Category: Resources

Eco-Lent Resources

Eco-Lent Resources

Cherice Bock

Lent is a meaningful time in the church calendar to focus on watershed discipleship: How will you be a more faithful disciple within your watershed this season?

We suggest below a number of Lenten devotionals focused on care for creation and environmental justice. A member of the watershed discipleship community, C. John Hildebrand, put together a daily reading schedule for Elaine Enns and Ched Myers’ new book, Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization, so you can read through it during Lent, knowing others are doing the same. Here are some of our suggestions for focusing your Lenten practice on watershed discipleship:

Image: “Sunset through Horatio N. May Chapel,” Tim Nafziger

New Resource | Congregational Manuals on Watershed Discipleship

New Resource | Congregational Manuals on Watershed Discipleship

Cherice Bock

An exciting new resource is available for use in congregations and interfaith groups interested in caring for the environment: Rev. Dr. Nancy Wright and Richard Butz, MFA, have created a Congregational Watershed Discipleship Manual in partnership with Vermont Interfaith Power & Light and Voices of Water for Climate.

They created two manuals: one with a Christian emphasis, Congregational Watershed Discipleship Manual: Faith Communities as Stewards of the World’s Waters (1st Christian edition), and another with an interreligious emphasis, Congregational Watershed Manual: Religious Communities as Stewards of the World’s Waters (1st Interreligious edition).

The manuals combine teachings around the spiritual and theological importance of water in Christianity and other faith traditions with practical ideas Read more →

Podcasts to check out

WD Editors

In addition to the Bartimaeus Cooperative Minitries podcast or “Bartcast,” we wanted to let you know about some podcasts related to watershed discipleship topics and featuring some people in the watershed discipleship network recently.

Shifting Climates logo: a black circle with two overlapping white clouds, one of which is a speech bubbleThere’s a new podcast called “Shifting Climates,” which has featured some fabulous people in its so-far 6 episodes: Randy Woodley (who will be a speaker at the upcoming Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute in February 2019; he’s also featured on the December 31, 2018 Bartcast), and a number of other theologians, climatologists, farmers, and activists. This podcast is created by Michaela Mast, Harrison Horst, and Sarah Longnecker. Here’s a little bit about the story of how they came to create this podcast. Read more →

A Sermon, A Poem, A Prayer? To Speak as Water

WD Editors

By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
Preached at Day House Detroit Catholic Worker, February 18, 2018
Originally posted on the Radical Discipleship blog

Genesis 9:8-15
1Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:12-15

Who am I?
I am fierce and gentle.
I am life and death.
I am ancient and new.
I am solid and fluid and gas.
I am in you and around you.
I am above you and below you.
I am the snow and the rain,
The creek, the stream,
the river, and the sea. Read more →

Water in the Desert, and a Prayer for Migrants

WD Editors

by Katerina Friesen
Watershed Discipleship Editorial Team

In 2016, I walked 75 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border along with over 60 other people on The Migrant Trail, an annual walk to bear witness to the thousands of inhumane deaths that migrant sisters and brothers have suffered as a result of U.S. immigration policies. Over the past 20 years, 7,000 deaths have been documented, and many human remains found in the desert remain unidentified. We walked to remember these known and unknown loved ones, carrying crosses marked with either their names or simply, “desconocido” (unknown), which we called out from our line of walkers to the collective response of:

“¡Presente!”

The temperature hit over 110 degrees one day as our group walked near the border in Arizona. Sweat dripped down my face and back, and we were advised to walk on the white line on the road since the black asphalt was so hot. Even though we had plenty of water in support vans and at rest stops (in contrast with most migrants crossing the desert, who can’t carry very much), my water bottle was low and all I could think of while walking was our next stop for water. We rounded a curve in the road, and suddenly I saw a humanitarian aid truck carrying water that they regularly leave out in the desert, water that saves many migrants’ lives. I only had a brief taste of the heat and exhaustion migrants go through in their perilous journey north, but at that moment I started weeping when I saw the water truck there, offering our group water and encouraging us on our way. Water is life, especially in the desert. Read more →

“Praise is a bodily function”: CAFOs, cows, and reconciliation of creation

Cherice Bock

What does it look like for creation to praise God? A recent post by Margaret B. Adam on the Creature Kind blog adapts a sermon she gave, which addresses this very question. She notes that “praise is a bodily function,” and that creatures sing their praise to God in their own unique voices, participating in creation’s reconciliation through doing the things they are created to do.

But what about cows raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), also known as factory farms? Can these cows praise God in the ways they’re created to do so? What is our role in enabling other creatures to be able to praise God to their fullest potential?

This is a good example of how to preach about watershed discipleship in ways both biblically grounded and with practical application. Hopefully it inspires you to think about the Christian ethics of animal products in our current economic system, and to consider how you might approach these topics from the pulpit.

Indigenous People’s Day

Cherice Bock

Today is increasingly being recognized as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and in honor of that, we would like to share a few links about ways that people are working with the Indigenous people of their area through watershed discipleship. Christianity is about loving God, and loving our neighbors as ourselves: in short, about reconciliation and creating right relationships. Through watershed discipleship, we recognize that the work of reconciliation before us in this time and place (especially as American descendants of Europeans) includes reconciliation with God, creation, and the people around us whose land our ancestors settled. This is not easy work, and can feel daunting, at least to me, so here are some resources on what it looks like to do this type of reconciliatory work.

“Becoming Unsettled” by Elaine Enns on Sojourners

Cherice Bock

An article by Elaine Enns is live now on Sojourners called “Becoming Unsettled.” In it, she tells the story of a region in Saskatchewan where she grew up, Stoney Knoll, a land that had been given to her Mennonite forebears by the Canadian government, and which by treaty belonged to the Young Chippewayans and other tribes from the region. She tells about the work toward restorative justice occurring between Mennonites and the Young Chippewayans since 1976. At that time, the Young Chippewayans began visiting their land, talking to the Mennonite farmers about the broken treaty, a situation Enns describes as “unsettling” for the Mennonites. Weaving in stories of Indigenous rights activism, efforts by Mennonites toward reparations, and the work of re-membering all the stories of that land and its people, Enns offers an example of one community working toward reconciliation in the wake of centuries of church-supported colonization. Check out the article, and allow Christ to speak to your heart about how to work toward reconciliation with the land and people in your own region.

RePlacing Church Podcast Interviews Ched Myers on Watershed Discipleship

RePlacing Church Podcast Interviews Ched Myers on Watershed Discipleship

Cherice Bock

Ched Myers appears on RePlacing Church Podcast

Ben Katt of the RePlacing Church Podcast recently interviewed Ched Myers on the topic of watershed discipleship. They discussed the definition of a watershed, the importance of care for one’s watershed as an act of Christian faithfulness, Myers’ own work in the Ventura River Watershed north of Los Angeles, CA, and other topics related to the social-ecological history of the United States. He invites us to “reimagine the landscape in terms of the real.” If you’re looking for a resource that accessibly explains watershed discipleship to interested friends and church members, suggest they give this a listen.

You may be interested in some of the other sessions on the RePlacing Church Podcast while you’re there.

Coming into the Watershed – Facebook roundup 11/17

BCM Online

Interesting recent posts from the Coming Into the Watershed Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/watersheddiscipleship/):

Mike Little posted about Potawatomi and Indigenous peoples are taking the lead in addressing climate change: http://www.potawatomi.org/news/top-stories/1855-potawatomi-and-indigenous-peoples-take-the-lead-in-addressing-climate-change

Bill Wylie-Kellermann let us know about Ryan Camero who is working with Restore the Delta, a grassroots group committed to restoring the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta:

 

Here is a great example of neighborhood based organizing around ecojustice and watershed work posted by Dave Pritchett – “Eastwick in the Middle: Organizing for Environmental Justice” by Media Mobilizing Project TV:

 

-Chris Wight