Moments of Arising Videos

In celebration of the 50th Jubilee year of Earth Day, the EcoFaith Network of the NE MN Synod ELCA developed a year long video series Moments of Arising . Created by videographer Linda Kalweit and the EcoFaith Network Leadership Team, with photography by Will Stenberg, this series invites you, even during the coronavirus pandemic, to look and listen for green blades rising throughout this Jubilee Year in and for our wonderful creation.

Watch the introductory video now: Reflections by Kristin Foster, Mark Ditmanson, and David Carlson inviting you in this 15-minute video to listen and look for green blades rising, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, in the Jubilee Year of Earth Day.

Promise is the first in a series of eight short videos in the Moments of Arising video series. Each one flowing from one of the stanzas of the hymn Now the Green Blade Rises--four original stanzas (ELW #379) and four newly composed, environmentally focused stanzas. Each of the 8 videos will include prayer and a relevant message by a different speaker. Promise, released for a time of Pentecost, flows from stanza 1 of Now the Green Blade Rises.

Exploitation is the second of eight short videos, each wrapped around one of eight stanzas of the hymn's four original stanzas and four newly composed, environmentally-focused stanzas. Based on the newly composed stanza 2, Exploitation features the performance of Paul Jacobson’s special arrangement of the stanza, a litany with scripture, a spoken reflection by Deacon Candidathee Colleeen Bernu, and a question to stimulate conversation and action.

Slumber, Stanza 3, is the sixth video in the Moments of Arising series and the third of eight videos wrapped around the eight stanzas of Now the Green Blade Rises. Opening with a prayer by Jordan Stone, Luther Seminary Jubilee Scholar from Sioux Falls South Dakota, the film features a probing reflection offered by Jordan Lutz, the Sustainability Project Manager for Bemidji State University and Lutheran Campus Ministry board member.

Lament features an opening litany by Professor Diane Jacobson, and conversation on the importance of lament in liturgy and hymnody between Pastor Mark Ditmanson and Paul Jacobson.

Death is the fifth of the short videos wrapped around the eight stanzas of Now the Green Blade Rises, four original stanzas of the Easter hymn and four environmentally focused stanzas, composed by Paul Jacobson. Death features a reflection by the Rev. Dr. Anna Madsen, director of OMG and the Spent Dandelion Retreat Center, and a litany by seminarian Mac Mullins.

Incarnation: With Claire Rephsholdt as litanist, the Rev. John Hanson as speaker, Else Madsen as scripture reader, and the Rev. David Carlson as host, we look to Christ’s incarnation in Bethlehem as a doorway into Incarnation in the whole of creation. In the stanza’s musical arrangement by Paul Jacobson, Christmas (Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella) dances with Easter (Now the Green Blade Rises)*. Along with the photographic imagery created by filmmaker Linda Kalweit, we are drawn into God’s saving love for the whole creation.

Responsibility: In a year unlike any other, this January has been a month unlike any other. Two weeks after an unprecedented attack on the United States Capitol we celebrated the Inauguration of the 46th President. So now, what is our responsibility? How do we exercise it?

Responsibility, the recently released Moments of Arising video, does not pretend to answer the question for us. Yet, with music and visual imagery, with Kendrick Hall’s prayer and Tammy Walhof's call to put neighbor and nature at the center of public policy, it places the question of our responsibility right where it belongs --- into our open hands and beating hearts.

Resurrection is the 11th and climactic video in the Moments of Arising video conversation series, created during the Jubilee Year of Earth Day around the new eight stanza version of Now the Green Blade Rises to nurture a grassroots movement of restoration and regeneration for neighbors and nature. The four new stanzas and brilliant musical arrangements of Paul Jacobson, along with the photographic imagery in Linda Kalweit’s inspired video design, brought over forty people into a community of creation together in a symphony of eleven movements.

The litany by Rev. Karen Bockelman and reflections by Pastor David Carlson invite us into the darkness of Holy Saturday and the Easter Vigil, where all resurrection begins. With Paul Jacobson’s resounding arrangement of the 8th stanza of Now the Green Blade Rises, performed at Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis with musicians from the Augsburg University Music Department, and with filmmaker Linda Kalweit’s stunning images of devastation and new life in nature, Resurrection works like prayer, moving our hearts into a new moment of arising for the sake of the whole creation.

As Pastor David Carlson says,

The sprouting and growing, the emerging of God’s Easter in our lives, happens beneath the surface, by God’s grace, through processes we may not see and cannot fully explain. Yet the darkness is where resurrection stirs, where one root suddenly fans out into more roots, where people of faith who are joined to Christ in baptism are empowered to plant and water and embrace suffering and death in the world with confidence in God, whose best transforming work has already begun – in Jesus living, the firstborn of all creation, arising green. Thanks be to God for renewing our hope in Christ, hope for all children of earth. So, what is your resurrection story? Where does it begin?

*Music Permissions for Now the Green Blade Rises

Tune: Noël Nouvelet (French, 17th c.); arrangement Paul Jacobson

Permission for use of text by J.M.C. Crum in "Moments of Arising" Video Series

granted by Oxford University Press & C.F. PetersCorp.

Additional Videos

Earth Day’s Jubilee Year: Professor Diane Levy Jacobson explores the ancient tradition of jubilee proclaimed in Leviticus and Isaiah and continuing in Luke, and how it is connected to Earth Day 2020, now in its 50th year. With breath-taking nature photography by J. David Levy, the video contemplates jubilee ideas of rest for the land, release from servitude, relation to the foreigner and immigrant, and other concepts that are strikingly connected to our experience in this time of climate crisis, cultural tension, and pandemic strife.

Earth Day, Our Moment to Arise: Around the world, youth and young adults are urging us to heed the climate emergency -- for the sake of their future, for those who are marginalized, and for all life on Earth. In this video, Earth Day, Our Moment to Arise , four high school and young adult climate advocates from the upper Midwest – Izzy Laderman, Johanna Bernu, Kayli Skinner, and Jordan Stone, with EcoFaith co-chairperson Pastor Kristin Foster -- probe the intersections between the coronavirus pandemic and the climate crisis, and challenge us to make critical decisions about a profound and shared change in direction.