Everyone in the conference center at COP27 (The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference) was looking for something. Some were looking for new partners or to expand their networks, others were looking for investment opportunities or new policy commitments. But I was looking for something less concrete: hope. 

This search was shared by many in my group as well. I had travelled to Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt with the Christian Climate Observers Program (CCOP), a non-denominational group committed to teaching Christians to be better climate advocates. This organization brought together Christians of all ages from all around the world, and among many of the young people in the group shared a common struggle with climate anxiety. It was this fear of what the future would hold if no action was taken against climate change that motivated many of us, myself included, to come to this conference. For others in the group, anxiety had already passed into grief. Family members lost to flooding, communities lost to wildfires, or livelihoods lost to financial burden were the driving factors behind their activism. We all sought hope of some kind, proof that God was working in midst of the chaos. And so, our anxious and mourning souls went into the massive conference center, longing for a reason to hold onto hope. 

My first activity at COP27 was to listen to the opening speeches. I sat giddy with excitement in a large overflow room filled with others who also weren’t granted in-person access to the main event. We watched on big screens as the most prominent world leaders gave their opening remarks. Given the overwhelmingly large scope of climate change, I had gone into the conference expecting to find hope in these largest and most powerful bodies, so I listened intently to what they had to say. ‘If the world’s governments couldn’t solve climate change, who could?’ I thought to myself. But as I listened, my excitement and hope plummeted. I realized that I had developed a strange sort of climate Stockholm Syndrome. 

Stockholm Syndrome is a condition that some people fall into during hostage scenarios. In a distorted understanding of their situation, the captives start to develop a bond and sympathize with their captors. And I admittedly fell into this. 

The climate is being held captive by private economic interests and political systems that value profit and growth more than the well-being of those held dear by God. And yet, I had placed my hope in these very systems. I thought they were well-intentioned, and that if we had the right people in power, saying the right things, that meaningful change would come. It was with this twisted hope that I sat in that room. 

I listened as world leader after world leader rambled on about “unity,” “urgency,” and “taking action,” and became increasingly disillusioned. My skewed read on where hope would be found was made obvious to me as I realized I was being told how important reducing carbon emissions was by oil barons. I was listening to military dictators tell me how much they cared about justice. Even those from my own country, the United States, bragged about our new partnerships with billionaires and private corporations (the leading contributors to carbon emissions) to fund new environmental programs. It was these systems and leaders that I was sympathetic to, that I looked to for salvation. Yet they were the very ones holding our planet and future for ransom. 

I spent those first few days rather discouraged. I had realized misplaced hope, and tried to dismantle my climate Stockholm Syndrome, but I didn’t know where else to turn for hope. I asked myself again, ‘If the world’s governments couldn’t solve climate change, who could?’

I did eventually find hope at COP27, just not where I had thought I would. But in hindsight, I should have expected it. Our hope is in God, that much should be obvious to Christians, but where God would be found was what I needed to answer. God has never been revealed in the most powerful among us, in the wealthiest or most privileged. God did not appear to Elijah in 1 Kings 19 in the strong wind, or the fiery earthquake, but rather in the gentle whisper. God did not come to Earth in the form of a Caesar or military leader, but rather as a carpenter from Nazareth. So, I should’ve expected that God would not be revealed to me in Egyptian President Sisi’s speech, or in Joe Biden’s. 

Every morning, the group I was with started the day with breakfast and a devotional. We shared of the high points and low points from the previous day and discussed scripture passages to set the tone for the new day. We would rejoice about successes and commiserate about frustrations together. My hope was found in these meetings.

With every lecture or panel discussion that I attended, I sat in the crowd, shoulder to shoulder with people from all over the globe, eagerly listening to and learning from the speakers. Often, I would have conversations with those around me before or after. My hope was found in these interactions.

Learning that there were thousands of others who cared, who cared for the right reasons, who cared enough to travel to the middle of the Egyptian desert, who cared enough to listen and learn in any way possible, gave me the hope I was looking for.

It is clear that we need to overcome our reliance and trust in those systems that are holding our planet and future hostage. To make it through the changing of our climate, we need serious change. But what COP27 taught me is that this change will never come from the top down.  Our hope will not be found in the economic powers and world leaders that preside. Our hope is where God is, with the marginalized, disenfranchised, with the mourning, with the anxious, with the masses who are calling out for a better and more just world. We are each other’s hope, and only together will we be able to accomplish the change we need. 


- Isaac Mann is currently a senior pursuing a BS in Environmental Biology at Houghton University, but he grew up in the community at Eastern Nazarene College. A baseball player and avid backpacker, he has loved the outdoors since he was a child and believes this passion is a calling into the field of ecology. Post-graduation, he hopes to continue his studies in graduate school and go on to work restoring and conserving Creation. 

         As I’m writing this the season has changed. We’ve had a hot and dry summer here in the hills of Tennessee, but after a long wait, no more! Within a matter of weeks everything has changed. All of the greens of the oaks, walnuts, dogwoods, maples, redbuds, and more are fading or gone. Replaced by shades from the palette of fall. The yellows, the oranges, the reds. All striking and beautiful. Enough to grab anyone’s attention if even for a moment. Then there is the movement of a fall breeze that makes the range of colors sway and dance, bringing with it cooler weather. Change is coming! It’s happening now! What a beautiful change it is and orchestrated on such a massive scale! 
When I step out my door there is so much happening outside! Not a word spoken, and yet so much is said. On some days there are too many interactions to count. The ongoing chatter between flora and fauna can take on the dull roar of a large convention, and yet no emails were needed. No memos had to be sent. No schedules needed to be plotted and planned. No agendas needed to be turned to strategy, and no policies had to be written to continue the work of God’s creative hand.
What a gift we have when we take the time to see! When we slow down to observe. Kind of like a spectator. . . just sit and enjoy.
​
Actually, we spectate nature a lot. For some, the main way we engage the natural world is through entertainment. Nature is the place we go to escape or recharge the batteries. But, I’ve come to realize that our role is not to be in “the stands,” and this is anything but a spectator sport! The truth is, we greatly affect the environment we occupy. So, while we might think we are just observers from the stands, some of us choose to take to the field and take action! The truth of the matter is we are all involved. We are all contributing. We are all playing a part. The question we all need to ask ourselves is what position am I playing?
 
Always take time to contemplate the seasons.
 
What role am I playing? Where do I fit in the world around me? Honestly, once we start asking these questions and we start looking at our world through the lens of creation care what we find can be quite alarming. The problems we see can run very deep, the realizations quite scary, and the burdens we start to carry can become quite heavy. It is important to take heart, bring your courage, and most importantly don’t tread alone! Jesus sent the disciples out in twos. The God who calls is redeeming, reconciling, and healing. He shapes and equips those that accept the call. We are redeemed. We are called to reconciling work, and we can help heal too.
 
Slow down.
Take a moment.
Always take time to contemplate the seasons.
 
I’m recalling one of the first books that grabbed my attention, Silent Spring. Rachel Carson was a marine biologist working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She was passionate about what she did. She had a lot going against her though. She worked in a male dominated field through a time that prized nuclear science. Despite this, her passion and attention to the “wonders and realities of the universe about us” (Intro XIX), brought about major change and launched the beginning of the environmental movement. She wrote:

“We need a more high-minded orientation and a deeper insight, which I miss in many researchers. Life is a miracle beyond our comprehension, and we should reverence it even where we have to struggle against it. . . . The resort to weapons such as insecticides to control it is proof of insufficient knowledge and of an incapacity so to guide the processes of nature that brute force becomes unnecessary. Humbleness is in order.”[1]

This book was written over 60 years ago. Her findings and concerns hit everything directly on the nose, but yet much of what she spoke for is under major threat today.

Life truly is “a miracle beyond our comprehension.” We forget that most of our modern conveniences and current lifestyles come from this miracle. We have learned and continue to learn so much from the natural world. Nature is the original, living artwork with God’s name scribbled in the corner. We take instead of revere. We extract instead of appreciate, protect, and participate in this miraculous thing. When we finally pause to take a pulse, we may find that many of our relationships with the environment are parasitic rather than synergistic. (Chainsaws have been echoing through the woods for the past several days as I write this.)
Much of the original stories, images, and even some of the parables in Scripture are agricultural. The natural world is such an integral part of our story. It seems that the life of the Church should have a very natural and dirt-related component to it. How many of our churches have this lens? We use images of a tree, the mountains, and the sea. How many of us know the details of these things in our world? Sometimes there appears to be a great divide between the kingdom work of the Creator and the work of creation. Our work as the Church of proclaiming Christ and saving lives does not always seek to also save the land where we live. But what if our salvation is both intertwined with spirit and earth?  We are called to both parts of a holistic gospel. 

What if, waste and destruction of the natural order was as noticeable to us as a cell phone ringing during corporate prayer?
Everyone notices it. Likewise, when God’s good creation is abused, it should be an alarm going off for the people of God!
In that moment we are doing one of the most important things in our lives, worshipping as a community and connecting with God. That time and space is important, holy, and sacred. The same is true when we step outside of our congregations on Sunday into the world. We move from one sanctuary into another. The sanctuary of the natural world. God created that too.
 
Remove what doesn’t belong. Cease what doesn’t need to continue.
Take the time to look at your world around you.
 
If we would just look and listen, there is a call to worship. There is a call to wholly living that whispers to all of us. It is a call out of destructive habits and into a daily lifestyle that sustains and gives abundantly. 
Take the time to look at your seasons. What has happened before? What is going on now? What is coming next? The work of this season lays the foundation for the next season. We need to reflect on the past, be aware of the now, and work towards the approaching season to come. It is fall now. That means winter will soon be here. Spring will be coming again. . . Life, death, and new life!
I pray the veil is removed for each of us in intimate ways, and for all of us systemically.
 
Always take time to contemplate the seasons.
However long, however brief.
Take time to contemplate the seasons.
Pause the busy.
Take just a moment to look around.
Go and sit in the midst of God’s creative hand.
Always take time to contemplate the seasons.
 
​- JT Blue is a happy father of 3 and husband, having 10+ years with a Pastoral degree
from Trevecca Nazarene University. He currently works part-time while
pursuing ordination and giving all his spare time to the Church, community, and
growing hobby farm at home.

[1] Carson, Rachel. “Silent Spring” p. 275

While stuck inside during the ice storm, I watched a video on this new trend in dealing with a person's body. 
Turning them into compost. 
I couldn't peel my eyes away as they explained the procedure. They would have a ceremony with the family where the body would be put in a cotton shroud. The corpse is covered with wood chips, alfalfa, and straw and put into a vessel for a month where the body breaks down into soil. Either the soil can be donated or be taken back by the family. 
It isn't legal everywhere. Usually the crunchy, liberal types are the ones to whom it appeals. Others are often disturbed by the thought. This often fits into much of the current post-religious spirituality, into the present movement of rejecting the afterlife and resurrection and just wanting to return to Mother Earth. For many this is wrapped up in believing decay and rot is all there is after death and finding a way to try and make it sacred. 
I don't know if YouTube knows me (I know the AI powering my activity on the internet knows me more than I would like), but such a thought-provoking video couldn't have come at a better time than being stuck indoors in the dead of winter while mentally preparing myself for Ash Wednesday.
Every Ash Wednesday while beginning to reflect on mortality, I remember one of my earliest memories of encountering the gruesomeness of death. 
I was about 6, if I remember correctly. It was back in the 90s when moms sometimes went inside a store and left the kids in the car with cracked windows. Mom went into the Bible House when it was on Main in Searcy. I waited in the car and found myself turned around looking out the back window at the cars driving by. 
I saw a motorcycle speeding past a truck. He didn't realize the truck was turning toward him, and the truck didn't realize he was speeding past him. The truck hit the bike, and my young 6-year-old eyes watched the man fly off like a rag doll and land on his neck. He was contorted a bit, and I thought I was going to throw up. He didn't move, and the paramedics came and immediately put him in a body bag. 
Before they got there, mom came out and asked me if I saw what happened. I actually lied. Not because I was in the habit of lying, but I didn't know how to process what just happened, and I felt afraid. I felt like I had seen something I wasn't supposed to see. 
I probably should have gone to therapy or something, but I said nothing and never talked about it, and again, this was the 90s. 
I had an idea of death since before I can remember. Being a pastor's kid meant you went to lots of funerals. Waxy looking faces on fluffy pillows surrounded by flowers and people crying. Death was still rather formal and pleasant. 
It also usually entailed good food at some point during the day. 
I heard about people going to heaven and being with Jesus. You missed people, but you were taught to feel happy for them. 
I had a new idea of death afterwards. I saw it happen in an instant. I thought before of people flying away and moving to a new place. After the accident, I thought of people breaking like a dropped toy or plate. Death felt much closer and people much frailer. 
Dust we are and to dust we will return.
I personally never really cared for the waxy faces pumped full of chemicals, trying to preserve and put off decomposition for as long as possible. I don't have anything against it. I know people are comforted by this and the process of a funeral, and I know people in the funeral service who take it as a sacred task. 
The composting idea doesn’t bother me, though. It is what happens to us anyway in the long run. For a good amount of human history and culture, people were wrapped in a cloth and put into the ground where the same process takes place. 
I think it makes us uneasy to see that dirt, though. We don't want to see it or think about it. It reminds us of what our bodies came from and are constantly becoming. 
If our bodies are always renewing themselves, then all the cells we had 7-10 years ago have already experienced death, even many sloughed off into dust. These bodies won’t just become dust eventually. They’re constantly becoming dust.
My idea of death, my relationship with it, has thankfully developed since I was a traumatized 6-year-old. A certain comfort has developed in me with death. It came first, believe it or not, from having that experience, and then second from the process afterwards of finding a deeper understanding and faith in resurrection.
This is where Christians struggle. It is much easier to believe in resurrection when we look at waxy faces on fluffy pillows and imagine them in glowing white robes. It is easy to imagine that body coming out and flying away when trumpets sound. 
It is much harder to look at a more realistic vision of the full process of death and get to resurrection. Could we stand at a body decomposed into a pile of dirt you could use to fertilize your tomatoes and say with full faith we believe we'll see them again one day?
Not just encounter their soul floating around on some incorporeal field. Disembodied souls was never the gospel. 
Could we look at that pile of soil and proclaim we believe in the resurrection of the body? 
Could we really have faith in the One who created it all and intends resurrection, believing God isn't threatened by decomposition? 
Such a credence takes a faith in God, an understanding of reality, even an understanding of the gospel, which goes a bit deeper than many are willing to tread. 
Souls floating around and an earth that isn't renewed but eventually thrown away is much easier to accept. 
We've skipped that pile of dirt, and we've wanted to just run into a warped vision of Easter, but you can't get to real resurrection without going through death. 
To be honest, it still is a challenge for me. I believe it is a perfectly human struggle to grapple with the reality of resurrection, if one is really willing to wrestle with it. Perhaps standing at a pile of compost we would feel like Ezekiel in the valley. "Mortal, can these bones live?" Oh Lord, You alone know.
The ground is frozen outside, but I still hope for spring. 
Ashes will be on my head Wednesday, a visible reminder of what my body is constantly turning into and will be completely one day, but I still hope for Easter. 
I still hope for resurrection.

​-

Allison Beaty was raised in Searcy, Arkansas where she felt called to ministry as a teenager. She attended SNU where she did a multidisciplinary in philosophy and theology. In 2013, she moved to Rome, Italy where she studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University completing a BST and then a MTh specializing in Patristics. She is currently the senior pastor at McCrory church of the Nazarene in McCrory, AR.

2020 was a challenging year to say the least. For others, it was filled with moments that seemed to crawl by. For some, moments flew by unnoticed. One of these moments flew higher than most of us were aware of. A mile above our heads to be exact. The “moment” is more like a week of moments, the week of June 21st, 2020. This week has so much to teach us about restoration and God’s work amongst creation.
 
The latter half of June was interrupted by the Saharan Air Layer, a cloud of dust making its way across the Atlantic Ocean from the Saharan Desert. The dust cloud made landfall setting records for the most dusty day since July 31, 2013. The sky turned a milky greyish white color. The sun was covered in a mysterious haze. Most of us in the United States were worried about breathing hazards and visibility concerns. Dust is rather annoying. However, we read in Genesis 2:7, dust is life.

Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. - Genesis 2:7 NRSV
 
This dust is formed in an area of Chad in north central Africa in a long dry lake bed known as the Bodélé Depression. Lake Chad was once a great lake, about the size of Lake Erie. As the climate shifted and water demands grew the lake level fell. Of course the sand and dust left behind is at the mercy of the howling wind. The lake was not an empty vat of water however. Life flourished beneath its waters and as the water fell, so did fish and plant life. These once living members of the ecosystem are now calloused into the dry, dusty landscape. As the winds whip up dust it also takes tiny particles of these fish. This mineral rich dust then begins its journey halfway across the globe riding on the wind.
           
These tiny specks of dust contain phosphorus which is an essential mineral that plants need to thrive. Without phosphorus terrestrial landscapes would lack the resources they need to thrive year after year. The Amazon Basin in particular needs an enormous amount of phosphorus to nourish its densely packed rainforest. The dust from the Sahara Desert makes its way across the Atlantic Ocean and is deposited into the Amazon Rainforest where it is essential to the sustained life of the forest.[1]
           
Even in death, God sustains life. The Sahara is a barren wasteland in many ways. However, that death brings about life on the other side of the planet. God is doing a reconciling work in each of us. But it is so much more than that. God is reconciling and restoring all of creation. Unnoticed by the general population, dust flies over our heads on its way to provide life to one of the most diverse ecosystems on Earth. The death of the Bodélé Depression is not final. In a sanctifying way, it brings life to the world.
           
In 2 Corinthians we read of the reconciling work of God.
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see,
everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself
through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God
was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and
entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  - 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 NRSV
 
God does not hold our dusty pasts against us but rather transforms our dust covered bodies into a new oasis of life. We are to go and do likewise, participating in the transformation of our world. We allow the transformative power of God to change us from the inside out. It is only because we have experienced this transformation that we can participate in the life bringing power of God. We are invited to participate with God in the reconciliation of all creation as agents partnering with God to breathe life out of the dust and create something new. When you see that milky haze across the sky or cough on a bit of wind blown dust, may you remember the resurrection power and its invitation for all of creation.
 
​-
 
Rev. Makayla Johnson lives and pastors in Central Texas with her husband Caleb. She is currently working toward a M.A. in Sustainability Studies and blends this with her Pastoral Ministry B.S. to share her deep love for creation with those around her.






[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/06/25/883555736/saharan-dust-cloud-arrives-at-the-u-s-gulf-coast-bringing-the-haze
Okin, Gregory S., et al. "Impact of desert dust on the biogeochemistry of phosphorus in terrestrial ecosystems." Global Biogeochemical Cycles 18.2 (2004).
 

Quite some time ago now I was in India, facilitating a class on holiness. One of our sessions was called ‘holiness and ecology’ and the students  - all pastors and leaders – were bemused. Holiness, they thought (and, in fairness, had been taught) was about a personal righteous relationship with God – and so, if a person was right with Jesus, then that was it. After readings were dissected, rich interpretations of Scripture wrestled with, conversations about creation and Godself, we left one another, going our separate ways for a whole year.
 
The next year, in a different class, but with the same group of leaders, one of them said that they wanted to tell a story. He’d been so angry, then moved by the class, so provoked, then challenged, that he’d returned home with different eyes. He saw his church building, its land, his people differently. From an incredibly impoverished community, with deep needs, a history of devastating deforestation, mudslides and floods, he suddenly saw that the spiritual welfare of his congregation was also caught up in their shalom, their wholeness. Inspired by his new vision, by the challenge of God’s love for the world meaning a sweeping cosmic, planetary, as well as personal love, he took action. He bartered for some seeds, he got a grant from an NGO for some mature trees – and he planted an orchard and a garden. To hear him tell the story, not only did that result in a green, beautiful, lush space, and not only did that have an impact on the waterway and divert floods, BUT it also meant that the people of the village were intrigued. This Christian (remember, it’s illegal to proselytise) cared for the whole village and its wellbeing. This Christian had brought beauty back. This Christian shared the harvest. Suddenly, in the act of creation care, the pastor had demonstrated that he cared for the multi-dimensional realities of the lives of his village people. In that moment, his church came alive. Years later, when I encountered him again, his church was thriving, so too his orchard, his gardens, they’d expanded and were now a social enterprise… all from the deepening of understanding that holiness and ecology are interwoven.
 
I wonder what strikes you about that story? I have had years now to process it and I guess the things that stand out to me are the tragedy of theological heresy and the absoluteness of hope.
 
I hope heresy isn’t too strong a word, but as we approach the celebration of the incarnation, the enfleshment of the Holy, the coming to the world to dwell-with-us of the Godself, the tragedy that a holiness church has so detached itself from flesh and its dwelling places, and so emphasized a personal relationship alone, is almost unbearable. When we make salvation detach itself from earth-boundness, when we make faith about only our worship-in-song-on-a-Sunday, when we deny that we are bound-up with each other, then we are short-changing God. We have done with our faith what heretical people did over centuries: bifurcated it, split it into body/soul, and acted as if all that mattered was the salvation of a soul. For shame. The God-who-comes-amongst-us, the Emmanuel, born with mucus in nostrils, spilling out in pain from a bloody birth, smacked into breath, mewling, crying, pooing, reliant on colostrum and protection, surrounded by communities of diversity from his earliest cries, is utterly earthed. The God-who-is-Jesus who treads on the earth, plucking and eating, making mud pies, doing miracles with nature’s grapes, is all about the interweaving of humankind and the earth we dwell in. God’s flesh amongst us, was because God so loved all flesh. Animals. Plants. Humans. The land. The sea. The sky. The sun. The moon. They are Good. They are beloved. They are part of God’s beloved world, and, they make it into God’s restoration-of-all-things plan.
 
When we hear the sweep of Scripture read newly, and then re-read it with our own eyes, we see that in our true-attempts to be faithful (God DOES want persons to be in relationship with Godself through Jesus, empowered by the Spirit) we have missed out some of the story: that God’s holy people are a light to the nations, a display, a foretaste of total restoration and goodness. And so, in God’s shaping of a people, the poor are fed, because there’s enough, some is left over for others to have the dignity of gleaning for themselves, the economies of justice are brought to live, the oppressed are set free, debts are discharged, the aching land is allowed to breathe, the ox don’t bear loads too heavy, the Leviathan sings praise in the deep. When we shed our heresy, we realize that God’s love is upon us – and our earthly existence, which also means our earth is bound up in God’s love: shalom.
 
Then, there’s absoluteness of hope. Is it too late for us to turn around? To tend and care for creation? Is it too late for us to repent, about-face, till, sow and reap? Is it too late for us to cooperate with God’s plans – so that God’s people would be a mini-community of the King; A beloved community where heaven’s breaking in? Is it too late?
 
No way, Never. The joy here is that there’s an absoluteness of hope. Plant a tree. And another one. Cherish a flower. Delight in a coral reef. Tend to an orchard. Grow herbs. Buy ugly veggies and enjoy the shapes you can see. Offset your travel. Invest in ecotricity. Use less water. Get a stainless-steel straw. Is it too late to make our buildings beautiful, or renew them for ecological friendliness? Is it too late to take little redemptive steps that would care for creation? Drive less, share more. Buy less, mend more. Heat less, save more. Is it too late to worship that infant-in-a-barn with the whole of our being, our souls, mind, strength, body- in the midst of a community? No! Thank God. It’s NEVER too late to join in what God is doing, it’s never too late to participate as an agent of reconciliation, an ambassador of good news, sharing in God’s ultimate mission of redeeming the world, caring for creation in harmony with God – whose love extends to the tiniest bit of creation itself. 


- Deirdre Brower Latz is the Principal of Nazarene Theological College. She is an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene with farming roots, she's immersed in urban living. She's passionate about creation care as part of God's love for the world and God's longing for the utter peace and Shalom of creation.  

     Unlike the earlier bloggers, I live surrounded by red brick, cobbles, cement, light pollution, next to a major arterial road (an old roman one) that makes its way through our enormous city. I step out of our door onto concrete, into a world that often seems careless of creation. But, I love our city. I love its life, its fullness, its busyness, creativity, its dynamic attempt to create space for people to live together. I also love creation. I’m the kind of person who feels most alive outside, in the wild, with horizons. I’ve traded that for the life I have now because of God. And so, part of what that has meant is negotiating how to marry the three loves: God, creation and the city.
 
The way we’ve done that has shifted over years: at the moment, the nearest blade of proper grass has been carefully nurtured by our neighbors and us in a patch of land that we reclaimed (strictly speaking appropriated, ahem) from drug users, gun-hiders, waste and the city. It was a mess, and our row of houses backed onto it. Finally, after WhatsApp collaboration, in the street conversations, we took action. We fenced it off with builders’ yard fences, chained it to walls, and effectively said ‘ours.’ It was vandalized. We persisted. Finally, it’s been (mostly) left alone.
 
We have tended it carefully as guerrilla gardeners, until now it’s a little haven outside of our terraced houses. During Coronavirus our patch, no bigger than half a gym basketball court, saw us planting veg, herbs, sunflowers (oh how they loved the wall we put them against!), mowing, picnicking, harvesting wild blackberries and generally caring. My neighbors, none-of-whom profess faith, are all in. Together we’ve tilled the soil, together we’ve harvested. We’ve mourned some losses of plants, we’ve disliked slugs together, we’ve cultivated earth-worms in the small compost heap we made, we’ve dreamt about an orchard and no litter! There’s something in all this that means as we offer this care and stewardship we step into our truest humanity – the image of God defaced but not erased. Over plants we’ve talked about death, prayer, hope, life. We’ve shared some of our job-sorrows, our yearnings, our frustrations at our neighborhood and its pain. At points we’ve swapped exhaustion stories, shared exhilaration and, in the night, it’s become a gathering-around-a-chimenea place for some. In this plot of land, we’ve cooperated, and we’ve built community. We’ve discovered a gift: caring for creation as a diverse community has meant that we’re for and with and  alongside one another in powerful ways.
 
In all of this there’s something visceral at work. Our guts know that all this soil-turning and watching for sun and rain is calling out something deep inside us. Our connectedness to the planet and its turning as we dig, sow, nurture plants and reap, reflects something of deep grace. We’re reflecting the beginning of our faith story. God’s speaking goodness over the earth. God’s calling people to be gardeners. We’re also foreshadowing something of the end of the story, a city with a beautiful garden, fresh water, worshipping folk enfolded into one community of love. In the middle space of this, we shape a tiny plot of land into a story board of nothing-to-something, death-to-life, stranger-to-gardener, and as we watch miracles unfold together, we rejoice.
 
I tell you all this because for us, part of our urban dwelling is participating in a lifestyle that cares for creation – but in our case, it’s as it grows through cracks, slowly. The acknowledgement of the miracle-maker seems far away for our neighbors (honestly), but the awe that each little miracle of seed-to-plant evokes is a good reminder that God’s harvest is woven in with tending, growing, caring, nurturing, tilling, planting… AND that so much of our cooperation with God relies on some mysterious force bringing the whole to life. 
 
I tell you this story because in the theology of creation care our truest commitment to our beloved planet, her people, their lives, is worked out in the ground around us. Creation care is about the places we live in the now – not a dream farm somewhere else (though that would be lovely), not another pristine land that we shape into our dream of wholeness, not a.n.other place – no, the truest care for creation is found in how we take the street we live in and say of it: ‘God’s’. Our truest stewardship is honed in the ordinary places of our lives where we discover how to line ourselves up on the right side of neighbor love, step up and tend the fragile, left-on-the-side-of-the-road-beaten lands, people and places.  The truest creation care is in the present reality of our daily existence where we look around with God-light in our eyes and join in creating, cooperating and crafting something beautiful where once there was only a wasteland. 

- Deirdre Brower Latz is the Principal of Nazarene Theological College. She is an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene with farming roots, she's immersed in urban living. She's passionate about creation care as part of God's love for the world and God's longing for the utter peace and Shalom of creation.  

​Composting is holy.
Literally. 

It’s not just a metaphor for holiness.
It’s not only the manifestation of the sanctified life. Rather, composting is embodied holiness. 

The ongoing, daily chore of intentionally layering organic material into a rotting lasagna may sound gross, but it is plainly and simply participation in perfect love. Perhaps more poetic and therefore more honoring to the beauty that is decomposing matter is this: Participating in the divinely created process of regeneration that is the collaborative effort of billions of microbiological life-forms all embodying a spirit of self-giving (love) for the purpose of communal nourishment, is to embody, I think, what we Nazarenes have long called holiness. 

I wouldn’t dare limit the definition of sanctification to only composting! But I will ask if our historical definition has been too limiting. Has God written into creation from the beginning holy, grace-filled systems that we can participate in, embody, and even contribute to? I believe so. Composting is one of them. 

I’ve seen it in the understory of the rainforest on the Washington coast. 
I’ve seen it in mineral-rich soil under the palm branch mulch on the Big Island. 
I’ve seen it in the decomposing logs on the banks of the seasonal creeks in California. 

And I see it in the compost piles at my house. 

We don’t have heavy machinery on our property. No tractor or tiller or chipper—just a few beat-up power tools from Home Depot, rakes, shovels, and pitchforks. In other words, most of the work we do is manual. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have help. Clearing forest, mowing fields, pruning trees, and keeping the blackberries at bay are mostly the work of employees I don’t even compensate: goats.

Our milk goats contentedly prune and rake and collect thousands of pounds of vegetation every year. And they haul it without coaxing to a centralized location for pickup. All of that vegetation is dropped in small pellets every night in the barn. As a token of our appreciation for the goats gathering all that vegetation, we make sure to give them clean sleeping quarters. Their bedding gets a fresh “dusting” of straw every night. 

Every three months, we muck the stalls, which means we’re moving two cubic yards of straw, urine, and droppings. Roughly a third of the material is the droppings, and two-thirds is urine-saturated straw. That means the accumulated material, with a little help from the rain, is a perfect balance of nitrogenous and carbonaceous material to promote maximum microbiological activity. That two yards of “waste” will become about five wheelbarrows of black compost in two years—one-eighth of our garden needs. 

As you can imagine, the barn “waste” flattens out and mats together when left in an exposed pile. It creates an anaerobic environment, suffocating all the microbes that, like you and me, depend on oxygen. Consequently, the overall temperature of the pile drops.

We learned early on that we need compost every year. Every other year wasn’t going to work. In order to speed up the decomposition, the pile needed two things: accessible oxygen all the way to the center and a minimum depth of three feet. Remember, we don’t have a tractor to turn the pile, and I didn’t want to spend hours a week turning compost. I quite liked the goats doing most of the work. 

I stumbled upon a solution while mowing the lawn last year. The pile of pure grass clippings matted together and emitted a putrid smell—a sign of anaerobic rot. But the pile next to it that came from under the maple tree was light, fluffy, and odorless—signs of an aerobic environment. By adding mulched leaves to the clippings, we incidentally created a much more hospitable environment for biological activity to flourish. 

That’s it! I thought. Our compost piles are not diverse enough. 

We now make four-foot diameter rounds with field fencing and literally throw everything in them that can decompose. Junk mail, garden clippings, tissues, cracker boxes, fruit rinds, chicken manure, potato skins, small branches . . . everything. What we end up with is a really aerated milieu of compostable trash. And then when we add our quarterly barn “waste” it builds a vertical, compostable lasagna. Our compost problems were solved. 

Instead of two yards of waste, we were now gathering four yards every three months. That’s eight cubic yards of material every year! And it breaks down at twice the rate. That means, over the course of a year, we now produce roughly 45 wheelbarrows of compost, with no turning. That’s all the compost our vegetable garden needs for the entire year. (For those curious, that’s a half inch of compost for nine of our 100 foot beds, every year.) 

On the surface, this appears as a story about goat poop, a nerdy hobby farmer, grass clippings, and house trash. But just below the surface, this is a story about many partners learning to work together. It’s a story of billions of microorganisms, nematodes, insects, and mammals, partnering in the sacred work of overcoming the power of death, for the sake of regenerative health and mutual flourishing. 

Composting is a chore. A craft, even. 
But it’s also embodied holiness. 
It is sanctification. Literally.

- Ryan Fasani is a pastor, kingdom farmer, and writer in Bellingham, Washington.​

​

          This morning, like every morning, I walked out my front door, slipped on my rubber boots and descended my wooden stoop to the driveway. I hardly notice the steps, for this time of year the Nasturtiums, Bee Balm, Calendula, Echinacea, and Poppies are still hanging onto their flowers in a type of protest against Autumn. I love our medicinal herb garden. It started with a few culinary herbs two years ago, but since has grown to 37 edible herbs and flowers—all with medicinal value in the form of tinctures, slaves, soaps, teas, and oils. We keep stealing more of our lawn for this ever-expanding, living apothecary. It wraps around three-quarters of our house, and likely by next Summer—because when it comes to growing useful plants, I have zero self-control— we’ll complete the circle.

     We have a large driveway, which begins the second leg of my morning walk. I’d prefer a small gravel loop, but I can’t complain because the Weeping Willow—my favorite non-fruit-bearing tree in the world—hangs its lazy arms out almost far enough for me to touch. In front of me, which is in direct view from the front of our house, is my favorite part of our property: our vegetable garden. I heard once that the best fertilizer is a farmer’s footsteps. Now, I’m no farmer, but I quietly rehearse that adage, without fail as I walk across my driveway to “fertilize” the vegetables. Walking in our garden is literally walking a prayer labyrinth, not only because moseying between beds, up and back, up and back, is rhythmic and meditative. As a family we have poured ourselves into this little half acre maze of vegetation, and yet it graciously gives in return more that we deserve. Walking it’s paths is a prayerful reminder of the abundant generosity of creation—a reminder of grace.  

     The impatience of the goats becomes undeniable at this point in my morning walk. Little Lovey, as my daughters like to call her, begins steadily bleating when she hears me walking in the garden. There’s an unsettled family debate whether she confuses my footstep with her caregiver, my oldest son, or if she knows it’s me and with enough persistence, I'll scratch her forehead. Either way, I make my morning stop at her sleeping stall, scratch, and marvel at the good work my boy does with his goats. The mornings are the only time they are in the barn; by day he rotates them between 17 paddocks. He’s discovered that seven milk goats is the perfect number for his small dairy. That gives him at least three goats per year in milk (he breeds them every other year), keeps his bedding prices low enough to still turn a profit, doesn’t over-tax the grass in the paddocks, and gives our family all the milk, chevre, and mozzarella we can dream of consuming. Usually Little Lovey quiets down after a minute of head scratching. 

      My daughter asks me to open her chickens on my morning walk because, as she says, “They get restless if they’re cooped up after sunrise.” I agree to do it if she stays on top of her fermentation project. She learned early on in raising chickens that she could save money on feed and improve the health of her flock if she fermented a mix of corn and wheat for a week before feeding it to them. My fourth leg of my morning walk is to check on the status of her fermenting bucket, open her chicken door, and check the nearby compost piles. 

     One of my pleasures in life is making compost. Sure, without a tractor it makes for a lot of pitchforking, but spongy, black soil, made from “waste” on the farm is nature’s resurrection hobby. And It’s just delightful in my hand, knowing, for example, that in one teaspoon there are a billion living microbes. I found that my garden—the prayer labyrinth from earlier—needs two cubic yards or new compost each year. That’s a half inch of compost on every other bed annually. Nearly eight cubic yards of compost material properly layered will decompose into two cubic yards of finished compost. Get this: all of the vegetable “waste” from the garden, the compostable table scraps from the house, our tissues and junk mail and scratch paper, and the bedding seven goats produce in a year ends up being eight cubic yards of material. We produce the exact amount of raw, compostable material on the property to create the demands of our garden . . . with a smidgen extra for mulching the fruit trees. 
​
     The last leg of my morning walk I let our Border Collie, Pepper, out of her kennel. Without fail, she darts out to our grass field, runs a few laps, and then comes and lays directly at my feet. She too wants her head scratched. My son has trained her to move the goats around the property in the morning and bring them in at night. With youthful energy, she’s glad to work and expresses such joy to be a part of our small attempts to care for the land. Just this morning, as I finished up my walk, Pepper reminded me of an important truth about creation care: If it doesn’t give our bodies vitality and fill our hearts with joy, then perhaps we’ve just given ourselves more tasks on our to-do list that never really gets finished. 
​
- Ryan Fasani is a pastor, kingdom farmer, and writer in Bellingham, Washington.