Event Reflections – Watershed Discipleship

Aloha ‘Aina: Reflections from the Eco-Stewards Program in Kailua, Hawai’i

June 2, 2018June 1, 2018WD Editors

Editor’s Note: The Eco-Stewards Program is entirely grassroots and is sustained by the grace of God in addition to the energy and passion of a handful of volunteer leaders.

by Vickie Machado
Watershed Discipleship Editorial Team Member

This year’s Eco-Stewards trip was a new experience for us as we invited nine young adults at various stages in their lives to join us for our program entitled Aloha ‘Aina. Past participants, speakers, hosts, and inspirational voices converged on the island of O’ahu for a special edition of Eco-Stewards that looked to further expand our networks, partnerships, and relationships with those engaged in meaningful work that mixes faith and environmental action. Represented among us were a variety of perspectives, backgrounds and spiritual practices including followers of the Roman Catholic faith, a practitioner of Traditional Longhouse spirituality, a leader from the African Methodist Episcopal tradition, mainline Protestants, Evangelicals, a follower of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village Tradition and some self-identified Christian-anarchists.

We were warmly welcomed by one of our core Eco-Stewards Leadership Team members, Rev. Liz Levitt, and her Kailua congregation, Christ Church Uniting Disciples & Presbyterians. Through this congregation and its community ties, our group of mostly mainlanders were introduced to Hawaiian culture Read more →

Reflection on the Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute 2018

April 11, 2018April 11, 2018WD Editors

Editor’s Note: Luke Winslow attended the Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute in January, entitled “Digging In: Heels, Histories, Hearts.” You can read other reflections from the Institute here.

by Luke Winslow
Guest Contributor

It felt like the Puget Sound hadn’t seen the sun since November. It might’ve come out for a few minutes here and there this winter, but my curiosity in visiting a completely different bioregion for the Bartimeus Kinsler Institute was matched by a readiness for immediate sunburns the moment I arrived in Southern California. I’m grateful for the flexibility of an academic schedule—a few months away from finishing my master’s work at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology—to have this weeklong Institute nicely timed with spring break. Driving through occupied Duwamish, Puyallup, Nisqually, and others’ territory to leave my adopted watershed after an Ash Wednesday service, I felt a twinge of vulnerability. Read more →

Reflections on “Blessing the Waters of Life” conference

December 6, 2017February 6, 2018Cherice Bock

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 the Eagle Creek fire in early September about 20 miles east of the retreat center, and a fire season with an unusually high number of days filled with smoke hanging over the gorge and Willamette Valley, I didn’t take the view for granted. The multifaceted issues relating to the fires brought home the need for the Presbyterians for Earth Care conference being held there, with the focus, “Blessing the Waters of Life: Justice & Healing for Our Watersheds.” Oregon Public Broadcasting reported on issues such as air quality, evacuation of local communities, the local economy, transportation disruptions, conservation and forest management best practices conversations, disruptions to education, threat of landslides after the fire and rain, difficulties for fish and fisher-people, threats to the drinking water source for Portland, and concern over tribal fishing areas and the health of the fish population tribes rely on as an important food and cultural resource. This one fire is an apt metaphor for the way that humanity is interacting with creation in harmful and avoidable ways, with multiple dimensions of consequences, and it is again feeling pertinent and relevant as so many are under forced evacuation around Los Angeles, CA right now due to the Thomas Fire and other fires in Ventura County. Read more →

Watershed Discipleship in Latin America

November 27, 2017February 6, 2018Cherice Bock

“We are doing this discipleship; we are disciples of this watershed!”

Beatriz Fernández de Hütt, a representative from Amigos del Rio Torres, and Karla Koll presenting on watershed discipleship, “discipulado de la cuenca,” at the Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana in San Jose, Costa Rica

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 Rio Torres that works to clean up the river running through San Jose, Costa Rica.

She learned about watershed discipleship at a recent workshop at the Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana (UBL) in Costa Rica, where Josh and Grecia Lopez-Reyes represented Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries (BCM) and presented on watershed discipleship, sharing from Discipulado de la Cuenca about the connections between watershed care, Christian faith, and the social and environmental justice concerns facing humanity and our planet today. This event celebrated the collaboration between UBL and BCM to bring the Spanish translation to print. When I spoke to Grecia and Josh about their trip, they expressed inspiration from the fact that many of the people they met in this workshop were already doing activist and advocacy work in their watersheds and were Christians, but had not necessarily connected their environmental work with their faith. Read more →

Earth Day at Eloheh and the EcoReformation

July 6, 2017February 6, 2018Cherice Bock

by Cherice Bock and Solveig Nilsen-Goodin

On Earth Day, April 22, 2017, we planted 150 trees at Eloheh Farm. Three groups worked together to make this happen: North Valley Friends Church, the Wilderness Way Community, and Eloheh.

Solveig Nilsen-Goodin is the pastor of the Wilderness Way Community in Portland, OR, and she had the seed of this idea when she began thinking about what her community might do to mark the EcoReformation this year, the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Read more →

“Water is Life: Journeying to Justice on the James”: Reflections from the Eco-Stewards Program in Richmond, VA

July 1, 2017February 6, 2018Cherice Bock

by Vickie Machado

Recently, young adults hailing from the Willamette Watershed in Oregon to the Biscayne Bay Watershed in Florida gathered in Virginia’s James River Watershed to partake in the 10th annual Eco-Stewards Program, a grassroots community that shapes young adult leaders through place-based experiences that connect faith and the environment. Each year, Eco-Stewards organizes a weeklong gathering in a location that reflects the pressing issues of faith and environmental action. This year’s theme, “Water is Life: Journeying to Justice on the James,” arose in response to the prevalence of water issues—such national events as Flint, MI and Standing Rock—and was hosted in Richmond, VA. Participants received copies of Watershed Discipleship, a natural fit as it addresses the complexity of faith, water, and justice. The anthology acted as our guide, and its themes were reiterated throughout the week in our interactions and dialogue. We assembled in Virginia open to learning the stories of the James River and how its inhabitants are responding to the beckoning call to become disciples of their watershed. The idea, “We won’t save the places we don’t love, we can’t love places we don’t know and we don’t know places we haven’t learned” (Baba Dioum), became a common theme and was expressed even by those who had no connections to the growing watershed discipleship movement. Read more →