The Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience from the Edge of Climate Change by Gleb RaygorodetskyI am mesmerized by Arzhan's kai song--the hauntingly beautiful and stirring acoustic blend of all the Altai's elements. In it, I hear the deepest rumblings of the shifting layers of the earth, the crackling of fire in the hearth, the neighing of a horse on a steppe, the bugling of elk in the forest, the tapping of raindrops on parched soil, and the high-pitched swish of air through the feathers of a bird swooping overhead.
In the next section of Gleb Raygorodetsky's The Archipelago of Hope, he visits the Altai people (his mother's ancestors) of the Altai Mountains that run along the Russian-Mongolian border. Here the emphasis is learning from local people their traditions of land use as better ways to care for nature in the midst of our changing climate.
Danil Mamyev teaches him that "nature for us, the Altai people, has a different meaning. . . . For us, Altai is a living and breathing being with whom we've developed a relationship over generations. . . . One cannot put nature in a park."
Danil, who was trained and worked for a long time as a geologist, is critical of the Western scientific approach. He states, "I believe now that my people's traditional worldview is, in many ways, more advanced." He adds, "The juvenile Western science . . . has done a lot of damage to our environment and culture. I just hope we can survive its adolescence."
One of the Altai elders talks about how unpredictable the seasons have become, making it difficult to plan. This, of course, I hear regularly from Omahans. It's clearly a global sentiment now.
According to the Altai, "If nature is not treated with reverence, reciprocity, respect, and restraint, the relationship becomes compromised, leading to environmental imbalance, such as climate change."
The shaman Maria Amanchina teaches that "If every human being could feel nature, the world would be saved." She adds, "On our own, we have no hope of healing anybody or fixing anything. We can do this only by asking other living beings to help us heal the earth. We need to ask everybody--animals, plants, spirits, the land itself--and, of course, each other."
How was your long holiday weekend? Mine was an interesting mix of activities. Friday Sebastian and I enjoyed the inauguration of the renewed downtown park here in Omaha, including attending the Kristen Chenoweth concert.
Saturday I decided not to be busy with household projects and instead to enjoy the day. Robyn and I went to the Farmer's Market and then lunch and then walked around the park to see more of it in daylight and then sat for a beer at Thunderhead Brewing. We also went over details of our August trip to the Boundary Waters. We hadn't spent hours leisurely together like that in a very long time.
Saturday evening I went to the Harmons for dinner, sitting outside on their terrace enjoying the view and the perfect weather.
Sunday was a work day. I spent almost the entire day on my touch-up painting project. That included scraping, caulking, and cleaning first. I walked around the house and got the base trim of the wood and parts that I could easily reach, concentrating more work above the backyard patio. So, there's plenty of upper parts of the house that need serious attention that I personally cannot give it and can't currently afford to have repainted, but at least the eye level parts look better now.
In my downtime this weekend I watched TV and movies. The finale of Stranger Things was exciting. I finally watched the gay romances Hearstopper and Fire Island. And the thrillers Invisible Man and Get Out (which I had somehow never seen the last five years, go figure).
Monday was miserably hot and humid, but in the morning I made a cole slaw and walked over to Field Club for the annual parade and then lunch party at the Fortinas. I came home and napped the afternoon away. I had planned to go to the evening symphony concert and fireworks, but the heat zapped me in the morning and I had no interest to go back out into it.
Tuesday morning I woke up early and spent a few hours scraping the side of the garage that parallels the entryway to the backyard. When I finally couldn't take the heat and humidity anymore I went inside. I ran one errand and then spent the afternoon doing some business and watching TV. I did catch up on bear safety for Yellowstone, which is only a week away.
In the early evening I went back out to scrape some more and my nextdoor neighbors invited me to join them in their pool for margaritas, which I did just in time for the rainstorm to come through. But after it passed we continued to enjoy the pool.
So, overall a great balance of activities over my weekend. Today I'm back to reading and writing on the front porch as the rain gently falls outside and the temps are a pleasurable sixties.
"These communities--islands of biological and cultural diversity in the ever-rising deluge of development and urbanization--are humankind's "Archipelago of Hope," for here lies our best chance to remember--or learn--how to care for Earth in a way that keeps it healthy for our descendants."
I'm currently reading Gleb Raygorodetsky's The Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience from the Edge of Climate Change, which focuses on various indigenous communities and cultures, relating how they are impacted and what they are doing to being resilient. In the midst of all the horrible news out of the United States Supreme Court in the last two weeks, this has been a nice escape that really isn't an escape but a reminder of reality.
Much like the lessons drawn from my earlier reading this sabbatical summer, in particular what I learned from the last book on the Aztecs, the theme is adaptability to an ever-changing world. While these indigenous communities have ancient practices, because they are more in tune with the earth, they are constantly having to adapt as things change.
One of the Sami elders--the Sami are reindeer herders and salmon fishers currently living in Finland--declares, "It is time to say goodbye to some things we'll never see again. . . . But it is also time to build new knowledge. And this knowledge could only emerge through keeping strong connections with the traditional territory."
Another Sami elder states, "But there is also a glimmer of hope--if the land can heal, even if it takes a long time, it means that we can also heal together with the land." Wisdom for all of in these troubling times. A reminder to take the very long view.
In a chapter on the Nenets, a Siberian reindeer herding people, we get a vivid picture of two worldviews, as their homeland, the Yamal peninsula houses an ever-expanding Gazprom natural gas site:
Here, the semicircle of the Nenets' chums, surrounded with sleds and reindeer, is a symbol of a cyclical world where people are an integral part of nature, not separate from or positioned above it. Their well-being is a product of the timeless coevolution between the people and their land that provides for current and future generations--wood for the sleds, reindeer skins for the chums, fish for the table. The straight lines of the dirt road and the pipeline cutting off the stoybishe from the rest of the tundra represent the rival worldview. It sees people in general, and Western civilization in particular, as being beyond the natural laws governing life, entitled to take from nature anything it craves, like natural gas. The future of the Nenets depends on which of these worldviews prevails in Yamal.
I wrote last week about how climate change is itself affecting the sabbatical, not just being one of the themes of study. The biggest impact so far has been the flooding and devastation at Yellowstone, which will impact our biggest planned trip of the summer.
I was relieved to receive communication from the Park over the weekend that they would be reopening part of the park and some of our reservations will still be possible. Some of them have been cancelled. And I'm still waiting to hear whether the campsite we have reserved for our first three nights will be reopening--so far they haven't said. So I've researched some backup plans and made at least one backup reservation with the intention of making more.
We had planned five nights total in the park (and three in Teton), so we were going to get to experience so much of it. That seemed important because I don't usually get this kind of time off plus I've made it to 48 never having visited the park. We aren't going to get as full an experience as we had planned, but we will still get a good experience. And the overall trip will still be wonderful.
Hopefully we'll hear more in the coming days.
Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public by Catherine Keller
Great Plains Weather by Kenneth F DeweyWorks of Mercy
Matthew 25:34-40; Micah 6:6-8
by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones
First Central Congregational Church
4 April 2022
In sixth grade I played soccer. We practiced on a field about a mile from my house that was part of the campus of Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College, close to the football stadium. When soccer practice was finished, our legs would be covered with a sticky, orange dust. When you showered at home, the orange would run off of your body in waves. Also your soccer shoes and socks took on an orange stain regardless of how many times you washed and bleached them.
We knew that the orange dust was the result of the field often being flooded by nearby Tar Creek. Because the water in Tar Creek was a bright orange ribbon running through the landscape. We knew it was stained orange because it flowed through an area of closed mines. For in the time of our grandparents and great-grandparents, our county had provided much of the heavy metals that the US used in manufacturing and fighting two World Wars.
To me it was ironic that this polluted creek flowed through the richest neighborhood in town, for a long stretch bordering the estate of the Coleman family who had owned the mines.
We knew it was polluted. But somehow, we never really thought about how toxic it was. It wasn’t until I was an adult and read an article in Time Magazine that I had the epiphany that I had routinely been poisoned as a child by heavy metals such as lead, zinc, and magnesium. I’ve long pondered how we didn’t know that, didn’t realize it, weren’t up-in-arms as a community about that? Willful ignorance? Corrupt and venal political leaders? The effects of that lead on our brains?
It wasn’t just the orange residue in the soccer fields. The mine tailings, called chat, which is something like gravel, were/are piled in giant mounds that rise in northern Ottawa County near the Kansas border like small mountains, creating a weird and fascinating moonscape. People went there to play, to climb the chatpiles, to ride dune buggies. People also used the freely available chat for all sorts of things, in particular as gravel for roads and driveways.
My grandparents driveway was gravel. As a young kid I’d play in it much like a sand box, using tools to shape roads and hills and cityscapes to drive my cars and toys. I don’t know that my grandparents gravel came from a chat pile, but it very likely did. As did that along the county’s gravel roads. Which means I played in the residue of heavy metals. And every time a car drove down the county road and kicked up dust that blew in across the farm, dust so bad that my grandmother would clean her living room twice a day, we all were likely breathing toxins.
The person who did finally take the lead on addressing this problem and both informing and mobilizing the community was Rebecca Jim, who was one of my high school counselors. It was in her role as sponsor of the Indian Club at high school that she and a group of students began to raise awareness. Eventually Rebecca retired as a school counselor in order to full-time lead the agency working on cleaning up this environmental disaster and restoring the waters. Some people believe the problem is too big and that the creek will never be clean again, but Rebecca refuses to believe that. She says, “We want swimmable, fishable, drinkable water. I’m still working for the day when we can say, ‘yes, meet me at the creek.’”
This very familiar biblical passage in Matthew 25 includes a list of ministries that have collectively come to be called the “Works of Mercy.” Feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, welcoming strangers, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and those in prison. And most churches, regardless of their theology or politics, usually have ministries that try to address some or all of these needs.
Ragan Sutterfield, whose article has guided our Lenten worship series, writes that “A world in the midst of ecological crisis is a world in need of mercy and compassion.” And so as we contemplate what spiritual practices are required of us in order to living faithfully, sustainably, and resiliently at this time in the world’s history, Sutterfield believes that the Works of Mercy in Matthew 25 are a great place to begin.
And so he invites us to renew our imaginations and look again at this familiar list of ministries and see how we might embody them in the midst of an ecological crisis. So, for example, if one of the teachings of Jesus is that we must give water to the thirsty, surely that means we must have fresh, clean, healthy water. Which means that if Christians are to faithfully live into this work of mercy, we must also be concerned with the state of our waters. Our work of mercy then means being concerned about a place like Tar Creek and the heavy metal pollution from discarded mines and its many impacts upon the landscape, the waters, and the health and well-being of humans, plants, and animals. Our faithfulness to God expands our vision, our concern, and ultimately our work far beyond what we might have initially thought.
As Ragan Sutterfield writes, any work we might do on a particular environmental issue actually must be seen within its wider connections to a host of other moral concerns, so we should seek to do our works of mercy “within a frame of healing the whole.”
He was one of seven contributors to a booklet entitled Embodying Care: The Works of Mercy and Care of Creation that engages in this act of reimagining the teachings of Matthew 25 through this wider lens of creation care.
If Love is the “center of creation,” which follows from our Christian teaching about the nature of God, God’s work in the world, and God’s expectations for human beings, then love will be at the center of our focus in spirituality and service. The booklet reads:
Our work is to cultivate our affections for the gifts of creation, which includes our own lives. When we begin to love the creation, giving our care and attention to it, we will begin to move into the life of the Creator, the community of God called Love. Love binds together all.
This being a communion Sunday, I was particularly drawn to the discussion of feeding the hungry by Episcopal priest Nadia Stefko. She ties this work of mercy to communion. She describes the communion table as “our fullest expression of covenant eating,” and points out that this “sacramental encounter must infuse and inform all of our eating throughout the weeks of our lives.” So the lessons we embody at communion should be shared throughout our normal interactions. How so?
She asks us to consider what it means when Jesus talks about feeding the hungry. Who exactly is hungry? Honestly, we all are. She writes, “So when we talk about how best to feed the hungry, we are talking about how best to feed all of us—about how we humans take our life from the life of the world around us.” And so our concern and our work of mercy should broaden to include how food is raised and prepared, the many issues related to the agricultural economy. All of this enters into our covenant with God and with the world.
Nadia Stefko provides six suggestions for how to reimagine this work of mercy, feeding the hungry. First, we need to learn what we can about food and its production. Second, we can’t just be passive consumers, but should be engaged in our food preparation through gardening, cooking, hunger relief efforts, and more.
Third, we should do our best to eat locally. Her fourth suggestion builds on this idea—we should also build local community around our food by getting to know people through food—eating together, cooking together, raising it together.
Her fifth suggestion is very important—“acknowledge your limits.” Our individual actions will not fix everything that’s wrong with our current food economy. We cannot achieve a “morally pure diet.”
And her final suggestion is to “remember always to say grace.” She expands on this idea:
Giving thanks for food is a countercultural act in two ways: It speaks against the commodification of food by naming it as gift . . . and it articulates gratitude for what is present before us, over against the fear about what is absent—the fear that fuels the myth of scarcity that is embedded in our dominant food systems.
So, these are just a few ideas connected to one of the works of mercy. We could perform the same reimagining with each of the others. I encourage you as part of our Lenten reflection and preparation to engage in this reimagining. How might your spiritual practices, your acts of service and ministry, be conceived of through the lens of creation care and healing the whole? What then are some specific new things you might do to continue to live, in this season of sustainability and resilience, as a faithful and effective disciple of Jesus?
I want to close with another statement from Ragan Sutterfield. He writes “Our call is to love and care for our neighbors within our limits. This is work enough for those who engage it fully—and for some corners of creation, it can make all the difference.”
I loved that statement. Sometimes we get overwhelmed by all the issues of justice, peace, and morality that call for our attention and time. But we each individually have limits. We need to remind ourselves that the church universal and all people of goodwill are working together and collectively on these issues. All we must do is our part. Rebecca Jim was just a school counselor who got concerned and motivated about the polluted creek that flowed where she and her students live.
So go and do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. This is work enough for all of us.
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Once Upon A Tar Creek Mining for Voices by Maryann Hurtt