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No words

2017-10-22-10-42-55-1100x825By Kateri Boucher

 

What would the trees say, if we asked them now?
What have we done?
What shall we do?
The Climate Report said 12 years.
Now, even closer to 11.
How is a little body like mine supposed to hold news that big?
The wheels keep turning,
hurtling us all forward, or
backward.
Whatever direction —
unceasing.
And where will this little body be in 11 years?
Will I still be one of the ones who can continue pretending?
The trees outside don’t say a thing.
Or maybe they do,
but I never listen long enough
to hear them.
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Wild Lectionary: Parched Shrub and Watered Tree

RDnetlogo76th Sunday after Epiphany C

Jeremiah 17:5-10
Psalm 1

By Laurel Dykstra

Psalm 1 and the verses from Jeremiah 17 are two of many passages where something valued or successful is compared to a tree by water.

For the preacher engaging with ecological themes, reading these two passages together suggests several overlapping subjects for exploration to “test the mind and search the heart.” Continue reading →

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Winter’s Harshness

ice-formationsIn January, over twenty women gathered for a Word and World weekend of rest and writing using winter as their guide and teacher. This is the first reflection offered which also gives some writing prompts. May it be company in these longer winter days.

By Kate Foran

 

Ceremony

I will tell you something about stories,
[he said]
They aren’t just entertainment.
Don’t be fooled.
They are all we have, you see,
all we have to fight off
illness and death.
You don’t have anything
if you don’t have the stories.
Their evil is mighty
but it can’t stand up to our stories.
So they try to destroy the stories
let the stories be confused or forgotten.
They would like that
They would be happy
Because we would be defenseless then.
He rubbed his belly.
I keep them here
[he said]
Here, put your hand on it
See, it is moving.
There is life here
for the people.
And in the belly of this story
the rituals and the ceremony
are still growing.

Continue reading →

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Wild Lectionary: Seraphim, seed people and fish folk, oh my!: celebrating God’s kaleidoscopic web of life

circle of life

Circle of Life, Zane Saunders, 1993 Creative Commons

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany C
Isaiah 6:6:1-13
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Luke 5:1-11

By Wes Howard Brook and Sue Furguson Johnson

This week’s readings reveal life springing forth from sky, sea and soil: seraphim speak to Isaiah, fish are netted by Simon Peter, and images of fleshy seeds of resurrection flow from Paul’s mouth (in the section of 1 Cor 15 that follows the lectionary passage). And if we listen a bit more closely, we can hear the usual lines that distinguish one creature from another blur and cross: Jesus promises that Simon will fish for people, while, for Paul, humans bloom and fruit like flowering trees. What might these criss-crossing images teach us about the intersectionality among living beings, in this realm and in the realm beyond the veil? Continue reading →

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Second Helpings

talitha2By Talitha Fraser

We live in times where the focus is on those things that divide rather than connect us but as Chappo (Peter Chapman) says “You should share communion together, it has a unique power to unite beyond words.”

For over 20 years Credo, in Melbourne, Australia, was a community gathering around food, recreation and creative art to foster a sense of home – especially for those of us experiencing homelessness, addiction, mental illness and isolation.  The Credo community believed good community development is possible when people from all economic and cultural backgrounds get together and support one another. Whether it’s by cooking together, eating together, singing together or playing cricket together. We need to foster spaces for people to develop transformative relationships with each other.  Though this community no longer exists its ethos, and delicious bolognaise, might live on in your kitchen and at your table. Continue reading →

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Bluetooth

10tb-blueteeth1-articlelarge

Photo of nun’s teeth from the New York Times

By Kate Foran

Cruising through the latter days
of Western Civilization in my forest
green Corolla under a 12 year
ultimatum on climate catastrophe
while my phone talks to my car
so I can listen to the news like this
tidbit about an eleventh-century nun
whose dental plaque was a fossil
record of all she consumed,
starch residue and flower pollen,
wool fiber and insect parts,
milk proteins and flecks of precious
lapis lazuli, but wait, how did that get there? Continue reading →

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Wild Lectionary: Post 2016 Faith, Hope and Love

img_2625333Fourth Sunday After Epiphany
1 Corinthians 13:1-13

By Mark McReynolds

Since the 2016 US elections, I have found environmental news both sad and enraging. I’ve been angered by the near theft of public land for extractive use and how “natural resource” industry lobbyists are now in charge of our federal land. Drilling for oil off the coast of California and in the middle of critically needed Sage Grouse habitat (surely messing up both) to enrich already rich oil companies is approved without even a nod to our changing climate. Reading of such news leads me to unloving thoughts.

Continue reading →