"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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Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa, invites all for an event with Will Steger on October 7th at 1pm!
A formidable voice calling for understanding and the preservation of the Arctic and the Earth, Will Steger is best known for his legendary polar explorations. He has traveled tens of thousands of miles by kayak and dogsled over 50 years, leading teams on some of the most significant polar expeditions in history.
This event is possible in part because of an EcoFaith microgrant.
The event will not be live streamed, but DVDs will be made available afterward.
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Meeting Christ in the Pollinator Plot Workshop
at the NE-MN Synod Walking Together Event
October 14th, Zion Lutheran, Grand Rapids
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The EcoFaith Network will present a workshop at the Synod Walking Together event.
Walking Together 2023 is an opportunity for us to learn from encounters with Christ through the stories of ministries happening right here in Northeastern Minnesota Synod.
Our synod voted to become a Pollinator Synod this spring! Learn the whys, whos, and hows of engaging in a synod-wide Pollinator Plot, with stories from congregations who have started their own pollinator project. Imagine other ways to pollinate the care of creation in your community. Bring home a yard sign for your church's own pollinator plot!
Learn more about the event and register here
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Pollinator Project launches new Facebook Group! | |
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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
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“The” Rice Street Garden OR “Our” Rice Street Garden?
by Vernita Kennen, Saint Paul Area Care of Creation
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This is the big question facing the garden team and the gardeners at the Rice Street Gardens in the Rice-Larpenteur neighborhood in St. Paul. The garden also borders Roseville and Maplewood and has been a community asset since its beginning in 2016.
Today the Rice Street Garden is a community garden of 260 plots, each 16 x 20 feet. The gardeners, many of whom live within walking distance, are mostly immigrants. The gardens provide a way for them to reconnect with the outdoor spaces many of them knew growing up. Growing their own fruit and vegetables means they are healthier while saving money. It also means that they are able to preserve their culture and customs while sharing that culture with their new neighbors.
St. Paul Regional Water Services is trying to sell the entire 13-acre site. The possibility of affordable housing is being talked about. A community garden could fit into that plan but there are no guarantees. If the mission of the gardens - - to unite diverse populations by providing the opportunity for families to grow healthy, organic foods in their own neighborhood - - is to be preserved, purchasing the garden land is best. A fundraising campaign is currently underway to raise $1 million with two-thirds of that amount already pledged. Seeing “the” Garden as “our” garden is an admirable goal and one that many of our church communities and individuals have been eager to support. (The ELCA has supported the Gardens with Domestic Hunger Grants.)
Our admiration for the efforts of the Garden team is enormous. We encourage others to visit and see for yourselves a very dynamic community garden.
Read the full article here
Contribute to the fundraising effort here
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Our Savior’s Pollinator Garden
by Kurt Hoffman, Our Savior’s Creation Care Committee member and Pollinator Steering Committee member
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As the 2023 growing season winds down, Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Outing is celebrating the first successful season of its pollinator garden.
The plot is located next to the church on the west side of State Highway 6, north of Outing. The area has been designated for a raised pollinator garden by the church council based on the recommendation of the Creation Care Committee. Technicians from the Crow Wing County regional Soil & Water District. surveyed the site, gave a detailed cost estimate, & provided the committee with a list of recommended plantings . The OSLC congregation raised over $1,700 dollars from congregation member donations and were matched by the regional Land & Waters Board of the regional SWD. Cass County Construction, a local construction company, donated black dirt for the pollinator garden.
Read the full story here
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We want them!
Green Blades Rising seeks reader contributions that relate ecology/EcoFaith to the Advent and Christmas seasons. We are looking for a broad range of ideas from ideas for worship such as preaching, liturgy, and music, to environmentally focused gift-giving.
Please email ecofaith@nemnsynod.org with ideas. We look forward to hearing from you!
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2023 Farm Bill Reauthorization: Invitation to Action | |
Policies impact how we live our lives, and our actions in the public sphere can impact those policies as citizens and concerned Christians on priorities shaped by our values. This year, 2023, the Farm Bill is in a reauthorization process that has far-reaching impact in our communities, locally and globally, now and for generations to come. Consider writing to your federal elected official to express your priorities as that policy takes shape.
Learn more and find a sample template here
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Got Climate Questions? The NYT has Answers.
by Diane Jacobson, Professor Emerita, Luther Seminary, member of NE-MN EcoFaith Network and Saint Paul Area Synod Care of Creation
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Beginning in 2022, writers from the New York Times Climate Desk have been answering reader’s questions about climate change. Both the questions and answers are exceedingly informative and helpful.
What follows and what is attached are the readers’ questions and the answers from the NYTimes writers, as compiled and formatted by Diane Jacobson. To access the cited references within the writers’ answers, one must be a subscriber to the New York Times.
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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
What Do Mega-Wildfires Worldwide Tell Us About the Climate Crisis?
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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 Green Blades Preaching Roundtable is taking a two month summer pause after June and will resume again in September. 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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Melinda Quivik, St. Paul, Minnesota
18th Sunday after Pentecost
October 1st, 2023
Ezekiel 18:1–4, 25–32
Psalm 25:1–9
Philippians 2:1–13
Matthew 21:23–32
Ezekiel’s statement that “the parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge” (v. 2) could hardly be more appropriate to our environmental, economic, and political situation today. What the parents have done tastes edgy (bitter? unpleasant? downright unacceptable?) to the children and they are left to clean it up.
Read the full reflection here
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Rev. Dianne O. Loufman, First Lutheran Church, Duluth, Minnesota
19th Sunday after Pentecost
Indigenous Peoples’ Day/Native American Sunday
October 8th, 2023
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:7-1
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46
The image that weaves through three of today’s readings is the vineyard. Scripture often, as in these texts, employs the image of vineyard/vine to describe the people of God. Given the destruction that happens to the vineyard/vine in two of the readings, I was led to ponder: Will there be a time as the result of droughts, wildfires and floods that a vineyard will no longer exist, and we won’t know what the metaphor stands for Perhaps, vineyards are already producing wild grapes. As the globe continues to heat up, what biblical creation metaphors will cease to have a referent?
Read the full reflection here
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Pastor James Muske, Bethesda Lutheran Church of Malmo, Isle, MN
20th Sunday after Pentecost
October 15, 2023
Isaiah 25:1-9
Psalm 23
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14
The Landmark Trail notes the site of former American Indian villages that once thrived on the shores of Ogechie Lake (which the trail parallels for much of its route). The signage notes that people have long been drawn to Ogechie Lake for the wild rice that grows in its waters. First, for the Dakota peoples for well over a thousand years and then later for the Ojibwe people, most especially the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, as Kathio State Park and Ogechie Lake lie within the boundaries of the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation.
Read the full reflection here
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Tamela K. Walhof, Lutheran Advocacy-MN
21st Sunday after Pentecost
October 22, 2023
Isaiah 45:1-7
Psalm 96: 1-9 [10-13]
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22: 25-22
In fact, the psalmist notes that it isn’t just God’s people that are to “sing a new song” of praise, but the whole earth – all of creation – is to sing to the Lord, and his glory is to be known “among the nations” for all “his marvelous works among all the peoples.” If we continue a little beyond verse 9, the heavens, and seas, and all that is within them rejoices in God, and even the trees of the forest sing for joy. It goes on to say that “He will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with his truth.” However, the word used here is tsedek, best translated as justice and righteousness, which refer to right relationship. So, rather than reading it as God ushering in judgement, perhaps we should consider what it means that God paves the way for right relationship – with God, between all people and nations, and even among all of creation.
Read the full reflection here
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Rev. Karen Bockelman, Duluth, Minnesota
Reformation Sunday
October 29, 2023
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36
Shortly after the start of the new millennium, the Lutheran World Federation was considering what their contribution to the 500-year Reformation Jubilee in 2017 would be. They did not want a monument of stone or bronze, but a living monument, one that would represent unity in reconciled diversity, rather than division. The quote attributed to Martin Luther, “if the world collapsed tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree today” led to the idea of planting trees: 500 trees for the 500 years of the Reformation.
Read the full reflection here
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Connections with Creation
October
October 8 – 19th Sunday after Pentecost
The texts from Isaiah, the Psalms, and Matthew all prominently feature images of the fragility of fertile land and the question of the land’s stewardship. Churches might participate in land stewardship in several ways. Some congregations tend gardens for food, flowers, and pollinators, giving away some or all of the produce and offering space for other community members to garden. Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, tends a remarkable vineyard on its property and serves the wine at communion. Congregations and faith-based environmental groups can advocate for farming and land-use policies that reduce soil erosion rates and honor the humble topsoil. (According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, it takes a century or more to form an inch of topsoil naturally.) Working to slow and reverse climate change protects fertile land from extreme weather events, fires, and desertification.
Read all Connections with Creation for October and November
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Trying to figure out how Faith and Science work together every week?
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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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Review by Fredric Quivik, Saint Paul Area Synod Care of Creation
All too often we think of the looming climate crisis mainly as a threat to humanity, without appreciating the harms it poses to other glories of creation. We may see, hear, and smell the beauties of the world around us, but we have little idea of how other animals are sensing and perceiving the world we share. Ed Yong’s An Immense World vividly brings those realities to us...
Yong’s book gives us powerful insights into the magnificence of the world around us, a magnificence we cannot sense but which we can perceive thanks to the work of scientists who are learning how other animals sense and perceive their umwelds, worlds of which we are otherwise unaware and completely senseless. The climate crisis threatens so much more than humanity; it threatens marvels of creation that can fill us with awe and wonder.
Read the full review here
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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, October 12 - 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, October 18 - 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
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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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