Watershed Discipleship
the creation waits…
Category: Blog
If an Ancient Cathedral Had Burned: Farewell to Grandmother Oak
by Ched Myers Old trees are our parents, and our parents’ parents, perchance. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, Oct 1855 On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, three weeks into the Thomas Fire here in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, the losses from California’s largest wildfire on record (scorching…
Pesticides and Shalom: Advocating for Sustainable School Grounds Management as an Act of Watershed Discipleship
by Jennifer Powell Guest Contributor Creating good childhood memories with my children is important to me: team sports, family camping trips, backyard barbeques, lovable pets, and birthday parties. More importantly, I hope to give my children a sense of connection to their community and…
Small Gestures
On Sunday morning, as part of our celebration of the MLK Day weekend, we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the destruction of the site of the Asistencia Santa Gertrudis a few miles from our home, where a small Chumash village survived between 1830 and…
Schade’s “Preaching the Body of God”
With all of 2018 ahead of us, it is refreshing to reconnect with more holistic understandings of how to understand our place in the world. Leah D. Schade does just this in her article in The Other Journal, “Preaching the Body of God.” She…
Salal + Cedar Prayer and Action Against Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion Project
“A priest, a rabbi, a Hindu and a Unitarian walk onto a pipeline route…” It may sound like the beginning of a joke, but this set-up describes a weekly blockade of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion Project near Vancouver, British Columbia, Coast Salish…
Advent, Plastic, and Spiritual Disciplines
My kids anticipate Christmas like no other season. They spend the month or two ahead of time thinking about and discussing what they want for Christmas, making lists, and poring over the Lego catalogue that appears in the mailbox. They understand the waiting and…
Eco-contemplation and Action: Bahnson on the Ecology of Prayer
The latest issue of Orion Magazine, a special 35th anniversary edition, contains several articles that may be of interest to those practicing watershed discipleship, such as “Women and Standing Rock: where does the body end and sacred nature begin?” by Layli Long Soldier (this…
Watershed discipleship and the Thomas Fire
As the Thomas Fire and other fires in and around Ventura County, CA continue to threaten homes and wildlife, Tim Nafziger wrote an article for The Mennonite, detailing his experience evacuating the area for several days, “Relationships made tangible in Thomas Fire.” He writes about…
Digging In: Heels, Histories, Hearts | February 19-23, 2018
Join us February 19-23, 2018 in Oak View, CA for the Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute, with a focus this year on “Digging In: Heels, Histories, Hearts.” Register for the institute by December 15, 2017 for early bird rates ($360 includes registration, accommodation, materials, and meals…
Reflections on “Blessing the Waters of Life” conference
A beautiful, relatively smoke-free week in early fall greeted Presbyterians and others from across the country as they gathered at Menucha Retreat & Conference Center on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge the last week of September. After an unauthorized firecracker sparked…
Watershed Discipleship in Latin America
“We are doing this discipleship; we are disciples of this watershed!” A woman named Beatriz Fernández de Hütt exclaimed the above quote during her presentation at a workshop on the Spanish translation of the watershed discipleship book. She leads a group called Amigos del…
Decolonizing Thanksgiving
As we head into the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in the United States, it’s great to think about all the things we can be grateful for. It is good to have a time to pause and reflect, to participate in the seasonality of gratitude for…
