 So we're getting pretty fancy here with this faith conference of ours and our association of congregations We're syncing up to a live stream across to all of our 550 Congregation partners and so we have made a promise to start a specific time. So part of that is the delay But just in this moment here before I introduce our speaker I just want to say thank you again to each and every one of you for being here This is something that we have a real privilege to host every year our Gustavus faith conference And I mentioned this at the very beginning of worship But this is something that is a partnership between Gustavus and thriving financial And it's just wonderful to have that opportunity to be able to provide something to this quality for all of you So can we give thriving another round of applause for this? Thank you so much I'm just curious raise your hand if you know what a thriving action team is if you've used that. Oh wonderful Well, you'll see in your program and this is a program that is designed as a takeaway resource for you It's something that again our broad network of Relationships that we have we want them to to continue to be able to move forward in their mission planning and the different things That they're doing so in your program. We have some some intentionally detailed Information about our mission partners Lutherans restoring creation in Minnesota interfaith power and light We also wanted to explain what an action team is with thriving Some of the stuff that's happened here today has actually been the result of an action team It's very easy any person if you're a thriving person you can get to in a year And that's two hundred and fifty dollars each time you use it to do something to to any idea that you have to Do something good something generous you might notice the ribbons that are hanging on the stairway This past week as our students here our own Efforts to educate our students and staff about Earth Day They and encourage folks to sign some things on ribbons to have a global prayer ribbon Well that all of it was done through a thriving action team And I know that part of the the table for Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light is using is using that now Our format for our speakers will be all introduced the first speaker They will speak and then we'll have a moment of question and answer So if there's something as they're speaking you think about that all that would be really interesting to know You'll have the chance at the end to have a brief Q&A Then we'll take a stretch break It won't be as long as the break you just had but we'll have a brief stretch break And then we'll go into the second feature presentation I call your attention to your conference program where a full biography of our first Feature speaker can be found the Reverend Dr. David Rhodes is the emeritus professor of New Testament at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and he is the director of Lutherans Restoring Creation as He mentioned earlier. We're just so proud to have them as a partner It was our pleasure to work with Dr. Rhodes And others on a wonderful DVD educational resource that some of you may be familiar with it's called earthbound It's likely many of you have utilized this cutting-edge series that has helped so many of us see how we are created and Called to care for creation Please join me in welcoming Reverend Dr. David Rhodes God, I love this life Love this world Conscious at age 74 of the preciousness of everything. I just can't seem to get enough of it and I have Two daughters and five grandchildren and great-grandchild And I want this world to stay Vibrant and alive for them and not come an enemy and Springtime is especially the case when just things seem to be bursting out all over the place. I Asked Joe Sittler one of our Pioneers in ecological thinking in Lutheranism one time what he thought were signs of the presence of God in the world and the 3 Mala Island disaster of Leakage of nuclear materials had just recently happened and decimated everything for some space around the facility and he said Do you know that within two or three days after three mile island? There were flowers blooming In the territory that had been decimated He said it's this urge to life this bursting forth of energy To thrive and to live That's the sign of the presence of God but as we know Earth is under siege In virtually every dimension and every ecosystem But you know it's part of our Lutheran tradition and I'm focusing today on the Lutheran resources for addressing our ecological situation It's Lutheran tradition that we don't need to be afraid to look at things We've been justified by grace We don't need to be defensive We don't need to try to justify ourselves by looking good or blaming something else We can see a thing for what it is both the good the bad the evil Face it look at it Because if we don't see the size of the problem We will certainly not see the size and dimension of the solutions from us that are going to be required to address them and we need to be as Dr. Johnson mentioned today in solidarity With those at a distance You know we say what a wonderful day this is today, but at this time of the year it may be in part due to climate change and Just because it's a pleasant happenstance for us Doesn't mean it's the case for those people with 118 degrees in Africa or those having to abandon their whole village in northern Alaska because Somehow they've lost the The ice and the support for their village and many other places in the world we could name But you know The environment is a spiritual issue People are often surprised to hear that being said But I want to give you a quote from Gus Faith who's the head of the Yale Department of Environmental Studies in Forestry who said As a scientist I used to think the top environmental problems were diversity loss Ecosystem collapse and Climate change I Thought that with 30 years of good science we could address these problems But I was wrong The top environmental problems are selfishness greed and apathy To deal with these we need a spiritual and a cultural transformation and We scientists don't know how to do that. This is about us This is about our Christian lives our human lives This is about our Communities here and Elsewhere in our congregations this is Requiring of us a deep spiritual transformation a metanoia a change of thinking and behavior That goes more than a few fixes here a few changes of behavior there. It involves a radical Reorientation and we have many Lutheran foundations to draw upon for this a Lot of them are not earthly friendly Some cases we can affirm them in other cases reclaim them in some cases expand them but under any Circumstances we are being called to a new thing One of the great strengths of the Lutheran tradition is that we believe in perpetual Reformation that the church always has to be changing That there is a season for everything and God is doing a new thing Father Thomas Barry has said we're entering an ecozoic age When environmental issues will be at the forefront of our life together It's a great work one that each and every one of us is called to participate in But we need more of the little fix on our reformation We're coming upon the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran reformation in 2017 and many of us are calling for a new reformation a holistic reformation and ecological reformation and Eco-justice reformation in which we reform our theology our ethics our church practices our worship our Life together our commitment in the world our sense of vocation in such a way That we address What God is? Calling us to do in this time We're called to be an alternative Community to not buy into the cultural assumptions That reinforce selfish greed and apathy We're called to challenge in the university and in the churches and in our lives We're called to challenge the in extreme individualism of our society the The the idol of the free market that will solve all problems The consumer society that drives so much of the destruction of the earth and Many other assumptions like an economy of unlimited growth We need to become an alternative community because when we buy into these American assumptions We are more American Christians Then we are Christian Christians What does it mean in our day that God is calling us to to be a Christian Christian and Not an American Christian well much is already happening in the church in congregations around here in synods calling for an eco reformation addressing climate change and other issues in Seminaries preparing pastors for leadership in their churches and in the civic society in camps and I have to say Colleges are on the forefront and I want to take just a minute to share with you what is happening here on this particular campus This campus has a sustainability professional officer Jim Donce Whose job it is to coordinate promote and encourage sustainability across But there's a campus greens A student group. There's a divestment group of students calling for divestment from fossil fuels of the college There's a kitchen cabinet. It advises the green cafeteria The the college has taken the president's climate commitment to reduce fossil fuels by half by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2050 The faculty comes forth with with courses to be offered and programs You have a chaplain and Brian Conkel who's been a leader in the church in ecological Commitments you belong to the Association for the Advancement of sustainability in higher education You have a green cafeteria with recyclables and plates and utensils you buy local food and purchasing serve a la carte You have your affair trade campus Outside you have a deep winter greenhouse to create local food a student organic garden hydroponic experiment You have an arboretum a prairie retention ponds for the Stormwater runoff There's a major composting project where all lawn and garden and food waste is composted With an earth flow unit that the college has purchased in order to compost everything you'd use here You have a lead certified building in backhaul at the platinum level, which is not easy to achieve You have solar renewable energy on several buildings One small wind turbine high efficiency boilers You are in process of retrofitting all the lights and moving to LEDs outside and inside You have vending machines on on timers. You have occupancy sensors for lighting in various places low-flesh toilets Furthermore you have a robust recycling program with a 78 percent diversion rate from from landfill a Bikeshare program that athletes began some hybrids in the motor pool carts and electric carts and All of this represents an outdoor campus-wide classroom Furthermore in terms of education you have an environmental studies program You have a volunteer program to integrate ecology into all fields business and sustainability government and sustainability You have a first-term seminar for all students pilot program beginning in the fall with a theme of environment student research projects sustainability labs a religion and ecology course a reading group on climate change curriculum review coming up that may encompass more and To top it all off You support the Nobel conferences in the summer and every other year the emphasis is on some dimension of the environmental situation campuses Across the country Lutheran campuses in particular are at the forefront pioneering what's going on here and I would just like to take this moment to celebrate that and to say that this campus is ready to declare publicly that you have the intention to be a sustainable Institution giving leadership in the church and in the world Can we express our appreciation for what this campus is doing? It's really quite astounding. I had no idea and I'm delighted to learn it all. Thank you, Jim So then my question is What's in your wallet? What are you doing in your home and in your congregation? That really takes seriously these issues and does everything you can to bring your own lifestyle and your congregation Into the 21st century as we address these problems now I want to look at some of the Lutheran foundations in my my critical point here is that how we think shapes how we act if We have religious views that are not really earth-friendly. We probably won't make those connections and They probably won't motivate us to be change Agents in what we need to do First of all central to the first reformation is how we read the Bible We believe in sola scriptura. We read the Bible through the lens of justification Unfortunately, the focus is almost exclusively on humans What God's doing for humans How human beings are called to do one thing or another and how human beings are saved and we kind of selectively Eliminate all the things in the scripture that deal with creation and Goodness gracious when you start to read it is everywhere foundational From the creation stories calling this creation good and celebrating it to the covenant with Noah and all the creatures of the earth to the Psalms which call all of life to praise God to the prophets who who call for for justice in the land so that the land will thrive to Jesus calling for a renewal of creation through the kingdom of God Clear through to the Final book of revelation where there's this vision of a renewed heaven and earth where God comes to dwell and And there is life in in the city with a river running through it and food for everyone We need a second cannon within the cannon a second lens through which to read it and and second Corinthians might be a good one For any who are in Christ Creation is new We used to translate that for any who is in Christ he or she is a new creation But that's not what it says for any who are in Christ. You see creation in a whole new way You relate to it in a whole new way creation is new and then it adds All old things have all passed away Behold Everything is new The operative word being behold Can we see perceive things in a new way that changes the way we relate to them in terms of our look at the Trinity? We have tended as Lutherans to focus almost exclusively on the second Person of the Trinity on the second article of the creed with the salvation of Jesus Christ and We've isolated it from the first article and God the Creator But if you start with God the Creator then you recognize that Jesus is Restoring all creation As Colossians says everything in heaven on earth under the earth and in the sea is Reconciled through the blood of the cross Theologian Larry Rasmussen tells a story in Africa where the the leader of worship Would say to the community what would did we used to believe and the answer Jesus died for my sins The leader and what do we believe now that Jesus died for all creation? Well, he not only died for all creation. He lived for all creation healing the sick preaching Good news to the poor providing bread in the desert calming storms with the threats there was a restoration of all of life in what he does and So the redemption of Jesus is a restoration of all of creation and the Holy Spirit is the sustainer and the connector and the Fulfillers of all creation and Often with the Trinity we have lost the sense of Jesus humanity Exorbing Jesus somehow into a divine being that isn't fully human but the 21st century version of the full humanity of Jesus is that Jesus was a mammal Jesus was a higher primate. He was in the gene pool He's part of the web he was part of the web of all creation and Therefore he belongs to all creation and he redeems all creation Part of the problem with that is that we have so Individualized salvation that we don't see that larger picture. You know I Think for many of us me growing up certainly till I began studying the New Testament My understanding was that the one and only Message of the Christian gospel was that Jesus died for my personal sins in order that I might be forgiven and go to heaven That's only one Model in the New Testament. It's not the primary Lutheran model. The primary Lutheran model is justification That's different from forgiveness. It's a different understanding But we have so individualized it that it becomes about me It takes the gospel that meant to free me and turns me back in on myself Not that forgiveness isn't important Not that I will not be with God. We will not be with God when we die But the biblical materials can't imagine a salvation without community or Without the rest of earth that God created Now justification is different in this sense it addresses both sin and shame by removing the Standards the laws the cultural standards that seek to define us By our income or our wealth or our status or our acceptance in society in some way the way we conform and fit in as Well as any religious efforts that we are trying to make to please God the whole point about justification is it liberates us from having to please God or anybody else and freeze us so that we can Concentrate on loving our neighbor and now loving our neighbor and Compasses our kin in creation our larger earth community That we would love and care for all of creation That takes us to our original calling in creation That on the day when God created human beings last God created them To take care of the rest of creation that God had created does it all point and When you see the second creation story you realize that we're called to serve Creation not from the point of view of dominating it, but serving it. Just just think about that for a minute Our job as human beings is to see that all of God's creation thrives You know, we've we've really messed this up What what do you think God was doing during the three and a half billion years while life was forming on this planet? Do you think she was waiting around twiddling her thumbs for humans to show up? Do you think God was not loving the trial of bites and the? and the Amoeba and the small mammals and all the plants and the dinosaurs and whatever other Forms of life came here that we're burgeoning forth from the land and then we show up in the last few seconds And we think it's all about us You know like the Carly Simon song I'll bet you think this earth is about you about you don't you So it was all there for us to use and abuse in whatever ways we can We need to get out of this ego centric anthropocentric point of view and Recognize that we're we're one creature among many Here and and we're called to exercise our service To to enable all of life to thrive. It just completely turns it around It's a it's a Copernican revolution that's our original calling and Jesus reinforces it when he says whoever wants to be great among you is to be servant of All and that means there's a real focus on this life, you know, there's a popular view and you hear particularly around funerals Where God has called someone home My mother's funeral the pastor said she's at home now and I I think to myself I know she's with God but this is home and The biblical materials understand it that way. Do you do you know that? The entire Old Testament was was written without a belief in life after death except for a few passages late ones Wow God was investing in this life and as I said Most of the New Testament is not about going to heaven. It's about healing the sick and recovering of sight to the blind and freeing the oppressed liberating people restoring them to a relationship with God Restoring them to community and Paul is mostly about creating communities That are reflective of the love with which God loves us That's what incarnation is about. It's about God coming to earth God coming to be Manifest as Jesus and in with and under all things This is God's home. The rapture theology has it wrong in Thessalonians those people are not being picked up to go off Everybody else has left to deal with the disasters quite the opposite Those people are going out to greet Jesus and welcome him home That's what the word means that describes the activity that they're engaged in I Sometimes used to say to my students, you know, if you only think about yourself dying and going to heaven be careful You may pass Jesus coming the other way Because the whole New Testament understands Jesus coming. It's about the future of here and the last as you will see in the The revelation lesson for this coming Sunday The whole vision of a new heaven and new earth it is that God comes home to dwell with people We don't go there. God comes here. That's the whole movement of God. You see this wonderful chapel It's it lifts people up by all these streams going up to think About the the glory and wonder of God trust me. I don't want to counter that But I also want you to imagine all these things as streams of God coming down Here in this place in this world in this land Dwelling here. God is earthbound. So the image of God and this is So rooted in Lutheranism is not out there Especially when you have a round earth where he is out anymore rather God is in with and under all things. That's our sacramental theology and Martin Luther has an Extounding quote. What a strong creation theology Martin Luther had where he said the entire fullness of the reality of God dwells in every single grain of wheat and every leaf Can you see it? The earth is filled with the glory of God Can we perceive it? We get a glimpse of it in the sacraments, you know for us the the bread and wine don't change It's just the words affirm that God Christ is there already now If God can be in such ordinary elements as grapes and grain God is in everything That's what the That's what the sacraments are about God is Everywhere and in all things so the earth is not sort of a lifeless place To be developed for human use It's a creation filled with the glory of God and if we can see it that way maybe it can help us use it or benefit from it in a different kind of way It's the right basis for use and In all of this we change our theology of sin sin now becomes Not just relation to other humans But in relation to the world around us. I Wonder how many of you in your private prayers Or when you come to church in those silent moments might say to yourself God forgive me for having a cup of coffee this morning that came from Workers who were paid poor wages and who were exposed to pesticides Their families to awful environmental toxic conditions God I I I ask you to forgive me that I bought that cheap dress Today yesterday because it was inexpensive, but I don't know who made it or where it came from or how those people are suffering and Do we recognize our corporate? Complicity as a humanity Luther defined sin as being turned in upon ourselves and that Whole of humanity is turned in upon ourselves as We Corporately as businesses governments Whatever our society does think look at all the resources we have around us that God has given us to make use of That's idolatrous turned in upon ourselves Luther was Interesting he said when you're justified by grace and you don't have to justify yourself by other means You can see the glory of God in everything because you're freed from looking at it as something you can use in your project So you can see a thing for what it is and That means our ethics are expanded to encompass not just our human relationships But to encompass our care for all of creation to see the interconnections You know, we are we are so fortunate as Lutherans. I am I am so Deeply satisfied to be part of a tradition that cares about the most vulnerable It comes from our theology of the cross We look at Jesus and we see that he is strengthening the society by securing the well-being of the most vulnerable and We as Lutherans have a long tradition of hospitals for the ill homes for the elderly orphans We have a long tradition of Lutheran social services for adoption. We have a malaria program Lutheran disaster with immigration services This is a whole spectrum of things that represent our collective commitment To the most vulnerable Now we are called to expand this To see the interconnections and redefine each one of these justice issues in terms of the way In which the environment is affecting immigration which the environment has interfaced with disaster relief The way in which the environment is interfaced with the vulnerable elderly and people of color We are called now to see those interconnections But also now to reach out to the vulnerable in society the endangered species the ecosystems that are under threat Whatever else may be under siege in our world That's the legacy we want to expand and have and worship with wonderful worship this morning You know as well as I do that for most of the time our worship focuses exclusively on human to God relationships and human to human relationships But if we are called to worship God with all of creation and to spake span the choir of creation is it was so beautifully depicted today If we are to all worship together Can we not encompass into our worship a Recognition at the beginning of worship that our real sanctuary is the earth. That's the holy place in which we are worshiping That we confess our sins in the confession against creation that we pray for endangered species and and other Dimensions of creation that are being degraded That we are commissioned at the end that our church we say Go in peace serve the Lord. Remember the poor tend the earth It's part of our commission and how we're called to live and worship is the central event of the Christian community if we can have it reinforced week after week after week in our mentality that our care for creation our Connection with creation our celebration with creation is an integral part of who we are as human beings and as Christians It will go a long way toward the transformation that's required Which brings us to spiritual practices Creation Discipleship if you will what we are called to do I asked the class at LSTC a number of years ago To take a week and imagine all the different ways they could conserve water Well, some of them did it some of them couldn't get into it But the major complaint was that they couldn't think of it as a spiritual act Their notion of spiritual acts was praying or reading the Bible or meeting in a small group and talking about faith rather than the concrete earthy action of Doing something that will make a difference. I was made aware a number of years ago It's just changed my whole way of thinking about this that my house is Connected to every ecological problem. There is the energy that comes in from the coal powered Fired power plant the What goes out? My chimney the gas that comes in leaks out in different places heat The water that comes in from a treatment plant and goes out to a waste plant all that's involved with that The food that comes where it comes from out was raised Where all these things go the products I purchase how they're made under what conditions? What the impact does it have on the earth and on other people? We it's amazing how ignorant we are of these things and if we suddenly became aware that every single day and Almost everything we do we have choices to conserve water be misers on electricity to Care about the products that we bring into our house to refuse to use toxic cleaning products or other things on our lawns To begin to take a holistic understanding that we can either contribute to the problem or we can help Minimize the impact and even act to restore We're called To shape our lives around these things now as much as anything those small decisions are important because they remind us of the bigger Ecological problems that are there and the impact these things are having on people. So what will motivate for this for this? guilt Maybe it'll get us started, but it's not gonna last very long Outrage at what's not being done. That's not gonna be very persuasive shame Grief at the loss of things despair No, what's going to motivate us is the very grace of God that is embedded in everything all around us And we know that grace from Jesus Christ Wendell Wendell Berry called it the fund of grace out of which we live and And Jared Manley Hopkins called it the dearest freshness deep down things It's that love of God for creation It's that love of God for everything in the world. It just fills and overflows So we're called To have a transformation an eco reformation a conversion to earth a conversion to creation a Love affair with the world around us For we will save What we love Thank you very much We do have a moment if there are some questions if you could just please raise your hand if you have a question And we will have our Little drone microphone come over to you just kidding. We're not doing that but a microphone will come to you Please raise your hand. We have time for maybe one or two questions Question up front here Pastor Rod Thank you Well, we're waiting. I I I know I go longer than I should my wife reminds me of that all time But I want you to be assured that I cut out the first two-thirds of my talk before I came here would you speak just in a short paragraph to the Populations that line coastal areas affected the climate change I'm sorry. I'm having trouble understanding Could you speak? briefly to the plight of Many emerging World countries who are suffering the effects of climate change. Yes, I can the question is can I speak briefly? To the impact briefly. That's a yeah. Thank you. Good reminder About the impact of climate change on third-world countries Katrina was a mini example of that the most vulnerable people were hit the worst and They were people that had the least resources to cope Many of them are still living in FEMA trailers Mostly people of color Elderly people sick people. We didn't have a way to get out. I mentioned the people in shish Maref in northern Alaska who are having to recocate their entire village same as happening in the Pacific Ocean with low-lying islands where whole cultures are Having to leave we're gonna have if we're worried about refugees. We're gonna have a huge Responsibility with environmental refugees in Africa the drought from this You can imagine it if you have 118 degrees. You're not gonna grow many things the drought has been awful and Thousands of people have died not only from the heat, but also from drought In Nicaragua as an example their group of Lutherans that went down there the Farmers can't farm anymore Because they cannot count on when the rains will come as they have for years upon years upon years now We have a lot to learn from people in the third world because they have a much less impact Than we have in our lifestyles and there are many villages in Africa that are totally solar and there are huge projects to plant trees to Compensate for all the trees the first world countries are cutting down in order to create farmland or whatever need to do This is where We we just can't hunker down and say well, I'm okay. My family is okay. This community is okay We have to be in solidarity with them There's a line in Hebrews. I love That says pray for those in prison as if you were in prison yourself Pray for those who are sick as though you were sick yourself Pray for those in the third world as if you were in the third world yourself And if you know somebody you can connect with or your congregation can connect with a community So that you can learn from them what's happening and what we need to do to be in solidarity with them That's in in incredibly important. Would you like to add anything? To what I said Did I address your your question? Thank you for Allowing me to affirm that you brought up greed selfishness and apathy and My question is how do you address people? Who refused to even see this as a problem? I don't you know, I Must say it's a wonderful thing to be here in this room with People who are committed to this and wanting to do something It's a wonderful thing to be part of this communion of saints and the communion with the larger earth and I I Think when I do talk and share with people I listen to try to understand What is it that prevents them and almost invariably I find things about their resistance that I probably can identify with But secondly when I speak I try to be confessional This is my Christian faith. This is my human commitments These are the things I care about and I want space in this congregation and in this church and in this world to be able to express them But You only have so much energy and I don't expend a great deal of it trying to convince other people although I think it really is important to have information that Indicates why you say what you say But at the same time I prefer to give my energy because it's life-giving to me to be with you and Thank you for that. Thank you very very much. I Invite you now to please stand and stretch and maybe reach out to somebody and just share something that you are really thankful for In your creation life and life your environment around you something that you just treasure. So please stand for a minute We're gonna take a five minute break Okay, I call you back to attention here as we Continue on with our second featured presentation If you could please find your seat again and we will Have our second featured presentation Every single day during the school year we have a daily Sabbath in this space and it's very intentional by design if you notice the floor beneath you is a Brown color in the ceiling above you is a blue color and the windows all around you are open That we know we're earthbound As you gather here, we know that we want to have eyes to see this wonderful creation around us I'll tell you when we talk with our students about the gift of this daily Sabbath. It's time to come and sit every day at 10 a.m You bet they know it's a gift But many start to realize that it's in some ways an active protest To stop from our busy busy busy busy To stop from that being Measured literally given a grade for every little thing you're doing to come and sit in God's grace To be opened up to a broader wisdom in vision for life In our conference program, there's a full biography of our second speaker You've heard a little bit about the amazing work that he is helping shepherd here at Gustavus Dr. James Donche is the director of the Gustavus Johnson Center for Environmental Innovation And he is the chair of the environmental studies program We are truly fortunate to have this gifted leader and teacher as a part of our Gustavus community And I have personally Appreciated Jim in so many ways and consider myself blessed to work with him. What a wonderful conversation partner and I'll tell you this man is so deeply rooted in his Lutheran faith and a Theologian if I will He's a gift in a wonderful conversation partner and topics of faith justice and service Jim was also a part of that earthbound video that I mentioned And so and he's been a presenter and is available to be a presenter and many of your congregations Around important environmental issues. He's also a part of organizing in southern Minnesota With the Minnesota interfaith power and light organizing people around the real issues impacting our lives and community Please join me in welcoming dr. Jim Donche Thank you, Grady for kind words. Thank you, David for really great words I Won't be quite up to that but I'm honored to follow those and that beautiful framing of what's going on And I hope to help help us as we think about this. I Am I have to admit with some trepidation doing a bit of theology here? But it's kind of a funny piece because I've got this title The radical freedom of creation care What kind of a title is that? From all that we see in here and most of the time how we act Environmental responsibility is the classic example of moral restraint for the common good Either we do the right thing by less stuff Recycle our trash drive our car less fly less or the planet is toast No freedom there just limits, right? But there it is the radical freedom of creation care I wrote it. It's printed. I'm going to have to work with it I'm gonna start with I'm gonna use a lot. There's a lot more I could talk about but I'm gonna use the simple case the recycling case the Stereotypical activity that many people see is how they begin to better care for God's creation recycling and trash trash That is to say what is left over unused unwanted what we buy consume eat use or do whatever we want with the material stuff of this world Humans have always produced trash If you look at what archaeologists have learned about the peoples and civilizations that come before us Much of what they know comes from poking around ancient trash piles Examining the remnants of past dinners and discarded dishes Sorting through the petrified bones and vegetable peels of ancient compost heaps But if future archaeologists are looking through our trash heaps I think they're going to probably remark that something dramatic happened dare I say radical Something in the last couple centuries went on first We had this Human population growths technological development the discovery of fossil fuels And all around a just this dramatic increase of human population and more people equals more trash We also found some creative ways to use our newfound knowledge We make a bunch of new kinds of stuff from plastic and other related material Durable stuff that doesn't break down too quickly, but at the same time not so durable that it never wears out or becomes obsolete the consequences More people more stuff more trash While we first recognize the negative aesthetic issues of seeing more trash in the landscape We've also grown to recognize that that trash has an effect on us and all other living creatures I've got a graphic illustration here. It's one that shocked me It's on Midway Island in the North Pacific Which besides have been a being a famous site in World War two in our history of that great conflict It's also a major albatross nesting area now despite the fact that Midway Island is a long way from any population center The albatross parents who travel widely feeding on the ocean and bring back food in their stomachs for their chicks Also bring about 10,000 pounds of plastic to Midway Island Think about that five tons shipped in by the birds of trash picked up all over the ocean and That plastic ends up in the stomachs of their young Now anyone can tell you especially anyone who really enjoys that convenience factor that There are ways to deal with this we can Put it in the right place in the trash can we can recycle it and of course we can use less. You know the mantra reuse Reduce recycle But if you've made a commitment to the three hours in your life, and I know many of you have there are challenges We have to not room we have to remember not to slip into buying the latest newest shiny thing on the shelf Just because it looks good, and then we got to remember to put whatever trash we have into the right container And we're never quite sure about how that recycling supposed to work Is it a three or five and can it be recycled? This effort of reducing reusing and recycling takes concentration and persistence Where's the freedom in that? Well, I'm gonna work on an answer We're gonna take a while to get there, but I'm gonna work on it We're gonna take a closer look at it to recycling and I'm gonna use a case study here that I'm really familiar with Since the summer of 2013 This campus has been Composting recycling all of its food waste all that we can collect Thanks to really great support from our dining services staff our physical plant staff Thanks to a key donation that allowed us to buy a vessel composter We've made a fairly rapid transition to composting both our pre-consumer waste The stuff that comes out of the kitchen scraps the peels from preparing the food as Well as the post-consumer food waste the paper The food remaining on the plates and trays after people eat Don't pretty good job not perfect, but pretty good I've been working with that effort over the past over years, and I've as a part of that I've learned how it works elsewhere, and I've been struck how It's not about what goes on out of that composting vessel. That's the easy part We can do that practically in our sleep Not quite but but close the really hard part is what the industry calls source separating You have to get the food waste separate from the stuff that doesn't compost It's the classic recycling problem how to get the stuff in the right bin and food waste is harder to But because our dining service operation is committed because we designed our facility well when it was built many years ago I'm not sure people were thinking about this then but they did it right and Because of our model of our dining service the a la carte model kind of helps reduce food waste We've been doing pretty well again. I think I think of ways we can do it better, but it's it's pretty good As a result we have a good composting process Well working with this means I spent a lot of time thinking about it and of course it spills over into my home life and what goes on in my own kitchen and That's where I begin to get a glimpse of how there might be freedom in creation care just the beginning If if my household When it's doing well, and we do the source separation thing well, and we keep the food waste out of the trash You know what happens the garbage never smells Because it doesn't have anything to rod in there and that means Yeah, I don't have to take the garbage out this week. It's not full. I can wait Now I'm sure you're saying but what about all that food waste? Surely that can start to smell and has to be taken out every week. This is true But the total volume is smaller and I have more options It's just food waste I can compost it in my backyard and use it for my garden I can take part in a community composting effort where it's recycled into fertilizer for some effort a community garden There even communities where they've implemented this on a municipal scale and they stop picking up the regular trash and Recycle bowls every week. They maybe do it every two weeks and have a small collection of food waste once a week changes the cost Equation of garbage so got a little hint of freedom in there Well, this is a holistic view and it does open up our eyes to some possibilities that things might be easier more free But it's still a kind of discipline, isn't it the discipline that constrains us to act in a certain way Okay, is this food waste? Can this be composted or not? I got to think and I got to have two containers I got a plan We need to go a little deeper to think about the freedom. I'm talking about we're just going to keep going down and digging into this About 15 years ago. I was asked to teach a course titled ecological design. I Still find that name ecological design a bit presumptuous given what little we know about ecology But the name and the experience of teaching that class brings insight to the topics of limits and freedom Since I was supposed to teach about ecological design Of course, I had to think about the design process in doing so I realized that the thorniest most difficult design decisions are those in which there are no inherent constraints or Standards to guide the decision-making If all things are possible Then nothing is because we don't know where to begin This realization got me to thinking about the true nature of choice and freedom and I'm led to make this claim See what you think about this All of the things that we humans do on this earth that somehow draw our attention to the divine To the holy to the spirit are grounded in some way in the physical real limits that guide and give life to what we do Let's think about this Can you imagine a building without a foundation connecting it to a place or? Music without the patterns of harmony and rhythm that give it shape Poetry without the perpetual wrestling with meter Painting without the two-dimensional field of the canvas theater without the boundaries of the stage Painting excuse me writing without the grammar and structure of a particular language mathematics without the discipline of proof Scientific research with no reference to experiment Likewise, I do not think that our lives can take any meaningful shape without the real and physical gifts of our environmental limits The stuff of this earth soil water climate trees animals and even mosquitoes Becomes the environment which gives life to both body and soul Surely by now you must be thinking whoa what kind of mental sleight of hand is this guy trying to pull Trying to tell us that all these environmental do's and don'ts are really environmental freedoms Let's go deeper still If we look more closely, and I'm really glad David Framed this really well. We will see where you often neglect the idea of environmental justice The concept that our environmental actions need to be looked at through a lens of fairness This way of looking at environmental questions highlights some interesting but often unspoken questions Take the basic case of waste and recycling the unspoken question in our mind in that discussion is That question that's on everybody's mind is who handles the waste Or to put it in terms of the food waste example. I have already explored Explored who does the source separation? And then the other question who has to live around the waste or deal with the consequences of that waste Again in the context of the composting example who has to live next to the landfill or the composting site Thinking about the many environmental questions and challenges we face I've realized that these questions are shaping our ideas about and our ability to care for God's creation When we say that it is too hard to separate our waste Are we saying it is really too hard? Are we saying that we want someone else to do the work? Someone who makes less money than we do And who has fewer economic options and if we don't recycle it, where will the waste go? You know the phrase not in my backyard Okay, let's move up to the really big scale the proverbial elephant in the room Climate change the international agreement on climate change was stalled for years Because richer countries didn't want to give up the advantages that they had relative to poor countries and the poor countries Sure didn't want to do anything until the richer companies countries has stepped up with a plate The fundamental idea of justice of course succinctly stated in Jesus summary of Law and the prophets, you know the bit about loving God with your old being and oh, yes loving our neighbors as ourselves And just to be clear about who the neighbor is the gospel slip in that little parable about the good Samaritan To make it clear that the community of our neighbors includes people who we think are outside of our community People we may even see as our enemies Thus the term environmental justice asked us to consider how our environmental actions affect not only our lives and The environment around us and our families But also how we affect all people Not just our near neighbors, but people all over the globe And as David clearly pointed out to make it even more challenging challenging. We speak of the God We worship as the God of all creation We take that description seriously We are probably called to do justice to our non-human neighbors Beginning with the plants and animals around us and extending all the way out of the albatrosses on Midway Island So much for freedom Now every environmental move is constrained by thinking about how we might affect the amorphous and impersonal entity called the earth But now we also have to ask how does affecting people all over the globe and plants and animals too. I Don't seem to have gotten any closer to freedom to freedom the radical freedom of creation care Maybe I need to go back and rethink that title Let's try something Maybe I shouldn't have been so grammatically correct and that instead of the word radical With the CAL at the end. I should have word used the word radical with a CLE at the end If you are well versed in English spelling and word meaning and maybe a bit of botany You would recognize that radical with a CLE At the end refers to the first or primary root of a sprouting seed The other radical the one spelled with the CAL shares the same root word pardon the pun With the CLE version, but usually refers to the dramatic difference or change in the in the fundamental nature of something When I wrote this title I was thinking about the fundamental difference the dramatic change and how we see the Dilemmas and decisions related to caring for God's creation But the more I think about it the CLE version the one referring To the root emerging from the seed is just as good a choice perhaps even better Because I talk about the radical freedom of creation care. I am really talking about a call to be grounded Rooted in the recognition of who we are as God's creatures We are creatures of God's creation made like all the other creatures in creation of the stuff of this earth We are part of the earth cycles of life a full part of our ecosystems a full part of their functioning as Integral parts of the ecosystem, but also made in the image of God. We are enabled yes Even freed to be full participants in that creation a few minutes ago I said that I do not think our lives can take any meaningful shape without the physical limits and gifts of our environment Real and physical gifts of our environmental limits That was part of a section where I outlined how most if not all of the creative endeavors of Our life take place within and even take energy from the constraints and limits that shape our creativity I would submit to you that creation care is no different and that is why I dare speak of the radical freedom of creation care If we see our position as creatures in creation as a prison a set of constraints that we must escape Then we are not free. In fact, we may even be dead in That frame of mind dealing with our trash and finding ways to transform it again to new materials is a barrier to being something else Something more desirable in our mind, but also something other than a child of God And if we see our lives as a struggle to push the consequences of our action on to someone else Hopefully someone on the other side of the globe will never we will never have to see Then we are placing ourselves in a kind of prison Not one of walls or confining spaces, but one where we are exiled cast out from being a part of God's kingdom But if instead We can see that working with the stuff of this world is a creative act One where we can bring all the creative energy that God gives us to bear on the challenge of living well But lightly on this earth then we are much more alive free to be what God calls us to be And if we can use that creativity to first imagine and then work towards a way of living that honors all God's creatures Plants animals humans in all places Then we will know a liberation Okay, I've been at many environmental talks where it stops there Liberation and It's all wonderful and then you go outside and you go home and you look at the trash can and it's like you're back to work Or you go outside and you look at our fossil fuel economy and you realize what it's doing to the climate and it's back to work And it doesn't feel very free So I want to talk and give some examples just kind of off the cuff here about that creativity And and what I've seen I'm gonna draw from people some of whom are in the room Or organizations that are in the room. I might say You've heard mention of Minnesota interfaith power and light and I've been Very privileged to work with that group as I worked on some renewable energy and solar issues in the community and done so in a creative way by meeting with city council members in people's homes and having good conversations But even the name of that organization is a lot of fun interfaith power and light quite a play on Your power company and suddenly you start asking wow could my church be a power company well With distributed energy and solar there some of you probably know churches that have put solar panels on your roof And it takes a little creativity to make it work because of where nonprofits and some of the tax credits Don't work for churches, but people have figured out how to do this and and done some creative things to make that happen quite amazing a lot of human creativity a lot of that expression of what we can be to work these things through or a Church that decides to do food composting, you know When we did our waste audit here looking at our food waste when we got done and I figured out Yeah, we maybe have maybe 400 pounds of food waste today, and I was trying to put some error bars on that to say How much I did we get it all and one of the things I realized we missed was coffee grounds You know your church doesn't produce any of those does it? No And there's some really creative things it it's great for compost great for your garden, but you can also grow some mushrooms on that Some really tasty the kinds they sell in the store for a high price. There are lots of creative possibilities there part of of that creativity Part of what we need to do that is to start Re-envisioning our world coffee grounds are not waste Coffee grounds are raw material something we can transform all of our waste is really a raw material that can we can do something with even that Carbon dioxide that's coming out of our cars and wrecking our climate is a waste that maybe if we did something different We could we could do something better with it There's possibilities part of that reimagining is really reimagining the Stuff of this earth and David hinted that's I'm gonna add another hint to it I haven't had to use my glass of water And I've done a lot of work with water. I've been in Africa and those places where it gets to be 118 degrees and dealt with water issues there, so I've thought a lot about how to keep water clean and We think about it here in st. Peter because our water supply had been impacted by Nitrate and from agricultural operations and so we have to have a reverse reverse osmosis But a few years ago one of the creative acts in my congregation first Lutheran here in st. Peter Was to read a book of rethinking worship with ecological images and one of the things I took out of that book was Any water anywhere? Probably has a few molecules in it that were in your baptismal font It may have even a few molecules in it that were in the River Jordan when Jesus was baptized because this water some of it gets Consumed and chemically changed, but some of it just keeps cycling around in the water cycle So what happens if we think about the waters starting with the rain that falls on? Our streets Starting with the rain that runs off our fields and in the rivers What if we realized that that is connected to the water of baptism? What does that mean? I? Think it's a way that we can start reimagining all these materials in our life as something dare I say sacred dare I say Holy the justice thing Starts to call in some creativity too when you start looking at and working with people working in that solidarity that David talks about One of my privileges of this past year Was to spend three and a half months in India was a group of our students and also a group of Concordia College Moorhead students as part of our semester in India program and In that we we've met some people who are really facing these climate dilemmas We were in the southern state of Kerala, and we were talking to farmers from the adavasi groups the native peoples of India And they were saying you know it is really tough. We don't know What's going on with the climate anymore? It used to be we could only grow coconuts in the valleys and now it's all the way up the mountains because it's different And we don't know when to plant and which seeds work best. It's confusing but we also met people that Used that as an opportunity to reclaim something and to do something really creative a group we visited were lower-caste women in an area Where traditionally they had worked for their landlords and their upper-class neighbors as household servants doing work in their fields and They didn't Cultivate their own fields because of course as people on the bottom end of the totem pole they got the worst land in town the dry Rocky soil, and they thought they couldn't grow anything But with the work of another organization called the Dacon Development Society This group of women had started to ask some questions And they asked some questions of what they were growing and they realized that as Outsiders and other people had come in and they'd moved to the bottom of the social They'd started focusing on these cash crops of cotton and wheat and they'd neglected some traditional crops particularly millets Which always grew in that area and there it's a drought prone area They can go several years without regular rains and it's getting worse with climate change Well, they started planting those millet crops again And you know millet doesn't need a lot of water and it's really adapted to that climate and what they discovered is if they used Their traditional millet crops they could do pretty well on those dry rocky fields And oh, yeah, they we used to use these plants as vegetables these green things that people call weeds But we used to know how to use those as vegetables and somebody did a little study and wow ten times the nutritional value in these plants and So now these women and they valued their seeds and they started keeping track of what varieties they were growing And two things that really struck me one as they said now Sometimes our richer neighbors that we used to work for are coming to us for help because this climate thing is really tricky And it's it's people having a hard time making a living And I Said to them I was familiar with people who lived in these drought prone areas And I know it can be tough and I said well, you know, you've had a drought last year You're kind of in the second year of a drought. How's it going and they just matter-of-factly said, you know We think we got two more years we can hold out which is an incredible sign of resiliency and Capacity to adjust and so that's another example of creativity as we can start looking at in that solidarity With other people's in the world and how can we work together to make this Go for us. How can we do better? How can we be more free in Serving God and loving our neighbor. Thank you So we do have time for maybe a question or two just raise your hand and we will make sure a microphone comes to you It's not a share or die situation But of course if you do have a comment or a question you want to make we have something in the front row here and Another one in the back over there came Thank you My brother has been working with garbage and the PCA for 30 years. I Have a curiosity as I know it is more efficient to send one truck through a neighborhood once a week Than to send seven or eight trucks. How can I talk to my neighbors? about Consolidating garbage and recycling pick up rather than everyone contracting individually So your real question is how can you talk to your neighbors? It's a key. That's a key question. How do you how do you find a way to? Converse I think it relates to this freedom thing because I'm still learning how to do this myself just to be honest But part of the problem is is we're a little worried about being asked to do something that's difficult And we're a little worried that it'll be a judgmental thing Oh, I'm not keeping up with my neighbors and doing the right thing and And sometimes it's just the conversation because People don't realize that you're thinking about this and they're actually really bothered about it, too And you've got to start the conversation. It has to be has to be genuine. You can't just say, okay I want to talk to you about your garbage. We know that you got to you got to talk to them about other things But sometimes that That's a way to break the ice again. I this is not a oh Snap my fingers and fix the problem But it takes the conversation now. I will point to Another creative way of thinking about this and I've seen some groups doing this in some urban areas And I think you could do it here. Let's say we're going to compost our food waste All right, we could haul it all to a central site Compost it and then what do we want to do with the compost? We want to bring it back to our gardens, right or someplace Well, you've seen some groups saying well, you know, this whole hauling thing is the problem Why don't we create a small neighborhood composting site where we all can compost our waste? Maybe it's close enough. We can walk to it. Maybe And some groups have done this to do bicycle collection Compost the waste near where we want to use to compost and then we don't we skip the truck all together So again, I'm not saying that's the solution in your situation, but that is The kind of creative thinking to look at the problem in a different way So hope that that's helpful Hello. Yes, I Heard yesterday on the radio that India and then I believe it's Indonesia and then the United States require the most Water for agricultural purposes and all other purposes Can you confirm that or something of the sort? Well, while I was working on my talk last night Pardon my spouse said Well, I was driving between my two schools today. I heard this really good talk on the radio. You should listen to it But since I was working on the talk, I haven't done it yet, but I'm going I know I actually know the authors John Foley who used to be at the Institute on the environment here in Minnesota I think it's probably true. I do know in the US that the most water using enterprise is agriculture and I No surprise that in India is the case because they have a lot of irrigated agriculture and I have lived in Indonesia and I would say it's probably true there, too Because they do a lot based on rice culture Several things to think about is if you use that water right in irrigation It's not a waste necessarily it can be reused for something else there But there's still the issue of a lot of it evaporates and you have to supply a lot of water As is typical of these things, I would say the number one solution is as I gave an example in the in the case of of India, perhaps The irrigated crops are not the right choice Many states in India are now sort of declaring themselves millet states because they've recognized that millet uses less water And it's a better way The other thing to recognize and I think this is probably the case in the US Context Water use is a reflection of actually how we care for our soil and we have tended to use practices that reduce organic matter Tillage regular tillage Not adding organic amendments, but chemical fertilizers and it reduces organic matter and a funny thing happened In 2012 we had a very severe drought in here in the Midwest and many places had Significant loss of yield in their corn and soybean crops, but when people looked at the results of that drought and Analyze yields it wasn't uniformly bad everywhere. You could have fields next door to each other that were Better than others and the difference was the organic matter in the soil If the soil had been cared for and had the capacity to hold more water You could you did better in the drought no question. So it's about taking care of that soil So that's one one avenue is just working on what they call the health of the soil and taking care of it and then Thinking carefully about the design how we do our agriculture. There are ways to use less water We've always had techniques and we can reapply those again recover some of that knowledge. Thank you That was a good question and now I'm doubly motivated to watch that talk Listen to it. Excuse me. Thank you