Tag: Ragan Sutterfield

Wild Lectionary: Hope in Worthless Places and Common Life

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“Abandoned Lot at 1400 Avenue E North” by Wendy Cooper

Proper 22, Year C

By Ragan Sutterfield

A couple of weeks ago I went on a birding tour of Monterey Bay. My guide on the trip was Debra Shearwater, a legend in the bird watching world, who has guided birders through those waters for over forty years. It was her birthday and it was the last season she would be leading pelagic tours.

As we watched the shearwaters, albatrosses, and murre’s of the bay, Shearwater told us about the changes she had seen. The water, she said, has changed color over the years. The krill populations have crashed and so fewer Blue Whales are seen. Over the last nesting season, large numbers of ocean-going birds had complete nesting failures, many of them not even bothering to lay eggs. “Go see them while you can,” she said, “especially the Northern birds, they are disappearing quickly.”

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Wild Lectionary: Affection vs. Effectiveness

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A tree that the author’s family visits weekly.

Lent 5C
John 12:1-8

By Ragan Sutterfield

The current level of atmospheric carbon is just above 411 parts per million–a level that is catastrophic and rising. While little has been done, the efforts of most institutions both governmental and non-governmental have treated the problem like a math equation. Cut fossil fuels by X amount. Increase forest carbon sinks by Y. Problem solved. But the problem has not been solved any better than the problem of a person who counts calories but does not trust in the goodness and value of their own body. We have failed to recognize that carbon is not the problem; that it is only the symptom of an underlying disease of our habits and hearts, a matter of our affections more than arithmetic.

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Wild Lectionary: Discerning the Body Learning to Be Aware Before We Act

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Proper 8(13)B
Mark 5:21-43

By Ragan Sutterfield

I have a small garden in my front yard, a smattering of plants, haphazardly planted–perennials and annuals, flowers and herbs and vegetables, “weeds” that I’ve welcomed and cultivated for their benefits to the soil and small wild things that make my yard their home. I water infrequently and mulch heavily–a plant must do well here or I take it out for something that won’t be too much trouble to grow.

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Wild Lectionary: Woven in the Depths

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Womb 2 Kovil BG Photo Credit: Fillipov Ivo, Creative Commons

Epiphany, Year B
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

By Ragan Sutterfield

E. Stanley Jones once wrote that if there is an instinct in the human heart to conceal there is also a deeper instict to reveal” (Victory Through Surrender). And yet, our culture keeps from authentic disclosure. We are invited, instead, to a kind of performative exposure, a way of revealing that also hides. We want to be known and seen but we do not trust those who might see us. We are afraid of what might happen if we are known, fully, authentically. So we manufacture disclosure on Facebook, hoping that in the commiseration of comments or praise of likes we will achieve what we are afraid to risk through a real openness. It is disclosure at the surface rather than at the depths.

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Wild Lectionary: Look to the Acorns

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Dark-eyed Junco
Photo Credit: Laurel Dykstra

Proper 28(33) A
Pentecost + 24

Matthew 25:14-30

By Ragan Sutterfield

I have been spending my mornings in the woods lately, a short hike before I begin to work on the tasks of the day. As fall finally arrives here in Arkansas the juncos have returned, twittering as they flash the white of their tails, and the long metallic notes of white-throated sparrows echo in the understory. Each step along the trails comes with a crunch, not only of the newly fallen leaves, but also of the acorns, cracking orange against the gray shale of the hillsides. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Look to the Acorns” →

Wild Lectionary: The Coming of the Holy Breath

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Djordje_Alfirevic_-_Breath_of_Earth
Djordje Alfirevic – Breath of Earth, CC 3.0 License

Pentecost

Acts 2:2-21
John 7:37-39
Psalm 104:25-35, 37

By Ragan Sutterfield

They were gathered for a festival of word and wheat, the harvest of plants grown from soil–breathing carbon, exhaling oxygen. Beneath the soil, the plant roots had spread a sugar feast for microbes who in turn gave their bodies for the wheat’s growth.  Those plants had now gone to seed, passing on their life to another season’s crop and in their abundance there was a harvest of bread for people and seed for birds and field mice and the life upon life that lives close to the ground.  It was at a festival for all these interactions, joined with a celebration of the coming of the Torah, those books that offered the story of a God who gives life to soil and cares about every detail of the material world.  The festival was Shavuot, Pentecost.  Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: The Coming of the Holy Breath” →