As we prepared for the 2025 Summit, our Green Team was fortunate to have wonderful support from Bethel’s members and friends. Our worship leaders offered prayers and made announcements, and the Green Team passed out flyers after services. We owe much to the Communications Team leadership who began about 6 weeks before the Summit to help create weekly bulletin announcements, newsletter articles, and Facebook posts that incorporated the amazingly colorful and compelling Summit artwork and narratives. Because our vigorous invitation effort was competing with other local events and nationally organized protests, we had a small, though wonderfully diverse, group of 24 Summit participants representing Eden Seminary, Forest ReLeaf of Missouri, a UCC and several Lutheran churches.

The day of the Summit arrived along with pouring rain, so Bethel’s Fellowship Hall seemed especially warm and inviting. The hall was “greened” with plants, and the refreshment tables were covered with forest green cloths that featured “tablescape” collections of rocks from around the world, treasured bird and animal figures, and tulips and daffodils. Soft music and nature themed sounds accompanied awe-inspiring nature scenes on a streaming video as people arrived to greet one another, drink a bit of hot coffee, and enjoy homemade breakfast foods.  Participants seemed to especially appreciate the large print booklets tailored to our St. Louis Summit experience.

At 9 am, our Green Team chair welcomed participants and read Bethel’s Land and Peoples Acknowledgment. Bethel’s Pastor Scott Benolkin opened with prayer and offered a biblical context for the Summit theme, and Professor Clint McCann from Eden Seminary played Marty Haugen music and shared a moving account of the significance of this present moment in the creation story. We even had time to introduce ourselves to one another before Summit streaming began.

The invited speakers were so engaging that the morning flew by. For lunch, we relished local Bosnian food and continued our letter-writing as Christian Bristol, one of the participants, played a selection of nature-related hymns on his violin. We especially appreciated the streamed afternoon sessions for their interactive components and their action orientation. Participants gradually drifted away (some to join street protests despite the rain) and at the end of the Summit, seven of us remained. We stood to share our 6-word stories, first putting ourselves in the place of Pharaoh as he ordered midwives to kill Hebrew boy babies, and then imagining ourselves as the midwives who helped birth and care for all the babies…a fitting and powerful metaphor-rich ritual to close our Summit experience.

During worship the next day, Pastor Scott blessed our letters to government officials and prayed for Summit participants and the work of the EcoFaith Network. I continue to feel such deep gratitude for the opportunity to gather, reflect and worship with both my own faith community and people throughout the Midwest as together we grieve accumulating life-losses in our natural and cultural world, celebrate and honor all of creation, and encourage one another to become midwives of hope for the healing of creation.

 P.S. A big shout-out to Pastor Kristin Foster, a tremendous creation theologian, writer and Summit planner, and midwife of hope. Thank you, Kristin, for your creative and passionate vision for the Network and the 2025 Summit, and for your open-hearted inclusion of our St. Louis gathering.

Brenda Light Bredemeier