Archives For Do Something

Dig In for God’s Earth!

Nathan Aaberg —  June 26, 2019 — Leave a comment

People standing and planting in former farm field

Over the weekend I joined about 20 other volunteers in helping one small corner of God’s earth make progress towards renewal. I want to encourage you to seek out opportunities like this in your own life. They’re out there.

In the photo above, you can see what we were doing – planting thousands of young prairie grasses where corn and soy beans used to be grown.

The Libertyville Township Open Space District has long owned this 44-acre parcel of land. For the last number of decades a farmer farmed it. Soil eroded, harming local waterways. Wildlife, including butterflies, found no food or sanctuary there.

The Open Space Disrict has begun restoring this field to prairie and oak savanna. In the first step, contractors removed 5,500 linear feet of drain tile from the field to allow water to more naturally infiltrate the land. But until diverse prairie vegetation can be established, preventing erosion is critical. This is why you see the erosion-preventing, bio-degradable mesh blankets in the photo.

And into that fabric volunteers are planting 10,000 young prairie grasses over two weekends. Specifically, we are planting prairie cord grass.

This is a favorite prairie plant of mine. Prairie cord grass likes its “feet” a bit wet. It also spreads quickly through energetic rhizomes. Pretty soon you have a thick, beautiful stand of green waving and undulating in the wind. Below the ground you have a thick, anchoring root system. This makes it perfect for erosion control.

For nearly three straight hours, we used hand-spades and even just our hands to create small gaps in the fabric. Once we had access to the soil, which was usually somewhere between being moist and water-covered muck, we dug a thin hole. Into that hole, we inserted the prairie cord grass plant. We then pressed the soil close around it.

If you don’t like sun, breeze, dirt on your hands, living things around you, and the chance to talk and even banter with people around you, then you should definitely avoid this kind of thing.

But I’m guessing you’re someone who would enjoy the experience. And, like it did for me, it would do your heart good. By the end, I felt tired and yet very alive and satisfied.

Being part of these kinds of projects is a way to honor and serve our Creator God. This is a natural part of a whole Christian faith. We should do what we can on as large a scale as we can to enable God’s earth to be as alive as possible and to recover from the wounds we have inflicted on it.

And doing so is a spiritual growth experience.

Look for opportunities like these. Non-profit land trusts and nature conservation organizations near you are a good place to start. Agencies like conservation districts, park disricts, and departments of natural resources are also well connected.

Dig in!

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Where Are the Christian Greta Thunbergs?

Nathan Aaberg —  June 10, 2019 — 2 Comments

Have you had the experience where dealing with a problem couldn’t just be one of a million things on your to-do list?

Perhaps it was a loved one getting seriously sick. Perhaps it was a crisis at work. Perhaps a rising river threatened to flood your community. You joined in with others building walls with sandbags for hours on end. You had to do something about it above all else. The rest of your normal routines had to fall away. Bills and sleep could wait.

When an issue is urgent, tangible and very specific, we respond to that issue with all that we have. We put everything else aside.

It’s much harder for us to respond that way when the causes of the challenge are broad and hard to see and when the impacts are incremental. This sums up the general human experience with things like national debt, education system dysfunction, cultural decline, and crumbling infrastructure.

This is even more true of problems for the rest of Creation. Our civilization dams up rivers, creates dead zones, depletes fisheries, degrades soils, and destroys and fragments habitat. Where God’s living things once lived there is only silence and stillness. If we’re aware at all, we may feel bad, but our lives carry us along.

Greta Thunberg, a 16-year old girl from Sweden, is challenging all of us in this regard. She is a rare person who won’t accept the collapse of the commons.

She has stopped going to school in order to protest at the Swedish Parliament and to bring attention to the dire threat that is global climate chaos. She is now speaking around the world. The world is paying close attention.

Like a prophet, Greta speaks powerfully and directly. Diagnosed with Aspergers, her intense focus and directness are sometimes disconcerting. She believes, in fact, that her Aspergers has driven her to become an activist. It has been a gift.

“The politics that’s needed to prevent the climate catastrophe—it doesn’t exist today,” said Greta in a New Yorker article about her. “We need to change the system, as if we were in crisis, as if there were a war going on.”

You should watch her speech to the United Nations. Her example is prompting other students around the world to start school strikes and protests as well.

So where are the Christian Greta Thunbergs?

Climate change chaos is causing tremendous disruption and harm for people around the globe, especially the poor. Farmers around the world are becoming increasingly desperate. It is also accelerating the extinction crisis to a new level.

Greta learned of all this and couldn’t believe people weren’t in crisis mode and acting at all levels of life. She stopped speaking. Eventually, she began a new path of life.

How do we as Christians not raise the alarm and jettison our normal routines as well?

Why aren’t there new Christian prophets completely devoted to urging commitment to God that will translate into better ways of living at the individual level and at the community and national level? What is wrong with Christian culture that many Christians don’t care or worse? Are we not paying attention? Or have our hearts not been changed by our faith? Can we love God and love our neighbor and yet pretend all of this is not happening?

Three things come to mind as I consider those questions.

First, my impression is that Christians don’t have a good track record of taking care of God’s earth. We have tended to go along with the dominant culture in which we find ourselves. If Christian Greta Thunbergs emerged and Christians responded to them, it would be the first time in history Christians stepped forward as a whole body of Christ based on the conviction that God’s earth mattered.

Why is this? I’m going to be writing occasional blogs as a way to dive further into this topic. There are, I believe, multiple reasons.

Second, two verses from the Bible come to mind. In Luke 14:5 we read this: “Then he asked them, “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?””

Being deeply devoted to keeping the Sabbath was one of the central features of the Jewish faith-culture. Jesus was making clear that nothing should stand in the way of compassion for people and non-human life we have responsibility for. Ignoring the cries of one’s child and the moaning of an ox while going to worship God would be completely contrary to who God is. It would also be an indication that the state of our heart is rotten. Following the routine, even the routine of holy worship, would be wrong.

Consider, too, Proverbs 21:3: “To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.”

Today, through communications, we better understand what is happening around the world then ever before. Our economies are more interdependent than ever before. In some ways, due to the development of technology, the condition of the earth is collectively ours more than ever before. The systems we are part of shape and reshape other places around the world. So when we hear of pain and destruction to people and life beyond our family, I would suggest the core principles at hand are the same as what Jesus asked in Luke and what we read in Proverbs.

Third, I can’t help noticing that, despite my convictions, I’ve largely gone along with my normal routine.

If I’m aware of all of these issues and have these convictions, why haven’t I done more of what Greta Thunberg has done?

The excuses and rationalizations have loud voices in my head. I have a family. My parents are failing. Someone else will surely do something. This is when I realize I sound alot like the people in the Gospels who wouldn’t follow Jesus because they had obligations to life as usual.

The whole Chrisitan faith-life includes putting your faith into action and your life on the line in pursuit of what God desires.

So do I really believe? Am I really committed to following Jesus? What would I do if I was?

And why do I feel alone struggling with these questions?

 

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A Calling to Honey Creek – Part 3

Nathan Aaberg —  May 27, 2019 — Leave a comment
People using shovels to fill in grave in the woods

Familiy and friends pitch in during a burial (photo courtesy of Honey Creek Woodlands).

In two previous posts (here and here), we have been sharing the story of Joe Whittaker. He played a pivotal role in the founding of the Honey Creek Woodlands green cemetery on the grounds of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia. It was, I’m convinced, his life calling.

As I wrote earlier, two elements of Joe’s story compel me to share it. First, for Creation to be healed and renewed in any significant way, we need to integrate a commitment to God’s earth into our culture. The burial of our loved ones offers a great opportunity to do just that. Burial intimately connects us with Creation. It also brings us back to the humility and radical Creation kinship of dust to dust. 

Second, when God calls you to make a difference for the future of God’s earth, you will need to step outside of your comfort zone. You and I can learn about the challenges and rewards of answering that calling from Joe.

In this last segement, you’ll learn more about the burial services at Honey Creek Woodlands, what Joe will remember from his time there, the wildlife this green cemetery supports, and what Joe is doing now.

Burials at Honey Creek

“We pride ourselves on the fact that every service is a little different,” says Joe. “The modern American funeral can start to have a little bit of a cookie cutter kind of a feel to it.”

“The pine box burial is probably the most common in terms of what people are going to be buried in,” says Joe. “Those are a nice canvas for people to express their feelings and their loss and their love. We see a lot of painting on caskets and writing and decorating of caskets. That’s something that you wouldn’t see at most modern cemeteries.”

“The family is usually heavily involved. We’ve had families help dig the grave. We’ve had families help fill in the graves. I’d say the vast majority of the time it’s actually the family that is lowering the body.”

Group of people fill grave of friend

Community burial at Honey Creek Woodlands (photo courtesy of Honey Creek Woodlands).

“I told my clients, “You can sit there and watch us do everything just like any other funeral. But we just want you to know that you are welcome to do as much as you’d like.””

“Often it’s basically a family burial. They take care of everything themselves, which in a bygone era used to be the norm. It can be a little dicey sometimes, because they don’t have a whole lot of experience doing this. But typically it’s very moving, very touching.”

Meaning and Stories

When I asked Joe, what he has going to hold onto from his time at Honey Creek Woodlands, he said it would it would be the people he’s met and the strength he’s seen in them.

“I wish every person I’ve buried would have lived a nice long life and just kind of faded out at the age of 95 or something, but that’s not the case,” says Joe. “You bury men who die at 40 and leave behind children. You bury children. You bury teenagers from car accidents. You bury suicides. You bury drug overdoses. You’re dealing with moms and dads.

“It’s hard to watch what they go through, but it’s just awesome to see the strength that people have.”

“I remember early on there was a very young man that came to see me in June of 2008, the first year we were open. He was a musician in Atlanta, and he had lung cancer. His friends brought him. They were all in their twenties, and one of the friends pulled me aside pretty early on. She said, “Look, he doesn’t have any family and doesn’t have any life insurance or any money, but don’t worry – we’re well connected with the musicians in the Atlanta area. We’re going to have a fundraising concert, and we’re going to get the money.””

“So I met with the young man. He was in pretty rough shape as he was in hospice at the time. We put him in a golf cart to take him out there. We picked him a spot. I don’t think a week went by before I got a phone call that he had passed. The person who called me was the same person who had assured me about the money. She said, “Well, we haven’t done our benefit concert yet. We thought he had more time.””

She promised, however, that even if it took until after the burial to do the benefit that they would get Honey Creek Woodlands the money. Joe trusted her. The burial went ahead.

“So they put the word out on social media that this guy had died. Money poured in from musicians from all across the country. A lot of money came out of Chicago, all the big cities. And this wasn’t like a well-known musician. He was just with a garage band.”

“By the time we buried the guy, his friends didn’t just have the money to bury him, they also made a very substantial donation to the monastery and to the hospice where he had been. And this was all pulled off by twenty-somethings.”

A Cemetery with (Wild) Life

Thanks to being managed for natural habitat, Honey Creek Woodlands is full of life.

“We see an awful lot of wildlife,” says Joe. “I’ve probably taken it for granted the amount of wildlife I’ve seen.”

Honey Creek Woodlands has owl, hawks, and all varieties of other birds. It also is a home for turtles, lizards, snakes, and amphibians.

Tiger swallowtail butterfly on flower of shrub

A tiger swallowtail butterfly at Honey Creek Woodlands. I would hope to be buried in a place like this that is full of wildlife. (Photo courtesy of Honey Creek Woodlands)

“We also have an unbelievable number of butterflies,” says Joe, “which is such a great thing for us because it’s symbolic of the resurrection.”

“I love the analogy that the caterpillar has no idea that it’s going to be a butterfly. It’s just going along being a caterpillar. And then all of a sudden, it’s a butterfly. I think that kind of has a parallel with us just living our lives the way we do not even knowing that when we’re done being this person that there’s something even more amazing yet to do.”

In fact, Honey Creek Woodlands holds the Georgia record for the number of butterflies found on a single day at one site. It helps that they have some of the best-trained butterfly counters in the Southeast.

“When we do the counts twice a year,” says Joe,  “we routinely either set a new record for ourselves or try to break the record for the state of Georgia for the number of butterflies found.”

In the chapter in Sacred Acts about Honey Creek Woodlands, the reader learns, too, that Father Francis Michael, a leader in the monastery’s decision to proceed with Honey Creek Woodlands, has identified 52 species of dragonflies on the monastery’s grounds.

The staff at Honey Creek Woodlands and visitors see a lot of deer, turkey, squirrels and chipmunks. Signs of coyotes are also about.

“We know we even have bobcats, but I’ve yet to see one,” says Joe. “People really love that wildlife is here,”

Stepping Back

While the work for Honey Creek Woodland has been a satisfying and deeply rewarding experience for Joe, it’s also been a challenge.

“It’s been very challenging for me being that I don’t live in Georgia. I’ve been going back and forth for years, and I didn’t start this project thinking it was going to be a ten year project for me.”

When he first started, his wife needed to give ever more care for her aging mother, so Joe and his wife agreed that he should work for Honey Creek Woodland despite the separations it would require for them. She would be able to focus on her mother without feeling neglectful of Joe. Joe could pursue his life mission.

But then when his wife’s mother did pass away about four years ago, they had to make a big decision about what to do. They ultimately decided that Joe should continue at Honey Creek Woodlands. since she had four more years of teaching before she retired. Still, Joe makes clear these last four years have been the hardest on them.

His wife retired on June 6, 2018. Joe officially ended his time at Honey Creek Woodlands the day before on June 5. They are enjoying their next season of life together.

I’m happy to report that Joe continues to serve Honey Creek Woodlands as an advisor and consultant. But even after his consulting work ends with Honey Creek Woodlands, his life will eventually reconnect with the place in which he invested so much of his life. Joe has recently made the decision to be buried in Honey Creek Woodlands.

“I’ll be the first member of my family not buried in South Carolina,” says Joe, “so it was a big decision. My family’s kind of scattered in a bunch of different cemeteries, so there wasn’t one that was a family cemetery. I no longer live in Charleston, which is my hometown.”

“It just seemed like more people would know me, and I would be surrounded by more friends at Honey Creek Woodlands in Georgia.”

Covered burial site in a light-filled woods

(Photo courtesy of Honey Creek Woodlands)

One last note. The numbers of green cemeteries are growing, and there is likely to be one or more in your state. I would encourage you to be discerning in choosing a green cemetery for yourself or a loved one. I totally believe in the green burial ideal, but I have seen green burial offered in woods that are clearly not being managed well for conservation. This is far better for Creation than the conventional burial, but it is not ideal.

The ideal situation is a cemetery that offers green burial as the burial method AND is managing the land of the cemetery and around it for conservation with long-term commitment and capabilities. It’s even more ideal if the land has some sort of permanent legal protection. Here’s a short piece that explains the distinctions between generic green burial and conservation burial. If you’re looking at a green burial option and have questions, I’d be happy to try to help you decipher whether it’s a good option. 

Last thought – it’s been such a delight to talk with Joe. I’d ask that you ask God to bless Joe and his wife. He answered a call and moved a better culture of living with God’s earth forward.

 

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An Earth Day Fast Experience

Nathan Aaberg —  May 5, 2019 — Leave a comment

This update on my Earth Day fast has taken longer to write than I expected. I appreciate the folks who checked in with me and wondered how it went. Here is my report.

On Monday, April 22, around 9:15 p.m., I broke my 24-hour, water-only Earth Day fast with a prayer and a light salad drizzled with drops of lemon juice. I went to bed shortly after, successfully resisting the temptation to indulge in some mint chocolate chip ice cream (organic, of course) in the refrigerator. I slept well and resumed my regular eating habits the next morning.

That’s how my Earth Day fast ended.

I find I can’t summarize the whole 24-hour experience in a pithy, Twitter-friendly form. Portions of the books I had been reading about fasting suggested one would potentially experience a mystical union with God and learn to suffer happily. Neither one of those describe my general experience.

One of the challenges with the fast was that I still had to work that day and do normal household tasks. Even though I prayed during the day and took a long walk at lunch, I found myself unable to create as much space as I would have liked to for mindfulness of God.

What I will say is that I was far more attentive to each moment as it went by. I was prepared for this from my shorter Good Friday fast. Emotions and thoughts stood out more sharply. I was also far more aware of my body. My normal instincts, I found, were to appease my body’s appetities as quickly as possible. Following what I had read, however, I did my best to direct my thoughts and emotions towards God when I felt physical discomfort.

I began my day with the reading of Psalm 104. Two phrases from the psalm became my go-to centering phrases – “…the earth is full of your creatures” and “I will sing to the Lord all my life.” As a result, those phrases imprinted themselves in my mind. In fact, they have come to mind every day since.

You might wonder how hungry I became. In The Sacred Art of Fasting, Thomas Ryan explains that the gnawing in the stomach we feel when we go without food for awhile is not technically hunger. Here’s what he writes about that gnawing:

“It’s not a genuine hunger pang (in the sense that your body needs the food) or a distress signal. It’s just the alimentary tract accommodating itself to a reduced workload.”

My brain and my body had a spirited debate about the veracity of that statement.

Nevertheless, for much of the day, I followed Ryan’s advice. I drank filtered water when I felt discomfort in my stomach. This worked just fine. Calmly naming that discomfort, moving through it, and continuing with life worked surprisingly well. Which is to say that it didn’t seem too intense or mystical.

Until about 8 p.m.

At that point, my body became much more insistent. I had a harder time staying focused on anything other than my body. This happened while I was driving around looking for a good birthday card for my father. Much sharper discomfort emanated from my core. Walking through a grocery store and a pharmacy stacked with snacks didn’t help.

Was I going to give in? Was I going to fight this sharp discomfort with my will?

Eventually, I found myself leaning into it. And from my heart came intense, urgent prayer to God out of both spiritual and physical need. This prayer was simple, direct, emotional, desperate. It came out of my weakness and forced humility. It was for me and also for God’s earth which needs God’s protection and intervention so badly. I have not had an intense prayer experience like that before.

Here are some other thoughts and notes from the fast:

Increased awareness of God’s earth 

I walked to and from work that day. In the morning, there was bright sun. Buds on trees and shrubs were bursting. Male red-winged blackbirds were making a racket as they staked out their territories. During my normal lunch period I walked around the farm our organization owns and manages. I took extra time to spend some time around the beautiful elm tree that has somehow survived all of the years.

The elm tree of the Prairie Crossing Farm on April 22, 2019.

On my walk back home, a soft rain brought a different, more mellow atmosphere. I paid particular attention to the large ant mounds that were visible in a recently burned prairie.

Sympathy for the hungry and needy

It is easy in the abstract to feel sympahty for the hungry and needy when one’s stomach is full. That sympathy is much more heartfelt when one is hungry oneself. I could not imagine a child concentrating in school on an empty stomach. It is heartbreaking to think of children in American and in the rest of the world experiencing hunger on a regular basis.

This broken world

To be honest, I unconsciously expected my day to be smooth and on a spiritually higher plane. I think I expected to find myself able to handle difficulties more calmly and easily.

In general, I did find my thinking clear and decisive. But when I read a group email that I took as directly insulting to me in an emerging grassroots group, my spiritual serenity didn’t do so well. The personal attack stung despite my fast and my spiritual alertness. I tried not to think about it. That just made it worse.

This was a reminder of the brokenness of the world that permeates relationships. It highlighted the serious fractures in community relationships that prevent us from creating a just world and from truly being God’s selfless shepherds of the world. What hope does Creation have? What hope do we have?

Seeking guidance takes sustained focus

One of my hopes going into the fast is that I would gain greater insight into the direction of my life. That did not emerge at all. I think this was in part because I did not have the space to really pray and write about the topic.

The tick

My interactions with Creation were not all beauty and light. After I took my walk around the farm here, I settled down at my desk and dived into my work. About an hour later I felt a light prickling on the skin of my right just below my knee.

When I pulled up my pant leg, there was a slow-moving tick. I instantly and instinctively flicked the tick onto the floor.

An ethical bind presented itself. I did not feel one with Creation at that moment. Would I kill the tick out of anger? I am not proud to admit that I considered various creative methods of doing so. But what was the right thing to do in light of my faith?

Just then I saw a group of energetic chickens making their way through our orchard and parking lot in the company of one of our staff. It clicked. Chickens like to eat insects and other small bugs.

So the tick was fed to a chicken. Instead of violence from anger, a chicken was able to do what it naturally does. From the life of the tick, the chicken gained sustenance. A good, protein-rich egg would result.

Belief and unbelief

When I am honest, I find my belief is mixed with unbelief. My faith compelled me to try this fast. My lack of faith prompted me, deep inside, to question whether it would actually connect me to the spiritual reality of God. I took that step. I did find a heightened awareness of life around me. I also was acutely aware of my own weakness, a deep need for God, and a desperation for God to save what is left of Creation. It requires almost too much faith for me to pray for the renewal of Creation, for God to fulfill his promise of a new heaven and a new earth.

I found, too, how easily I normally pass through life in an unconscious way. The fast woke me up. Maybe faith is, in part, about being truly awake?

 

As I meditate further on the fast and how it didn’t seem to quite live up to the ideals I had read about, it occurs to me that I was naive. Like any practice, whether spiritual or otherwise, one doesn’t just try it once and suddenly reap all of the benefits. Spiritual practices require practice.

I realize my experience of church has not prepared me for this. This quote from Dallas Willard in The Spirit of the Disciplines rings true to me:

“One of the greatest deceptions in the practice of the Christian religion is the idea that all that really matters is our internal feelings, ideas, beliefs, and intentions. It is this mistake about the psychology of the human being that more than anything else divorces salvation from life, leaving us a headful of vital truths about God and a body unable to fend off sin.”

I want the abundant life Jesus offered. Life involves our spirits and our bodies. Fasting is an ancient practice of unifying our spirits and our minds and of opening our hearts to God. So I intend to keep practicing and seeing where it leads.

And I would like to do it with others.

I realize that my fast ended up being an individual experience. Our inner spiritual life does need feeding. But just as we are both spiritual and physical beings, we need both individual development and community bonds. I hope someday to find a community of believers who want to embark on fasts and other spiritual practices together.

I pray that you, too, will look for ways to deepen your faith-life. Even when it means you’re not exactly sure what to expect.

 

P.S. On behalf of my family, I made two donations at the end of my fast. One was to Cool Learning Experience, a summer camp run by First Baptist Church in Waukegan, Illinois, by my friend Barbara Waller. It provides a nature-oriented summer camp experience for chidren and youth in the Waukegan area who would normally not have summer camp experiences and who would be unlikely to get much experience with nature. Barbara has made the development of this camp her life mission for the last decade and has impacted, with many staff, volunteers, and supporters, hundreds of lives.

We also made a donation to African Parks, a non-profit conservation organization that rehabilitates and manages important protected areas in partnership with governments and local communities. Through this organization, people around the world are able to help resource-challenged African countries manage and defend their natural treasures. Rangers in these parks are in a life-and-death war to stop poachers from wiping out elephants and other increasingly rare animals. Global forces are driving this poaching. Support from around the world is needed to stop it.

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My Coming Earth Day Fast

Nathan Aaberg —  April 18, 2019 — Leave a comment

I’ve decided to fast and pray on Earth Day.

This is a step in a continuing odyssey for me.

Listening to a podcast recently lit the kindling of my awareness that fasting has a long history of being a powerful Christian spiritual practice. I have also long believed that a Christian faith that does not spiritual transform ones’ faith-life is not really faith at all. I will be trying my first focused fast on Good Friday with that same motivation.

My intense spiritual struggle over the condition of God’s earth also motivates me. My heart alternates between breaking at the condiition of God’s earth and intense anger. For reasons not entirely clear to me, I am acutely aware of the wounds of God’s earth. Sometimes I wish I could turn off that sensitivity. I am also painfully aware that few people of faith seem to care with any urgency. And the ones who do, including me, struggle to find meaningful traction and direction in taking meaningful, large-scale action that will alter the course our world is on (Gabe Brown is one exception).

My faith struggles mightily with all this.

So I am going to see where this leads. I recognize many Christians do not associate Earth Day nor God’s earth with their faith. Likewise, many of the people who are acting energetically and sacrificially to defend and restore Gods’ earth do not associate Christians with Earth Day either. Over time, I would like to change this. But I must start with myself.

 

Motivations

I seek the following from my Earth Day fast.

Open My Heart to God

Here is a great quote from Cistercian monk Charles Cummings in The Sacred Art of Fasting by Thomas Ryan. “The more I try to make Christ the center of my life and thoughts and actions, the more I feel every pull and tug that draws me back from the radical, loving surrender of myself.

YouTube, sports, and a host of small matters distract me. These cause me to be deaf to God and his callings as they relate to family, neighbors, and Creation.

I am hopeful that I wil experience a closer connection to God through this fast. I desire the Holy Spirit to fill me so what is uniquely me is creatively directed towards God’s ways. I want to give God’s will highest priority. Even as I write that, part of me is afraid of allowing that to happen. May this fast reduce or eliminate that fear.

Full Mourning

I sometimes retreat from allowing myself to feel the full grief of how much we have defaced the beauty and goodness of the natural world. I want my grief “circuit breaker” removed. I need to dive into that grief.

The grief over the empty forests of Vietnam. Poaching wars over the last great animals of Africa. More thatn 750 impaired (meaning chronically sick and depleted) streams and rivers in Iowa, largely due to the way we farm and raise animals. The decimation of Haiti’s forests. Emerging dead zones (like the one in the Gulf of Mexico. The list goes on and on. People and Creation suffer from all of this.

David mourned by fasting after the deaths of Saul and Jonathan (2 Samuel 1:12) and the death of his son Abner (2 Samuel 3:32-35).  Nehemiah fasted in grief over the state of the Jewish people who had returned to Jerusalem and the condition of Jerusalem itself – the wall broken down, gates burned by fire (Nehemiah 1:4). Mourning and grief for God’s earth through fasting and prayer seems wholly appropriate.

Deep Repentance

I want to express deep penance for what we have done to God’s oceans and lands and for the part I have played in it.

I also want to express regret for the fact that Christianity has largely been AWOL from the struggle to cherish God’s earth. And, in fact, too often economic philosophies and political ideologies have used a misrepresented Christianity as religious legimitization for advocating degrading uses of God’s earth.

But repentance is much more than feeling sorry and feeling regret. I’ve recently learned that the Greek word metanoia that we translate as “repent” has a deeper meaning. It means a transformation of our hearts and minds. Father Gregory Boyle of Homeboy Industries articulates it like this: “to go beyond the mind we have.” I will pray that I and many other Christians will go beyond the hearts and minds we have to a loving spirit that cherishes all that is God’s. What isn’t God’s?

Visceral kinship

I believe the fast will help me better appreciate the plight of the poor harmed by climate change and the plight of birds, mammals, insects, fish and other life who find it ever harder to survive in the world we are unraveling.

Seeking direction for action

In Esther 4:16, we read of Esther asking the Jewish people to fast before she visits King Ahasuerus uninvited. She will do so to seek save the Jewish  people from destruction and at the risk of her life. Moses and Jesus both fasted for 40 days before key points in their missions on earth.

I need further wisdom and discernment about where I should focus my energies in trying to defend and renew God’s earth. I hope to gain it while fasting.

Intensify my prayers for Creation and its defenders

Are you praying for Creation along with your prayers for family, friends, and yourself? I do, but I feel compelled to do more. We should also pray for the scientists (like Katharine Hayhoe), advocates, and regular people who are putting their hearts and minds to the service of Gods’ Creation and the people who depend on it. They struggle against the powers and dominions of this world. Their hearts are broken by what they see unfolding. They are trolled viciously. Sometimes they are killed because their words and actions would stop powerful people from making money.

Learn to LIve with Limits

Our appetites tend to be our masters. This is true of our individual lives. This is true of our economic-political systems. Adam and Eve’s sin was ultimately about not accepting a limit on their desire. I struggle with limits on my appetites. And when my appetites for distraction and security fill up our lives then we have little life and love left to give to God’s purposes. I seek God’s help in loving limits and loving God’s ways.

Seek Joy and Hope

This year Earth Day is the day after Easter. That proximity is unusual, and it calls attention to the fact that Christ’s life, death, and resurrection are good news for all of Creation.

I desperately need to remember that good news and to fully experience the joy it contains even in the midst of this crazy, broken world. And by remember I mean a confidence that fills my bones and heart, not just a doctrinal assent.

I believe It is fully understandable and acceptable to be outraged and full of despair at the injustices of the world that harm people and Creation. The Bible gives us many resources for expressing outrage, doubt, and misery. We are not fully human if we can look at injustice in any form, shrug it off, and go on to a Netflix binge.

Yet, our faith also calls us to hold joy in our hearts even as we struggle with brokenness and evil. God loves us and the whole world and has expressed grace and love to us through Jesus. God’s mercy does endure forever. God will make everything right some day. I need direction for action and light in my heart.

 

How exactly this will work

I will begin with a sunrise-to-sunset fast on Good Friday to deepen my experience of remembering the crucifixion of Jesus. Then, on Easter evening, I intend to eat dinner with my family before going on a water-only fast until after sunset on Monday (Earth Day) when I will have dinner again with my family. I will still be working during the day.

In The Sacred Art of Fasting, I read that it is really not a spiritual fast if one does life completely as one would normally would. So I plan to take a walk and pray during the time I would normally eat lunch. I also plan to pray whenever I feel hunger pains and between tasks.

Since fasting is typically combined with almsgiving in Christian tradition, I plan to honor that tradition but will do so in a different way. I will make a contribution to a conservation organization that is protecting habit so that God’s living things have places to live and food to eat.

 

I Welcome Fast Companions

I originally thought I would make a big push to encourage you and others I know who share deep concern for God’s earth to join me in this fast. Having friends to communicate with during the day for mutual encouragement would certainly be wonderful. But I’ve decided to focus this first attempt on my own exploration of this practice. This will enable me to speak from experience for Earth Day 2020.

If you do decide you want to join me, please email me at wholefaithlivingearth@gmail.com. We can arrange to share phone numbers so we can create a text group during the day.

I strongly encourage you to do some research on fasting before you do it. If you have any health issues that would make a food fast a risk for you, please consider a fast from something else.  And if you haven’t fasted before, please consider starting slow – perhaps skipping just lunch or doing a juice fast.

Your prayers would also be welcome.

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