Earth & Spirit

The mission of the Earth & 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 & 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.

Dawn Chorus: Who Were Those Singers??

On April 6 2025, eleven adventurous early risers came to explore the Grace trails to listen and watch for birds. The air was full of song, but due to misting rain, not many of our feathered friends were visible on the wing. The big treat was seeing a pileated woodpecker hard at work at the top of a tall dead tree. The chorus included song sparrows, white crowned sparrows, golden crowned sparrows, pine siskins, spotted towhees, American robins, yellow-rumped warblers, dark-eyed juncos, Bewick’s wrens, red-winged black birds, chestnut-backed chickadees, and the final glorious aria from a purple finch perched near the parking lot. Over the years, 46 bird species have been spotted on our land, which has great mixed habitat of trees, open areas, flowering shrubs, and a water source just past the fence on the farm property.

The next time you arrive at Grace in the morning, pause and listen for a while. It will bring you joy and hope.

Thank you, Demi Allen, for leading our crew. And thank you to the Cornell Ornithology Lab for the very helpful Merlin app for identifying birdsongs!