Archives For Do Something

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!

permalink

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?

permalink

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.

 

permalink

Rescuing God’s Land – Jeff and Lori Sundberg

Nathan Aaberg —  September 29, 2018 — 2 Comments

In a recent post I wrote that whole faith Christians will work to bring more life to the corners of God’s earth they hold, keep, and use. And they will do so even when the culture of land use around them creates pressure to do otherwise.

Whether that corner is an urban yard, a suburban lot, a rural property, or a farm, there are creative ways to bring more life to the parcels of land under our care. Figuring out those ways is one of the pleasures and challenges of being human. Over time I want to share profiles of what Christian land stewardship looks like in real life.

In August, I shared the story of David and Dianda Easter. In this post, you will read about Jeff and Lori Sundberg.

As their daughters went off to college and life after college, Jeff and Lori Sundberg had been thinking about where they wanted to move to for their next phase of life. They lived in a neighborhood in the prosperous town of Libertyville, Illinois. They were long time members of First Presbyterian Church of Libertyville. They had good jobs at nearby Lake Forest College. Yet, they knew that in their approaching retirement they wanted to be in a more rural place.

When Lori had lunch with the husband of her boss who had recently passed away, she didn’t know she would receive insight that would impact their decision on exactly where to move. The husband shared that he and his wife had also had conversations about where to retire to and had talked about different places here and there.

But then they had come to an important realization. “Why,” they had asked each other, “would we want to move away from our community when we’re approaching the time of our lives when we really need our community?”

This resonated with Jeff and Lori. So when they became aware of a 10-acre property on the northern edge of Libertyville in an area where public and private people and organizations had largely preserved its rural landscape character, they were intrigued. Five of the ten acres were in agriculture. The other five included a house that needed to be demolished, a large shed, a small wetland overgrown with nonnative plants, and a small woods also overwhelmed with invasive non-native plants. It was not a posh, pristine place, but they saw potential. They especially liked all of the open space around the property. In September 2015, they purchased it.

This is where a bit of backstory on Jeff is helpful. In addition to being a professor of liberal arts, business, and economics, he is an avid birder who has seen and identified 625 bird species to this point in his life. His ability to share a wealth of bird knowledge in entertaining, vivid, and funny ways makes him in constant demand for talks and for leading bird tours. He has served on the board of local and regional conservation organizations as well and volunteers for workdays restoring natural areas. He saw the land through an ecological lens.

“Some people like to rescue dogs,” says Jeff, “and I felt like this land needed rescuing.”

He explains further. “The land needed rescuing from us. The property was full of stuff that had been planted here on purpose that doesn’t serve any ecological purpose. It was also full of plants that had just come in here because they’re invasive and don’t serve any ecological purpose. An example is the Siberian elm. They are one of the least useful wildlife trees in North America. There’s almost nothing that eats them. They’re all over the place, and they spread like crazy.”

Jeff and Lori began rescuing the land by removing as many of the non-native trees, shrubs, and other plants as they could. This was hard work.

Lori is honest about her level of initial interest in tackling the ecological problems of their new property.

“Before we started the removal of the invasive plants, I didn’t think anything about rescuing the land. And I really didn’t see myself restoring property in my retirement plan.”

“But then when we started in on it and Jeff was showing me the Oriental bittersweet and other invasive plants, I got really into it. At one point Jeff gave me a whole patch of brush back there and a weed wrench and said, “Take out everything.” It was fun.”

“She had never used a weed wrench before,” says Jeff proudly, “but she was an unstoppable force.”

As they removed invasive non-native plants, they also began planting a wide variety of native plants indigenous to the area. They’ve planted over 140 trees and shrubs. The tree species have included six different kinds of oaks as well as two hickory species. The shrub species have included viburnums, ninebark, American bittersweet, hazelnut, and witch hazel. They’ve also seeded prairie plants in the open areas, woodland plants amongst the wooded areas, and wetland plants in and around the wetland.

Photo of wooded wetland pond in spring.

When Jeff and Lori first purchased their property, this wetland was not visible due to the massive wall of invasive brush that had grown up over time. Since they opened up the area, turtles have returned and frogs have become abundant.

“We’re just trying to undo some of what humans have done or allowed to do to the property,” says Jeff.

There have been signs they are on the right path. “In the woodland, all the native grasses came up right away after the seeding,” says Jeff. “And all of a sudden last year, all these tall bellflowers, were blooming everywhere one day, and it was just spectacular.”

God’s wildlife have responded, too. Turtles have been seen around the pond, after not having been seen at all the first two years. Frog and toad numbers are way up. “We have lots and lots of leopards frogs and chorus frogs and American toads and green frogs,” says Jeff. And Jeff and Lori are seeing tons of birds. While I was there, for example, Jeff pointed out a ruby-throated hummingbird foraging for food.

Jeff has noticed that the birds are mostly seen nesting and foraging in the native trees.

Small oak leaves bursting from bud.

The bud of one of the many oak trees the Sundbergs have planted opens to the glorious green of young oak leaves. Oak trees support an amazing variety of wildlife.

“I think taking care of the earth is part of what Christian stewardship is,” says Jeff. “I don’t in any way think I can make this better than what it used to be, but I’d like to make it closer to what it used to be. I don’t think the earth is here just to give us oil and coal and big muddy pits in the ground.”

“I certainly think there is a Christian element to what we’re doing. Plus it’s fun. When I was out here slaying Oriental bittersweet, it really felt like Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Lori finds that the way their home fits in most with her Christian life is being able to share the inspiring, peaceful setting with her church community. “We’ve had plans to have a silent Saturday out here in the morning,” she says. “I think it would be a good spot for that. There are plenty of places people can spread out, sit, and enjoy nature while doing their meditation or their prayer. We’ve also had deacons’ meetings here.”

“It does feel like a place that has a role to play in other people’s lives and not just ours,” adds Jeff.

They have several pieces of advice for other people who want to restore the beauty and ecological abundance of God’s earth.

1. Volunteer for ecological restoration work days: Volunteering with people who know what they’re doing is a really good way to learn. It can be hard to just take a book and just figure it all out.

2. Not everything will work: “You need to realize that everybody fails in so many ways,” says Jeff, “but especially in what they plant. It would be entertaining, in a dispiriting way, to know how many things I planted that didn’t live a week. That’s just part of the learning process.” Having someone to encourage you and give advice is really important.

3. Keep a record of what you plant and where: Jeff has a spreadsheet of every plant and seed mix they’ve put into the ground. This allows him to track the success and failure of what has been done over time and to make adjustments going forward. Keeping that record will also allow you to feel some satisfaction in what you’ve done over time.

Jeff and Lori sitting outside of their home.

Jeff and Lori live about a mile away from me. It has been wonderful to see the transformation of Jeff and Lori’s property over time. What a world and what a Church we might have if more Christians around the world were committed to rescuing and renewing God’s earth.

 

permalink

Bringing More Life – David and Dianda Easter

Nathan Aaberg —  July 28, 2018 — 3 Comments

In a recent post I wrote that whole faith Christians will work to bring more life to the corners of God’s earth they hold, keep, and use. And they will do so even when the culture of land use around them creates pressure to do otherwise.

Whether that corner is an urban yard, a suburban lot, a rural property, or a farm, there are creative ways to bring more life to the parcels of land under our care. Figuring out those ways is one of the pleasures and challenges of being human.

I would even assert that taking on the challenge of bringing life to different places and at different scales is a path towards growth in our hearts and minds. It takes patience. It takes careful observation and nuance. You need to research and gain new knowledge while also using practical, down-to-earth skills. Anyone doing this will make mistakes. What works at one point may not work at another point. Love and faith will be needed. Sometimes discipline will have to be applied. Sometimes hard choices will have to be made.

Sounds a whole lot like parenting, doesn’t it?

Over time I want to share profiles of what Christian land stewardship looks like in real life. And in this post, I share the land-to-life story of David and Dianda Easter.

In 2008, they acquired a 7.5-acre property near Urbana, Illinois after a search of over a year. They were living in Ohio at the time and had been working with a real estate agent for their search. David’s sister was eager to help. She drove back county roads looking for properties that might not be listed. Her efforts paid off when she found an abandoned Christmas tree farm.

Your average person might have seen only problems. The Scotch pines that were left on the property were succumbing to disease. The former owners had been harvesting the Christmas trees with a big digger but had not been replacing the missing trees or filling the holes that had been left behind. There were over 200 holes scattered about. Each was 3-5’ in diameter and 2-4’ in depth. What’s more, invasive non-native plants like Asian honeysuckle and autumn olive now dominated the undergrowth.

Open woods in the foreground without any invasive plants and in background, across the property line, is a wall of invasive shrubs.

The contrast is stark. Across the Easters’ property line in the background of this image, you can see their neighbors’ land is still dominated by a thick mass of invasive shrubbery that prevents light from reaching the ground. In the foreground you can see what the land looks like after the Easters have removed invasive shrubs and diseased trees over the last 10 years.

It was an aesthetic and ecological mess. The Easters saw a chance to restore and renew God’s creation.

Its context, which David’s sister had noticed, also gave the property latent potential to be ecologically valuable . The property, for instance, is next to a river. River corridors are especially important for wildlife. Their property is also across from a publicly-owned natural area. By restoring this degraded property, the Easters saw they could have a larger impact.

The Easters were motivated by their long-time Christian faith to take on this challenge.

“We’ve done organic gardening for thirty something years,” says David. “We’ve always felt that God created the earth, and the earth should be protected. We believe we need to protect and improve the world around us and leave it a better place, both spiritually and physically.”

The Easters were able to retire early to this piece of land because they had long committed themselves to living as simply as they could, which itself was a reflection of their Christian values. They chose not to buy into consumer culture, which compels people to keep consuming and buying.

“Early in our marriage we set a lifestyle, and we capped it, even when our incomes rose,” says David. “Instead, we saved, and we gave.”

In 2008, they weren’t quite ready to move, but were eager to begin improving their new land. So for the next four years, they would travel from Ohio and spend several weeks of their annual vacations filling in the holes, clearing the invasive plants, taking down the diseased pines, and planting native trees and shrubs.

“The first years we planted and went back to Ohio so we didn’t care for them well so we had to replant quite a few.”

In 2012, they moved to their property in Illinois, building their own passive solar house there with solar panels on the roof providing much of the energy they needed. They also planted a large garden so they could grow more of their food. Now that they were there year-round, their restoration of the land picked up in pace and intensity. To bring ecological life to their land, they’ve planted a wide variety of native trees and shrubs.

A young oak sapling protected by wiring.

The Easters have planted hundreds of native trees on their property since they bought it in 2008 and have also seen native trees and shrubs spring up even when not planted by them. Here is a young oak with protection from deer.

David is proud to recite the diverse native species of woody plants he and his wife have planted, both from seed and as live plants – 10 species of oaks, four species of hickory tree, two maple species, persimmons, sassafras, viburnums, pawpaws (a favorite of mine), hornbeam, Juneberry, wahoo, snowberry, coralberry, ninebark, hazelnut, witch hazel, and spirea. For their own sustenance, they’ve also planted fruit and nut trees and bushes. These include pecans, gooseberries, currants, blueberries, pears, peaches, and plums. In all, they’ve planted 82 different species of trees and shrubs on their property.

“We have a book called Trees of Central Illinois,” says David, “and we’ve planted everything in the book, I believe, except perhaps for the ones that would belong on the river bottoms. Based on the number of fenceposts we’ve purchased for marking the location of the woody plants we’ve planted, there at least 750 trees and shrubs growing right now.”

David Easter stands next to pawpaw tree.

David stands by one of the pawpaw trees he and Dianda had planted some time ago. Seeing what they planted grow and prosper over time has been a great pleasure for them.

They’ve had pleasant surprises as well. After they cleared out the invasive plants that had been dominating the land under the trees, native plants began springing up that the Easters hadn’t planted, including sassafras, oaks, and spicebush. “We’ve seen plants come up that we would not have expected and had not done so in 20 years,” says David. His guess is that birds were bringing in nuts and dropping berry seeds from other nearby properties.

The rich variety of native plants and the pollen, nectar, fruit, nuts, and cover they provide has attracted a variety of wildlife. They have seen turkey walking through, hawks and eagles flying over, and owls in the woods. Deer are actually overly abundant. They are happy to see coyotes using the land frequently. The red fox are a mixed blessing, as they are beautiful animals but have also absconded with several of the Easters’ chickens. Monarch butterflies, which face a difficult future as a species, often visit their land. Dave and Dianda enjoy watching bluebirds nesting in the next boxes they’ve installed on the property as well..

They’ve even had moments of discovery. “In the tallgrass area one day we saw hundreds of swallows and hundreds of dragonflies,” says Dianda. “Were swallows eating the dragonflies or were they both eating insects there?”

David and Dianda have advice for people who want to bring life to their properties:

1. Do research before you begin

2. Use native plants whenever possible

3. Start planting native plants (especially trees and shrubs) as early as possible in your ownership or stewardship of a piece of property so you can enjoy them as they grow

4. It’s never too late to start planting and restoring your land

5. Start small so you don’t become overwhelmed and can learn lessons that you can easily fix as you go

It was a pleasure to spend time with David and Dianda on their property when I took the photos you see. They were simultaneously at peace with who they were and energetic in their life purpose that is bound up with their Christian faith.

I first met David at a land conservation meeting we both attended in central Illinois. In addition to what he and Dianda are doing on their land, David also works to help God’s creation be protected and restored to life on a larger scale by serving on the board of Grand Prairie Friends. This is an organization that protects ecologically important lands from development by purchasing them and also by using legal tools like conservation easements. David and Dianda attend and are active in the life of Stone Creek Church in Urbana.

permalink