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How is Your 2025 Creation Goal Going?

Nathan Aaberg —  January 31, 2025 — Leave a comment

In my previous post, I encouraged you to set a goal for doing something for Creation in 2025 beyond what you already do. And I urged you to make that goal a stretch goal.

How has that been going?

As I mentioned in that same post, I am committing myself to getting a podcast off the ground this year to explore the themes I have been exploring in this blog.

I’m happy to say that I’ve made some progress. I’ve worked with a designer to get a logo completed, which I will share eventually! I have also built out my guest list a little further, and I have done some further preparations by reading an excellent book about the podcast production.

What has made the difference?

Keeping a log in my journal of the time I spend each day on my blog and podcast launch project.

Since I started keeping track on December 30, I’ve done some sort of work on either or both in 33 straight days. Sometimes it’s just 30 minutes, but even in that small amount of time, I can make some progress. More importantly, working every day keeps the momentum going. It also keeps the ideas and questions I need to tackle fresh in my head. And, honestly, it just feels good to keep the streak unbroken.

Why not try it?

Even if you cannot make time every single day, logging the time you do put in will show you that you are translating ideals and goals into your life on a regular basis. It will help you make progress and get the momentum going.

The key is the habit of tracking your new habit. Whether it’s time committed or some other meaningful metric, the tracking will inspire and compel you.

One last thing – can you share any recommendations for podcasts you especially like? They can be about anything, from the Bible to politics and books. I’m always up for learning and for ideas on how to make the podcast I will do as good as possible.  You can email me at wholefaithlivingearth@gmailcom

 

P.S. One of the guests I plan to have on my podcast is Raymond Epp. I met Raymond recently at the AcresUSA EcoAg Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, and we hit it off pretty quickly. His calling is to make available the insights of regenerative agriculture of North America to people in Japan where he lives with his family. He has brought creativity and an entrepreneurial spirit to that calling. 

In the photo below, he joins the participants of a two-day workshop he organized in Hokkaido entitled My Regenerative Journey. The participants were mostly farmers from around Japan but also included representatives from three major corporations. All of the participants were eager to learn more about the mindset, principles and outcomes of regenerative agriculture.

Raymond and the community of Christians he is part of are also making plans to build a sacred retreat place this spring “devoted to contemplating the incarnation of the Lamb of God and the ongoing life of redeeming creation that God is inviting us all to participate in.” He closed his recent email with this encouraging phrase – “Blessed be the journey!” Isn’t that a good perspective? Blessed be your journey of whole faith.

 

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What Are Your Creation Goals in 2025?

Nathan Aaberg —  December 31, 2024 — Leave a comment

Have you already created a list of goals for 2025?

When you do, I urge you to include at least one goal that not only relates to Creation but stretches you.

It’s traditional to create goals that relate to our personal health, professional goals, and hobbies. We may even have goals that relate to how we develop our faith, like committing to reading the Bible over the course of a year or praying each morning (which I recommend).

But I don’t often hear people develop goals that relate to doing our part for God’s precious earth.

If you believe that Creation matters to God, then embrace that conviction and turn it into sustained action that stretches you. As Jesus tells us in the story of the wise builder and the foolish builder, one’s faith is not real without putting it into action.

One example of a stretch goal would be committing to significantly increase your purchases of local, organic, and regeneratively grown food. This will be healthier for you and your family. It will also support good stewards of God’s earth and send a signal to our food and farming system about what kind of agriculture people want.

Another example would be to apply your love of God to your yard, farm, or even your business facility’s landscaping. Expand the amount of area that provides sustenance to birds and bees in the form of native vegetation. Treat your yard or farm as if it was God’s (which it is) and as if God cares about the life of this earth (which God does). Then enjoy the life that will come.

Why not commit to increasing the giving your family makes to Creation protection and renewal causes?

You could move your family or your church to more renewable energy sources.

You could decide to volunteer on a regular basis to restore a local natural area or to help a nature conservation organization. You’ll meet good people and learn a great deal about Creation.

Perhaps, you could even plan to organize people you know to address a Creation-related issue. This might include preserving a  natural area threatened with development or prompting your local school district to offer meals to its students with healthy foods.

Pray about it. Listen to what stirs your heart and mind.

Write it down.

And plan out the first few steps.

Then act.

The hardest part is getting going. Inertia is a killer.

When it comes to moving past inertia, here’s a video that my wife and I found useful. The speaker shares five tips for how to increase your odds of actually achieving your goals for a year. Good stuff. We plan to apply these principles this coming year.

You may be wondering what my 2025 goal is for Creation. One is to launch a podcast as a complement to this blog. There are so many Christians who are caring, tending, and defending Creation in courageous and creative ways. I’d like for you and people like you to hear their stories. I also want to explore the theology of Creation with theologians and other thinkers. I would like to explore the marvels of Creation, from new discoveries about the soil biome to the social lives of killer whales. And I want to talk with people who can give you and me insights into how to better live out our whole faith in connection to Creation.

Why is this a stretch?

Well, I am not good (in other words, I stink) at technology. I’m also quite busy with my work for The Land Connection, a food and farming non-profit. How will I fit this in? Do I want to inflict my voice on innocent people?! And, if I am honest, I will say that I feel a bit of reticence (In other words, fear) at doing something so new and different.

But it feels very right.

I started this blog 10 years ago because I literally couldn’t not do it. There were ideas and questions and convictions I couldn’t just let continue to boil in my heart and mind. They were going to explode if I didn’t express them and address them. Over the course of the last 10 years, I’ve learned a great deal that has further bolstered my convictions, my love of God, and my appreciation for Creation, even as it has also made me hurt even more to see what is being done to Creation. The best part has been hearing from people like you who appreciated particular blog posts. I have realized I am not alone. You are not alone.

I feel the same pent-up energy for podcasting.

You’ll be the first to hear once I get it going.

I’d love to hear what your goals are, too.

I hope and pray you will have a year of abundant life and whole faith in 2025.

 

P.S. And don’t forget to get to enjoy Creation in 2025 with your loved ones. Hike, Birdwatch. Study plants. Read books about it. Grow some of your own food and cook with it!

 

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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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What Creation Stewardship Looks Like

Nathan Aaberg —  April 30, 2023 — Leave a comment

Whether you call our obligation and calling to tend God’s earth “stewardship” or “Creation care,” it’s easy to feel like the concept is a little vague. This is especially true when it comes to producing food.

So I encourage you to watch this video of a webinar hosted by Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT) to get a sense of what Creation stewardship looks like on a small scale. In the video, Kirsten Robertson details how she creatively found natural solutions to replace the chemical dewormers she had previously been using on her goats and sheep at her family’s 10-acre farmstead in South Carolina.

As you’ll see, Kirsten brings both an engineering background and extensive grazing experience to her situation. I believe you’ll enjoy the thoughtfulness and logic of her presentation’s structure while also appreciating her tenacity and values. Please enjoy.

There are several things that struck me about the story of Kirsten’s creative stewardship journey.

The first was how it occurred to her to study how grazing animals in nature generally avoid dying from parasites.

In my interview with John Kempf, he shared one of his favorite Bible passages – Job 12: 7-10  That passage especially resonates with Kirsten’s story.

The passage reads: But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you, or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.

How often do our systems of producing food and even living itself come out of careful learning from Creation? They should.

The second was how Kirsten learned as she went. She didn’t have all of the details of her new systems in place when she stopped using chemical dewormers. She had to make adjustments. New insights came to her as she proceeded. Her faith and persistence were rewarded. Creation stewardship is a lively, interactive endeavor. It builds our wisdom muscles.

Another thing that stood out to me was how the characteristics of specific plants, like black locust and chicory, were helpful allies to her. What a wonderful example of how knowing the “players” in Creation is valuable and fascinating. I encourage you to launch into the study of Creation as a lifelong pursuit.

You can’t help but notice that Kirsten’s approach was complex. She made the farmstead landscape more complex in terms of layout and vegetation management. This is a far different from relying on chemicals while ignoring the factors that made the parasite infections happen in the first place.

The chemicals-dependent approach that she moved away from is a microcosm of our dominant food and farming system. Our tendency is to create “simple” industrial approaches built on our chemistry and engineering prowess without caring about the impacts of those approaches on our neighbors and Creation. We need humility to learn from Creation. We  need to consider its needs and patterns.

Perhaps this is why the Bible teaches us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. When we work with Creation, we should remember that God is looking over our shoulders and observing whether reverence for God is in our hearts.

And what I ultimately responded to in Kirsten’s story was the joy and life that emerged from it.

Stopping the use of the chemical dewormers allowed dung beetles to return with benefits for the soil.  Diversifying her homestead’s landscape attracted other wildlife as well.

And that changed the direction of Kirsten’s life. She was once close to giving up on their farmstead. By learning from Creation and creatively applying its lessons, she ultimately found her enjoyment of life there resurrected.

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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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