January 20, 2026
When you are feeling powerless, consider the pollinators. Join the Gospel plot.
In the midst of truly existential threats to our lives, our neighbors, the common good, and the very web of Creation, we can be immobilized by a sense of powerlessness. The powers, systems, and the tyrants of today are remaking the world with deadly impact on people, nations, and the whole balance of life. Whether we live in a small town, on a dirt road, or in urban neighborhoods, our power can feel utterly disproportionate to these threats.
In such a situation, pollinator species point us toward a different kind of power, a power that is at the heart of the Gospel. These tiny, apparently powerless, often overlooked and disregarded creatures, whose drastic decline endangers so much upon which we depend, are a key to the regeneration of life itself. They are small yet great, they seem powerless, yet they have life-giving power, they are extraordinary creatures, yet they need our help. They face death threats every day from habitat loss and chemical poisons, yet they continue to pollinate life. They show us that nowhere and no one is too small to make a difference because we are participants in a plot for life far greater than ourselves.
We are called to become part of the Holy Spirit’s subversive plot to pollinate an alternative way of being human for the sake of life! In this plot, we find our model and hope from pollinator species are our model and our hope. We need them, and they need us, just as is true for everything. As Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass and The Serviceberry Economy, continues to remind us, All flourishing is
mutual.
In the Holy Spirit’s great plot, we are pollinators and plotters. Faith communities of every size and every place are becoming demonstration plots, pollinating alternative ways of living that support life. We all steward plots of land, even tiny ones, which can become pollinator habitat. It is not size, not “greatness” that matters, but embracing our participation in God’s plot. From a planter to an acre, what we do with our specific plots matters. How we cross-pollinate with congregations and communities across our region matters. How we live the Gospel paradox that God’s power is shown in weakness, how we show that the least will become the greatest, is how we participate in the Gospel plot.
Join the Pollinator Plot!
Rev. Kristin Foster
EcoFaith Network NE MN Team Co-Chair
Cook, MN
Northeastern Minnesota Synod
Kristin Foster, long term pastor on the Mesabi Iron Range of northern Minnesota, now retired from parish ministry, is the co-chair of the Northeastern Minnesota Synod’s EcoFaith Network and editor of the Green Blades Preaching Roundtable. Over four decades of ministry, including fifteen years as internship supervisor, she has written, preached, and worked for the rights of organized labor, the full inclusion of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, and the empowerment of small communities. As pastor of Messiah Lutheran Church in Mountain Iron, she was also the founding chairperson of the Iron Range Partnership for Sustainability. She lives outside Cook, Minnesota with her husband, Frank Davis, on an old Swede-Finn farmstead. They take every available opportunity to spend time with their two daughters, their partners, and their three grandchildren.