EcoFaith Summit 2021
The event features:
Speaker Professor Barbara Rossing, Professor of New Testament, Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago, Director of Environmental Studies Program
Storytellers:
Kevin Anderson – Director, Family Freedom Center, Duluth
Johanna Bernu – 8th grade, Descendant of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa
Ricky Defoe - Spiritual Elder, Pipe Carrier, Fond du Lac Member
Alicia Green - Creation Care Team Member, Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa
Jack Lamar – Early Frost Farms, Embarrass
Tom Uecker – Founder, Duluth Monarch Buddies
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Now the Green Blade Rises Music videos as performed for the Moments of Arising videos, with musical arranger and director Paul Jacobson, and filmmaker Linda Kalweit
Together with the EcoFaith Network of the Minneapolis Area Synod, Lutheran Advocacy Minnesota, Lutherans Restoring Creation, Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light, the St. Paul Area Synod Care of Creation Work Group, and Together Here Ministries - Northeastern Minnesota Synod
During this year unlike any other, many plans and intentions have been put on hold, including creation care efforts in our congregations. Creation care leaders have expressed to us that they feel as though they are (or will be) starting over.
At the same time, new seeds have germinated in this Jubilee Year of Earth Day, even amidst a pandemic. And people like you, committed to the care of creation, are seeking ways to ignite or reignite your whole congregation in this central calling of our faith.
How can we tell stories of a wounded yet wondrous creation in ways that motivate our congregations to actively care? How are each of us, personally and as congregations, part of the Great Story of creation’s healing? How can the green blades of God’s resurrection work be rising in our midst?
Storytelling for the healing of creation is the heart of the April 17 EcoFaith Summit. Through the telling and sharing of personal and biblical stories, we will strengthen the grassroots movement of God’s people to hear the cry of creation and heed God’s call to respond. You, your team, and your congregation are at the heart of this movement!
2021 EcoFaith Summit Recordings
Full Summit
Keynote Speaker: Barbara Rossing
Storytellers
Ricky Defoe
Ricky DeFoe, Spiritual Elder, Pipe Carrier, and Fond du Lac Member tells the story of his own life’s spiritual journey, which included a period of years as a Roman Catholic, before his return to his Ojibwe spiritual heritage. He describes our society’s relationship to each other and to the Earth as “upside down”, in which we treat Mother Earth as a collection of resources, instead of as our source, our Mother. If we take care of our Mother, our Mother will take care of us.
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Tom Uecker
Tom Uecker, founder of Duluth Monarch Buddies narrates the extraordinary beauty and endangerment Monarchs in the form of a dialogue between the Dr. Seuss’ Lorax and the Monarch telling her own story. The Monarch and the Lorax invite us to become part of the Monarch’s story by planting milkweed everywhere.
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Keynote presentation
Revelation: The Lamb’s Alternative Power Story for the Healing of Creation
The Rev. Barbara Rossing unfolds the apocalyptic final book of the New Testament not as a message about the end of the world, but about the end of the Roman empire. For the many people of faith who are aware of that Earth’s systems have reached a tipping point life because of our own civilization’s “empire”, Revelation is not about the end of the world, but the end of the empire. The world is about to turn. She traces the false story that empire uses to maintain power, and contrasts it with the alternative story of Lamb power for the healing of creation.
Barbara Rossing is a published scholar of the book of Revelation, Professor of New Testament, Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago, Environmental Studies Coordinator, and board member of Lutherans Restoring Creation.
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Kevin Anderson II
Kevin Anderson II, Director of the Family Freedom Center, Duluth, shares his experience of children in Duluth who have never been to the shore of Lake Superior because of poverty. He tells the parable of the diseased tree, suggesting to us that we need to address the sickness of our society’s systems. He challenges those who want to “save the Earth” in general to participate in the healing of racial and economic inequities right where we live.
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Jack Lamar
Jack Lamar of Early Frost farms tells us about a turning point in his life which led him and his wife purchasing land in Embarrass, Minnesota. Over the years, he learned that the land is not there to serve him, but that he is there to serve the land. Learning to love the land has opened him up to an ever-widening circle of community with people.
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Alicia Green
Alicia Green, Creation Care Team Member, Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa, tells the story of finding and following her life’s core purpose in nurturing the care of God’s creation in her many roles as mother, spouse, science teacher, community leader, church member, and nature lover. She invites us to identify three words that identify our own purpose too!
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Johanna Bernu
Johanna Bernu, 8th grade, Descendant of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, shared the story of her research into the differences between the North American yellow water lily and the European yellow water lily. From the Eurocentric perspective, these are the same plants, but careful observation reveals crucial distinctions, and the damage to the Native yellow water lily and its benefits when the European variety invades.
Note: Johanna Bernu is not digitally sharing her story because she has been taught that in Ojibwe culture, our stories are sacred, to be told in real-time and only shared with the people who were physically present in order to honor the sacredness. She has offered to share a summary of her study and to be digitally available for groups who want to hear and discuss her water lily story.