The Last Word + Thank You

Rainbow Bridge, Navajo National Monument + Photograph by Jeffrey Louden

This blog has been an experiment, a bridge if you will, to engage the people of the Rocky Mountain Synod in preparation for the assembly by looking at the theme, "Landscapes of Faith." 


We have heard from people from every corner of the Synod - Wyoming to El Paso, Utah to Colorado and from the Land of Enchantment too. We have heard from laity, clergy, synod staff and rostered leaders. We have heard from people within the church and from those without.  


Always we have heard that people engage their landscapes: internal, external, spiritual, mundane. We have heard that they care for them and are willing to work for them. 


To the extent that we have helped the conversation, we have succeeded. Thank you for taking the time to read the posts and to prepare for the assembly.


Warmly,


Kent Mueller, Kari Reiquam and Jeffrey Louden


Oh, and one last word. The authors and photographers would appreciate if you asked for permission before using text or photographs and then after use, if you would forward a copy of where and how you used the material. There may be a fee for the photography.  Thank you.

Earth Day + Third Sunday of Easter 2012

The Earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. 


Psalm 24


There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.


Charles Darwin
The Origin of the Species, 1859




The essence of spirituality is connection.


Pastor Carl Walker


Our goal is not just an environment of clean air and water and scenic beauty. The objective is an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all other human beings and all other living creatures.

Senator Gaylord Nelson, 1970 on the first Earth Day

The Journey

The Wind River Range, WY, looking south, on an course with the National Outdoor Leadership School in August 2006.

Photography by Jeffrey Louden

"I only went out for a walk and finally decided to stay out till sundown. For going out, I found, was really going in."

       John Muir

John Muir was born on this day in 1838. He grew up in Wisconsin in a strict Presbyterian home. He was instrumental in giving voice and power to the conservation movement at the end of the 19th century. In addition to the founding of the Sierra Club, he advocated for the establishment of Yosemite National Park. With President Theodore Roosevelt and the first director of the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, he shaped the conservation of public lands, especially in the West. He considered his greatest failure the damming of the Hetchy Hetchy Valley.  

Muir said, "One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books."

As we consider the landscapes of faith (plural on purpose!) perhaps we can hope for a faith that is as expansive and broad and generous and beautiful (and if we are lucky as wild) as the landscapes of the Rocky Mountain Synod. 

       Jeffrey Louden
          Pastor and NOLS Instructor

350.org + Bearing Witness

Photography by Jeffrey Louden on 4/2/12

(the "graffiti" was painted over with black the week after the shot was taken.)

Across a world divided in so many ways, one of the things that—sadly—unites us is the increasing damage from increasing temperatures. So far science has been in the lead in sounding the alarm, and the insurance industry (the part of our economy we ask to analyze risk) has not been far behind. Now we need faith communities the world over to step up and do their part in reading, like Daniel, “the writing on the wall.”

On the weekend of May 4 - 6 (Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, depending on when your faith community gathers), we’ll help organize a huge global day of witness. In communities around the planet that have felt the sting of climate change, people will gather to mark the spot where wildfires consumed houses, where floods took down bridges, where acidifying water bleached coral, where drought killed forests. As part of those rallies they’ll form a “dot”—a dot we can connect with other dots across the planet to remind people that climate change is not a future threat but a current crisis.

In other places, people will form “dots of hope” around solar panels and wind turbines; they’ll help dig community gardens and weatherize homes, they’ll bike en masse or paddle to the middle of some lovely lake they’d like to see persist.

We’re so hopeful that religious communities of every major religious tradition will be involved in this work. Both the Hebrew Bible and Gospel contain injunctions to love one's neighbor and to be good stewards of the Earth. One of the things that faith communities do best is bear witness, on our own behalf and on behalf of those whose voices are not heard in our societies.

This day will not solve the problem of climate change—that will be a long path. But it won’t begin in earnest until we acknowledge as a civilization both that we’re in trouble and that we have ways out. Please join us on the weekend of May 4 - 6, and keep us in your prayers.

Sincerely, 

Bill McKibben

350.org

On behalf of Interfaith Power & Light

Water in the Wilderness, Rivers in the Desert

Peace Lutheran Church sits on a very unique landscape.  From my office in El Paso, TX, I can see the mesas of New Mexico and the mountains of Mexico.  The “border” is close enough (8 miles) and the “fence” is tall enough that I can see that fence climbing the mesas and dividing me from those mountains and from my neighbors in Juarez.  The border is a landscape all unto itself.

The beauty of this landscape is marred not just by the fence, but also by poverty.  Imagine a person walking into my office and asking for drinking water.  I could respond, as would be normal in most places, by offering a bottle of water, ala Matthew 10:42.  But here, such a request is just as likely to be a request for potable water, something taken for granted in most places.  More troubling, such a request comes not from the landscape across the border, but from the landscape of the United States; in fact, just 5 or 6 miles as the crow flies from my office.  Even more troubling, that request has gone unanswered and ignored by the very governmental jurisdictions established to provide so basic a service.  This landscape can be very hard and harsh at times.

Such a landscape challenges the Church to discover different ways of doing ministry.  Here, charity is not enough, if it is sufficient in any place.  Here the struggle for justice cannot be ignored.  Here the poor cry out for good news.

One church cannot change such a landscape.  But a coalition of churches and other institutions can and are.  Through one, Border Interfaith, water and justice are given, to give drink to all without exception; so that God’s praise is declared.

For I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people.

                           Isaiah 43:20b-c

Pastor Wayne Kendrick

Peace Lutheran, El Paso, TX

What if?

St. Matthew's/Ascension + Price, Utah

Photograph by Jeffrey Louden

What if… 

… we rethought the entire notion of synod, bishop, geography? 

… we were willing to take enormous risks in this process? 

… we formed four or five synods out of the Rocky Mountain Synod, each served by a worker-bishop/overseer, clergy also connected to a congregational ministry? Or, failing that, what if assistants to the bishop, by intention and design, lived in different sections of the synod as truly deployed staff? 

… we took Called to Common Mission and other ecumenical agreements even more seriously than we do now?

… that led us to new creative mission work possible with our Episcopal, United Methodist, Presbyterian and other brothers and sisters with whom we are in full communion, with whom we live and work in this vast territory? 

… our new bishop made new proposals to his or her counterparts in those other traditions about creating new mission dialogues, investigating cooperative ministry sites, shared staffing, shared facilities (fill in the blanks because I know there are more ideas). 

… we took a much more serious look at how to better use technology for all our missions and ministries?

… we discovered we could save dollars, become better stewards, and create and maintain closer ties to one another? [In this age of technological innovation, distance need no longer be a prohibitive or limiting factor for many of the kind of meetings we will need to hold.]

What if…?

Pastor Jim Drury

Ascension St. Matthew Church, Price, UT

a congregation with Episcopal and Lutheran roots

Bricks and Beauty

Good Shepherd Lutheran is connected by a brick breezeway to Shepherd of the Valley Healthcare Center. That connecting wall is even more beautiful than the majestic snow-capped Casper Mountain to the south.

Good Shepherd is the smallest of four ELCA churches in Casper, a city of 53,000 along the Laramie chain of the magnificent Rocky Mountains. Shepherd of the Valley Healthcare Center is the largest long-term skilled nursing facility in the state of Wyoming. When linked together by bricks, the beauty of the two outshines the mountains.

Some may scratch their heads, wondering how a church can perceive an exquisite scene in a pile of bricks. But it is not the wall the people admire, but what the wall represents - the possibility for people to come together in a divine encounter in a Sunday morning family gathering. Without that long stretch of red bricks, many of those in wheelchairs or with walkers would find it treacherous to navigate through snow-covered property in the depths of winter, or endure blazing heat at the height of summer.

At the assembly we are being challenged to perceive (not just see) beauty in our landscapes. Beauty is often elusive. Can we perceive the beauty of our collective family as we sing of our Lord? Can we perceive courage as we wrestle with social issues that cry out for justice? Can we perceive the changes that must come to our beloved synod to ensure a vital future? Can we perceive the great strength that we already possess, thanks to the tenure of our Bishop, Allan Bjornberg?

Can we behold the beauty of our landscapes, while seeing beyond the bricks?

          Pastor Jack Damien

          Good Shepherd Lutheran

          Casper, WY