Archives For Amazing World

Do You Have Faith Enough to Take Risk?

Nathan Aaberg —  July 17, 2024 — Leave a comment

I’m reading an unusual and unusually insightful book – Faith and Will – by Julia Cameron.

Julia Cameron wrote The Artist’s Way, a book millions of people have used to better understand how to take their hankering to be an artist and turn it into reality. What many people don’t know is that she has written more than 40 other books, including The Right to Write, which I just read and then reread.

In Faith and Will, Cameron explores what faith is and how exactly one lives with faith. One of her key themes is that having faith in God requires us to believe God is working in our life and has an intention for it that is best for us. This may not seem groundbreaking to you if you have long had a deep faith. But there is something in the way that she writes of faith and life that has its own unique liveliness and truth.

Faith, she asserts, requires us to submit our will in some way to God’s will. This is not easy. What we think would be ideal might not actually be what God has intended nor what is really and truly best for us. She shares compelling stories of people who come to that realization after mistakenly pursuing what they desired without considering God’s wishes. What God then revealed to them, to their surprise, was actually much better.

There was a particular section that I wanted to share here. Here’s what she writes:

For most of us, we would have more faith if we tried to have more faith. Our need for faith is always slightly larger than the amount of faith we feel we have.”

She then quotes her friend who said this:

“I think faith is dead center as the issue determining the quality of our lives… If we have ‘enough’ faith, then we are willing to take ‘enough’ risks to respect ourselves. If we are shirking our faith, we are not taking risks and soon we feel we can’t respect ourselves.”

After that, Cameron writes:

To hear my friend tell it, either we expand or we contract. There is no staying the same, When we try to stay the same, the shoe begins to pinch. We are not the size we once were, even if we are not yet the size we long to be. For most of us, the act of expansion is an act of faith. Faith requires risk. Risk requires faith. In order to be faithful, we must move beyond what feels to us like our safety zone. We must move out on faith.”  

Here is what I hear in that – our faith will generate insights into things we must do beyond our comfort zone. The will to take risks will then grow our faith.

So faith requires us to humble our will but also to have the willingness (that comes from faith) to stretch beyond our current self.

Are you and I taking necessary and important risks out of faith? This is a question you and I should ask in all areas of our lives – family, friendships, community, and our own personal development. And, of course, Creation.

Protecting and renewing God’s earth inherently entails many risks. There is the risk of being seen as the weird treehugger. Of being “that person” on the block or in church who speaks up about things that no one else seems to care about. There is the possibility of ridicule that can come from landscaping in ways that honor God. We can pay attention, act, and still not be successful. We risk heartache at forests being cut down despite our efforts, coral reefs becoming devoid of life, of more people dying from rising heat levels.

But as Cameron explains, faith needs risk, and risk needs faith.

This is challenging to me. I see the faith-filled and risk-filled lives of Abraham, Noah, Moses, Jesus, and his disciples. Yet, I sometimes long for comfort and putting life on cruise control.

To inspire you around risk for God’s earth, I encourage you to check out the free film Reviving Rivers. It tells the story of Dr. Rajendra Singh who sold what he had to treat sick people in rural villages in India. That, it seemed, was, what he was meant to do. But then a man he was treating opened to his eyes to what his true calling should be, which entailed further risk and faith. Taking that risk has had wonderful ripple effects for the earth and thousands of people.

The trailer for the short film is below, In the YouTube notes is a link to the website where you can watch the whole film, if you sign up for the Water Stories newsletter.

What risk will you take this month and this year out out of faith for others, for yourself, and for God’s earth?

How can I and others pray for your faith as you take those risks?

Let me know. wholefaithlivingearth@gmail.com

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Longing for the Belonging of Church

Nathan Aaberg —  January 31, 2023 — 2 Comments

I was driving home late last year on a familiar road when I saw a sign for a new church that I had not seen before.

There was no traditional church building in sight. But there was a barn with fresh red metal siding and a metal roof. That, I realized, was the church’s sanctuary. Intriguing.

Perhaps this was it. Perhaps the alternative approach to church architecture signalled an assembly of believers where Creation mattered, where people really believed God loves the whole world.  Could this be a community of faith where Creation’s presence in the Bible was reflected in theology, culture, and way of living? Maybe this would be a place where I could belong.

After pulling away from church a number of years ago, I’ve longed for belonging around faith and Jesus. Seeing that new church in a non-traditional building brought that old familiar pang back to the surface of my heart.

When I got home, I promptly visited the church’s website. It was bright and well-designed. Its photos and text highlighted the church’s racial diversity. The faces, set against a background of wooden barn walls, were friendly, enthusiastic. Promising, I thought.

I found the “What We Believe” section of the website. Hope crashed into reality.

 

Not a word about Creation. Not a single word.

I have to admit this – in that moment, for a moment, I questioned myself.

Maybe I am wrong, I thought. Maybe there’s a good reason why so many churches don’t speak about Creation or care about it. And maybe staying away from church is a rebellion against God’s will. Doesn’t the New Testament speak clearly about the obligation and rewards of being with other followers of Jesus?

That old familiar pang pressed against my heart. Here I was again, feeling guilt for not going to church while longing for belonging in a faith community.

 

Am I Unforgiving?

Some new friends, who I met at a field walk last September at their farm, suggested a different way for me to consider my situation.

They are faithful believers who steward their land carefully and attend a church in Indiana. There they often find themselves alone in expressing a Creation care consciousness. They are not always understood.

During the field walk, we had bonded over our common convictions. I had shared my challenges in finding a church. They wrote this in a recent email:

For us, it’s forgiveness every single time we walk into our church. It can be a struggle for fellow Christians to understand our views, but we think it’s important to lend grace and forgiveness so we can continue to educate them on this matter. People are starting to listen, starting to realize the connection we have to all of His Creation. We pray that you can find forgiveness in your heart so you can go out to disciple this to His people.

These words brought me up short.

Was that the problem? Am I not being forgiving? Was that why I couldn’t fit in and make a home at a church?

Perhaps I needed to commit myself to forgiving fellow believers as they would need to forgive me for my own blind spots. If I repented of the judgments I was making, would I then be able to find a church where I could belong?

 

A Buck Outside the Window

More recently, I was having a conversation with a coworker at the nonprofit I work for in a room with a wide window. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement in one of our organization’s farm fields roughly 80 yards away. I couldn’t help myself. In mid-conversation, I turned to look closer. Through a row of trees between us and the field, I saw a deer. It was a young buck. The head it held high had a small set of antlers.

Then it strode through the row of trees and onto the lawn south of our office. This was midday. It was now in full view and less than 30 yards away in the middle of a subdivision* in a Midwest town.

By now, I was no longer pretending to be engaged the conversation. We both watched as the buck strode across the lawn. Its eyes were watchful. Its posture powerful.

He passed out of sight. The lawn seemed a wilder place even with him gone. My mind and heart were still absorbing the experience even as my coworker renewed the conversation as if nothing unusual had happened and without a word about the buck.

 

Ears to Hear

Jesus sometimes used the phrase, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Matthew 13:9, Mark 4:9, Luke 8:8, etc.)

In recent weeks I’ve encountered stories and insights that convince me that…… well, let me share them first and then share my conclusion.

The first came from an article in Christianity Today about Bono’s newly published memoir. In it, Bono shares his recollection of a conversation he had with Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham. Billy Graham, one of the most famous Christian evangelists of recent history, had invited Bono to visit him. Franklin had picked him up at the airport. From the conversation that Bono recollects, it’s clear that Franklin was dubious about whether the rockstar Bono was an authentic Christian.

“You … you really love the Lord?” (Franklin)
“Yep.” (Bono)
“Okay, you do. Are you saved?”
“Yep, and saving.”
He doesn’t laugh. No laugh.
“Have you given your life? Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?”
“Oh, I know Jesus Christ, and I try not to use him just as my personal Savior. But, you know, yes.”
“Why aren’t your songs, um, Christian songs?”
“They are!”
“Oh, well, some of them are.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, why don’t they … Why don’t we know they’re Christian songs?”
I said, “They’re all coming from a place, Franklin. Look around you. Look at the creation, look at the trees, look at the sky, look at these kinds of verdant hills. They don’t have a sign up that says, ‘Praise the Lord’ or ‘I belong to Jesus.’ They just give glory to Jesus.”

 

Killer Whale Theology

Cover of Beyond Words by Carl Safina

 

In Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, ocean advocate Carl Safina opens the reader’s mind and heart to the complex world of killer whales.

Three things astonished me. The first is the very creatures themselves. There is, for example, not just one generic kind of killer whale. There are actually estimated to be eight types of killer whales. Some eat only fish, primarily salmon. Others prefer mammals. One type, much smaller than the type that eats seals off of ice flows, hunts penguins. Yet another type hunts sharks. Regardless of type, these are highly social animals with matriarchal leadership. Oddly, pods of the same type of killer whales will not socialize with other pods of the same type. They have their own cultures. Yet, killer whales in the wild have never been seen being aggressive to each other.

Their vocal communication capacity is amazing.

“Killer whales in a  group can be spread out over 150 square miles – and all be in vocal contact,” write Safina.

Having huge nerve cells for hearing and generating sounds from skulls that are sophisticated technologies, killer whales (like other dolphin species and whales) inhabit a world we can only dream of. They live, in fact, by sound.

The second remarkable thing is how little humans have known about killer whales for most of human history. It was only in 1960, just over 60 years ago, that a researcher discovered that dolphins relied on sound for so much and that eyesight was a secondary source of information. And it’s been even more recently that people have differentiated the different types of killer whales and discovered that each killer whale has its own individual personality and remarkable social intelligence.

And the third most remarkable thing?

After detailing how powerfully effective killer whales can be as hunters, with some even hunting down 30,000-pound sperm whales, Safina writes this:

“Even stranger, then, that killer whales have overturned no kayak, emptied no rowboat, and slurped no human. It is perhaps the greatest behavioral mystery on our mysterious planet.”

 

Seeing Blue

In Joni B. Cole’s excellent and warmly witty book on writing – Good Naked – she has a chapter entitled “Seeing Blue.”  In it she argues why each writer’s writing matters and is worth pouring energy into, even when it seems to have no immediate reward.

 

Here’s a paragraph in that chapter. It follows her statement that the Egyptians were likely the first civilization to create a word for the color blue and that research indicates few people until modern times really noticed it as a color (don’t worry – you’ll see the point in just a bit):

The claim that a culture with no word for a color it cannot see is supported by a contemporary study with the Himba tribe in Namibia, whose language has several words for nuanced shades of green, but nothing to describe blue. When shown a screen with eleven green squares and one distinctly blue square, the Namibians could not pick out the blue one. Yet, among the green squares that appear identical to a Westerner’s eyes, they could immediately identify the different shade. The ability to see or not see a shade speaks to its important to a culture. Now just imagine if every culture had the ability to see every kind of color!

Her point – every writer has the potential to help readers see something they could not see before.

What I also see in her words is this – our culture can blind us to truth that is right in front of us.

 

A Misfit Who Can’t Unsee Blue

The blue so many churches and so many church cultures cannot see is the life, beauty, mystery, and vulnerability of God’s Creation all around us. The blue that Franklin Graham and many other Christians cannot see is that Creation matters deeply to God and that care of Creation is part of the very core of what we were created for.

I can’t unsee that blue.

Nor can I force Christians who are happy with their churches to see that blue if they don’t want to see it. Nor do I believe that many churches, who are struggling with declines in attendance, will be open to changing their culture and theology around Creation.

So what is worse? Going to church and not belonging because I see a color in the Bible and Creation others won’t see? Or not going to church and missing the fellowship and singing of songs with other believers? Of longing for belonging to a group of people committed to God and Jesus in a whole way?

Right now, despite those old familiar pangs that emerge from hidden places in my heart when I see a church, I’ve come to accept that I am what Jon Terry called me in our conversation earlier this year.

A misfit.

That’s who I am.

Or, if one puts a more positive spin on it, you could label me an “edge walker,” a term Valerie Loorz calls herself in Church of the Wild.

Is there any reason to think such a path could be faithful to God?

When Jesus responded to the Pharisees who complained that he was healing people on the Sabbath (Luke 14:5), he asked them if they would not act on the Sabbath, despite the prohibition on work, if they heard a child or an ox stuck in a well.

When you imagine the scenario that Jesus presented to the Pharisees, you cannot help but hear the cries. Whether a child or ox fell in a well, there would have been heart-rending sounds – the pleading screams of the child, the plaintive bellows of the ox.

My ears can’t unhear the cries of Creation today. Nor can I unhear the lamentations of people whose lives are or will be in misery because of what is being done to Creation.

Pretending I couldn’t hear those cries or shutting my ears to those cries would be, in my mind, a betrayal of God.

I see the blue.

I hear, and I listen.

And what I hear (and oh how I wish I could hear the sounds of killer whale clans as they race through the ocean) resonates with the thread of Creation’s worth through the whole Bible.

So I need to act as best I can.

I pray that people out there who are like me will find each other and act out of the convictions we have from our faith.

Perhaps we will together form new wineskins?

And perhaps many years from now there will be people who drink the vintage of the wine from those wineskins and smile and nod and make more of their own and please God in the process.

 

 

*To be fair, the subdivision is not just any subdivision. It is the Prairie Crossing conservation community, where a significant amount of habitat has been set aside and managed for natural habitat. This makes the buck’s appearance just slightly less surprising. But still a remarkable moment in the middle of an afternoon.

 

 

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Bravery, Goodness, and Gratitude in 2022

Nathan Aaberg —  December 31, 2022 — Leave a comment

I wrestle with staying hopeful.

My heart and mind are often painfully aware of climate chaos and the ongoing loss of the life of God’s earth

But I know those who follow Jesus and love God cannot help but to also be people who see light and hope. Everyday we are alive on this earth, we should seek out and hold onto gratitude for the goodness around us that comes from God. That awareness feeds our hearts and fuels our persistence.

As you begin a new year, I encourage you to take time to meditate on the year that has just past. What was good? Where did you sense God’s grace? What are you thankful for? What did you learn? In general? About protecting and restoring Creation as part of a whole Christian faith-life?

Here are just some of the things I discovered by looking back at my own year.

1. Bounty from the Garden: My wife Mayumi has been building the soil of our pesticide-free garden for more than 15 years. In 2022, she harvested a wonderful bounty – garlic, Asian pears, beets, kale, green beans, parsley, ground cherries, and even okra. During the height of the okra season, she was harvesting and cooking it in delicious ways almost every day. God’s Creation enables us to taste and see that God is good.

My wife harvesting okra

My wife Mayumi harvesting okra from our garden that she will cook later. Through her careful tending, the garden produced wonderful food again this past year.

2. Earthkeepers Podcast: Early in 2022, James Amadon and Forest Inslee interviewed me for their Earthkeepers Podcast, a production of Circlewood. Circlewood is an organization in the Pacific Northwest that is working to accelerate the greening of the Christian faith. I first interviewed James for this blog back in 2017 when he was still early on in his move from being a church pastor to becoming Circlewood’s executive director. I’m delighted to see that his gifts are bearing so much fruit. I was also honored that I would be chosen to be interviewed. Through the Earthkeepers Podcast, James and Forest are interviewing fascinating people on the edge of faith and ecology.

3. Good and Brave People: In 2022 I had a good conversation with the elder of a church in Davenport, Iowa. He had given a sermon about the Biblical basis and faithfulness of Creation care. He had been nervous but felt compelled to bring up the topic. We need more brave people like him.

Through my work and my own personal seeking, I continue to have the chance to encounter brave farmers. They are willing to go against the current of conventional practices and raise crops in ways that minimize harm to God’s earth. These same ways produce excellent, healthy products, from vegetables and meat to grains and flowers. Farmers like these put their livelihoods on the line in their choice of how they will raise food to sell. Their faith and values are profoundly inspiring to me.

This sign at Broadview Farm in Marengo, Illinois, highlights an area planted with sunflowers specifically to feed goldfinches. I’ve been fortunate to meet many farmers who keep the life of God’s world in mind as they plan the uses of their farm.

Over the past years I’ve had the opportunity work with and help a number of public conservation and forest preserve districts work to improve the sustainability of their farmland management systems. These are public organizations with thousands of acres of farmland which have largely been farmed with a chemical-reliant, production-first approach for decades. I have been blessed to work with staff who care deeply about the land and water under their management.They are creatively advocating within their institutions to move more earth-friendly farming requirements forward. They do this even when others in their institutions don’t get it. I admire them.

During a 2022 field walk at a farm field owned and managed by the Forest Preserve District of Will County, participants were shown a prairie strip planted perpendicular to the downward slope of the field. The strip provides habitat for wildlife while slowing erosion from farmed land. 

4. Food Forest and Land Stewardship Near Galesburg: This summer, my wife, eldest son, and I visited friends who had purchased some beautiful land near Galesburg. Just one of the ways they are tending this land is by replacing conventional corn and bean fields with trees that will produce nuts and fruit. They have a long-term vision and love the land very much. Their willingness to try new things, work hard, and build community inspired us greatly.

Our friend Craig showing us one of the chestnuts he and his wife planted on their land near Galesburg.

5. Positive News in the World: In the midst of many negative forces, we cannot forget that Creation, when given the chance, can begin to rebound. Check out this story about the response of nature in New York Harbor, which used to be a cesspool of pollutants. A key point to remember is that in a world in which we are all tempted to sin, good regulations and laws are needed.

We can also forget that people can push for decency and goodness in their society….and succeed. Check out news of this ruling in Maryland that preserves the right of homeowners to garden and landscape in ways that enable nature to thrive. A brave couple made that happen.

6. Birds of the Garden: We had three surprise avian visitors this year to our largely naturally landscaped yard. Two were birds – a nuthatch and red-bellied woodpecker – that came to the bird feeder and thrive around trees. After 19 years, our yard has three bur oaks, a pin oak, and two hackberries that are all of decent size. I particularly appreciated the nuthatch. It is able to descend headfirst down the trunk of a tree with perky little movements. Its  upturned beak is perfectly suited for seeking out food in the nooks and crannies of tree bark. It also, as this excellent article explains, stockpiles seeds in the bark of trees for accessing later.

The third bird was a red-tailed hawk. It somehow caught a rabbit, despite the restricted air space of our small property. The hawk consumed the rabbit on top of a rain barrel with little concern for the sensibilities of the people looking at it from their dining room.

This red-tailed hawk has the remains of a rabbit on the top of the rain barrel in our yard during a rain day. (Our son Owen snuck up close to get this picture)

7. Thought-Provoking Books: There were two books I read in 2022 about Christianity and Creation that were so thought-provoking that I read them twice – Victoria Loorz’s Church of the Wild and Norman Wirzba’s This Sacred Life. I’m grateful to the authors, their editors, and their publishers for producing these books.

This book was insightful and moving. it also used language far from traditional conceptions of Christianity. I

8. Inspired Words: I continue to find inspiration (and challenge) in reading the Bible. Thanks to my interview with John Kempf, I now have Job 12: 7-10 indelibly etched into my consciousness. How much better would we be faithful servants of God if we actually did ask the beasts, the birds, the bushes, and the fishes of the sea and were willing to listen and learn from them? What if we remembered that our lives and the livings of all living things are in the hand of the God? We are created kin.

What are you grateful for in 2022?

Write those things down. Talk about them. Feed your heart and soul with them. Share them if you would.

Many blessings to you all.

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Moments in a Month on God’s Earth

Nathan Aaberg —  April 30, 2022 — Leave a comment

My tendency, as you’ve seen from my past blog posts, is to think big picture. I learn towards theology, ideas, trends, analysis of verses,patterns of people marring God’s Creation, and patterns of people regenerating God’s Creation through ingenuity and commitment and faith.

In this post, I go in a different direction. I share some moments in my life in the month of April that relate in some way to God’s earth.

April 10 – I volunteer along with other residents here in the Prairie Crossing conservation community to burn several sections of the prairies and other habitats of our community’s common areas. Our burn leader – Jim O’Connor – takes extreme care in the planning of the burns so that homes are never in danger. Jim also keeps track of when areas are burnt. It’s not good to burn at the same time of the year every time. Prescribed burns are essential to keep prairies healthy.

 

April 16 – This is the same area six days after the burns on April 10. Look carefully in the bottom left corner of the image. Can you see the mound that has a different texture than everything around it? And can you see the robin just to the right of the mound? The mound is that of a colony of prairie ants (likely Formica montana). With the weather warming, the ants had begun to appear on the surface. And that had drawn the robin which had been scarfing them down like a famished guest consuming a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Prairie ants play an important role in prairie ecology and provided a useful, high-protein, high-fiber diet supplement for the robin early this cold spring. I wonder what King Solomon would make of this.

 

April 19 – Many residents in Prairie Crossing have native habitats on their own properties as well. Here Jim O’Connor (yes, he is everywhere) and Bill Pogson (not in the picture) are helping me burn the natural habitats of our yard. Further down the alley we have a small open prairie. Here we have three oaks whose leaves burn nicely, contributing the fire ecology of the habitat. Prairie Crossing HOA regulations require us to have at least 3 adults carry out any burn and to also make sure that the weather is suitable for a burn that day. Burning together with neighbors brings us together. After the burn was completed (and perhaps inspired by the beer), Jim expertly recited portions of a Robert Burns’ poem.

 

April 21 – Any ideas what this is? A lunar landscape perhaps? It’s been a wet month. Rain the previous day turned some eroded soil along the edge of Harris Road near our non-profit organization’s office into mud. These are worm trails visible early on a weekday morning. The ephemeral trails were ever so faint traces of creatures whose lives are usually invisible to us.

 

April 21 – Another burn in a Prairie Crossing common area. My friend and neighbor Bill Pogson uses a drip torch to spread the flame. Earlier we had burned to the right of the image so the flames you see that are being pushed by the wind will only go a short distance and then run out of fuel. I had more work to do at the office that Friday afternoon, but I felt I needed to help out as good burn weather can often be rare. Glad I did. The needs of people and nature don’t always fit in nicely with our plans for a day.

 

Stir fried basmati rice

April 25 – It’s a weekday night, and Mayumi and I need to figure out what to make for dinner in a hurry. We had leftover basmatic rice I had made over the weekend, so Mayumi created a quick stir-fried rice dish with organic peas, onions, carrots, and pasture-raised eggs.

 

April 25 – Gus, one of our two cats, enjoying a nap in covers we’ve pulled up around him. I believe our love of our pets and how our homes feel much better with plants in them remind us of something profound we see in Genesis – we are meant to be in a state of shalom with the rest of life.

 

April 26 – Our small garden at the south end of our home. You can see the compost bins in the background. To the right of the bin is a choke cherry and a shagbark hickory, both native woody plants. And at the right edge of the image is an Asian pear tree. The abundance of vegetation you see in the garden itself is winter rye, a cover crop that my wife Mayumi planted last fall to build the soil. The winter rye stayed green all winter, and with all of the rain, it is now growing quickly, which means it is pumping dissolved sugars (liquid carbon) into the soil which feeds the microbes and fungi there. This is our first time using cover crops in these beds. We keep trying to learn.

 

April 27 – It’s not exactly in my job description, but on this Wednesday I led a tour of our farm and Prairie Crossing for ~40 students of AP Human Geography classes from a local high school. Here my colleague Meg Runyan explains how she gets 8,000+ plants germinating and growing in our greenhouse for our annual organic plant sale. Earlier I had shared why it makes such a big difference to human health and nature how food is farmed. One of the teachers said at the end of the tour, almost as an aside, that just reading about sustainabilty has little impact and meaning. Youth need to experience what it actiually looks like.

I also gave a sermon to the North Suburban Mennonite Church and Christ Community Mennonite Church on the Sunday after Earth Day. In preparation for the sermon I reviewed my notes from a book I had found inspiring some years agao – The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church by Alan Hirsch. A quote I found that I couldn’t squeeze into the sermon that I still find compelling and want to share is:

“To say this more explicitly, there is no such thing as sacred and secular in biblical worldview. It can conceive of no part of the world that does not come under the claim of Yahweh’s lordship. All of life belongs to God, and true holiness means bringing all the spheres of our life under God.”

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Bring Life by Restoring Habitat Around You

Nathan Aaberg —  November 30, 2021 — Leave a comment

One of the ways we can live out a whole Christian faith-life, whether as families or as communities of faith, is to restore and maintain natural habitat on our own properties.

Whether or not we do so matters.

Without natural habitat – without food to eat and places to find shelter – much of the wildlife of God’s earth cannot survive.

Restoring habitat usually and primarily means replacing lawn with vegetation that is native to your particular place. But if your property already has areas that you do not keep as lawn or garden, then restoring habitat can also involve removing invasive plant species and, again, planting more native plant species.

To inspire you, I want to share the video below of a presentation by Stephen Barten entitled “Backyard Wildlife: If you Build It, They Will Come.” He gave this presentation for the non-profit group Chicago Living Corridors through the Barrington Library in October.

Stephen, a veterinarian and award-winning wildlife photographer, has been restoring his family’s property in the Barrington area for the last 25 years. In the ~75-minute presentation, he shares photos and trailcam footage of 70 species of mammals, insects, reptiles, amphibians, and birds that have been seen on their property.

If you’re like me, you’ll be gobsmacked by the sheer variety of creatures Stephen documents.

That experience of sharing their world with a wide vairety of creatures is something Jesus and the other people of the Bible would have understood. From bears and jackals to the white stork and partridge, the Bible is full of many references to wildlife in the air, on the land, and in the sea. We need to visualize the many shepherds in the Bible interacting with livestock, wildlife, and complex vegetation ecologies all of the time. We know, too, that King Solomon paid a great deal of attention to plants and wildlife as well. I suspect Solomon and Stephen would have a great time discussing their observations together, despite being native to two very different places.

You will also appreciate the insights Stephen provides about a number of the different species of wildlife he encounters. He even shares tips about living with some of that wildlife, like what to do if you find a fawn.

Stephen and his family do benefit from living within two blocks of a lake and from living in a wooded area with few homes. If you are living in a dense city area or subdivision, you will likely not be able to attract flying squirrels and mink no matter how much habitat you restore. But you will still see God’s creatures and help sustain them.

Now is the time to plan for what you will do with your personal property or church’s property in 2022.

Study the habitats of your area. Figure out where you will source native plants for planting in the spring. Get help from someone who knows those plants in designing your habitat. Remove and treat invasive woody brush (like Stephen describes in his presentation). Start small to get the knack of it all. Plan to plant some native plants (even just a few oak trees) in the spring. Get ready by spring.

There are a wide variety of resources available for learning about native plants and restoring habitat to your property. The organization Wild Ones is a good place to start. I would also highly recommend Doug Tallamy’s book Bringing Nature Home. (And if you don’t have your own property, volunteer to help create and restore habitat at your church or another place.)

Will your property look a little different from your neighbors?

It may.

But work to retrain your eyes and cultural assumptions to be in line with God’s perspective. Ask yourself this question – what kind of culture and values does a yard (or a church landscape) really communicate when the plants there almost completely deprive the life of God’s earth life itself?

A well-designed yard that includes habitat and a bit of well-placed lawn, on the other hand, communicates something very different. That yard communicates that the people of that place care about God, the life of God’s world, and their human neighbors, too.

Enjoy. Learn. Grow. Embrace challenge. Show your love of God. Create habitat.

 

P.S. My wife and I have devoted much of our small property in Grayslake, Illinois, to native plants and maintain the prairie sections with occasional prescribed burns. We’ve been delighted to see cedar waxwings, cardinals, squirrels, chipmunks, voles, chickadees, goldfinches, toads, a variety of bees, monarch butterflies, hummingbirds, house wrens, rabbits, Cooper’s hawk, and a red-tailed hawk eating a rabbit. And, honestly, we’re still learning as we go.

Image of Nathan's home with native plants and prairie habitat using most of space

Here is an image of the habitat around our small home just after a late summer rain. Native shrubs and trees are great additions to your home landscape. This section of our yard includes native trees like hackberry and bur oak. There are also native shrubs like elderberry, serviceberry, nannyberry, and witherod viburnum. A native habitat landscape in Arizona would, for example, look very different. Please share images of the habitat you create on your property with me at wholefaithlivingearth@gmail.com.

 

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