Green Blades Rising Newsletter September 2021

"Now the green blade rises from the buried grain..."

Centering Prayer

Beloved Mother, Father, Lover, Earth, our larger self, our greater body, we’re so grateful to be granted a human life right now at this time of such anguish, turmoil, and so much suffering and loss is occurring; and we’re so grateful to be given human identity and a human voice and so we can take part in human councils. And help us to be evermore fully aware of the blessings of being part of your intelligence.

From an interview with Joanna Macy within Emergence Magazine’s Widening Circles

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Being God's Stewards of the Earth at French Lutheran

Recipient of an EcoFaith Network Seed Grant

French River Lutheran is one of two congregations of the NE MN Synod in 2021 who applied for and received a seed grant from the EcoFaith Fund. The EcoFaith grant program equips congregations to fulfill God’s call to be stewards of the earth for the sake of the whole creation by providing seed money for specific ministry initiatives. Your donations to the EcoFaith Fund make these micro-grants and other initiatives of the EcoFaith Network possible.

The French River Lutheran Church congregation, on the shore of Lake Superior between Duluth and Two Harbors, Minnesota, is seeing with new light! The church will utilize energy-efficient alternatives to meet needed infrastructure upgrades. LED bulbs will replace old lighting throughout the church, including the larger bulbs needed to light the sanctuary. Over time, the church will benefit from lower electricity costs, freeing up money for ministry. Of course, the new lighting will benefit God's larger sanctuary outside the doors of the church building by reducing our carbon footprint. The recent re-roofing of the church also allowed French River Lutheran to install insulation on the roof where previously there was none. Other environmentally beneficial things have and are happening at the church. Several Boy Scouts from the troop hosted by FRLC have done their Eagle Scout projects on church grounds, including the installation of bat houses and a rain garden that holds the runoff coming off the church roof.

Additional spaces for rain gardens have been designed into a new parking area and are awaiting their new vegetation. A majestic, old-growth cedar forest on church property borders the French River, and a nature trail, created by Eagle Scouts, provides joy to nature lovers. Another new facet of eco-activity at FRLC is hosting an outdoor/nature-oriented pre-school run by recent Environmental Education college graduates. The church also participates in traditional eco-friendly practices, such as utilizing non-disposable coffee cups, recycling paper, and composting coffee grounds.

Part of the Synod EcoFaith Network grant will fund educational signage, inside and outside the church. We want members and visitors to know that the church uses LED lighting to share this aspect of our stewardship, and outdoor signage may be placed near the rain gardens to educate about how this practice helps preserve the water quality in our lakes and streams. The old-growth forest composed of white cedar is a rare forest type native to Northern Minnesota. French River Lutheran may place another sign near the trail to explain the particularities of this unique forest type and the ecological benefits of forest cover in general.

French River Lutheran is blessed!

Our location on the mouth of the French River is exquisitely beautiful. And, when we fulfill our calling as God's faithful stewards by making God's building more eco-friendly and protecting the beautiful river, forest, and lake God has entrusted to our care, we show by our actions that we don't take this blessing for granted.

We want to thank the Northeastern Minnesota Synod EcoFaith Network for the grant and challenging French River Lutheran Stewards to share what we are doing to inspire others to see the light and converted.

Story submitted by Kevin Stroom, French River Lutheran.

EcoFaith in Worship and the Word

Preaching for the Whole Creation

Creation in Preaching

September 5th Pastor John Sippola, retired, First Lutheran, Duluth

Last week on Saturday evening, Siwa (my dog) and I walked through the woods to a spring-fed wilderness brook trout lake not too far from our camper. I expected the waterline to be low and the water to be warmer than usual. The temperature had been in the 90-degree range for four days!. But, to my surprise, that water level in the lake was the highest I've seen! (No, it wasn't the beavers. I checked.) I took off my sandals and waded out on a sand spit into the crystal clear water. Siwa followed obediently. The water temp shocked and surprised me. It immediately numbed my feet, ankles, and calves. It was almost as cold as Lake Superior during ice out. The brook trout are surviving, I thought and breathed a sigh of relief.

I don't know about you, but the phrase in a dry and weary land (Psalm 63) captures the condition of my spirit. I feel dried up from drought, brittle as I age, and worn out from the pandemic. How we, together with the plants, trees, and beavers, yearn for the rain to water the earth, stop the wildfires, end the drought, and moisten our souls; to be baptized by rains that help the land and everyone in to keep their cool, simmer down, and cease our incendiary words and ways.

Read the whole reflection here.

September 12th Pastor John Sippola, retired, First Lutheran, Duluth

This week's lectionary invites us to explore some of the unique teaching ways of Jesus. To begin with, the prophet Isaiah in chapter 50, verse 4, summarizes the process of an intimate, empathic, trust-filled relationship between divine teaching and rapt, inspired listening, "The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning, he wakens— wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught." James, in chapter 3, verse 1, issues a sober warning to those who aspire to teach, "Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness."

In Mark 8:1, we find ourselves on the road again, walking with Jesus, the disciples, and a crowd on the way to Caesarea Phillippi. What is your path? Who is with you on the road? Last week Jesus listened as a foreign woman (and Mom) had the faith to teach him to expand his narrow vision to include her and her daughter. And today, Mark will use the bad example of the disciples and Peter to correct the common misperception of Jesus’ mission. But the way Jesus does it exhibits his communal artistry – his liturgy, his way, his mode. Let’s take a closer look.

Read the whole reflection here.

September 19th Pastor Lisa Buchanan, Bethany Lutheran, Deer River

“What kind of world do we want to pass onto our children and grandchildren?” is generally a question that can reframe any environmental conversation. Suddenly we see the little faces we love in an uncertain future. Our actions and choices today will impact their life. Greatness, Jesus tells his disciples then and us today, is welcoming the vulnerable and looking toward their interests instead of just elevating our own.

Jesus goes on to say that by welcoming the vulnerable, we welcome God. What!?!? That Jesus is always making us go beyond our own boundaries and sense of self to see a larger reality – the Oneness that we share. The great ones recognize this reality and see the suffering of one as the suffering of all. What a parallel for living in our one world. We are bound to each other spiritually and environmentally. If we are not the vulnerable ones right now, there’s a good chance we will be someday – weakened by disease or age or the unfortunate circumstances of life. And when we are in that vulnerable spot, how good to know that we have a privileged place in the eyes of all of the great ones and in the welcoming arms of Jesus.

Read the whole reflection here.

September 26th Pastor Maria Anderson-Lippert, Christ the King, Bloomington

Living in our capitalist society as a person with a pretty comfortable life creates a lot of opportunities to be confused about what God’s promises really mean for our lives or how we encounter them. And that confusion can often distract us from the ever-present reality of our warming climate and its long-term effect on our communities. This happens not only through our desires or temptations to believe that one more product or experience or housing project will fix whatever issue we’re experiencing, but in the way we think about who has power to leverage what’s needed to halt our climate’s demise. We’ve been told many lies about how we can

individually purchase our way into climate solutions or reconcile our distorted

relationship with the gifts of God’s resources.

Both our Numbers text and our Gospel text remind us that true power is shared

power, that God put God’s spirit into each and every one of us for the sake of the whole

world. Power was never meant to be consolidated in one person or one group of

people, but to be shared and spread and cultivated by the collective whole. That is the

radical teaching and power of Jesus.

Read the whole reflection here.

October 3rd Pastor Liz Davis

While the Genesis text leads us to the conclusion that humans are created for partnership with each other, take some time to explore the narrative of God creating all sorts of birds and animals with the expectation that one of these would be a good companion to the human in its loneliness. This may resonate well with your pet-households who know what it is to feel connected to their animals. Watching a show in the evening, I’m more likely to be snuggled with our Golden Retriever overgrown lapdog Hildegard than with my husband, and for company when working at home during COVID, we put up a cot in the office from which our lab Ignatius groans at us when Zoom meetings are too loud. Our pets bring us comfort and joy. We might easily expand from pets to wild animals and birds as those creatures with whom we have a relationship of mutual care and wisdom-sharing. St. Francis is said to have taught that we meet God in creation as creation reflects God’s goodness and care.

Read the whole reflection here.

Photos from the Line 3 Treaties Not Tarsands

Day at the Capitol

Members from the EcoFaith Leadership Team, Kristin Foster and Sue Lyback, attended the day at the capitol last Wednesday, August 25th, to urge Governor Walz to Stop Line 3. The day was full of prayer, grief, and community.

Check out MN Interfaith Power and Light's page to learn more about how you can engage if you feel called to act.

Feel free to share your Line 3 photos of action at ecofaith@nemnsynod.org We're in this together!

This Month's Green Tips

Feel free to use these striking Green Tips created by two Synod members for your bulletins and general knowledge! These are meant to inspire earthkeeping action!

This month, Laura Raedeke green tips focus on water.

Here are Laura Raedeke's Green Tips Lutheran Church of the Cross in Nisswa and here are Steve Spigarelli's Green Tips from First Lutheran in Aitkin.

Connections with Creation

September 5 – Lectionary 23/ Pentecost 15

While scholars debate the intentions of Jesus (and the author of Mark’s gospel) in implying that the Syrophoenician woman and her people were “dogs” unfit for divine healing, his words are discomfiting at best. We may wish to excuse and explain away what Jesus says, but we can use it as an opportunity to explore the human tendency to view the world as a hierarchy with humans at the top and all other lifeforms below us. Whether we see Jesus’ interaction with the woman as a “teachable moment” or as an unabashed example of an ethnic slur, the fact remains that the woman could only stake her clever claim within a system that deems outsiders as other and even nonhuman. As a thought experiment, how might this story be different if humans operated out of a worldview that sees an interrelated web among all creatures and fellow humans, where all are equal and valued?

Read all the Connections with Creation here.

Book Review

How to Rescue the Earth Without Worshipping Nature

by Tony Campolo

I chose to review this book for two reasons. I didn’t realize a Christian writer was concerned about the environment in 1994. The other reason is the author, an evangelical conservative Christian best known for his passion for social justice issues, centering mostly around the poor.

“Being concerned about the environment is a biblically mandated command, and acting to rescue creation….is a Christian obligation,” writes Campolo in 1994. In true conservative evangelical style, he refers to doing something about caring for the environment in anticipation of the second coming of Christ. That wouldn’t be my prime motivation, but among evangelicals, it probably resonates.

Campolo recommends churches and individuals take an “environmental audit” to measure conservation efforts, turning church camps into ecological camps, church member pledges to commit to environmental responsibility, beyond personal morality. He speaks directly to evangelical pastors: “Our sermons have taught that God loves people and wills to rescue them from sin and Satan, but in our homilies, we have ignored the message of God’s saving work for the rest of His creation.” How true has that been for the mainline wing of the church as well?

Read the whole book review here.

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.