Earth and Spirit

The mission of the Earth and Spirit program at Grace is to raise the environmental awareness of everyone in the parish as to our spiritual covenant to care for God’s Creation. Climate change is an unprecedented threat and an opportunity for people of faith to protect and restore Creation’s integrity, to facilitate earth-friendly practices within the parish and in our personal lives. Our faith is an engine of transformation for our deeply troubled human relationship with God’s gift of life and love. Earth and Spirit is here to support this holy and wholly necessary transformation.

Contacts: John Kydd, Marcy Lagerloef, Deborah Milton, Nancy Peregrine

Conversation to Care for Creation

We meet on the first Sunday of most months during coffee hour after the 9:30 service. Upcoming dates may change, and will be listed on our events page and in our newsletter. 

Many of us struggle with how to respond to our chaotic and rapidly changing world. Perhaps the most important thing we can do right away is “rethink everything.” Those are simple, but challenging words, and it’s always easier to face such challenges when we do it together! Come join us to examine assumptions, address fears and uncertainties, identify the cultural story that no longer works, and perhaps, explore the nature of trust, truth, loss, hope, love. 

When we share from our hearts, we find it easier to make changes that Care for Creation.

Please join us on first Sundays. Everyone welcome. No preparation required! As Steven Charleston writes In Ladder to the Light: Our wisdom is not in what we know but in what we wonder. (p 90)

Let’s grow our wisdom AND our actions by WONDERING together!

Questions? Contact Nancy Peregrine or Deborah Milton.

November, 2022

Here is a link to a blog post that Grace member and Missioner for Climate Care and Climate Justice John Kydd wrote from COP 27, the largest annual international gathering on climate action, organized by the United Nations.

Earth and Spirit Ministry Arises Anew

October, 2022

“Thank you so much, John and everyone, for this comprehensive and truly energizing - and Spirit-inspired - proposal. I am so glad to see Earth and Spirit (aka Creation Justice?) renew itself as Grace Church turns into a new year and a new era.” —Stephen

Thanks to our wonderful Interim Rector, Stephen Crippen, Earth and Spirit, long a program at Grace led by Marcy Lagerloef, is now a ministry. As the climate crisis escalates so does our devotion to Creation and Climate Justice.

Our proposed first eight activity areas and their leaders are

  1. Implementing the Climate Pledge proposed by the Bishop’s Task Force for Climate Justice – John Kydd
  2. Reducing our Carbon Emissions – at home, at Grace, in our communities – Marcy and Gary Lagerloef
  3. Sister Climate Congregations – Susan McDonald, John Kydd, Dusty Collings
  4. Cultural Transformation – Deborah Milton
  5. Creation Care Gardening – Nancy Peregrine, Renee Ziemann, Marcy Lagerloef, John Kydd
  6. Supporting and Sustaining our Youth – James Rufo-Hill, Anne Kundtz
  7. Supporting and Sustaining our Youth – Going out to go in – Emily Chamberlain
  8. Adopting a “Season of Creation” at Grace – John Kydd

You can read the details about each here.

Join us, because this is about us. Please contact the appropriate leader(s) above for activities you feel called to. If you have a different idea, then let us know!

— Marcy Lagerloef, Deborah Milton, Nancy Peregrine, and John Kydd.