minnesota,

First Sunday in Lent

February 18, 2024

Genesis 9:8-17

1 Peter 3:18-22

Mark 1:9-15

This Sunday we begin a season that many of us associate with sin and suffering. For many of us, Lent has emphasized the ways that our sin wounds not only the world but also wounds – crucifies – God’s own self. Indeed, Lutherans are known for taking sin seriously, and Lent is a profound time to do just that. However, the Lenten emphasis on sin is actually a remnant of a wider, ecological approach to the season.

Read the full reflection here

Pastor Karen Behling (she/her), Chippewa Falls, WI

Second Sunday in Lent

February 25, 2024

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

Ps 22:23-31

Rms 4:13-25

Mark 8:31-38

God’s words to Abraham and Sarah call to mind creation with God’s promise to make them exceedingly fruitful. In the Genesis 1 creation account, by the time we get to verse 28 with God’s instructions to “be fruitful and multiply”, we have already been told about plants yielding seed and trees bearing fruit as well as swarms of living creatures and multiple kinds of birds and animals. Life is already abundant and fruitful when God charges humankind to “be fruitful and multiply”. Within such a context, fruitfulness seems to be about so much more than many human children and descendants.

Read the full reflection here

Connections with Creation

February

February 14 – Ash Wednesday

As the church enters the Lenten season with its forty days of fasting, it’s vital to remember that the absence of food does not necessarily signal a holy restraint. Fasting is a faithful practice of temporary restraint to welcome God’s justice. But all too often hunger is a sign of starvation, an indication of injustice, often caused by a privileged refusal to share the earth’s abundance with all humanity. Though our environment produces more than enough food, the continued reality of starvation is a sign that things aren’t right. How will God work to make it right in this season, and how will we join that work?

Read all Connections with Creation for February and March

EcoFaith Book Corner

EcoFaith Book of the Month

Rooted Faith: Practices for Living Well on a Fragile Planet

By Sarah Renee Werner

Review by John Hanson, retired pastor, EcoFaith NE-MN Synod

Werner grounds her book thesis in the premise that climate action is to be seen as critical on a personal and community level. In the last chapter, “A New Heaven and a New Earth”, quoting Revelation, she states: “The world is currently experiencing a climate change revolution, and deep and lasting change cannot come from big government alone; it also requires millions of communities working on a local level to repair the earth.” COP23 made that abundantly clear, governments and industries need their feet held to the fire of caring for the earth.

Read the full review here

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:

Earth Harmony, Thursday, February 8 - The Planet You Inherit: Letters to My Grandchildren When Uncertainty's a Sure Thing by Larry Rasmussen (2022). Meeting 8:00-9:00 a.m. in person at Chester Creek Cafe in Duluth.
Religion & Science, Wednesday, February 21 - Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross (2023). Meeting 8:00-9:00 a.m. via Zoom. Contact Pastor Carlson for the link or for more information, pastor@gloriadeiduluth.org

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!

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/

Read. Watch. Listen. Share!

Study: Climate change deniers changing tactics to spread misinformation

CNN