"Now the green blade rises from the buried grain"

Greenland Then and Now: Witnessing Climate Change

St. Andrew's, Mahtomedi, to host Lonnie Dupre

Tuesday, Nov. 14th, 7pm

St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi will host article explorer Lonnie Dupre on Tuesday, November 14th at 7pm in the Fellowship Hall. Dupre will talk about his expeditions over the years, namely Greenland and what he has witnessed on climate change and solutions moving forward. 

There will be an opportunity to meet Dupre and visit environmentally friendly booths after the presentation.

For more information, please visit St. Andrew's website.

Will Steger Pulls No Punches

by Laura Raedeke, LCC, Nisswa, and the EcoFaith Leadership Team NE-MN Synod

Photos by David Boran

Legendary Polar Explorer, Educator, and Environmental Ambassador Will Steger packed the Celebration Center at Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa, on Saturday, October 7. Around 325 people came to hear Steger’s PowerPoint presentation and to ask questions about his adventures and the drastic effects of climate change that he has observed firsthand on the glaciers at both Poles.

Steger has led teams of some of the most significant polar expeditions in history, but told the audience that none of them could be done today, due to a changing climate. Many of his expedition firsts will also go down in history as the last. 

Born and raised in Minneapolis, Steger moved in 1970 to the wilderness north of Ely, Minnesota, where he blended adventure-based environmental education with cutting-edge technology that has allowed him to reach millions of followers and students. In 2013 he began building the Steger Wilderness Center, to which he contributes 100% of his speaking fees.

Steger’s message doesn’t focus on “doom and gloom,” but instead appeals to people’s hearts to help generate the love for our Earth that is needed to help our planet thrive. Facts and data don’t move the heart, Steger says, but wanting a livable world for our grandchildren does. Each of us has a “sphere of influence” in which we can help to make the changes that all of us working together can make.

Looking out at the audience, Steger said, “There is a real sense of community here. I can feel the goodness in the room."

This event was made possible in part by the EcoFaith Network NE-MN Synod.

Tammy Walhof, Lutheran Advocacy-MN, to Travel to COP28

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.

Please join us in praying for Tammy's safe travels. We look forward to hearing about her learnings and experiences when she returns!

Updates from the Pollinator Project

The EcoFaith Network welcomed six new Pollinator Project Congregations at the NE-MN Synod Walking Together event! That makes 39 congregations at some stage of becoming pollinator sanctuaries! Let us know if you want to be among them! Email Tom Uecker at tomuecker1945@gmail.com.

Want to do something to protect pollinator habitat this fall? Don’t rake your leaves! They provide protection for pollinators and mulching in spring growth.

Pollinator Project launches new Facebook Group! 

Share stories, photos, questions, and find out what others are doing.  Yes, it’s Fall, and gardens are being put to sleep for the winter, but it’s a good time to share what we learned this year and begin planning ahead for next year. 

Join here

ELCA Missionaries Prepare to Confront Global Climate Impacts

by Vern Rice, Saint Paul Area Care of Creation Work Group

On Wednesday, July 12th, the Christ the King Lutheran Church (New Brighton) Care for Creation Team hosted 20 ELCA missionaries preparing to go into many parts of the world. Representatives of our solar panel working group, our Community Garden and our new roadside pollinator garden all made presentations and showed our work to a very attentive audience. Our Global Mission Team also shared how we are partnering environmentally with our mission in Tanzania through tree planting and installing solar panels there. 

Members of Christ the King were energized by hosting these wonderful missionaries!

Read the full article 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

Conserving and Restoring Healthy Forests: Using Nature Itself to Address the Climate Crisis While Protecting People and Wildlife

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.

Rev. Karen Bockelman, Duluth, Minnesota

All Saints Sunday

November 5, 2023

Revelation 7:9-17

Psalm 34:1-10, 22

1 John 3:1-3

Matthew 5:1-12

All Saints Sunday so often focuses on the humans who are the “unlikely ones” to be blessed. We name those who have died and remember them. We light candles and offer prayers. What would it mean, on this day, to name the “deaths” of creation—what has become extinct or is endangered, is empty and lacking, poor, mourning, hungering and thirsting for wholeness? What would it mean to pray for blessings on creation and to commit ourselves to be instruments of God’s fulness? If the Beatitudes were to be rewritten with creation in mind, where would you place monarchs and whales, ocean tides and rainbows, the dark of night and the brilliance of stars, the heat of the desert and the threat of flood, endangered species and family pets, wind and clouds, fields and mountains?

Read the full reflection here

Rev. Matthew Cobb, Together Here Ministries

24th Sunday after Pentecost

November 12, 2023

Matthew 25:1-13

Go to the innermost, and be there as a unitive energy is welling forth from the darkness of the ground. Take care of yourself, love yourself. From this essence that you are you, simply and plainly, act, with no analysis, no forethought. Your conscience with the guidance of your deep unconscious awareness, what ancient traditions describe as bearing witness to what is, will always lead you and guide you as needed. 

Stay there at home in the innermost essence of yourself. That is from there where you need to act. And you need to act now, as the time spent conversing and analyzing and passing time with no action are over.

Read the full reflection here

Pastor David Carlson, Duluth MN

25^th Sunday after Pentecost

November 19, 2023

Zeph 1:7, 12-18

Ps 90:1-12

1 Thess 2:9-13

Matt 25:14-30

To be sure, the world has deep needs. From war and gun violence to poverty and racial injustices, from indifference to a mistrust of others that has weakened the fabric of our society. And in the face of such challenges, the message that often comes across is that we need to be fearful. 

Yet that fearful mindset is precisely what our other readings confront. As Paul says to the Thessalonian church, “God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that … we may live with him.” The soteria of the New Testament is not just about salvation after death but about God freeing us from sin and enabling us in this life to embrace a holistic sense of wellness, wholeness, healing and wellbeing for all people and creation as an alternative to a fatalistic, fractured trajectory. And rather than scarcity, Jesus invites us to see God’s abundance and even in the midst of fearful times to live boldly in the promises of God.

Read the full reflection here

Rev. Emily Meyer, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Reign of Christ Sunday

November 26, 2023

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-2

Psalm 95:1-7a

Ephesians 1:15-23

Matthew 25:31-46

Ezekiel offers a somewhat nuanced image of the Divine Sovereign character - a gracious shepherd who cares tenderly and lavishly for ‘my sheep’; a shepherd whose provision ensures that pastures will be green and lush, water will be cool and plentiful, and safety will be offered and accessible: ‘I will feed them with good pasture…’, ‘I will make them lie down…’, ‘I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed and I will strengthen the weak…’ Under the compassionate care of this royal shepherd, bullying, arrogance, greed, covetousness, and hoarding will not be tolerated. Growing fat off the suffering and deprivation of others will not be tolerated - indeed it will be punished with expulsion from the flock.

For a scattered and oppressed people, these are words of hope and comfort.

For a nation/people who are already comfortable, the warning against greed and bullying tends to fall on deaf ears.

Read the full reflection here

Connections with Creation

November

November 1/ 5 – All Saints Day/ Sunday

All Saints celebrates equality among the saints, especially remembering those who have died and returned to the earth. Theologian Dorothee Soelle wonders if the equality we experience in death inspires revolutionary movements for equality among the living. She writes in The Mystery of Death: “I often ask myself whether death is not the very inventor of equality and whether human beings are permitted any equality at all without the consciousness of death’s power. As [death] is repressed in the world of the rich, so too the consciousness of human equality disappears. . . . Can equality in the negative sense be so neatly distinguished from equality in the positive, revolutionary sense of human rights for all?” (Fortress Press, 1984, p. 10). Could it be that the communion of saints and the earth itself work together to inspire revolutionary movements for equality and justice?

Read all Connections with Creation for November and December

EcoFaith Book Corner

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, November 9 - The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg (2023). Meeting 8:00-9:00 a.m. in person at Chester Creek Cafe in Duluth.
• Religion & Science, Wednesday, November 15 - 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. via Zoom. Contact Pastor Carlson for the link or for more information, pastor@gloriadeiduluth.org

How Americans View Future Harms From Climate Change in Their Community and Around the U.S.

Pew Research Center

Survey: US religious groups do not view climate change as a crisis

Religion News Service

As climate risks mount, the insurance safety net is collapsing

Grist

Like EcoFaith Network NE MN Synod on Facebook, check out our website, or email us!