Oct
04
2011
Guest post: Lowell Bliss of Eden Vigil
“Wangari Maathai–Nobel laureate, founder of the Green Belt Movement, and sister-in-Christ Jesus–passed away on Sunday, Sept. 25, at the age of 71. We at Eden Vigil wish her the joy of her resurrection.”
Ed has asked that I post this latest issue of the Environmental Missions Prayer Digest, something I’m happy to do. But first let me forward a story from Ed himself. On Sept. 28, Ed wrote:
Wangari was a good friend of Care of Creation Kenya. . . . She did attend a 2006 God and Creation conference – funny story there: She had been invited and finally showed up on the last day of the conference. They had to give her platform time which turned out to be right before my presentation, which was to be the closing talk of the conference. Well, she took the entire slot (45 minutes) which meant that by the time I got up to talk, it was already past lunchtime… wouldn’t have worked in the US, but these were Africans – so I just pretended there was no clock in the room and took my entire time as well (and then some, as I recall!). I had the honor of a future-Nobelist telling me after that she ‘enjoyed my talk very much.’ Of course, at that time we had no idea that she would be winning the Nobel.
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Sep
27
2011
This summer Brittany Ederer, a student at UW-Madison, served as an intern in the Care of Creation office in Madison. Based on her interest in camping, education nature and environment, we assigned her to start a survey project of Christian camps in Wisconsin, the upper Midwest and then throughout the country. Are there Christian camps who are actively promoting creation care as part of their camp program? Are they using creation care principles in caring for their properties? This blog post is a preliminary report on a visit to one camp not far from Madison. It turns out one of the best examples of creation care at camp is right in our own back yard. We’re looking forward to a complete report from Brittany later on, but in the meantime, enjoy her thoughts on what’s going on at Timber-lee…
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Jun
07
2011
85 years Strong
We pause here for a break from our normal focus on creation-care to note a significant family event. The following is a tribute to my Dad, who is 85 years old today, co-authored with my sister Marilyn, and simul-posted on her blog, Communicating Across Boundaries, as well as on various Facebook pages of Dad’s numerous offspring. Happy Birthday, Dad!
85 years ago today, June 7th in 1926, a baby boy was born to a family in the city of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He was fourth in the family, joining three sisters, a mom and a dad. Three years later his youngest sister was born and the family was complete. He was named Ralph Edward Brown and he is our father and grandfather. Read more »
Jun
02
2011
My niece Stephanie Burkard has just finished her freshman year at Old Dominion University and wrote the following essay for a scholarship contest. (See the link toward the end of the piece to help her win…) I post it here with her permission. [And if you are also a student and have a piece like this that you'd like to see published, send it my way. ]
I picked up Blue Like Jazz this week. Chapter 2 coincided with some deeper thoughts I’ve been having. One sentence sums up the chapter. ”I am the problem” (Miller, 20).
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Apr
07
2011
You just never know who you’re going to meet at a conference (or a guest house). This time it was Orlando, Florida – and the person waving across the auditorium turned out to be Mark Morris, a friend and former member of the church I pastored for a time in Pakistan from about 1991 to 1995. He and Cindy were raising three of the cutest little girls… but I digress: We’ve both changed places and jobs numerous times in the last fifteen years and had completely lost track of each other. It was fun catching up personally and professionally. Our ministry at Care of Creation was new to Mark; this is how he described our conversation on his own blog. Enjoy:
Confession time. I’ll just put it all on the table…my actions and lifestyle might just demonstrate that I am complacent about the creation God has stewarded into my hands. It’s ok, because I balance this neglect with a high level of care for the least reached hearing a verbal and living proclamation of the living Lord. I invest myself in seeing churches and individuals traverse cultures in order to spread the saving name of Jesus to the glory of God the Father. So it is simply off my radar to get on the “liberal-minded” green kick of environmentalism. And yes I chew my gum and spit it out the window while driving 65 miles an hour down the highway. I don’t even know how many gazilians of years it will take for my juicy fruit to reprocess back into the environment, if it does at all. I’m obviously sinful and uncaring about God’s creation. So why am I writing in this blog about the Care of Creation?!
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Mar
07
2011
The following is a guest-post from Tom Rowley of A Rocha USA. A Rocha and Care of Creation partner in various ways in the interest of creation care and Tom blogs regularly at the A Rocha USA website. Here he tackles a fundamental question: How do we dance around the problem of modern technology when almost all the tools we have to deal with creation care issues are, in fact, technological? Enjoy and offer a comment.
This piece started with me feeling rather smug over a major technological breakthrough at our house—namely, setting up the hand-me-down Wii that my sons got for Christmas and then, hold on to your hats, connecting that to Netflix for family movie nights. All without uttering an expletive (at least none that my dear ones heard). Before putting fingers to keyboard, however, the smugness gave way to heartburn over what we had unleashed on ourselves—yet again. Read more »
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