A Rocha USA Blog

By Sandra McCracken*

Photo: Betty McCracken

My father is a brilliant biology teacher, now retired. My mother is a thoughtful student of the Bible. They will have been married for 50 years this August. They have made records of their years of bird-watching in a worn Peterson Field Guide, plotting their dates and sightings together in the margins. They took me on nature walks as a child and we talked about the names of Missouri birds and trees and flowers.  

Maybe that’s one of the reasons that I love Maltbie Babcock's "This is My Father's World." I love the line “He shines in all that’s fair” because this poetry has given me license to make art about all aspects of life. I have been shaped by the same kind of experience that Babcock describes in being able to taste and hear and see the glory of God in the skies, the flowers, and the birds singing their melodies like hymns.  

In recent months, I’ve been reading John Muir's memoir and writing poetry and melodies about what it means to posture myself in such a way that is more mindful of my place in the world. Water. Electricity. Oil. Pesticides. Organic foods. As Muir wrote, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” We are all pulled and affected by our place and by each other. Our little choices do have consequences. And there is so much to consider — just reading labels at the grocery store can be a precarious business.

The more I learn, the more I find that unfortunately America has not had a stellar reputation for stewardship throughout history — logging, strip mining, and crop dusting, just to name a few problems. Nor has this been a pressing concern for most of the American church, whom you might think would be at the front lines ready to care for God’s creation. All too often, the topic of conservation quickly becomes political and we run to the safety of our pat answers. There have been some confusing lines drawn by both parties that do not add up to a consistent theology. The only way to get past these political blockades is to go up and over, elevating the conversation, speaking in nuances instead of sound bites, truly listening to each other, and looking for points of unity in spite of our differences. In fact, our diversity may be our best asset when it comes to seeking solutions for our environmental challenges.

One of the biggest hurdles for me personally in caring for the earth is that the problems feel so overwhelming. I cannot easily read National Geographic without feeling heavy-hearted about the realities of our condition, both within our own insatiably selfish hearts and in my sadness over the many species and habitats that we are losing along the way. And deeper still, if we are attentive to the words of Jesus and His care for the poor, the choices we make in the way of stewardship deeply cut into the survival of the people most desperate for these natural, sustaining resources. The poor are the first and hardest hit by these ecological losses and irregularities.  

Photo: Sandra McCracken

So with each passing day, I am becoming more attuned to the particular DNA I have from each of my parents — biology and theology — pushing me forward on the journey of conservation. I might be unqualified, but everybody has to start somewhere. Rather than burying my head in the sand like I am inclined to do, I have to lean into my discomfort. I’d rather deepen my longing, not assuage it. And I look to the great hope that all things will one day be restored and renewed. I want to honor and care for God’s creation not because of a marketing team pulling on my checkbook, but because of a doxological pull that tugs on my conscience.

As a songwriter by vocation, all of this comes out of me more as poetry than as politics. The wonder of the great outdoors creeps into the songs I write. My favorite time with my children is when we walk in the woods or explore the creek. We visited the Redwoods together in January and stood at the base of those 2,000-year-old trees in wonder. I can’t help myself from whistling back at the Towhee birds in Shelby Park. I am giddy when I hear or glimpse the Barred Owl that shares the beautiful old trees in our urban neighborhood. I wake the kids up some nights to see a particularly bright moon in the sky. And I will never get over the thrill of an airplane window seat view — seeing the horizon, the landscapes, the contours of the countryside, and the rivers carving spaces in between.  

Recently, I had the great pleasure of hearing Peter and Miranda Harris, the founding members of A Rocha, a global conservation organization. They shared the story of their journey from a humble small group in Liverpool, to the Alvor estuary in Portugal, and now it has become an international network of conservationists in 16 countries. I had never before heard anybody speak with their particular blend of hope, ethics, and spirituality. It was a rare and powerful combination. As I sat in the room that evening, it confirmed in my own spirit that I'm on some sort of old-yet-new journey through these themes. 

L to R: Jill Phillips, Sandra McCracken, Miranda and Peter Harris, and Jenna Henderson

Miranda wisely confessed, “We cannot save the world — that’s God’s business. If we stop being in-process, we’ve lost the battle.” Knowing that we cannot control the outcome is really the beginning of the path, not the end. It is a small but real thing that each of us can enter into this practice of conservation believing that we can be part of tangible renewal. For some, it might take the shape of educating or gardening. For others it might look like banking or engineering, a public office or scientific research. It takes all kinds to accomplish the greater good. And it matters for us to practice renewal. It matters because God loves what He made, and when you love someone, you are drawn to love what they love.

At this invitation, we see that the earth is full of remarkable displays of God’s glory (Psalm 104). As we join together in earth-enjoyment, we come not just as individuals, but as a diverse family of people. This co-laboring to bring healing and wholeness is a simple call and yet a difficult one to abide.

This kind of unity is a challenge every day right under my own roof. In our family of four, from morning until night, we shift our weight back and forth to try our best to respond to the will and desires of each person. And therein is the conflict. My youngest child is three years old and she shows her will in full color. I, too, have a strong will, but a more grown-up version. The same goes for the other two. We each want things our own way. Sometimes we want to be left alone to have it our own way, but we need each other. We get frustrated. We want things to work but they don’t always work. And if Mick Jagger is right, that “you can’t always get what you want,” then could there be a higher objective for our desire?

The result of how we go about getting what we want extends out from individual families to neighborhoods, then cities, countries, and even out into the atmosphere surrounding our planet. Together we multiply our potential for sustainability, and together we multiply our potential for destruction. We react to each other with changing shades of conflict and complacency because we desire to have things our own way. Meanwhile, the honeybees in the clover fields, the fish in the ocean, and the polar bears on the ice caps go about their day-to-day lives. Their health and wholeness is directly and profoundly affected by how we work out our desires.  

Jonathan Edwards, the great intellectual and theologian, made the case that we have free will, but that at any given moment we are slaves to our greatest desire. And our desires will function to guide our behavior whether we acknowledge them or not. James K.A. Smith, philosophy professor and author, puts it this way in his bookDesiring the Kingdom: “Our love is aimed from the fulcrum of our desire — the habits that constitute our character, or core identity. And the way our love or desire gets aimed in specific directions is through practices that shape, mold, and direct our love.”

I confess that I am more than a little weary of my same old practices. I want to wake up and name my desires, to bring them out into the light. I want to see things as they are so that I can change and be changed. This is the beginning of care and conversation, whether it’s about protecting dolphins, or about the community garden, or about policy making on Capitol Hill.  

No matter your life station, there is still some small good to be done. Maybe we can’t change the world, but we can do something. This summer, as we celebrate my parents’ 50 years of marriage, I realize that they have built 50 years of good things, pouring themselves into their family. They taught me to love the things that they love, shaping my desire for beauty and biology, and now I am able to spend some of that inheritance on my own little ones. No one may notice whether or not you recycle that cup when nobody is looking, or if you ride your bike to work, or if you teach your young nephew the difference between maple and oak trees. But a few small habits aligned for the greater good can add up to a whole garden of hope. And hope, like an eager seed, points us to a day coming when God’s green earth will be made new. 

This article was originally published on the Art House America Blog.

*Sandra McCracken is an independent singer-songwriter whose smart, soulful blend of folk and gospel is as progressive as it is timeless. In the past 13 years, McCracken has released seven studio albums and two duo EPs with her husband Derek Webb; most recently, she has teamed up with a side band, Rain for Roots, to record and produce an album of children's songs. She is a founding contributor of the Indelible Grace hymn project, and her re-tuned hymns are sung in congregations across the country. McCracken currently lives, writes, and records at her home in East Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, Derek Webb, and their two children.

by Tom Rowley

Around the world, people are starving, forests are dwindling, rivers are drying up and species are going extinct. The reasons, of course, vary: from corruption to desperation to ineptness and more. But the root cause—whatever the intervening ones—is that humankind has ignored and distorted our role in stewarding the Earth--our first and primary role according to Genesis. The ecological crisis, then, is actually a church crisis.

For decades, that crisis went unnoticed—if only by the church. Fortunately, the danger that the church wouldn’t “get” environmental stewardship now seems past. Not so fortunately, a new danger lurks: that we’ll get it wrong.

Which isn’t to suggest malicious intent. (Though given we’re a fallen people, there is certainly some of that. No names here but follow the money…) Rather, it is simply to say that we must carefully examine both our motives and our methods. Both “why” and “how” are essential. Both distinguish a biblical approach from a secular one, which by anyone’s estimation, including most secular environmentalists, has failed. So while it’s right to care for the poor who are disproportionately harmed by environmental degradation, just as it’s proper to want rivers for my children’s children to swim in, these are not the primary biblical reasons. Nor are recycling or governmental regulations or eating locally comprehensive responses. All are good and necessary; all—individually and even collectively—are insufficient. And if they are all we’ve got, then we’ve got it wrong.

Getting it right, of course, is a long, difficult process. Case in point: A Rocha, the Christian conservation organization I work for, has been at it nearly 30 years now in 19 countries and we do not have it all figured out. We have, however, with help from some of the world’s best and brightest theologians and conservationists, learned some really important lessons.

It is worship. Caring for the Earth is a right and worshipful response to God in recognition that all things have been created through Jesus and for him, that in him all things hold together, and that through his death on the cross all things are redeemed. It is worship of God the Creator, not his creation.

It is relationship. Caring for God’s creation is a way of lovingly relating to God, to ourselves, to our neighbors and to all of nature. It is a way of living.

While it serves other purposes, it is right to do regardless. Stewarding the Earth is directly connected to other biblical commands—caring for the poor, loving our neighbors and sharing the Gospel. But it is not strictly utilitarian. God values his creation simply because he made it. We should do no less.

It requires both passion and grace. As with any other aspect of Kingdom living, caring for creation is by turns gratifying and frustrating. There are blessings and there are challenges. And we must not let our passion for creation or for our projects outrun our grace for people—those we work with, those we seek to influence and even those who seem to stand in our way.

It is a “get to”, not just a “have to”.  If we are open to them, the blessings that come from relating rightly to God, self, neighbors and all of creation far outweigh the sacrifices and inconveniences involved. With gratitude and obedience comes joy.

This is not a program. Showing God’s love to all creation—human and non-human alike—is not a series of tasks or boxes to check. It cannot be summed up, nor packaged. It can only be lived—as worship, in relationship, with both passion and grace, because we get to.

The road to “getting it right” is long, uphill and at times full of potholes (none of which negate the joy). These principles serve as guardrails. In future posts, I'll write more about them and how they translate into actual projects.

by Rev. Dave Bookless, Theological Advisor to A Rocha

When I Google ‘Do material things matter to God?’ I find over 20,000,000 results. Some sites (confession: I didn’t check them all) warn of the dangers material things pose to our relationship with God: ‘be spiritual and don’t get sucked into worldly concerns’. Others claim to give the secret of material prosperity, usually in return for a fee. It seems Christians are mightily confused about whether the stuff we think we own, the world of nature, even our own bodies, are deep-down good or not.

We’re mixed up largely because Western Christian thinking has been compromised by Greek philosophy’s unbiblical separation of body from soul and material from spiritual. We may quote ‘Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things’ (Colossians 3:2), but we spend our lives pursuing and all-but-worshipping material things – nice homes and cars, good food, good-looking people, comfortable churches. The results are disastrous both for our world and our relationship with God. Believing material things don’t matter has allowed us to pollute and plunder the gift of God’s good world. Believing only spiritual things matter divorces us from the constant biblical reminders that our attitudes and practices concerning possessions, people, other creatures, and the land we inhabit are at the very heart of our relationship with God.

Of course, Genesis is clear. Everything God made, darkness as well as light, fish as well as fowl, mountain, moorland, maggots (presumably!) and me, are all good. Put them all together and in their totality they’re ‘very good’. Matter does indeed matter to God, so much so that he made lots of it. Millions of variations upon it. As the atheistic scientist J B Haldane rightly, if apocryphally, said: God has "an inordinate fondness for beetles." After all, he made at least 400,000 species.

Material things are to be celebrated and cherished. It is not disembodied souls that are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’; it is our physical bodies (Psalm 139:14). God made wholes not souls, as Tom Wright puts it. Jesus doesn’t tell us to contemplate philosophical concepts. He encourages us to study birds and flowers to understand God’s Kingdom (Matthew 6:25-34). In fact, matter matters so much to God that in Jesus he entered into his material creation. Jesus, God with us, is the greatest possible ‘Yes!’ to physical, flesh-and-blood life, both human and animal.

Look at Job: a man who had it all, materially-speaking, and then lost it all, along with family and health. How did God answer his raging and questioning? Not by telling him to be more spiritual, or to contemplate the happiness he’d receive after death. God made him look more closely at the bio-physical world around him. Ironically, Job’s problem was that material things, specifically the non-human natural world, had not been important enough to him. His world had been centred on himself. It was in wildness and wilderness, in the mystery and majesty of untamed nature, in recognising that this world is not for us but is in the deepest sense for God that Job began to put the pieces back together.

What about us? If we try and pretend matter doesn’t matter, we get sucked into an unconscious materialism, we treat God’s earth without the respect God gives it, we cease worshipping God with our whole being, and we fail to enjoy God’s material blessings – which are not found in owning and possessing, but in enjoying, receiving and sharing God’s gift of creation. So next time you need some material therapy, keep clear of the mall. Read Psalm 104 and then step outside and immerse yourself in the wonder of God’s creation.

by Tom Rowley, Executive Director of A Rocha USA

In cities and towns across the United States, Christian faith is hard at work—well beyond the stained glass and steeples. It may not be obvious. But it’s there. It’s there in healthcare, housing and education. It’s present in programs for the hungry, the addict and the abused. It’s even in the gym. And I’m not simply referring to the faith of the many Christians who work in these arenas, but to the institutional identities themselves. Indeed, faith has long been a driving force in the founding of organizations and services that enhance our communities--from Jesuit schools to Methodist hospitals, from pregnancy centers and food pantries to Habitat for Humanity and the YMCA.

Now imagine those services weren’t there, that faith was missing in action. Picture your community with gaping holes in this fabric of faith-driven works that fosters health and wholeness in society, blessing those who serve as much as those who are served.

Sadly, just such a gap exists in most communities today—one left by Christians ignoring and in some cases actively opposing the biblical mandate to care for the Earth, which God created and called "very good."

Both the excuses for and the results of our abdication are many. Political divisions, economic tradeoffs and differences over the cause and severity of challenges and the choice of solutions make environmental stewardship controversial for many believers. Bad theology that twists humanity’s dominion into a license to exploit and despoil only complicates matters. Excuses notwithstanding, anything but the most jaded reading of the Bible reveals that throughout Old Testament and New God’s people are instructed to lovingly steward ALL that God created.

And when we haven’t, care of creation has fallen to those whose motivations and methods are often at odds with what the Bible teaches. Earth care can become Earth worship. Humans can be seen as just another species at best, pests at worst. And in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges, despair becomes the order of the day.

Fortunately, things are changing.

Christians are starting to add the non-human portion of creation to our care list. We are going green--at least green-ish. We’re recycling and putting up clotheslines. We’re taking shorter showers, eating more locally grown food and putting fewer miles on the car and more on the bicycle (or Birkenstocks, for the really crunchy). We’ve even swapped Styrofoam for ceramic to hold our organic, shade-grown, fair-trade, fellowship-hall coffee. All to the good and to God’s glory. But is that enough? Is there anything more we as God’s stewards ought to be doing?

For some, the answers to those questions may well be “Yes, that’s enough. And no, I don’t need to do anything more.” Fair enough.

Others, in growing numbers, are carrying their care for creation out into their communities. Following the lead of those who earlier sought the “peace and prosperity of the city” by building hospitals and high schools, these followers of Jesus are now planting organic gardens that help both people and pollinators; cleaning and protecting streams, lakes and entire watersheds; planting trees; removing invasive species; running creation-care workshops; building nature trails and more. All to the good and to God’s glory.

Many of these efforts—I’m tempted to say the best of them—work with and help secular groups who also care for the creation albeit without knowing, much less worshipping, the Creator. And while that help is at times met with skepticism if not hostility, humility and hard work go a long way toward overcoming even the most strident objections.

What the creation groans for, and the unbelieving world needs to see from those who claim to love the Creator, is a little less talk and a lot more action. When we do that, when we go and preach the Gospel to all creation using, as St. Francis puts it, "words if necessary", we will begin at last to fill that gaping hole in our communities and in God’s wondrous yet beleaguered creation. And just as with healthcare and housing, feeding and teaching, and every other act of giving, those who serve will be blessed as much as those who are served.

by Emiko Corey, Farm Manager of Santa Barbara A Rocha Five Loaves Farm

Rebecca Laughton writes “agriculture is sustainable when it is ecologically sound, economically viable, socially just, humane and adaptable, and is a dynamic concept which allows for the changing needs of an increasing global population.”[i] Sustainable agriculture is the alternative philosophy of farming that considers each member of the food system as well as the environment. The food system is characterized not just by the farmer, but also “researchers, input suppliers, farm workers, unions, farm advisors, processors, retailers, consumers and policymakers.”[ii] Sustainable agriculture is defined beyond methods of farming and looks at the big picture of justice within agriculture, including: consumer food security and safety, environmental health, economic viability of farms and social equity issues surrounding farm labor and processing conditions. As a farmer of the Santa Barbara A Rocha Five Loaves Farm, I seek sustainability because I believe this is how God calls me to be a good steward of the land and resources in which I farm.

The concept of sustainable agriculture has developed out of disappointments in modern industrial agriculture characterized by a centralization of power, control, and wealth, a value of competition and capitalism and an attitude of domination of nature to meet production goals.[iii] This has led to corporations instead of families running farmers, many consumer misunderstandings around the health and safety of food, exploitation of marginalized laborers and environmental degradation. Sustainable agriculture seeks to respond to these changes, bringing back some of the “old farm values” while being innovative it its call to make changes for the future generations of farmers.

Sustainable agriculture seeks to bring justice to the consumer.

Food should be safe, healthy and affordable.  At Five Loaves Farm, we have the opportunity to give all produce grown on site to the hungry poor of Santa Barbara. In a society where the hungry are often given cast-offs or damaged produce it is a privilege to provide the highest quality of produce to those in need. Five Loaves Farm is committed to contributing to food security, defined by the USDA as “a condition in which ‘all people at all times have access to enough food for a healthy, active life. At minimum, food security includes the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods…’”[iv] We work with the non-profit organizations that receive our produce to promote health through educating community members about new produce and how to use fresh vegetables through recipe sharing. It is our belief that everyone in our community has deserves to eat healthy, fresh, organic produce.

Sustainable agriculture is committed to environmental justice.

At Five Loaves Farm we do not use pesticides, fungicides or synthetic fertilizers. These chemicals create a biological imbalance on the farm and contaminate ecological processes in the local watershed and surrounding wildlife areas. Our agricultural lands are understood as an ecosystem. I plant flowers that increase the amount of beneficial insects and pollinators. I add compost and plant cover crops to increase the microbiological activity and organic matter in the soil which increases soil overall health and fertility. I am careful with the amount of irrigation used so that excess nitrogen does not runoff and enter into local streams and eventually the ocean. We are in the process of planting a native hedgerow that will increase the amount of native pollinators on our site. In the future we would like to also build owl boxes and raptor perches to increase the amount of natural rodent predators we have on the farm. All of these practices are also in accordance with USDA organic farming standards.

Sustainable agriculture emphasizes the need to have economically viable farms.

Economic viability has three sources. First, it comes simply from making sufficient profits from the sale of produce. Next, it comes from a diversified farm that creates resiliency if there is crop loss. And lastly, it comes from the consumer holding a higher value for the work of the grower and the product produced. Many small farmers have begun selling at local Farmer’s Markets or through Community Supported Agriculture programs. The middleman is removed to increase profits and the consumer’s direct connection with the farmer increases the value people place in the profession. Those who are farming should be valued by the wages they are paid and appropriate respect for the job performed.

Sustainable agriculture engages in social justice.

In conventional agriculture, laborers are often treated as second-class citizens; given brutal working conditions with minimal pay. Sustainable agriculture seeks to address the needs of those employed on the farm, through fair wages, higher safety standards, adequate housing and year-round employment. For Five Loaves Farm, the primary way we take part in social justice is through community building. Our farm laborers, those who volunteer and intern at the farm are not simply completing a task, they are participating in the community built around the farm. Weekly we host volunteers and interns who participate in all aspects of the farm, planting, weeding and harvesting. Each volunteer is given a full experience of what farm labor is like. The challenge of the work instills a sense of respect for those who do these tasks all day.

The motivation behind sustainable agriculture is to “find a way to feed ourselves more in keeping with the logic of nature, to build a food system that looked more like an ecosystem that would draw its fertility and energy from the sun. To feed ourselves otherwise was ‘unsustainable,’ a word that’s been so abused that we’re apt to forget that what it very specifically means: Sooner of later it must collapse.”[v] As a sustainable agriculture farmer I seek sustainability for the consumer and those who receive our produce, for the environment, the soil I grow in and the surrounding ecologies, for the longevity of the farm and for all those who come to work on the farm. I believe that as farmers we can feed to world through sustainable farming practices and I ask that you join in the process of seeking sustainability within our food system.

           

By Dave Timmer, Stewardship Director, NW Washington A Rocha

We’re bombarded with tradition at this time of the year.  As I get older, I think back on the advent traditions of my church.  There was a time that I didn’t think my church really dealt with advent.  That mostly came out of familiarity - traditions often become so second nature that we don’t realize they are traditions.  It also came out of spiritual immaturity.  Christmas was about presents under the tree and the church rituals were just a sideshow.  Furthermore, and this still happens, my postmodern mind tends to get frustrated by the tradition battles that take place every year.  The fights over which decorations are appropriate in the sanctuary, or the ridiculous “War on Christmas” that a certain cable news station likes to invent.  Now, I see greed creep into my five year-old’s mind as he looks through a Christmas Lego magazine.  This is frustrating.  So, rather than enjoy this time of year, my jaded mind would rather just skip it. 

Because of this, I need to remind myself that there are some advent traditions that are good to remember.

Every year, four Sundays before Christmas, the music changed in church.   The kids jockeyed for position to be Mary or Joseph in the upcoming play, not just a stoic shepherd or, even worse, a sheep.  And each week, a church family was responsible for lighting one more candle in the Advent wreath.  Of course, adding a candle each week dramatically increased the odds of lighter malfunctions. 

This is probably my biggest advent memory – big brother (who is just old enough to be responsible with fire) is desperately clicking the unresponsive lighter and with an increasing amount of panic, he gives it a bit of a shake before finally making eye contact with dad.  Dad is nervously watching, mulling over his options of how to help.  Then just as dad is about to move, the lighter miraculously ignites and a soft chuckle rises from the congregation.  Big brother redeems himself by getting all the candles lit without also igniting his sleeve.  Dad smiles…disaster averted. 

This year, though, I’ve been more aware of an advent emphasis on “waiting”.  It is an attempt to empathize with the young couple at the center of the Christmas story.  This couple wonders what awaits them in Bethlehem – with a new baby set to arrive soon, very soon.  No hospital arrangements are ready for them.  They don’t even have an open couch arranged.  Furthermore, this baby isn’t even Joseph’s.   

Today, I’m wondering if this emphasis on waiting is appropriate.  There was a time for waiting, yes.  The Biblical story, brilliantly, plays this out.  As far back as the Genesis story, a promise is given.   A promise of redemption, a promise to make things right again.  The curse will be knocked back.  That is the central theme – and the story is amazing.  No matter how bad things get, God is not about to abandon this promise.  Noah builds a big boat.  Abraham has a son.  David becomes king.  It’s going to happen. 

But God’s people rebel and Babylon creeps nearer.  The situation is as bad as it can get.  The prophets describe the scene.  Their sieged capitol city is in ruins.  People are so hungry.  There are stories circulating of mothers eating their own starved children.  The king, cowardly, fled the city.  But he was quickly captured, his sons were murdered, his eyes were cut out, his hands were bound and he was dragged into exile.  The temple is a smoldering pile of rocks.  God is gone and his people are scattered.  They are forced to leave their homes and their farms.  The symbol of God’s promise - the “promised” land - is no longer theirs; the prophets long for restoration. 

Throughout this longing, though, there weaves a beautiful thread of hope.  There are promises of peace and justice (often quite violent justice…but justice).  There are promises of deliverance and re-membering the scattered people.  There is the promise of a Messiah and rest.  There is hope, even, for the land.  The “promised” land experiences a Sabbath.

After these promises, however, there is silence…for a few centuries.  This is the time to wait. 

Finally, the silence breaks.  Remember those promises.  There is now a new conqueror with a Roman name.  Remember that royal line.  The people have come back to that same land.  Remember that the land rested.  There is a new temple and new traditions.  Remember the pictures of justice that those prophets painted.  The new conqueror wants to keep track of all those people with all those traditions.  Remember how God uses nations to write his story.  And a poor, pregnant, unmarried couple travels across the country to have a baby in a barn.  Remember the Messiah that they wrote about. 

The waiting is over.  This is what they’ve been waiting for.  The rest is history, right?  We’ve even made this moment our fulcrum of time.  Everything has changed.

Jesus’ kingdom has been established.  In it, the hard work of redemption is occurring.  This isn’t happening in some far-off place or some future kingdom.   God’s redemptive work is happening today.  His story continues. 

So what are we waiting for? 

The Christmas story has happened – remember it, yes.  Empathize with that young desperate couple – definitely.  But the time for waiting is over.  

It’s time to join in.

 

 

 

By Ginny Vroblesky, founding Director of A Rocha USA

 I had often seen the tree on my morning walks.  It was striking in its own way.  I had glanced at it with pity, seeing it as an example of the abuse of man – specifically the gas and electric company.  It bore the scars of missing branches.  Its trunk had been repeatedly cut to below the level of the power lines. Here was the tallest tree of the eastern forest, a tulip tree, stunted, gnarled and misshapen.

 This week I stopped to truly consider the tree for the first time. I was surprised to turn around and discover a German shepherd dog laying a stick at my feet.  “Does he want me to pick it up,” I asked his master who was coming up close behind him.  “He wouldn’t let you,” he replied.  “He is just taking a rest. Are you looking at the damaged house”, he asked.”

“No”, “I have been wondering what that tree across the street would say to us.” 

“Look at me.  I live in spite of the gas and electric company,” the man proclaimed.  “What about the one over here that fell on the house,” I asked.  “He grew too big for his own good,” he quipped.

 I laughed as the man and his dog walked on and then it seemed as though the tree began to speak to my spirit.  “How old are you,” I asked.  “Our heart wood flows at a different rhythm than yours,” he responded (at least it seemed to be a he). “We tulip trees can live long – you would say 600 years, but we think in terms of maturity and fruitfulness rather than age. We know that our lives will continue to be fruitful long after we, ourselves are gone.”  I had been wondering how young the tree had been when it had first encountered the power lines, but the tree’s response turned my thoughts to myself, my own struggle with growing older and questions of my life’s value. “What do you mean,” I asked.  

 “Have you never seen a tree that has fallen in the forest? When we leave our place we create a gap in the woods, letting in light to a previously dark spot.  New, young trees have the opportunity to grow.  All parts of our bodies are valuable.  When we fall, tiny organisms come and release the energy that has been trapped in our cells.  It goes back into the soil to nourish a new life. Remember, too, that we have been on earth much longer than man. We see things differently.”

 “That’s true”, I said.  I had read the story of Genesis and also knew the fossil record.  This reminded me of other verses in the Bible. “I have heard it said,” I began, that “all the trees of the field clap their hands.” “Ah, yes,” he replied.  We trees set our faces towards our Creator.  We rejoice when we see his work, whether it is in the provision of the sun or rain or when he keeps his word.  We share the earth with you.  We face challenges all the time, many that we cannot control, such as leaf borers, disease, just as you do.  But we deal with the challenges as they come- we do not add to them by concern for our future or fretting over the past.  We know we have value.  Of course right now that pesky English Ivy growing up my trunk annoys me.  There is nothing I can do about it and if it grows too dense it will smother my light, Oh well.”

 “What about the horrible things the gas and electric company did to you,” I demanded.  “Look at me,” the tree whispered.  “Look at my branches.”  And I did.  They looked like huge muscular arms.  They sprang horizontally from the trunk below the power lines, bent at the elbow and then sent leaders soaring to the sky.  The tips of the braches reached as high as any neighboring tree.  Their leaves waved in the sun up with those of the Willow Oak across the street.  No near by tulip tree was taller than this one.

 “I have noticed that the furrows in your bark seem deeper that the other tulip trees your same size.” I observed. “That’s true”, he replied.  My life has been challenged in ways theirs has not. “My brothers have had a more delightful place to grow. I might not be as handsome as my peers, but I have fulfilled my task on earth just as well.”

 “What task,” I questioned.  “Why to reach for the sun and to give life.  Don’t you know that I eat light?  I gather light particles and from them make food for everyone else. Why, my branches and leaves feed insects, aphids and caterpillars.  Some make honeydew from the life I give them.  They in turn provide food for other creatures.  Without my brethren, and me there would be no life on earth.  This is a task worth striving for, wouldn’t you agree?”

 I certainly would, I thought, to give life must be a wonderful thing.  But he went on.

“I have been challenged repeatedly, but – look – my flowers are just as lovely and smell as sweet as anyone else’s.

 I wondered at him.  I had expected bitterness and regret.  But he actually seemed to be grateful for the difficulties in his life, for here he stood while some of his peers were gone, toppled by strong winds.  His branches had had to spread wide and low.  He encircled the power lines.  His neighbors had fallen on them. He was confident of his future.  He knew that even though he died his value would go on. “What about you?” he asked. “Thank you,” I murmured as I turned thoughtfully away.  But there was lightness in my heart that lasted almost the whole day.

By Robert Campbell*, Pastor of Santa Margarita Community Church

I find myself listening to this interview with Peter Harris again and again. I sat in the room while it took place, but still I go back to it often. Those moments as a fly on the wall set something free in me and I make mental pilgrimages to them often. On one of those recent mental trips, while mowing my lawn, Peter Harris asked me a question (not literally, but you know what I mean):  “What does an A Rocha-shaped church look like?”. I waited and waited for the gloriously details of a church in the ditches of creation care, but he didn’t answer his own question. He left it up to others to live out and discover. Therefore, as a deliberate and dedicated lover of the local church, on that pilgrimage with a community of local people, I feel compelled to try and answer: What does an A Rocha shaped church look like?

An A Rocha-shaped church starts with a people in a particular place who are willing to do the hard stuff. They do it out of their holistic theology of Christ’s lordship over all of life, and with the leadership of a pastor who is also a real person living in that real place. I realize I am saying nothing new. New is not the point. Believing and acting are the point. Any definition of a local church must begin, with real people. People with actual names like Matt, Su, Ben and Serenity, who are not only fellow parishioners but also neighbors. When an A Rocha-shaped church prays, “Our Father,” these are the faces that come to mind. Those faces have stories to tell. The stories involve joys like marriages, babies being born and relationships being restored. They also include many human sorrows caused from death, brokenness and simple sin between people in their circles. That’s the way it is with real people in an A Rocha-shaped church. The actual people matter more than theoretical people who might attend one day if we run the right advertisement or offer the right program.

The real people are also dirt people. Maybe “dust” people is a better description. Whenever I use the word “dirt” in a sermon I am reminded by my geologist friend, Bonnie, that dirt is what you find on the floor. I am referring to “soil,” she says. I get it, and A Rocha friend Mark McReynolds tells me it’s not a “bird,” it’s a male Western Tanager. I am learning, slowly. The book of Genesis uses the word “dust” to describe the creation of mankind; we are dust and breath, body and Spirit. An A Rocha-shaped church will be made up of dust people. Dust people are not fake people living in a fake world, but a desperately practical people working it all out in the dirt of daily life. They are concerned with every step and every act for the good of the people they live with in the place where they live together. A dust person builds a fence around the yard and puts the unfinished side facing inward so their neighbors see the clean part. A dust person hears about A Rocha’s kestrel program in NW Washington and asks how it might benefit their grape-growing neighbors in California. My people are dust people and they are the real thing. They are Christian all the way down to the dirt.

What we believe comes out of our fingertips. This is always true. An A Rocha-shaped church is formed out of an A Rocha-shaped theology, a theology that includes the dirt. We believe that God is the owner of all things. Creation is His and His will is going to be accomplished in it. We believe that God has given us the responsibility to steward His creation towards His ends, which includes both people and place since it is impossible to separate them. We believe all of our daily actions on this planet we call home are acts of worship towards Jesus. We believe all this because Jesus Christ is the Lord of all of life, not just the so-called “spiritual” parts. Our working, playing and loving are all spiritual acts when done by faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross. While our culture relegates religion to the private sphere, the God of the Scriptures does no such thing. As believers, we know what we go about our daily lives under the smile of God because God is happy with Jesus and we belong to Jesus. Because that is firm and settled, we are free to just try the hard stuff to see if it makes a difference, and it will make a difference.

When questioned about what A Rocha should look like in particular place, Peter Harris is known to answer, “I don’t know, I don’t live there”. He is right, only the people living in place really know how people concerns and place concerns come together. In my place they come together between ranchers and environmentalists, both who love the land, but speak a very different language.

What is it in your place? An A Rocha-shaped church will explore the needs of their own place and be willing to just do the hard stuff because it needs to get done. Don’t know where to begin? Come and see what Marty and Emiko have going at the Santa Barbara A Rocha project site. Go see the great work Dave is doing with the watershed in NW Washington.You will be inspired, challenged, taught and encouraged. Then you can go home and try something.

Me? I’m that Pastor. I live here. I am effecting and affected by my people and my place. Their stories become part of my story and their circles become my circles. It is my responsibility to lead my congregation in learning to value each other and the place where we live. It is the charge of God to me to bless my people with a truly human spirituality that affirms the redemptive power of their daily lives outside of the church gathering. Today, I offer that blessing to you. If you are an ecologically oriented believer trying to find your way to bring people and place together, but not feeling the affirmation of your local church: you are doing a good work, the Lord bless you and keep you. If you are ecological worker, daily striving to do good without the ordination that the church gives to ministers or medical doctors: you are loving your neighbor well, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.

 

 

*Robert Campbell is Pastor of Santa Margarita Community Church, an Evangelical Free Church on the Central Coast of California.

By John Humphreys

I subscribe to the BRILLIANT “Parasite of the Day” web page.

As the organizers put it – “The United Nations declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity. In celebration of the enormous diversity of parasites and to highlight their importance, we created this blog, which showcased a species of parasite every day. Now that 2010 is over, we will continue to add more parasites from time to time.”

All the way through 2010, all of us subscribers were entertained, educated and disgusted in equal measure by the extraordinary variety of organisms which make their living off other creatures.
Some are more-or-less tolerable for the host: the mistletoe, which all of us love to kiss under, is not often lethal to the tree it grows on and the ubiquitous head louse is merely an irritation to us, although has school districts and parents up in arms when they see it.

Some are genuinely spectacular – like the largest flower in the world, sported by the rainforest parasite Rafflesia arnoldii. Others are actually parasitoids rather than parasites because, simply, they always kill their host – the newly discovered and very worrying “white nose syndrome”, a fungus that chokes hibernating bats, is a case in point.

Then there are the plutocrats of the parasite world – the hyperparasites, who parasitize parasites themselves. An example is the tiny wasp Caenacis inflexa, which attacks other wasps like Eurytoma rosae and Glyphomerus stigma…which themselves are parasitic on  the “gall wasp” Diplolepis rosae…the ecology of plant galls is endlessly fascinating.

Of course, there are some genuinely terrifying creatures like the nightmare-inducing tongue-eating louse and the ghastly crab-controlling barnacle.

Now, many of these beasts…and plants…and fungi…have exquisitely exacting tastes. They may only target one single organism to live off. While this type of deal must have some advantages for the parasite, there is one enormous downside: your host dies out, you die out.

Which leads me to the tick, Ixodes neuquensis. It is only found on a gorgeous little opossum-like creature, the (confusingly named) ‘mountain monkey’ Dromiciops gliroides. This charming little thing lives in South America and its forest home is being torn down.
When it goes, when it is gone forever, and two things will happen.

Firstly, we will never see it alive again. Films don’t do the same for me, sorry. It will be gone, and nothing this side of the Second Coming can bring it back.

Secondly, a variety of living creatures dependent on it will join it in oblivion. Not just the tick and other parasites; this marsupial mammal is the only known way that a unique plant –Tristerix corymbosus, a type of mistletoe - can spread its seeds (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromiciops_gliroides and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristerix).

Ironically this mistletoe only parasitizes two cacti. So the whole ecosystem is teetering on the edge of oblivion. As I say ad nauseam, the only way for you and I to do anything about this is to help preserve the forest. And spread the word. Thanks for reading.

 

Cute, almost gone.

Joe Friday had it wrong.

As Boomers (and Hulu fans) will remember, the Dragnet detective was famous for his deadpan, cut-to-the-chase approach: “Just the facts, ma’am.” Good for police work; not so much for prompting change—environmental or any other kind. To do that, we have to aim for the heart, not just the head.

Consider any number of modern maladies: obesity, HIV/AIDS, drug addiction, etc. All are “treatable” with facts: “A leads to B. Avoid A, you avoid B.” All are still rampant.

Or ponder the health of planet Earth. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’ Red List:

• Thirty-eight percent of known species are currently threatened with extinction.
• The current extinction rate is approximately 1,000 times faster than the “background” or natural rate.
• One species goes extinct every 20 minutes.

Care only about people? Consider these sobering statistics:

• Sixty percent of Earth’s “ecosystem services,” which process our wastes and provide us with air, water and food, are seriously degraded and cannot be maintained at this pace. (United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.)
• Some forty percent of deaths worldwide are caused by pollution of various types. (Cornell University)

If facts alone were enough to convince us--and by extension our institutions and societies--to change, surely these would do the trick. They haven’t.

Nor, I must add, has a clear understanding of what the Bible says on the subject. We now have countless books, sermons and seminars on creation care. The facts are in. The theology is settled. God really does care about God’s creation and told humankind to take care of it. And still we Christians argue, waffle and ignore.

Despite the failure of both science and theology to affect change, those of us in the conservation arena—both secular and faith-based—continue to act as if they will: “All we need is for people to understand!” At best, we are like rubes speaking louder and slower to force English on a Frenchman. At worst, we’re poster children for Einstein’s definition of insanity.  We keep talking at the head, when we should be speaking to the heart.

How do we do that? In a word: relationship.

Marketers, of course, know how to tug at our heartstrings. Photos of the starving child or the polar bear cub have their place, I suppose. But a true change of heart—one accompanied by lasting changes in attitude and behavior—requires more. It requires relationship. By inviting people into relationship--with those of us who care about the creation, with the creation itself, and especially with the Creator—we begin to speak to the heart (as opposed to merely pulling its strings). And the heart begins to listen. Someone may be uninterested in environmental protection, but an afternoon weeding and watering the community garden with a person who is both loving and passionate about growing things changes the conversation. I may know nothing of the mercury poisoning our rivers, but time on the water with a winsome and knowledgeable guide can't help but enlighten and inspire me to care. Relationships —more than facts, theology or anything else—change our hearts and then change our actions.

To Christians, this should come as no surprise. It is, after all, how God does it.