EL3530 Religious Education in Relation to Creation

Final Post for Class

2010-03-22T17:03:00.002-07:00

Hello classmates,

I tried to post the video of the Sunrise and Scripture. The first shot at it failed...not sure why. I, also, attempted to email it, but the video file was too big for Luther's Email system. Not sure how else to get it out to people at this point, but keep looking for it and some pictures from our weekend away.

Steingraber Book Post

2010-03-22T17:03:00.001-07:00

Living Downstream

DDT, PCB, CFC, DDE, MCF-7, TCDD, 2,4-D, MX, etc, etc, etc. In reading Sandra Steingraber, we are reminded of many chemical agents some labeled as known carcinogens. In some ways, I found myself drowning in acronyms and my mind swirling with chemical nightmares. In other ways, I found it fascinating how she would describe these chemical reactions in such simple terms that I could simply close my eyes and watch the carbon and oxygen components binding together in hexagonal shapes. The reading could be overwhelming with all the ways that carcinogens reside in our environment. Due to the scientific development of plastics, petroleum based products, pesticides and insecticides and the ways they are distributed throughout our environment through run off into our drinking water and throat floating in the air to far reaching areas, I also found it fascinating to realize the magnificent reach of these contaminants not only in space, but also time.

I found the dance that Steingraber made with environment and lifestyle interesting. It seemed to me that she found that science attributed most of the cancers to lifestyle living, the things that we “choose to consume: breathing air as opposed to eating dessert, or drinking water as opposed to dipping snuff” (61). She, personally, was working to prove that cancer was also caused by the environment. She writes, “environment is used to label everything we interact with or consume that is not freely chosen” (61). Even in her afterword, she quotes John Bailar in supporting that we need to change our focus on cancer research. Bailar argues for a “redirection of cancer research dollars away from treatment and toward prevention, including removing carcinogens from the environment” (276). Yet she herself even quotes Peter Infante in stating that “we need more study is the grandfather of all arguments for taking no action.” We must then think about who really is in charge of these actions, studies and fact-finding searches. Another swirl of acronyms will begin: EPA, FDA, USDA, EWG, WHO, SEER. It may even begin to seem that all of these agencies were put into place for good, but because of a lack of communication and integration of studies one never gets the full truth.

The other section of this book that was fascinating for me was when Steingraber discusses the traits of a cancer cell and the reactions that take place. Cancer, to me, has always been a tension between scary and fascination. Steingraber took this to a new level for me. She tells about the two traits of a cancer cell: invasiveness and primitivism (240). She discusses the ability of a cancer cell to invade other tissues and how primitive meant that the tissues created by cancer appear to revert back to some cruder, more primitive stage of development. She also states quite clearly that “a cancer cell, then, is made, not born” and that “cancer arises through a series of incremental changes to chromosomal DNA” (241). Her continued discussion about the three overlapping stages of cancer helped me to understand that we do all carry genetic predispositions and are exposed to carcinogens all the time, but it is a combination of small structural alterations to a person’s cell’s DNA strands that begins the process. Then additional exposures to cancer-stimulating substances continue the promotion of cancer cells and then lastly, the progression of the exposures continue to inflict physical injury to the DNA. When these mutations pile up, the cells spread and invade (242-244). Therefore, these shifting DNA bring greater possibility to cancer. How amazing the human body is and how amazing are the carcinogens at work in our environment.

Week #5 Post

2010-03-16T21:53:00.000-07:00

Week #5 Post

Organic foods does not equal cheap. This week I spent some extra time perusing the organic foods section of the grocery store and the organic produce section. First of all, I have to say that I was impressed by how many choices there actually were in the food section. You see, I have pretty much avoided those sections of the store not because I did not value their quality or efforts, but because I find that it simply does not fit into my budget. I can honestly say that it has probably been almost two years since I wandered down this aisle at the grocery store, so this week I wanted to explore this fear of higher prices than I previously could not afford further this week. I wanted to see if the price points were similar to what I remembered from before. For the most part, I was not surprised. Some prices were comparable. For example, a box of comparable corn flake types of cereal that I would normally purchase was a little higher than my generic brand, but in comparison to size it was quite a bit smaller. I did also notice that many of these foods did focus on health. For example, many of the foods were high in fiber, low in sodium and gluten free.

As far as creation conscious packaging, I wondered if the manufacturers were just as concerned in the after math of their products as their food production. For the most part, the frozen section that I never really knew existed in that aisle seemed to have less plastic wraps and thinner cardboard used in its packaging. In the cracker and cookie section, I really did not see much difference. Some of the cookies appeared to still be packaged in the plastic shrink wrap that I would normally find in the other part of the store. In some ways, I kind of find this an oxy-moron. Why would a company that works so hard to make sure that their foods are free of chemicals, pesticides and other negative food additives still use packaging that could be harmful for the earth. Now, I will admit that I am not sure if this plastic is made in a special way that is completely biodegradable, but it physically looked to my eye to be similar.

In the produce section of the grocery store, I bought two oranges, two bananas and two apples. One from each section – organic or non-organic. I did notice that the organic orange peel did not seem to feel like it had a waxy surface versus the other. The organic orange had more juice in it, but tasted the same to me. I will admit that the organic banana was smaller in size, but tasted better. Overall, I could not see much of a difference in the apple’s appearance. They both had similar skins, similar feel in cutting and similar taste. The one difference that I noticed was that the organic apple core seemed to be more woody than the other. It did not affect the taste in any way though.

Well, another adventure in the grocery store!

Week #4 Post

2010-03-11T21:36:00.000-08:00

Week #4 Post

Another week has past with my focus on my personal Earth care project. Today, I finally went to the grocery store…well, in all honesty, I did go to a Target that carries a large collection of groceries including a newly installed produce section. In order to save some gasoline and carbon footprint, I chose to check out some of the grocery items at Target instead of driving a few more miles down the road to the Rainbow grocery store. My plan was to look at the production locations of the most common brands of food items that I would normally buy and see if I could be more strategic in my purchases again to make my personal carbon footprint smaller. Well, it was just as frustrating as it was looking at what I had in the grocery ads a few weeks ago, but with a new twist. One of the things from a few weeks ago that I found was that in the grocery ads that it did not even tell me where the produce came from…like Florida oranges or Idaho potatoes. At the grocery store, I did find that you can tell from where the produce came from, but at Target I had no choices. For example, there was one choice for bananas (non-organically grown) but they were from Guatemala. Quite a distance for two lonely bananas to travel to allow me to eat my potassium on my cornflakes for the next couple of days! I guess that my not driving a few extra miles to the “real” grocery store didn’t really save that much in the real scheme of things.

The other frustration that I found while out shopping was trying to find out how far my typically purchased brands had traveled to get to “me.” As when I looked in my own cupboards, I found that what I could only determine was the final resting place of where a product was packaged. While comparing canned and boxed goods by brand that I was not able to save much in regards to my carbon footprint from switching from one brand to another. I was proud of the fact that I could at least find some brands that were packaged closer than the ones that I would normally purchase, but again I kept thinking how far did the corn that was used to make the corn flakes travel before becoming my corn flakes or how far did the tomatoes have to be transported to make my tomato soup?

Another week has also passed since I have purchased any pre-made meals with tons of packaging. At first, it was hard not to just be able to go to the freezer and pull out a meal and zapped it to death (convenience!). Now though if the option is not there, I am still able to find other choices like making a fresh salad or planning ahead and having things semi-prepared. I did make some larger meals and froze what I am called Janelinia’s. My own frozen pre-made meals to pull from the freezer, but meals that I made myself. I find that they taste better and are just as fast to cook when in a hurry.

Orr Book Post

2010-03-11T21:33:00.000-08:00

Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect

“Treat the earth well. It was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”
An Ancient Indian Proverb

In reading the book Earth in Mind by David W. Orr, I was reminded of this proverb that I have sitting on my bookshelf. I read it almost everyday as I sit at my desk or reach for a book off the shelf. There were two areas in Orr’s book that reminded me of this proverb: First of all, Orr writes on page 63, “Least-cost reasoning applies to those costs that must be paid now; full cost applies to those costs that can be pushed onto others or deferred to our children.” The Indian proverb above reminds me of this…that if we don’t get our acts together that what we have borrowed from our children in the line of the environment, we have entrusted them with something bigger and worse than we will ever see today. Orr continues by stating, “Only people who take their obligations seriously, people of virtue, would willingly pay the full costs of their actions or even demand to do so” (p 63). Later in the book, Orr quotes Amory Lovin’s words, “One effect of not paying full costs is that we fool ourselves into thinking that we are much richer than we really are. Prices that do not ‘tell the truth’…eventually lure us (our children) toward bankruptcy.” Here we are reminded again that what we do or do not do now or soon will affect our children at a detrimental cost. When we consider the price of something, we must also remember the cost. The price is what we agree to pay for something at a checkout, but the costs will be greater than that…often what we chose to ignore for the injurious affects to the next generations.

Another area that struck me when reading Earth in Mind was Orr’s reflection on the railroad system. I lived on the edge of a small town in rural Southwestern Minnesota growing up. I can still remember the sound of the train horn and the rumble of the train cars rumbling over the tracks. When I was in second grade, the train tracks were removed from a long span of area. I can remember my dad saying that this was a big mistake. It was a vital connection between the five small towns that followed State Highway 68. Orr writes, “the end of the fossil fuel era means the end of automobile and truck travel as we have known them. Amidst all of the options for alternative transportation, the best and cheapest is to rebuild the railroad network that for nearly a century bound the country together” (197). Well, I think Dad was probably right and every day I think of it as a mantra as I hear the train whistle and the rumble of train cars near my own home now. I have noticed that the length of the trains and the frequency of the trains in my area have increased since the fuel prices were high. Funny, how when one looks back, how we did things weren’t so bad after all. Sometimes technological advances were not actually advances.

Week #3 Post

2010-03-05T09:04:00.000-08:00

Well, I still have not gone to the grocery store yet (2 weeks in a row), so my plan of looking more closely at production locations on the products I shop for most often for this week was for naught. Instead, I was able to get some great researching done about Food Co-ops. First of all, I do want to admit that my recollection of a food co-op was from when I was probably in middle school. My mom would stop at the Marshall, MN food co-op and buy spices and whole wheat flour. The co-op in Marshall at that time was a small hole-in-the-wall joint that was simply a few rows of plastic boxes with bulk items in them. It was also only dried stock such as flour, spices, beans, snack mix and so on. It also had a funny smell in there with the mix of all the spices. I, also, for some reason had a mindset that food co-ops specialized in vegetarian food fare.

Well, I spoke this morning with a Ms. Maren Harviex at the River Market Community Co-op in Stillwater, Minnesota (see additional contact information below). From our 25 minute conversation this morning, I had a few eye opening experiences. First of all, she dispelled my myth that co-ops only sold vegetarian foods. All of the local (meaning St. Paul and Minneapolis area) co-ops are full grocery stores carrying bulk foods, dairy, produce and meat. The River Market also has a full deli. This particular co-op has been around for 32 years and did begin exactly how I remembered the co-op in Marshall with only dry bulk items.

Another interesting thing to learn was that you have to be a member of a co-op to be able to shop there. There is a one time $80.00 membership fee at the River Market in Stillwater. For your $80.00, a member receives eight shares of stock in the co-op which entitles you to dividends if at the end of the fiscal year the store makes a profit and the board approves it. By shopping there, you also receive member specials, monthly sales, a 5% member coupon one time a month and 10% if you are a senior. Your membership gives you voting privileges for the election of the Board of Directors as well. I asked, “how many members they had?” I was shocked to find out that the River Market has between 3,500 and 4,000 members.

When I asked Maren to describe what a co-op was, she said that it was similar to a year-round farmer’s market where they focus on offering natural and organic, free of chemicals food. River Market also tries to support smaller farmers and stay as local as possible for the sustainability factor. They, also, do have educational classes for their members including recently on hoop houses, making cheese and yogurt and sprouting grains. What I found interesting was that these processes are not new because these procedures actually going back to the roots of American agriculture. Maren also said that River Market’s focus is to encourage healthy living and to help people make lifestyle changes.

I was specifically interested in finding out more on how they felt they are able to care for creation in their endeavor. She talked a lot about buying local as much as possible, but in my mind I kept thinking about how Minnesota does not have a long growing season, so what is local. Maren stated that local for the River Market is within 100 miles and that in the non-growing season that their produce would come within the five state area. I guess that this carbon footprint is smaller than what is probably happening at my local grocery store, but I still have hopes for smaller distribution. The last thing that we discussed was about my question of packaging. One item in particular that they have recently implemented at River Market are using wax paper bags instead of plastic bags in their bulk section. She shared that many are not happy with this change, so she is not sure what the end result might be at this point.

Overall, this was a great learning process for me. I hope that others take a closer look at food co-ops in the future as well.

River Market Community Co-op
221 North Main Street
Stillwater, MN 55082
Phone Number: 651.439.0366
www.rivermarket.coop
Monday-Friday 9-9
Saturday 9-8
Sunday 9-7

Schut Book Post

2010-03-02T13:37:00.000-08:00

Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective

In reading the book edited and compiled by Michael Schut, I found three things that I would like to discuss further. The first piece was where Michael Schut writes about The Big Economy, The Great Economy (pages 73-79). He discusses how we need to not only explore the ecological degradation that are connected to our consumption and usage levels in our own country, but also the effects it has on other countries and how it attributes to poverty. Last year, I was given the opportunity to be a keynote speaker at a Praise and Pamper women’s retreat. I spoke about the connections between creation care and the poverty. One of the things that I began with was to stress the following: “As obvious as it sounds, climate change and poverty affects everybody…men, women and children. Also, we cannot separate poverty from climate change anymore. Climate change is already having a disproportionate impact on poor people in the U.S. and abroad and it is hitting women hardest. It is not the easiest to understand. After all, everyone will be affected during a flood, for example, but changes in weather and extreme weather events are being felt most in our poorest of poor communities. This is because poor people rely more on natural resources and have fewer ways to protect themselves. And because women tend to do the jobs that are most affected by changes in weather such as gathering water and firewood, raising food crops and raising children.” I do believe that the externalities of our consumption and the changes happening with weather are forgotten in our own ignorance or choosing to ignore.

This topic connects to a second area in Schut’s book that I wanted to lift up. I was a missionary to Ifunda in the highlands of Tanzania about six years ago. I could connect on a personal level when Michael Schut writes in his article called Worldview as Inheritance (pages 191-193). He writes, “Sometimes it hits us squarely between the eyes – maybe visiting another culture…our worldview, the glasses which we see the world, is not the only way to perceive reality. And yet the assumptions embedded within that particular worldview often go un-examined, leading us to live a life largely defined by the larger, dominant culture.” I am personally a third generation recycler. My grandfather was recycling before recycling was of national importance with the “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.” My grandfather worked for the Ottertail Power Company in southwestern Minnesota. He would climb the poles and remove components that held the housing units for the transformers. He would later recycle these transformer components by tearing them apart and selling the scrap metal that he could get out of them. He once told me that he wanted to do his part to save the precious metals our precious Earth would run out of if we didn’t take care of it. So, this recycling bone in my body started at a very young age. My family would recycle everything that we could possible from aluminum cans to newspapers to cardboard boxes. It was this hard work that I and my family had put forth that was glasses that Schut was talking about. Then when I was in Tanzania, I would be riding in the jeep or a bus to my destinations and I would see people throw boxes out the window or a plastic bottle. I was internally getting angrier and angrier until I asked by interpreter why people litter like that. He smiled calmly and looked into my eyes and said, “They are not littering. They are passing on a gift to someone else who might be able to use that box or use that plastic bottle.” My perceived reality was that I was working so hard in Minnesota to save the planet and here they are not giving a whit about it…my perceived worldview and assumption had to be completely rethought.

The final thing for this book is in regards to by Personal Earth Care project for the class. I was reminded of how much the packaging and processing of the convience foods that I so love uses too many resources. I have already decided to not purchase any microwave-ready meals that come with a box, a disposable pan and other multi-layering packaging like a plastic wrap. I might be eating a lot of cereal, but I am already thinking about how much less trash I will have in one week.

Jewish Social Statement

2010-03-02T09:02:00.000-08:00

For my second social statement review, I chose a statement by World Jewish Congress (link found on the Alliance of Religions and Conservation website at the following address: www.arcworld.org/faiths.asp?pageID=81. This statement was written by one person (unlike the ELCA one I blogged about earlier which was a committee of sorts). Therefore, it tended to read more like a personal opinion and used a ton of references to other writers and resources that Professor Nahum Rakover used in this writing.

I was not surprised to find that many of the references were legalistic in some way. There was great effort to point out that the Earth is not subject to man’s absolute ownership and how their laws had economic, social and moral considerations in the matter of the environment. The social statement began with an emphasis on the Creation Story in Genesis and spent some amount of time discussing that dominion does not mean being a tyrant.

I was especially struck by the sharing of a story by R. Aryeh Levine where two rabbis were walking in a nature area and one of them absent-mindedly plucked a flower off a plant. R. Abraham Isaac Kook said to his companion, “In all my days, I have taken care never to pluck a blade of grass or flower needlessly, when it had the ability to grow or blossom. You know the teaching of the Sages that there is not a single blade of grass below, here on earth, which does not have a heavenly force telling it Grow! Every sprout and leaf of grass says something, conveys some meaning. Every stone whispers some inner, hidden message in the silence. Every creation utters its song (in praise of the Creator).” R. Aryeh Levine said that these words have been engraved deeply on his heart. These words spoke directly to me as well. I liked how R. Levine says that each individual plant is part of the relationship between man and nature. It reminds me of the symbiosis that I feel when I do my pilgrimage walk through creation each fall. I am constantly amazed at how I feel so connected to the dying life and the crispness of the air. It sometimes make me wonder about the phrase that some say that they “worship in nature.”

It was interesting that that writer also spoke directly about smoking (like cigarettes) as polluting the environment. I kept wondering what specifically drove him to bring this up, but hardly discusses other forms of water, air and land pollution and the effects on the Earth and to ourselves.

There was an odd ending to the social statement as it seemed to focus on Israeli legislature, but said nothing about the rest of the world. Maybe I do not understand the polity of the Jewish church that well, so it could be that this Israeli legislature is for all of the world to follow. The author tells of the current activities happening including a 1994 Year of the Environment, a book written called Environment Reflections and Perspectives in Jewish Sources that was published. The book traces how principles of environmental protection were given expression in ordinances passed in Jerusalem’s neighborhood in the 19th and 20th centuries. It also seemed like the writer was stuck in reflecting on what has happened in the past and did not give any specifics on what should be done moving ahead.

Blog - Week 2

2010-02-28T16:36:00.000-08:00

The first full week of my Earth care practice was mostly uneventful. This was not a grocery shopping week for me, so to investigate purchasing foods that are grown more locally without much of a footprint behind them has not really begun for me. In reading Schut’s book Simpler Living, Compassionate Life I was struck by the French fry story (p 76). It made me think more about this part of my Earth care practice and how we may not know exactly where our food comes from and the impact one little French fry really has on the Earth. It is the unaccounted for externalities that even a little country girl like myself sometimes forgets.

Even though I was not in a grocery store this week, I decided to look in the two big grocery chain stores ads this week to see what kinds of changes that I might need to make. It was interesting how in no area in the ads did they mention anything about where the food came from not even in the produce section. This is where I thought it would at least say something like Florida oranges or Washington apples. Since that seemed a bit of a futile experiment, I also looked in my own cupboards to see where my favorite brands came from to assess the carbon footprint of their delivery to my local grocery store. It was a bit frustrating to find that the first four staples that I pulled out of the cupboard were packaged (note packaged, I could not assess where they were grown) was Washington, California, Arkansas and Illinois. It will be an interesting time at the grocery store this week to see if I can find any comparable items that are packaged closer to home.

I talked with a fellow church member today about her gardening practices. I knew that she always started some of her plantings in the house about mid-February. I had already purchased carrot, sweet pea and onion seeds and needed some advice on when to start planting them. On the farm, we pretty much stuck the seeds in the ground after the frost was gone and let nature take its course. City dwelling is a little different especially when I do not own any land. I was concerned about trying to grow vegetables in a pot on my cottage home deck this summer. Her advice was what I had chosen to try to grow would not need to be started in the house ahead of time, so I will have to do my plantings outside after this course is over. Since she already has the screened in porch with the special lighting, she asked me if I was interested in some tomatoes. I will be going over in a couple of weeks to help her start the plantings for tomatoes. She has offered to house mine with hers until they have strong enough stems to be in regular sunlight for continued growth. I am actually getting more excited to do these plantings and get my hands in the dirt. It has been a long time for me to grow my own vegetables.

This coming week, I will be looking more closely at food co-ops which I am sure will be very interesting because I do not really know how they work.

ELCA Social Statement

2010-02-21T14:42:00.001-08:00

Before interning at the Lutheran Coalition for Public Policy in Minnesota (LCPPM) ELCA public policy office, I will be honest and say that I had no idea that the church had developed any social statements. One of the blessings of my internship was to be able to study and look for ways to promote, educate and network people around these social statements through giving workshops, preaching and simple conversations with my fellow Christians (not always Lutheran).

One of the most interesting pieces of the Social Statement on Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope and Justice (developed in 1993) that I ran into was that people immediately think that you are going to talk about global warming and climate change. The Al Gore movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” seemed to have stirred a ton of feelings in people that ran the gamete of completely agreeing to completely disagreeing with it. For some, this would have been preaching to the choir and that they were simply looking for more fodder to support their often mis-guided means. For others, I could see their deep detest about the church climbing on the bandwagon. This was never the main purpose of my talks.

In the Caring for Creation social statement, one becomes immediately aware that the main focus is on our sinful, weak and uncertain acceptance of our caregiving responsibility given to us by God in our own creations. It reads, “our current practices may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life.” It also reads, “we see the despoiling of the environment as nothing less than the degradation of God’s gracious gift of creation.” It calls for all of humanity to take its place in creation and our role within creation to serve it and God.

In the section where it discusses the current crisis, it does appear that the church (the ELCA) has decided to assume science is correct. It specifically talks about how the damages we have made to the environmental systems such as depleting non-renewable resources, the prevalence of acid rain and the erosion of topsoil through our unsustainable agriculture practices are not only having local affects, but is affecting the entire planet. Even further, the social statement lifts up the depletion of the ozone layer and…dangerous global warming. Yes, it even says, “global warming” in the statement. Again, church and science are brought together. It began with Darwinism and continues even today.

My most favorite sentence in the social statement is about the ministry work that I was apart of at the public policy office. It reads, “We act.” It discusses how when we are faced with today’s crisis that we do not despair and we act. The final pages of the social statement focus on “The Call to Justice” and the “Commitments” that the ELCA is making. Now, you can see from my week one post that my desire to understand public church and the call to justice come together. This entire statement is focused on the biblical words, both Old and New Testament as its foundation. For in the hope of God’s promised fulfillment, we too can hear the call to justice and independently and interdependently we can do justice and we can act.

There are many resources available to churches and individuals around the commitments listed in this social statement. The LCCPM until recently had someone on staff dedicated to help congregations developing Care for Creation teams, there are calendars on the web around making creation a church year emphasis and tons of tools on the ELCA website around education curricula and programs for use within the church. It is my hope that everyone who takes this class has if only a little exposure to the ELCA’s call to public church that I was able to participate in.

Blog – Week 1

2010-02-21T13:59:00.000-08:00

Confession Time...

I proposed two years ago to my candidacy committee that I wanted to understand more fully what the ELCA meant by “Public Church.” You see, during my endorsement interview preparations, I felt that I did not have a grasp on “public church” and what that meant for myself personally or what that meant to the ELCA in general. In the ELCA ordination statements one of them reads, “Will you give faithful witness to the world, that God’s love may be known in all that you do?” Now that is not so tough to say, “I will, and I ask God to help me,” but the footnote says this,

“The charge to witness to the world is given to the church today…the content of that witness is God’s revelation in Jesus Christ…the testimony of these acts of God’s grace and forgiveness is expressed in both word and deed by ordained ministers through compassion, hospitality, patience, and forgiveness; through seeking peace and justice for all people; through care for God’s creation; and through sharing one’s faith through preaching, teaching and personal witness.”

I struggled with two aspects with this in my reflections. First, I did not feel that any pastor’s in my life had modeled what seeking peace and justice for all people looked like in a public sphere. Of course, we prayed for them and maybe collected food and winter clothing for those in need, but it seemed like there was supposed to be more to it than that. Secondly, the statement ‘through care for God’s creation’ and what did that really have to do with church. OK, I recycle, I have changed out my light bulbs, but whatever else might this mean biblically and pastorally for me.

So, I came to my Endorsement Interview with three proposals. First of all, I could do a normal year of internship by being in a congregational setting full time. Second, I could do a full year of internship split between two sites. One of the sites would be a congregational ministry site and the other an ELCA Public Policy office. Third, I could do a full year of internship in an ELCA Public Policy office where I would intentionally seek out opportunities to preach and lead worship. My first choice was the second option and this is what my candidacy committee felt would be best for my personal learning objectives and for my future ordained ministry. I was surprised by the immediate support that I was given on this endeavor and waited patiently for the phone call that the whole candidacy group had either approved or shot my initial idea down. The phone call came and option two was granted…I did my year of internship part-time at Our Redeemer Lutheran on the east side of St. Paul and simultaneously part-time at Lutheran Coalition for Public Policy in Minnesota, the Minnesota ELCA Public Policy office in the Christ on Capitol Hill church building.

Because of the extensive work that I have done in the public policy office, I am hoping to still find new things to learn about caring for God’s creation. I am proposing to make my practice of earth care to become more sufficient and sustainable around the foods I buy. I would love to discuss this practice in more detail, but really what I am hoping to accomplish is threefold: to purchase less food that come with so much packaging that cannot be recycled, to buy foods that are grown locally and without much of a carbon footprint behind them and to begin growing inside a summer produce garden to be planted outside once the weather is warm enough. I can see the challenges ahead in this practice as convenience makes life so easy, but the effects of that convenience are detrimental to the environment.

Initial test post

2010-02-18T15:17:00.001-08:00

Just to make sure it works.