 I would like to ask Jake, if he is here, or he maybe just stepped out to come and welcome us to the place here at Kairos, at Grace Presbyterian. That's my fault. Should I just step in? Do you think Jake will be a little longer? Right here. Oh, okay. For those of you who are online, I'll just say you can probably see most of us, but I'm seeing like 15 people, and there's more of us milling around. So there's like 15 people here in person at Grace Presbyterian. And for those, and if you can't see the whole group online, Shannon, can you tell us how many people are online right now? There are 16 screens, so including you, so 15 people online, maybe 14. So we are a little community already beginning to form. Jake, thanks for having us here. Yeah, so hi everybody. I'm Jake. I'm one of the ministers here at Grace, and it's great to welcome you into our space. We are a community. We value belonging, community, compassion, engagement and service. And so it's really great to have you here. A couple of things for you. I get to kind of do the flight attendant spiel for you. So in the case of an emergency, the nearest exit is over here and then just head out the doors into the parking lot. And there are two washrooms. So if you head out these doors, you can either go to the end of the hallway, and there's a washroom there, or if you take a right, and then another right, there's a little alcove and right in that little alcove. There's the other washroom. So it's great to have you here and welcome. Glad, glad to be a part of this and to welcome you into Grace's space. Yeah, Sarah, I'd like to invite Sarah. Sarah is going to open our morning for us. Hello everybody, my name is Sarah Arthur's and like to thank Grace for welcoming us with your open arms literally so lovely. Kevin, thank you for nudging all of us. It's very good at that. Let me just tell you, he's a very good nudger. It's because of his nudging that that we are here so thank you so much Kevin for doing that. I want to give you a little overview of the morning just so you kind of know where we're going. I'm going to say a few words by way of introducing myself why I'm here. This is an event, a project called greed Exodus. We will be welcomed to this place and this land with our colleague and friend Tony snow, and really glad for that grounding in the earth which is even more important because of the theme of what we're attending to today. We will be having that. And then it's been my pleasure to kind of bring into our community together a number of people that I've been working with over the last two years, and who I've grown to know some more than others but become aware of the amazing things that are happening in Calgary so we will be hearing from my friend and colleague Liz Reese, who will be speaking about the mystic contemplative path, and why it offers hope and wisdom in our times. Robin hope galey will be speaking about her experience and her offerings around wild church, a grassroots movement inviting connection with creation. Dave Saudi was not here yet will be speak he's from the Lutheran world will be speaking about what do you pack for the journey into hope. And Doreen caught, who I'm sure is known to everybody here will be sharing her experience from Parkdale United Church about how to create an energy efficient church building. And at the end there'll be a chance for some integrating of what we found all these different pieces that we've touched into, and all of them will be kind of giving us an experience, and another kind of perspective on what, what is hope. In this time of climate crisis. So, I wanted to just share why I am here today. Yes, a little bit. I'm here because in November of 2019. I experienced a kind of profound permeability and unsettling around climate change. It's an agenda to be particularly concerned. And some things happen to change that. Since then, I've been on a journey of learning brain experimenting of gathering with others to explore what God life love the Holy Spirit is calling us forward into as the biosphere we know shifts and fragments. And so I acquired the name of green Exodus. And as we know the Exodus in the Old Testament began with the burning bush. And I remember reading in a meditation by Richard Roy, which I went back to try to find and couldn't find an occasion where he made the provocative statement that perhaps the burning bush was maybe like our fall leaves. And it made them, when they are brilliant yellow and gold. So not something kind of freaky, like green leaves and fire around the but something very natural but for some reason, astoundingly beautiful to Moses at that moment in time, so much so that it made him stop. It made him say, Wow, and it made him permeable to God's call and invitation to something. So I don't know whether that sits with you or not, but it's an interesting perspective to open up our minds about how God is present to us in the earth. So what I would like you to do, and this is the invitation for people online as well is by way of beginning. I'd like you to just get into little clusters of three or four. I'd like you will take about five minutes. And what I'd like you to do is to think about in this lineage of being upended by the astonishingness of the earth. I wrote that line I had to say it upended by the astonishingness of the earth. I would like you to think about some occasion lately where you have been just wowed by wildness by something green and living some four footed or winged creature that has totally caught your attention and initiated delight within you. I'd like you to get together with three or four other people and introduce yourself and just share that particular moment in time. It could be this morning when you saw the sky, pink and blue and white and gorgeous, or it could be the incredible autumn we've had a particular moment, but when the leaves fell down on my head like blessing, just invite me to think about that. So we'll take about five minutes to do that. And, and then we'll continue. So one of the activities that Green Exodus did in 2021 was we hosted a month of activities we called Earth Jam community and practice spiritual practices for living in a time of emergency, emergency, emergency. And at that event, we were given the at the opening ceremony for that event, we were each given the opportunity to think about what our intention was for this month of kind of significant engagement and programming. And what came to me was that I wanted to move forward without a map. I wanted to move forward without a map. But that's a juice. What I wasn't expecting that didn't I didn't know what it meant. So the following weekend I took some time for reflection and possible meanings emerged, which felt validating and encouraging. So as I was wondering, what is a journey without a map. I had this BGO. Does anybody know what a BGO is. It's a blinding glimpse of the obvious BGO. Okay, so I had a BGO, and that moving forward without a map is an Exodus. In the Exodus, the Israelites left Egypt without a predetermined destination and without a map. The left they left because they had to, or they would die. Guidance and sustenance were provided by God on a moment to moment day to day need to know basis. They were acutely and uncomfortably dependent, which on a number of occasions was more than they could tolerate. It was the time of the golden calf. They just couldn't couldn't handle the ambiguity of the situation, but they were walked into a new relationship with God, who we might say the divine the more than us who calls us into life and love, and into a new relationship with the land and with each other. And eventually they got to a destination. The second BGO that happened for me around Exodus was that Exodus is a community journey. And Exodus is not a solitary gym. It is not a private personal pilgrimage, no single servings, but the journey of a community. All of this carries some weight because the name for me of what we're doing is green Exodus so there's a sense of it being a community. So who is on this green Exodus. Perhaps those of us who have left or are leaving old ways of knowing the earth. Old ways of being in the earth. Old ways of knowing and naming God. Old ways of being church. Perhaps those who are on this Exodus are those of us who are seeking a way of being in the earth, which bows within its astounding beauty and honors it as everything necessary to our existence. And as the very presence of God, in which we live and move and have our being. We are seeking a way of living in the earth, which blesses our neighborhoods. All things, living a beautiful. Perhaps it's those of us who are opening our hearts and bodies and imaginations and mind to a God who is always beyond words, but never absent. And who is always calling us forward into a new relationship with her, the earth and each other. And that is what this event is about. We are here finding each other as companions on this Exodus together. And we are in this work together of finding new ways of being in the earth. So that is part of my imagining what the gift of this day is for us is that we are finding ourselves finding one another, and finding the spirit of God within us as we are on this Exodus into a new way of being in the earth. A way which makes sense of its gorgeousness. So, having said that. I would like now to pass it over to Kevin was going to welcome Tony was going to welcome us to this place. I want to ask you to teach us is on your heart. Share with us. We are so grateful for what you have already done. And on behalf of Paris, we want to offer you this tobacco, this medicine for your healing for our healing for healing. Thank you for the invitation to come to this. We talked early on with Kevin about how this become together and some of the coordinating we did a couple months ago to think about where this gathering resides and thinking about the connection between now and in the coming weeks the COP 27. It's a time of bringing ourselves into the open as Sarah was talking about with the ex this. The other thing we have to remember about Exodus that it's generational, and that this is change. And in our work, a lot of it is trying to find those threads of change that are connected to our past and connected to our wisdom that helps us in times of crisis helps us in times of unknowing. And so, when we come together in our traditional way, we have a smudge, and we have a time of prayer, and that is one of the traditions of our elders that they take part in as a communion with God, the remembrance that we are God's children. So I like this candle as a reminder of our connection to our past, our connection to what has gone on in our communities, and the struggles that we find today that are connected to our way of being. And all of those things resound in our efforts to find new ways to be together. As we offer this prayer, we burn the smudge which is a gathering of plants and herbs from the mountains, it is a gathering of medicinal plants that we use in healing. And in our traditions, we talk about purification. And in scientific study, we hear how the smoke of the sage and other plants that we use actually cleanse the environment. And so there's a deep connection between our understanding, the science around it, and our connection to these faithful practices, and how we are in the world. At this time, we hear a lot about native wisdom being a doorway gateway into a greater climate awareness, greater climate knowledge, and how to be within Earth. And a lot of that has to do with our traditions. So that begins with prayer, let us pray. What do you have your sugar in our cup, Creator God, mother of all, heart of all creation. And we know and see you in everything around us. You know your spirit abides with all. And that you nurture us into this space that we might learn to live in harmony and oneness with your creation. And we fail with that, give us where we have not lived up to our expectations, caring for the Earth, nurturing one another. Pray for forgiveness we pray for understanding pray for hope that our future, the future of our children and their children might extend long past our current trajectory. And here at this time we remember our Mother Earth. A coach a remember that our time here is not long. But that, you know, work, carry on the stewardship that our ancestors have done. Teach that to one another. But we learn to live in harmony and in balance with the world around us. Jesus Christ. I'm going to screen here, a written landing alternate for the climate hub and this is sort of a rendition of that came out earlier. And this is because we're coming from different spaces because we're coming from different areas you can also add your area that you're coming from in the chat. And part of this is a recognition of how we are grounded and how we are centered in this land, how we are here and how we can be here. And in that we are talking about relationships. We're talking about history, we're talking about that process of being together. Our acknowledgement today bridges lands and territories among the whole of creation. In this sacred space we remember the lands to which we were first called into being ancestral lands, holy lands, full of belonging and nurture lands that spoke our language back to us, whose names we recognize in our ancestral tongues and to whom we were recognized and known by our places of origin. This was the first reconciliation, knowing belonging and acceptance by all God's creatures and all God's creation. In the relationship we learned about God, a creator, through the works of creation, and we learned our purpose by observing the inner workings of ecosystem and the lives of our cohabitants, the animals, the plants, the rivers, the stars, in each their own way follow God's plan. The meaning of the Christian teachings and instruction, our lessons that were given by creator were misinterpreted, condemned and graced, and we were forced to assimilate. Now generations later, we work to rebuild our communities, beautiful stories they preserved to use in the land. Don't make screams. I'm going to find the slingshot. Yeah, right if I bought it under the middle symbol beside the alley, that's correct. So, with this, we have in our tradition that as morally, we came to Christianity in the 1850s, 1840s with Rundle, Reverend Robert Rundle, who came out to our reserve, and was a minister there. He had sort of an open way around his involvement and taught many stories in Cree to our people, our people are stone. And in the connection there, it became deepened by a Anishinaabe missionary who came to our reserve, and was a very gifted man who taught us to accept the Bible as a guy. Not as a instruction that was posed upon us. We're very different from many tribes that we embraced the teachings of Christianity and Jesus, and that those were incorporated into our customs in our culture in our ceremonies, and all of that has a resonance for our people. They did things like create their own longer prayers and hymns that were used in a Christian tradition, and we use those prayers and ideas in our ceremonies around death, around life, around some of our work with the church and some of our customary times like when you come of age. Here, a traditional stony hymn called God Father. I'm just going to sing that for you. In this work, we are often brought to connection with others, and so in my father's time, he studied at the Cochristian Training School in Tempe, Arizona. The Cochristian Training School in Tempe, Arizona, was run by this Reverend, Dr. Reverend T. Herbert from the Nose Pierce tribe in Washington. I had known him for a number of years, and I talked to him last year. He was concerned about being in Arizona. He wanted to go up and see his daughter back home and had decided to make that trip. We had a conversation before that he made that trip and then got sick from COVID and died. But this is one of his prayers from the Book of Reform prayers. Greater God, your presence is as the wind, the breath and sustainer of life. You're grateful for being a part of your beautiful creation. Rugged mountains, rolling plains, uncultivated deserts. We thank you for the birds of the air, the animals, the fish of the sea, for purity of air and water and healing medicines that remind of the need for holy virtue of life, spiritual and physical. In your holy mystery, you have revealed that we are God's children. A wonderful mosaic of humanity with different cultures and heritages. We have work yet to do to work for truth and equity. We pray that we might always be found faithful, reflecting your love. God's like to overcome the darkness in this world. You're present, O God, through your son, Jesus, in whose name we pray. In this work, and as we find our center and our place within this land, it is a recalling to our body, to our spirit of belonging and of knowing us in this space. When we think about this, I'm reading from Acts 17 verses 24 to 26 from the First Nation version of the New Testament. It says, the Great Spirit is the one who created the universe and all things in it. He is the rightful ruler of the spiritual above and the earth below. He does not live in lodges built by human hands. Creator does not really need human beings to do things for him, since he is the one who gives all people life and breath and everything we need. Beginning with the first human being, he made all nations and tribes and wanted people to live all over the face of the earth. He decided ahead of time when and where each tribe would live. So this idea of placeness and intention. My father writes, for thousands of years, the Stony people gained an education from the tribal leaders which fitted them to live with pride and confidence on this great island. They learned the ways of the seasons, the ways of the animals and birds, they learned which plants and herbs would sustain their good health. They learned the ways of living together in respect for the needs of others, the sharing of the bounty of the hunt, the meaning of prayer. They learned to live in all the seasons. They learned the importance of bravery and wisdom. They learned the responsibility of leadership. They did not build schools as a white man does, but the Stony education system was suited to the requirements of a free and independent people living in a free land. In this notion of belonging, there is a way of determining our presence by this investiture of our being into these spaces and of our stewardship and connection to the land, doing what we are responsible for. My father writes, in the days prior to the coming of the white man to the lift, a nomadic way of life, hunting, fishing, gathering, the abundance of the good land. There were literally millions of buffalo roaming the western plains along the foothills and even in the Rocky Mountains themselves. There were game animals of all kinds, moose, elk, deer, wild sheep and goats, readily available for us to hunt and to enjoy. The land was vast, beautiful and rich and abundant resources. Our Mother Earth called from us, called us from the mountains and prairies, the valleys and mountain areas. Lakes, rivers and springs, come my children. Anyone who is hungry, come and eat from the fruits and gather from the abundance of this land. Come everyone who thirsts, come everyone, come and drink pure spring waters that are especially provided for you. Everywhere the spirits of all living things were alive. We talked to the rocks, the streams, the trees, the plants, the herbs and all nature's creation. We called the animals our brothers. They understood our language we too understood theirs. Sometimes they talked to us in dreams and visions. At times they revealed important events or visited us on our vision quest to the mountain dogs. Truly we were part of and related to the universe. And these animals were a very special part of Great Spirit's creation. In Job we read, but ask the beasts and they will teach you, the birds of the heavens, they will tell you, the bushes of the earth, teach you. The fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all of these does not know the hand of the Lord has done this. In his hand and in the life of every living thing, all the breath of all mankind. And so this deep connection with the world that you're embedded in some relationship with that, knowing that we can turn to creation in our need. Knowing that in our relationships must build up that understanding between us and the world around us. And so this sense of being, the sense of belonging, a sense of understanding. My father writes in our migrations as in our vision quest when people continue to observe the lands, the animals, plants, rocks, trees, strings, sun, wind, moon and stars and all things. Our teaching has always been that everything was created for a purpose by the Great Spirit. We must therefore respect all things of creation and learn as much as we can. There are lessons hidden in creation that we must learn in order to live a good life and walk the street. In our tradition, this mountain that I have here is the sacred mountain of our people located just outside our reserve called Yom Nuska. Yom Nuska is the way that we say it. And it means like a sheer cliff tabletop and it is a reminder of that this is the place where God sits in our land. Yom Nuska is a funny word because Yom Nuska in our language just means messy hair. That's what that's what we're calling it. And in this space, we don't climb it, Rector, I've mentioned this before in one of our three nexus events. We don't climb the mountain of recreation. We don't go there to just hang out. We are driven by purpose and by prayer into this land and to share with communion with God at these spaces. And to open ourselves up to the message and the spirit of that place in order to receive instruction and education from the land, from creation and from creator is our place to commune with God. Much like we see in the Hebrew Bible around Mount Zion or Hebrew about these places that are holy in our land. Similarly, we have connection, deep connection to special places that are full of spirit. And when we go into these places, we don't create that we don't consecrate places and make them holy. They are holy unto themselves. And we as we recognize and engage with those lands, we become, we understand more about our place in that relationship. And so here at the new one cop me name means water, what common spirit, it is a holy lake. It is a place where a spirit resides where we go and pray. There are numerous examples of this in our land. And one of those is the stony connection to laxing hand, which is also another spirit. We call this, like any one con and laxing and it's called one company. So in these spaces, they are a recognition that God has placed something special and powerful in these areas, and that we go there for instruction or rejuvenation connection. We also see there are healing waters there with the hot springs, those were used medicinally by our people. And one of that example is many for with or the offer been which is the traditional healing place that is now called cave and basin. So when this was discovered, it was immediately cordoned off and turned into Canada's first National Park Connect 1883. We were forbidden to go there. Since that time it was turned into a resort, the pool there. Facilities and amenities put in there and that kind of caved off that or closed off where the cave is, and then charging people to go in. It's only since 2010 that we can go back into that space without having to pay the fee to go in, but still it's trying to go into your church. And you have tourists and everybody sort of gathered around and talking about what you're doing and you're not really there, can't really do a smudge or or do any kind of ceremony there with everyone. You need your space so it's not a private area. And I'm going to end off with this, which is this idea of enculturing and of moving within culture into that sense of being bringing who we are, and who we have become connected in community into this space of understanding. So in Beloved Amazonian a document that I went through is one of the Mennonite programs. I came across this particular passage, which I think really to me kind of woke me up to what we have been missing for a long time. So it says in the Eucharist God in the combination of the mystery of the incarnation chose to reach our inner depths, the fragment of matter, the Eucharist joins heaven and earth, it embraces and penetrates all creation. For this reason, it can be a motivation for our concerns environment, directing us to be stewards of all creation in this sense encountering God does not mean fleeing from the world or turning our back on nature. We take up the energy many elements proper to the experience of indigenous people in their contact with nature, and respect native forms of expression and song dance rituals gestures and symbols. The second Vatican Council call for this efforts to inculcrate the liturgy among the indigenous people for over 50 years have passed, and we have still have far to go to go along these lines. This was called and through our other belligerents or knowing better, we didn't bother to take this opportunity to open this door and walk through and see where we would end up. And I think would be a very different space we had sort of learn from one another. It's going to read from one last passage from Joy Harjo from poem the exile of memory. The old muscogie muscogie laws outlaw the Christian religion, because it divided people who are relatives of Panther raccoon deer and other animals and lived and wins were soon divided. But muscogie ways are to make relatives. We made a relative Jesus gave him a muscogie name. Cannot see our ancestors as we climb up the rich of destruction, but from the bark sense their soft presences at the edges of our minds. We hear they're singing. There is no word in this trade language. No words with enough power to pull all these all this we have become. We are in time. For me, when I hear this. It is how we have built that in culturation of what we have encountered. We have taken on Christianity and its teachings. Find a balance between our understanding of world around us. And this is a common pattern for people, even through a lot of the assimilation and force measures that we still find time and still find ways to keep our traditions alive. And Christianity is not our one whole form. It is part of how we understand the world. It is one aspect of the world we can learn from. We move through to continue on knowing who we are, knowing how we are in the world that we can flourish in a way that God intended bringing us information. I would say every missionary, every explorer that came through our land was greeted and learned from, and was taken through the mountain passes and our traditional land, and let free on the other side, guided and nurtured and loved in that way. We always have that practice. And so we continue to do that. I continue to do that here with all those who are strangers now, who can learn and who can share in this wisdom, share in this understanding. I'll turn it back over to you. And whoever's next for us have learned the kind of tradition. So kind of a bow during our days of pandemic and online and just want to say thank you, Tony, for the goodness and the breadth of those words. I felt the mountains come into our states, I felt the rivers, I felt the wind, I felt the trees. I felt the lineage that we're being welcomed into. I'm just, yeah, thank you so much. Tony. Thank you. This year. All right. So, the next piece on our, that we wanted to spend some time with is what I'm calling a practice of community. And this is something that we've also been experimenting with it through green Exodus, and this is a way of being together, which creates a space for us to speak. What is most alive in us right now. And to hear what is most alive for other people. So the structure of how we gather and is that we will get into groups of three, and you will each have three minutes to speak. No one can interrupt you. The people who are listening, their role is to be very present to try not to relate, try not to make connections try not to think about how you can fix or solve whatever the person might be sharing. Just by your attention and your presence, create a container where they can articulate something that comes from perhaps something surprising for them. And part of how I see this connected to our Christian tradition and to hope is that as Tony has been articulating, we believe that God is present in each of us. And we also come from a Trinitarian faith, which sees God as three, and that life and love and creativity flows between three somehow it's a complex theology, but there is this belief that God is between us and amongst us. And when we gather, and when we are present in who we are, and we join with others who are equally able to be present, something new is born, some new energy, some new love some new understanding some new possibility. So we're going to experiment with this today. What it looks like is that you will find two other people and online Shannon will break people into breakout rooms. You will each take your phone. If you have one, and somebody will go first, and the question you have is, What are you here today. And I invite you to sink into that question. Don't just go well, you know, it was my job before, you know, but really given the goodness of what we've already experienced let that your answer to this question. Why are you here today. What has brought you to this space with these strangers about the earth about climate change. What brings you here today. You have three minutes to speak to that. And if you don't go all the time don't worry about it. If you need silence at any point in your three minutes, just take it the other people won't interrupt you. And when the little wonderful little kind of alarm thing on your phone goes off, then it'll move to the next person. And there doesn't need to be any crosstalk, no conversation, it's just you have three minutes and then you provide listening for the other two people in your small group. And then we'll come back together and we'll just hear a little bit of what surface what's come out from that. And so that's what we'll do with our next time to get it. Any questions about that. And this will feel uncomfortable perhaps something new, something maybe on the edge of your comfort zone, but we're on an exodus, an exodus is going somewhere. And if you want to embrace this opportunity, that's a chance to experiment with that. And no, there's no right around way to do it. Just take it as an opportunity for something different. Shannon, how does that sound to you. Any questions or wondering from your group or from you. I think that's good. Good. Okay, thank you. Okay, so we'll, yeah, we'll take some time, you can find two other people, and then somebody can offer to go first, and, and the first person can set their time or someone else has a phone they can do it for them. So, we'll just take a few moments to just hear a little spattering of what emerged for you from that experience. And we'll maybe also, is there a way to get some words from the online folks. Okay, we just asked you. Okay, all right, well, we'll maybe we'll start with the people here. So what caught your, I don't want to feedback report I don't want to kind of know, kind of, who said why the more, but more kind of what caught your attention what surprised you from that experience. What, what got you what kind of yeah, what caught your attention and surprised you from that experience with each other. I can't say verbatim what happened. Sorry, sorry, sorrow, sorrow was a theme. Thank you. Connection was a theme in the face of what we're all facing. I would need to come together. That sense of needing one another wanting to be with each other. Anything, anything else that caught your attention. Yes, we're all trying to help her small ways. Great. Thank you. Okay, what about them online anything that kind of caught their attention, or sorry, yeah, looking at you. So, some things came up in the chat already and feel free folks to write more or to speak out but Laura says we did not know why we're here but we found that we are seeking. Wonderful. Thank you. And Sean says connection and integration. And actually it was that we found what we were seeking, even though we didn't know what that was. I'm sorry, I miss read already. That's amazing. We can go home now. Thank you. Any other comments or statements from the from our online friends. I think in our group we were feeling urgency. Thank you. Thank you for being courageous in that moment and perhaps making some new choices. And I am glad now to kind of move into the next part of our time together, and really glad to welcome Liz Reese, who will be kind of sharing with us. The wisdom and the excitement and passion she has about the mystic mystic contemplation path as a way forward with all of this newness that we're stepping into. Hi everyone. Wonderful to be here, connecting with with all of you online and here in person. I thought I want to talk about. Yeah, contemplative mystic things and I thought it would be really lovely for us to just at this moment sit in a couple of minutes of silence, would you be okay with that. I've been taking in a lot, and it'll be a time for us to just ground, and then, and then I'm going to stand up after a couple of minutes and launch us into what I want to say with that with a master effort. And now to just close your eyes and just see if you can relax into your physical form, a sense of coming home to the body, letting yourself on clench in every way, dropping your shoulders a little bit and clenching the jaw with great kindness to our deepest home in the heart, residing in the center of our being and taking a moment there just to connect, connect with the divine in dwelling, connect with the deep inside of you. Connect with everyone here, get in person or online where we are gathered together. So from that place apart. Listen to what my Sturrock wrote in the 14th century. When I was the stream. When I was the forest, when I was still the field. When I was every hoof, but thin and wing. When I was the sky itself. No one ever asked me, did I have a purpose. No one ever wondered, was there anything I might need, or there was nothing I could not love. When I left all we once were that the agony began the fear and questions came, and I left, and tears I had never known before. So I returned to the river. I returned to the mountains. I asked for their hands in marriage. Again. I begged, I begged to wed every object and creature. And when they accepted God was ever present in my arms, and God did not say, where have you been, for then I knew my soul. Every soul has always held the sacred. And that is your Eckhart's wonderful mystic of the Christian tradition. Often brought forth when we're talking about creation spirituality. So deep ecology educator Joanna Macy has said that in our time of crisis. There are many things to focus on, and different people are going to play different parts. One is holding action and holding action is about protecting the earth, protests and activism and political organizing. And the second is life sustaining actions. Creating new life. Perhaps as in the shells of old containers. Maybe this is a permaculture community gardening or different ways of doing things. And the third is consciousness shifting actions, which are about waking up with them. And helping the spiritual shift place in our times. So I guess you could say where I'm coming from today is that third category consciousness shifting action. It tends to be where I'm most position that inclined. But I honor everything everybody's doing. I would like to talk about the mystic and contemplative path, which gives me hope in our times. And I think needs to rise up in our times about how the mystics of the Christian tradition are begging to guide us through this dark night of the soul. Mystic teachers like Meister Eckhart, who I just read you some of his wisdom, these mystics and contemplatives knew something about journey and deep about breaking down the walls of separation. About fierce courage about traveling through darkness and about suffering. The wonderful John of the cross beautifully described that he came to a place where there was no other light to guide than the one that burned in his heart. What is burning in our hearts? What is burning in our hearts at this time of climate crisis? What kind of inner fire do we have to draw on? Good question. We can and do. Right rightly. Talk about the climate emergency and ecological destruction as being caused by human greed and over consumption. But every time I hear us going on about that I keep asking, Well, what's causing that? What in us? What's going on in us? Absolutely. We can keep rearranging the pieces and the politics. But something keeps coming up. No matter how we organize externally. People tend to think of the contemplatives as people who are sitting around maybe navel casing or staring at a candle or maybe you can go to them for a little stress relief. Actually, it won't take you long if you look to see the contemplatives, the mystics of our own Christian tradition are fierce and bold and courageous and all about transformation. The mystics, for example, coined the phrase the false self, the ego driven self that is never satisfied, always striving for more to obtain more to gain more power to get more external security, control and less affection and praise or propensity in other words to search for happiness outside of ourselves in external conditions. Despite that have something to do with over consumption and greed, and they teach us how to shed the false self to let it die. In fact, through the through the wisdom Jesus, through the contemplative path to the inner journey of silence, emptying and surrender, we want to become receptive, guided by spirit, wed to every object and creature. My stricter words again, listen to what Thomas Merton, who was writing in the 50s and 60s, had to say. He says, he's brilliant when he talks about the false self. He says, we are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal. We may be true or false. The choice is ours. We may wear now one mask and now another, and never, if we so desire, appear with our own true face, our own true face. The hunger in our times, in my view, is powerful. We are hungry for truth, for authenticity, for the journey that guides us to that true face, and for the journey that guides us to the light that burns in our heart, that will guide us through our collective dark nights and our personal ones. Might it be the church itself is going through a depth of the false self in our times, so that the true face may appear under the refuse of empire, the entire protocol and being in the head, rather than the heart, the burning heart. So I am, I've been very honored to teach within the Centering Prayer tradition, which is a, and I have some people here we've been journeying together recently, about practice. It's a contemplative practice that was originally taught by Tom's Keating, a Trappist monk, and carried forth by mystic teachers such as Cynthia Verjeaux and many others. The practice is one of silence and surrender. And it is deceptively simple. It is silent receptivity with the Holy. It's a practice that teaches us to open, to make room for the guidance of the Spirit, to welcome transformation. Within and around us to welcome the shedding of who we are not a wonderful welcome the shedding of who we are not the complete opposite of what our culture teaches, because it teaches us not to take up any space. Just to sit and allow what what God wants to bring up in us, path of deep humility. People don't rush to sign up for the path of deep humility in our culture. But the world is suffering from our taking up of space from our endless taking from our falsity and lack of consciousness from our alienation from our own deep and sacred hearts. The most interesting prayer, I believe, is what we need and practices like it, what we need on the planet right now, how to learn to listen to make an opening to head for wisdom, instead of our scrambled and reactive doing, which we've been attempting to wield for so long. So I wanted to give an example of how this mystic contemplative path meets eco spirituality. A year ago, through Sarah mentioned Earth Jam, and our, we did a day during Earth Jam last year of a full day and evening of a wild church. And we did a wild church wander. We were all assigned to head out into nature. We were online when we did this due to pandemic, but we each were assigned to head out for several hours in our own vicinity or wherever we were drawn to take outside the practice of sacred reciprocity. So I went to fish creek near where I live. And I sat on a log and centering prayer for quite a long time. And then began, I began to move slowly, very, very slowly through a small pathway through the woods. And at a certain point. As I was just very slowly and peacefully walking along. A certain point, a deer appeared in the woods. And she and I held a very long gaze, and every few minutes, because I was in such a space of peace and silence. Every few minutes, I just took a tiny little step like this toward her and stopped and keep kept holding the gaze with just this deliberate benevolence. And so I moved forward, and I'll pour it toward her. And at a certain point, she laid down, and I knew something about the return that my master Eckhart was describing. And I knew something about the sacred. Thomas Barry, the wonderful deologian said only the sense of the sacred is going to save us now. And I knew something about the shift of consciousness. And sometimes, when I want to put down this work, you know what I see. I see the eyes of that deer and other, other animals I've had similar opportunities with to see their eyes. And I can't forget that. So I returned to the river. I returned to the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again. I begged to wed every object and creature. And when they accepted, God was ever present. That's what I wanted to say. I'm sure we get a chance to talk more. Thank you. We're going to take a bit of a break now in about 10 minutes. I'll add to. There is, there are my friends, I believe, and there's more fun. So. Okay. Oh, yeah, it's just great. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. She was having. And the very first time. Sorry, we don't have your condition. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I didn't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Really. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I keep going around. Yeah. Yeah. And. The dog called was talking about this and I was like sitting in the car around and there was a person there. The dog just ran by the door I opened the door and she came right in the side. I was like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, That's what we need. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I just. I just. I mean, I. I know. Yeah. Get off this. Sometimes. I'm sure it's not easy working. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to start reading. After a long time. We trust and love the spirit of creation. Majestic presence in space and time. I'm sure you're right. I'm really proud of you. I'm proud of you. And I'm proud of you. You're a great artist. Matter shaper. Poetry of the universe. Portiography of spinning galaxies and whirling atoms. Sculptor of spheres. While drummer of heartbeat. master storyteller of our universe, dramatist who gives us a heart after with us and within us in the play. We trust and love the spirit of creation, whose wild work in progress we are. Beautiful of color in eyes and skin. Curious, adventurous, ever changing. Speaking a thousand languages. Dancing a million dances. Smiling seven billion smiles. Dreaming dream upon dream. We trust and love the spirit of creation, who calls creation good. Yes, very, very good. Hallelujah. That Wild Earth Whitney comes from a presentation that Brian McLaren gave here in Calgary in 2019, just at the outset of my time in seminary at the seminary student at Vancouver School of Theology. And in that same talk, Brian McLaren called for the rewilding of Christianity, the return to a creation-based way of worshiping outdoors in the natural world where Jesus taught, where the cosmos is our witness and guide. If we want to activate hope for a healthier future, I agree with McLaren. We should take church back outdoors, whether it's into the public square, as John Wesley did, or into the wilderness, as the Wild Church network invites us to do. But before I say a bit more about that, I want to give you a minute or two to talk with one other person. So I'll invite you just to turn to somebody different perhaps than you spoke to so far. Just one minute each to say, when was the last time to answer the question? When was the last time that you talked with a member of the larger-than-human world? And what did you say? Might have been a rock, a mountain, an animal, an insect, a tree, your pet, a bird. One minute each, two people, and the uttermost night, and the male and the female, and the plants bursting with seed, and the crowning seasons of the firefly and the apple. I will honor all by wherever and in whatever form it may dwell, on earth, my home, and the mansion of the stars. Thank you. I thought I would just call you all back with words again. It's easier, so perhaps easier. Maybe not. I'm sorry if I interrupted people's conversations. I have a basket of stones with me, and I'm going to pass it around, and I realize that I can't pass it to you online, but know that I have a stone and a basket with a wish that you should hold it, and perhaps you can create an image of your mind, in your mind of a small piece of the earth in your hand. So I'll pass those if you want to take one and hold it while I share with you. It's a way of bringing Wild Church into this, you know, what Brian McClaren describes as kind of an antiseptic linear space, right? To me, each of these stones is sacred. Each one carries a message of longevity, solidity, and slow change. And I think this represents a message of hope. I've heard that rocks even are in a process of transformation, although they change much more slowly than we do. It's possible the stones in this basket, in fact, likely that they carry within them a memory of life on this land dating back many hundreds of years, and that they will be solid witnesses to life on this land many generations after we've returned to our elementary forms light. Yeah, so I invite you to consider with me the sacredness of the stones and take one to holding your hand or imagine one in your hand. I just, I'm going to bore through a bit of a presentation. I'm a seminary student, so there's a little theology in here, but I want to say I'm a beginner in this work. I'm a beginner in this work, and so I wanted to maintain a beginner mind to know that I'm open to correction and always interested in learning more. So I gave a paper at a conference at my theology school a couple of years ago on the importance of returning to outdoor worship, and there was a couple of big problems that I mentioned in that. So I'm just going to give you three. So in order to activate hope, I think, or in this situation, it's good to see, to look in the face of the dark at the same time as we're generating fresh hope in the light. So first, isolation. By early in the 21st century, social isolation was recognized as a modern flag, while our dominant Western social model encourages us not to need each other. We do. We are relational beings and running grounds as hardwired for connection. But not only do we need each other, we need creation. Our living Earth, which is at every level endlessly undergoing transformation from the individual species to the biosphere, the largest ecosystem, which some of you may have heard describe as Gaia, or as the living incarnation or body of God. Second, disembedness. Now this goes back to what Tony said about embeddedness. Theologian Norman Worsbaugh, who grew up in Lethbridge and is now in the US, describes how modern life is characterized by disembedness, meaning that we have gradually become disembed from the sacred ties of kinship and community with land. In fact, transformed through technology, the natural elements that are sustaining us right now are barely recognizable. Water comes from pipes. Waste flows away in them. Heat is released from a metal box, which fires on command. Light arrives at the foot of a switch. Food comes in cardboard and cellophane. And cars move us back and forth through the major arteries of our cities. But the true and original source of it all is the natural world. Third, economics. The economics of capitalism are a contributing factor in our divorce from nature. Arguing for a moral economy, Christopher Lind, who died some years ago, another Canadian, and who I would encourage you all to look at. This book is called Rumors of a Moral Economy. Beautiful book. He points out how economics have become disembodied from society. The quote economy, unquote, depersonalizes. It describes humans as labor, nature as land, and capital as money, and forces these organic living, loving beings into self-regulating markets that ignore moral and social impact. In this system, labor and land are only seen to have value when they are productively feeding the economy through extraction and exploitation. Activating hope is what we're here to do though. So those are the problems, and I'll stop on the problems. Let's get to the optimistic side. I am here because I have the gift of helping to plant a wild church community in Calgary as a practicum project in my seminary education through Vancouver School of Theology, and I'm grateful to the participation of people in this room, including Sarah and Liz, and Tony, who have helped to direct that process so far. A few things on restoring our right relationship with the earth, which is a goal of the wild church community. Theologian Peter Rawlins, who lived through the troubles in Northern Ireland as a child, defines reconciliation as to sit with again. In order to reconcile our relationships, we need to sit alongside those different from ourselves and have a meaningful chat about things, a chat in which we show up, pay attention, tell the truth, and don't become attached to the results. So recovering from our divorce from nature, like the reconciliation process we are working towards in our treaty relationship with our Indigenous relatives requires a commitment to sit with the land and listen. Wild Church helps us develop or practice that heightened sensory awareness of the sacredness of life and our essential interdependence with it. So Wild Church is a new ministry that can appeal to those who are well connected in church communities, those who call themselves spiritual but not religious, and those who have no interest in ever entering a church. Our practices are different from traditional church services, and to support participation of those who are attending church, we intentionally choose meeting times that are not in conflict with traditional worship times. The liturgy is different from, you know, typical church liturgy. Our gatherings last 75 to 90 minutes, they're about, they could be much longer and some of us would advocate for longer when you're trying to sit in the forest and listen because it takes time. A few of the elements that we do regularly from my experience with Wild Church so far is acknowledge the land and water with feeling, take active prayerful steps to become more mindfully aware physically present in the moment, call in the directions, and go off for a wild wander, assignment wild wander to listen to what the earth has to teach us today. After the wild wonder we come back together to share what we've learned in the circle and perhaps to create a small mandala from various earth objects that people will bring back with them. The goal of the of Wild Church according to the Wild Church network is a relationship with nature rooted in love through which we participate in the kindred connection of all beings, elements, and places. The hope is only that participants will develop a deep caring about the more than human world that surrounds us and depends on our living earth alongside us. By practicing embodied presence in nature and learning to be still and listen, we can form caring connections with other right forms. Okay, so I hope I get three more minutes and I'd like to invite you, all of you, to to practice a two minute meditation practice out of the three of us asking to have a still so we'll spend a few minutes on a wild wander of a sort without leaving our chairs, which I know is deeply insufficient. However, it's what we have. So I'll ask you just to mindfully meditate on what hope may be activated through a small bit of earth that's in your hand right now or that you're imagining today. So set your feet firmly against the earth or your spine down with the chair in which you sit knowing that the earth is always there. Breathe deeply and slowly. Offer a silent intentional prayer asking for guidance from the earth on the stone. Breathe in deeply and at the top of the breath feel how it feels for your body to be full. As you feel the urge and begin to breathe out feel the space the stone occupies physically or psychically and at the bottom of the breath feel how it feels for your body to be empty. Really take note of the pause in your breath and in that small space of emptiness allow your fears of not doing this the right way to flow away as your body calls for it. Take another breath in and deeply allow images and feelings associated with the earth with the stone in your hand or in your mind to flow naturally. Thomas Berry says in reality there is a single integral community of the earth that includes all its component members whether human or other than human in this community every being enters into communion with other beings. While church hopes and intends to support our experience of communion with creation as our prayers are spoken in view of the elemental sources that support our living. If this idea appeals to you I invite you to join us for future gathering. I'll be helping to support this community building effort as a student until April but the intention is that we're growing a community that will continue well beyond my practical project and so I invite you to be part of that. Or perhaps perhaps just make your way outdoors in your own backyard or depart from your God in the coming days sit at the base of a tree and say allow these words from Mary Oliver's iconic poem Wild Peace. Tell me about despair yours and I will tell you mine. What does your tree have to tell you? What when you feel it's your turn to speak might you have to tell it? Thank you.