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A Calling to Honey Creek – Part 2

Nathan Aaberg — April 9, 2019 — Leave a comment

Blessing of gravesite at Honey Creek Woodlands. (Courtesy of Honey Creek Woodlands)

In an earlier post, we began to share the story of Joe Whittaker. He played a pivotal role in the founding of the Honey Creek Woodlands green cemetery on the grounds of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia.

Two elements of Joe’s story compel me to share it. First, for Creation to be healed and renewed in any significant way, we need to integrate a commitment to God’s earth into our culture. The burial of our loved ones offers a great opportunity to do just that. It is a defining moment in the lives of families and religious communities. Burial intimately connects us with Creation. It also brings us back to the humility and radical Creation kinship of dust to dust.

Second, when God calls you to make a difference for the future of God’s earth, you will need to step outside of your comfort zone. You and I can learn about the challenges and rewards of answering that calling from Joe.

Getting Honey Creek Woodlands Going

When talking about the effort and challenges to get Honey Creek Woodland going, Joe says, “It’s good I didn’t know then what I know now. I probably would have just said, “Good luck with your project!””

Joe’s lack of training in land management and lack of knowledge of Piedmont ecology posed big challenges. He was going to try to create a green burial cemetery on 80 acres of formerly forested land that had been clear-cut some years back and was in a state of transition.

As Joe puts it, “I had no idea of what the land was going to do. I was just overwhelmed with what it did.”

In particular, invasive species had already taken hold in the forests. The clear-cutting gave the invasive species a wonderful opportunity to spread. In addition, the natural succession of the Piedmont woods also generated tremendous vegetative regrowth. This meant a jungle of green overwhelmed the land. Blackberry and briars, in particular, grew vigorously.

Walter Bland, a local native plant expert, visited the site with Joe early on and said, “Joe, I don’t know what you’re thinking is, but your clientele is going to want to see natural.”

“That’s what we’ve got,” said Joe.

“No, no, no,” said Walter. “There’s a big difference between natural and nature. Natural has a lot of management involved. It looks like nature but it’s under control.”

In short, people were not going to want to bury their loved ones in thickets. Nor would they find it practical or appealing to come back to visit a thicket.

Joe, with the benefit of the wisdom of Walter and the Georgia Piedmont Land Trust, made a significant decision. Rather than trying to control all 80 acres in an aesthetically pleasing way through an intensive use of resources, he would allow much of the 80 acres to go through a decades-long natural succession process. Over time, trees would naturally emerge in these areas. Their shade would, over time, thin out the understory plants.

But in the smaller areas where burials would be done in the short-term, Joe and his staff actively managed the landscape. This meant trimming trees and controlling brush. These areas would still be natural and have abundant native plants that are vital for wildlife. They would, however, be more visually appealing and accessible for visitors. Honey Creek Woodlands would, in other words, be going for something that looked natural and functioned ecologically. It just wouldn’t be 100% unmanaged naturalness.

Joe then worked to figure out the logistics and layout of the cemetery. The area where the burials were to take place was actually a mile and a half from the monastery itself. And between the monastery and the burial area there was Honey Creek, crossed by an old, dilapidated bridge. The only existing way to travel in that direction was a rough Forest Service road. Joe gave the solving of these issues a high priority.

A gravel road leads through the southern woods of Honey Creek Woodlands

The road through Honey Creek Woodlands and a forest rebounding from clear-cutting. (Courtesy of Honey Creek Woodlands)

“One of the things that I’ve really focused on for the last ten years,” says Joe, “is trying to make this as convenient and logistically smooth for families as I possibly could.”

“People get caught up in the warm fuzzy part of the funeral service. But you’ve got to have parking. You’ve got to have accessibility for elderly people. I keep beating that drum. You’ve got to think logistics, people. Before any natural burial cemetery gets off the ground, think about logistics!”

This focus on the details has come out of the awareness that the modern, conventional funeral does make things convenient. There is parking. There are bathrooms. For natural burials to work for most people, it can’t be too challenging or inaccessible.

“If we can grow the number of people that this options works for just by providing a little bit of convenience,” says Joe, “then it will be well worth it. If your facility does not work for the elderly, it’s probably not going to be very successful.”

One of the ways they provide convenience is by having a fleet of golf carts visitors can use. While some visitors use the hiking trails, the vast majority of the people who come to visit their loved ones are going to use golf carts to travel the three-mile round trip.

Having some golf cart repair experience, by the way, was another serendipitous part of Joe’s background that he brought to Honey Creek Woodland. Who would expect that working for a golf course during the summers of his high school years would pay dividends much later in life? Destiny? God’s plan?

Thanks to the efforts of Joe and his team, the Honey Creek Woodlands conservation burial cemetery opened on April 22, 2008 – Earth Day. Since then, more than 1,300 people have been buried there, including the remains of about 30 miscarriages. Honey Creek Woodlands has sold almost 3,500 plots.

The Demographics of Burial at Honey Creek Woodland

True to his background in market research, Joe has paid attention to the demographics of people who choose to be buried there. He’s categorized them into three groups.

The first are those desire to be buried on the grounds of the monastery where monks will pray for their soul every day. This appealed deeply to many people of the Catholic faith. Because there aren’t that many monasteries in Georgia, Honey Creek Woodlands possessed a unique attraction. These deeply Catholic families, however, rarely have had any exposure to green burial beforehand. Their faith doesn’t necessarily include a concern for Creation.

“That’s a big hurdle to overcome,” says Joe.

“If a grave isn’t manicured,” says Joe, “then some people feel their loved one is being disrespected. That’s been one of the biggest hurdles for me to get over – this cultural notion of manicured graves.”

The Pavilion at Honey Creek Woodlands. (Courtesy of Honey Creek Woodlands)

Joe identifies the second group by their financial motivations.

“They’ll call up,” says Joe, “and say, “My uncle died without any life insurance but he left instructions that he definitely didn’t want to be cremated. And we don’t have any money.””

The lower cost of green burial is attractive to them. At Honey Creek Woodlands, the total cost is usually around $5,000 for everything. According to this article from 2017, the average cost of traditional funeral is around $11,000.

Joe found the budget-minded customers to be challenging to work with at times. The environmental and spiritual philosophy of a green burial did not motivate them.

People who specifically wanted a green burial comprises the third group.

“These are people who are environmentalists, whether they’re birdwatchers or people who camped a lot in their life or even hunters and fishermen – anybody who’s spent a lot of time in the outdoors. Even master gardeners,” says Joe. “It’s perfect for what they want.”

“When I’m trying to pitch green burial to people one of the things I’ll say,” says Joe, “is that our Creator had no need for a trash can.”

“Everything’s recycled.”

Part Three will be coming before long.

A Calling to Honey Creek – Part 1

Nathan Aaberg — March 16, 2019 — Leave a comment

As people like you work to change how churches act towards God’s earth, weaving mindfulness of God’s earth into the culture of our churches is vital. When we do so, we enable the Spirit to more truly shape our hearts and souls.

For cultural change to happen, we can’t just say a prayer like a magic incantation. Someone needs to actually carry the ball forward. That someone needs to sense that it is their calling, even if it is not their place of expertise. That someone needs to be willing to dive into the details that can be less than sexy.

With that in mind, I want to share the story of Joe Whittaker over several blog posts. Joe played a key role in launching Honey Creek Woodlands, Georgia’s only green burial ground. It is owned and operated by the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, a Roman Catholic contemplative religious community in the Trappist tradition.

More than one thousand people have been buried at Honey Creek Woodlands since it opened for business in 2008 in Conyers, Georgia. What makes Honey Creek Woodlands distinct from some other green burial grounds is that the land above ground is managed to be as ecologically healthy as possible as well. Conservation efforts there are part of a larger constellation of conservation and cultural activities happening in the 8,000-acre Arabia Mountain Natural Heritage Area.

I interviewed Joe because of my own interest in green burials and was planning just to write a blog about Honey Creek Woodlands. But his story was fascinating, and I was struck by his big heart and humility. I discovered he is Episcopalian, and he has also long loved the outdoors. He seems to have been destined to do what he did at Honey Creek Woodlands.

I believe Joe was answering God’s call. I believe you and I are hearing the call of God to preserve and renew God’s earth. We can be inspired by Joe’s faith and courage. He helped accomplish accomplish a great deal, despite his nervousness about stepping into the unknown. That’s what building God’s Kingdom looks like. It requires real faith and action.

I hope you will be inspired and also take away insights about the challenges and rewards of launching a green burial cemetery. Moving to green burials is, I believe, one way for Christians to create a culture that truly lives out a conviction that the earth is God’s.

A Monastery Needs Help

The Monastery of the Holy Spirit had a challenge at the end of the 20^thcentury. How could the Monastery use its 2,260 acres of land to generate needed revenue while still stewarding that land in a way pleasing to God? In the past, there had been some clearcutting for timber. This was not something the fathers considered a good option going forward. The abbott at the time – Francis Michael – was, among many things, a naturalist. He understood that growing monocultures of pine trees on that land was not how you stewarded a healthy ecosystem.

Yet, how could that land be conserved as natural habitat when restoration efforts take money instead of generating revenue?

“Your options are limited,” says Joe. “You can exploit the land or you can sell off the land. Neither one of those were too appealing to the monastery.”

A way out of this conundrum presented itself when Francis Michael and others at the monastery heard of the first conservation-oriented green burial cemetery. Dr. Billy and Kimberley Campbell had launched it in South Carolina. It was a place where people could bury their loved ones simply and humbly. The Campbells used some of the revenue for management of the land as a healthy natural area.

The monastery came to the conclusion if they should look into doing this on their land. They could meet people’s desire for natural burial, steward the land, and support the Monastery as a whole financially.

They began exploring the idea more seriously. The metro Atlanta community showed great support as little wilderness has been spared from development in the past decades. The city and Rockdale County were also very supportive.

They were ready to go but who would actually make it happen?

Joe’s Call

Back in 2005, Joe was working in South Carolina for a company based in Chicago that did consumer research on what people buy in grocery stores. He traveled a lot and worked to understand the connection between food sale trends and what stores were doing with promotions. While he was driving he heard a story on National Public Radio (NPR) about green burial. It so happened that Joe had long been telling his family, in a half joking way, that when he died he just wanted them to put his body out into the swamps.

The green burial story on NPR riveted his attention.

“Holy smokes!” he thought, “This is exactly what I wanted my whole life.”

His excitement was tempered a bit by the assumption that the green cemetery they were talking about must be somewhere out on the West Coast. Then the radio host noted that they were talking with Dr. Billy Campbell. He was operataing the only green burial nature preserve in the country at Ramsey Creek Preserve in Westminster, South Carolina. This was in Joe’s own backyard, just an hour away.

So Joe contacted the Campbells, met them in 2007 and initially just talked through his own burial plans with them. But the relationship deepened. He began helping them as a volunteer.

The Monastery of the Holy Spirit contacted Dr. Billy Campbell about their plans to convert 80 acres of clearcut land to a green burial cemetery. They asked if he knew of anyone who could get their green burial cemetery off the ground, Billy connected them with Joe.

“That’s kind of crazy,” thought Joe when he first heard of the monastery’s interest. “I don’t live in Georgia, and I have a job.” It would also mean commuting back and forth to Georgia and living there for ten days at a time.

He and his wife. however, gave it some more thought. In the end, they decided that he would go to Georgia to help get the cemetery up and running. They realized it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“It’s almost like going to a Rolling Stone concert and saying I really like this band and then writing them an email saying, ”You guys are great.” And then they say, “Well, hey, do you want to come and help us out?” And the next thing you know you’re playing backup guitar for the Rolling Stones.”

“I don’t think I could have created a more perfect position for myself. I’ve always felt very blessed. I don’t think a lot of people get to do things that they’re passionate about and that they enjoy and that they get a lot of meaning from.”

You’ll read more about how Joe helped to launch Honey Creek Woodlands despite many challenges in the next installment. Be sure to read the chapter “Life is Changed not Ended” in the book Sacred Acts: How Churches Are Working to Protect Earth’s Climate. It provides more details about Honey Creek Woodlands.

Give for the Defense and Renewal of Creation

Nathan Aaberg — December 30, 2018 — Leave a comment

According to the Nonprofits Source website,thirty percent of annual giving by U.S. residents comes in the month of December. Ten percent comes in the last three days of the year.

Is that you? Are you still in the process of deciding where to make your charitable gifts for 2018?

And if you are, are you considering gifts to nonprofits that are working to defend and renew Creation?

I want to challenge you to make the defense and renewal of God’s Creation a giving priority in your year-end giving and in your philanthropy planning in 2019.

If you are paying attention, you know God’s earth faces tremendous pressure and destruction. Whether it is poaching, dead zones, dwindling habitat, overfishing, farming practices that erode and poison, or impending climate chaos, action is needed.

We read in Psalms 50:11 that God knows all the birds of the mountains and the wild animals of the field are His. We read in Isaiah 6:3 that the whole earth is full of his glory. From John 3:16, we know that God so loved the world – all of it. We cannot love God and simultaneously allow the destruction of God’s earth.

We also know that the health of the earth has tremendous impact on the fate of people, especially the poor and the marginalized. Poisoned water poisons people and wildlife. Pollution in the air harms people, especially children. Depleted resources rob communities of economic sustenance.

Helping to defend and renew God’s earth is an important way to love God and to love your neighbor.

Changing the way you live and how you relate to God’s earth is an important way to do that.

But it is not enough.

The issues facing God’s earth, even at the local level, are complex. Collective, ongoing efforts are needed to deal with those issues.

This is where thoughtful and committed giving comes in. Supporting nonprofits dedicated to addressing environmental problems and developing solutions is a way to live out your whole Christian faith. Will you make that commitment?

Tips for Giving to Nonprofits

Are you new to philanthropy in this area? The following are some tips I’ve put together, based on 15 years in the environmental nonprofit world and with more than ten of those years in fundraising

Start small: Unless you already know a nonprofit well and know of its effectiveness, I’d suggest starting with a gift of $50 or $100. You can then build that giving over time as you gain confidence in the work and impact of the non-profit.

Expect good communcation: Look for nonprofits that communicate clearly what they are doing on a regular basis and what are the challenges they face. They should express their thanks to you efficiently and fairly promptly. Stop giving to non-profits that only communicates with you to ask for money

Be cautious about direct mail solicitations: A good nonprofit does want to build its base of donors, and direct mail is a way to do that. But a good appeal should be based on clear communication of the group’s work and impact along with the inevitable emotional appeal. When they include cheap gifts or return address stickers, that’s not a good sign. And don’t decide to give just based on a direct mail letter. Check out their website. Talk to people in the field.

Be patient: You should understand that bringing about change for God’s earth is no easy thing. It is often an uphill, David-vs.-Goliath battle. As you begin paying attention to nonprofits and their work, don’t expect quick fixes or that even all of their strategies will work. It is not easy working against whole systems that are built on using up and exploiting God’s Creation.

Follow your particular interests and sensitivities: Feel free to give to the issues and efforts that most resonate with you. I would suggest thinking about supporting a mix of local, regional, national, and international organizations over time.

Look for mission-focused organizations: You will want to support non-profits that in every way are focused on tackling a pressing issue or set of issues. A good nonprofit is a vehicle for you to make an impact on that issue. A nonprofit that gives too much attention to itself as an institution and takes exclusive credit for efforts that were actually partnerships has revealed that it is too self-centered.

Prioritize your giving: Over time, if you find a non-profit that is doing really good things in a strategic, effective way in regard to an issue you care about, give more to that non-profit and perhaps see if there are other ways to get involved. Don’t be surprised if they reach out to you in more personal ways as you give more. Good ones will do that. Manage that communication in a way that feels right to you. That personal contact offers the potential to learn much more about the issue and the group’s efforts.

Please feel free to contact me with questions and ideas related to your giving plans.

I hope and pray 2019 is full of many blessings for your and your family!

The Next Gathering – Saturday, January 12

Nathan Aaberg — December 15, 2018 — Leave a comment

You are warmly invited to the second gathering!

Earlier this year, we held the first gathering at the Riemer Family Farm in Brodhead, Wisconsin. This event brought together Christians like you who believe that tending and defending God’s Creation are an essential part of the Christian life. Coming together made a big difference. It lifted our hearts and redoubled our energy. It can do that for you, too.

Have you felt isolated because you hold the conviction that loving God and your neighbor while accepting violence against God’s earth is illogical and contradictory? Does your awareness of the worldwide wounding of Creation make you feel overwhelmed? Have you wanted to share your excitement about the incredible complexity and beauty of God’s earth and not had other Christians in your life who would understand?

Then this gathering is for you. Here are the details:

Date: Saturday, January 12th

Location: Vernon Hills, Illinois

Time: 11:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Lunch: Potluck

These gatherings are still a work in progress as we figure out how to best use this time together. But our intent with each of these events is to: (1) open our hearts more fully to God; (2) reinforce our individual commitment to tending, defending, and renewing God’s earth; (3) learn from each other and encourage each other; and (4) explore what ongoing connections and common action we can do together. You will hear the ways other Christians are living and working to renew God’s earth. You will be able to to share your convictions, your struggles, and your successes with a warm, supportive group.

If you would like to join us, please let me know at naaberg19@gmail.com.

We will cap attendance at 25 so the gathering can be as effective and intimate as possible. I’d be happy to answer any questions you have, too, and will share more details about the event.

And if you’re too far away to come to this event, I’d also be happy to talk to with you sometime to share how we’ve been organizing these gatherings and what we’re learning along the way. Just reach out to me by email as well.

Why not organize your own gathering where you are?

Yes to Natural Burials

Nathan Aaberg — November 30, 2018 — Leave a comment

In rolling Ohio landscape hole for burial has been opened in meadow with pine branches nearby for covering after burial.

A site prepared for a natural burial at the Foxfield Preserve in Wilmot, Ohio. (Photo courtesy of Foxfield Preserve)

Interest is growing in natural burials. That’s good news for people interested in living (and dying) in the ways of a whole Christian faith.

I experienced this firsthand when I attended a session entitled “Dying for Conservation” recently at the Land Trust Alliance’s annual conference in Pittsburgh. The session featured representatives from a number of organizations that are operating conservation-oriented natural burial cemeteries in several eastern states.

One of the speakers was Jeff Corney, executive director of The Wilderness Center in Ohio. He spoke about his motivations to more widely promote the organization’s natural burial ground (Foxfield Preserve) and its conservation benefits. When his father died, their family had proceeded with a conventional burial. By the end of the whole experience, he was convinced the whole process was wrong. It was all wrong because it was not in keeping at all with his father’s life or their family’s values. His heart sank.

Foxfield Preserve is one of a growing number of conservation burial cemeteries around the country. In these places people are buried naturally as part of a larger effort to restore and manage natural habitats in those places. A portion of the fees paid for the burial often funds those restoration and management activities. In this way a person’s death contributes to the life of God’s earth.

This is an encouraging trend. Christians should embrace this with enthusiasm and support. In fact, as I wrote in this earlier blog, whole faith churches should make this the new normal.

Because it’s so much a part of our culture, we often overlook a defining moment of disconnection in the usual burial ritual we attend. At the graveside service a pastor will often use the phrase “dust to dust” in reference to Ecclesiastes 3:20. Yet, everything in the way the body has been treated and the way in which it will be buried is intended to prevent our dust from returning to the dust.

There are at least two reasons why this profound dissonance between the worldview of the Bible and how we actually bury our dead matters.

First, if you believe the earth is God’s, then damaging and diminishing God’s earth is something you will want to avoid at all costs, This should especially be true when it comes to a spiritual-cultural moment of profound meaning.

Yet, we allow the river of culture and tradition to carry us away from our actual values.

Here’s a concise rundown of the cost to God’s Creation that comes from an article in Forbes by Laura Moss in 2011:

Embalming bodies requires cancer-causing chemicals like formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde and phenol — in fact, every year in the U.S. we bury 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid. Plus, caskets are often made from mined metals, toxic plastic or endangered wood. U.S. cemeteries use 30 million board feet of hardwoods, 180,544,000 pounds of steel and 5,400,000 pounds of copper and bronze annually. Casket burials also prevent a corpse from decomposing efficiently, and this slow rotting process favors sulfur-loving bacteria, which can harm nearby water sources.

Obviously, the exact numbers have likely shifted, but the general consequences remain the same.

All of that chemical and industrial activity is designed to prevent the vessel that is our body from naturally being recycled back into God’s earth. Yet, we are compostable!

This is not even to mention the fact that the conventional cemetery itself is a largely sterile and dead landscape. Vast areas of lawn are doused with weed-killing chemicals and mowed regularly by lawnmowers with internal combustion engines.

If your loved one loved God and cherished God’s Creation, you’d have to conclude that the whole process fundamentally contradicts your loved one’s values.

And there’s another reason why our burial rituals matter.

My son and I are reading the Bible together in lieu of confirmation classes. We just finished up Numbers. One of the things we came to better appreciate, especially with the help of the writings of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, was the way God integrated extensive rituals and laws into the everyday life of the people of Israel.

In his essay “Neuroscience and Ritual,” Rabbi Sacks notes that:

…much of our behavior is driven by instincts that lie beneath conscious awareness and the rational, reflective part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. The question then arises: How, if our instincts are largely unconscious, can we change them? The short answer is ritual: Ritual is behavior that bypasses the prefrontal cortex. It is action based not on a ritual decision that this is how we should act. Rather, it is behavior that follows a precise set of rules, a fixed choreography. Doing certain acts repeatedly, we form new “habits of the heart” that work at an unconscious level to form new patterns of instinctual behavior.

In other words, rituals shape the hearts of the people carrying them out. And from those shaped hearts come habits of behavior.

As Jesus said in Luke 6:45: “Good people bring good things out of the good stored up in their heart, and evil people bring evil things out of the evil stored up in their heart…”

Unfortunately, our death and burial rituals form wrong habits of the heart as they relate to Creation. Our unconscious comes to understand that death and mortality are things to be afraid of and to deny. At a heart level we understand that we are separate from the life of God’s earth. We absorb the understanding that our eternal destinies and Creation’s eternal destiny are completely different. We deny a Biblical and scientific truth – we are made of dust.

Above all, our burials and our burial places assert a selfish dominion that is the oppostie of what we see in God. They reflect in their tangible details an odd hybrid of Greek philosophy and American industrial culture.

When our core rituals reflect ways in opposition to God’s ways is it any wonder that the rest of our lives do as well?

In that context, the trend towards narual burials and especially those that contribute to conservation of God’s earth is doubly positive. The trend offers hope for particular patches of land and water where people are buried. We can renew the life of what we have been charged to tend and mend.

What’s more, choosing to bury naturally offers hope for renewing the ground that shapes everything else – the landscape of our hearts and souls.

I plan to post some links to related articles on my Twitter feed. I hope you’ll follow it.