walking gently on the earth by lisa mcminn and megan neff

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W a l k i n gg e n t l y o n

t h e e a r t h

Making Faithful Choices About

Food, Energy, Shelter and More

Lisa Graham mcminn

and meGan anna neff



God created the wor ld in a del ica te

ba lance for the good of a l l p lants ,

an imals and people. Trag ica l ly , though,

f rom the Fa l l to today, we as humans

have l ived in ways that keep l iv ing

th ings-- inc lud ing fe l low human beings--

f rom surv iv ing a t a l l , much less

f lour ish ing.

But we can change that .

Soc io log is t and author L isa McMinn and

Megan Anna Nef f inv i te you to

red iscover, th rough new eyes, the

beauty and goodness of our ear th , and

to make fa i th fu l choices that wi l l help i t

p rosper. Each chapter un iquely beg ins

wi th a prelude by Megan Anna that h igh l ights an Afr ican perspect ive or

prac t ice, help ing us g lean the wisdom of another cu l ture and remind ing us of

the in terconnectedness of every th ing on the ear th . L isa 's f lu id , pass ionate

wr i t ing then of fers both the t ru th about the s ta te of the ear th and insp i ra t ion toget back to sha lom - -a peace that a l lows a l l th ings to thr ive.

L isa c lear ly demonstra tes the ef fec ts of our choices and makes i t easy for us to

choose wi th d iscernment , w i th l is ts of resources and organ izat ions a t the end of

each chapter . In fused throughout is a deep celebra t ion of the ear th God made

and dec lared "excel lent in every way" (Genesis 1 :31).

Come and read. Then go and l ive wi th in tent ion, us ing the power of your

choices to walk gent ly on an ear th that is beaut i fu l and broken, that i t might

come to f lour ish once aga in .

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©2010 by Lisa Graham McMinn and Megan Anna Neff

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission

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African artwork by Kirsten McCammon

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Cover images: Pete Turner/Getty Images

ISBN 978-0-8308-3299-6

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Lba of Cogess Catalogg--Pblcato Data

McMinn, Lisa Graham, 1958-

Walking gently on the earth: making faithful choices about food,

energy, shelter and more / Lisa Graham McMinn and Megan Anna Neff.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8308-3299-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Human ecology—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Christianity

and culture. 3. Creation. 4. Christian stewardship. I. Neff, Megan

Anna, 1984- II. Title.

BT695.5.M46 2010

241’.691—dc21

2010014325

P 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Y 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10



C o n t e n t s

Prelude: Siamese Crocodiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Capte 1: Fo te Beat of te Eat . . . . . . . . . . 13

Prelude: Strength Lies in Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Capte 2: Famg Pactces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Prelude: Help Me, and Let Me Help You. . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Capte 3: Dg at Tables of Compasso . . . . . . . . 65

Prelude: The Teeth and Tongue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Capte 4: Lvg te Maetplace . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Prelude: God Is in the Heavens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Capte 5: A Matte of Degees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Prelude: The Earth Has Weight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

Capte 6: Fels Tat Fe O Eges . . . . . . . . . . 157

Prelude: Except for God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Capte 7: Sstag te Blessg of Famles . . . . . . 181

Prelude: It Is God Who Swats the Flies for the Tailless Pig . . 201

Capte 8: Fal Wods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

Appendix A: What Might a Home Audit Look Like? . . . . 214

Appendix B: A Primer on Traditional Energy Sources . . . 218

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224



P r e l u d e

s Cc

Funtunfunefu-Denkyemfunefu

during my second year of seminary I shared a house with two

friends. By the second week we had coined names for each of our

bedrooms based on the character of the rooms which, inciden-

tally, matched our wardrobes and personalities. We called my

room “Ten Thousand Villages” after a non-profit chain that carries

fair-trade goods from around the world. My housemates’ rooms

were “Pottery Barn” and “West Elm.” We were an eclectic trio.

My room featured Ghanaian photos hanging on clothespins

from my wall, African necklaces, a Malawian wall painting and a

Malawian wood table in the corner. Perhaps I make too much

show over the fact that I love all things African. The irony is that

the classic “Pottery Barn” and “West Elm” rooms—the cream du-

vet, the black photo frames, the Ikea desk—were just as interna-

tional as my African room with its paintings and carvings.

Whether it is disguised like my housemates’ rooms, or obnox-

iously over-the-top like mine, most of us live in homes full of



10 WaLkinG GentLy on the earth

décor from around the world, and have international wardrobes

and food pantries.

I have traveled to many different places in my life, but I will

never come close to visiting all the places my food and clothes

have been. How many places have your taste buds visited today?

Coffee from Indonesia, oranges from Florida, bananas from Hon-

duras, chocolate from Ghana, biscotti from London, tomatoes

from Mexico, rice from Thailand. Our taste buds are tantalized by

food flown from all over the world to our doorstep. And how aboutaccessories and clothes—how many countries are you wearing to-

day? As I sit here writing, I have a wallet from India beside me, a

coffee mug from China which is filled with a cinnamon dolce soy

latte (I’m sure there are several countries involved in the espresso,

soy, sugar), and I’m wearing a J. Crew dress, also from China.

The fact that our world is becoming increasingly interdepen-

dent, that we can flip on the news and hear what is going on inSudan, India, France or our local town, shows that we are con-

nected, but not necessarily that we care for one another any more.

Charles W. Forman, a historian and Presbyterian missionary who

taught church history in India, argues in his book A Faith for the

Nations that Christ is the only secure basis for human unity. “We

cannot bear the closer contacts and the constant rubbing up against

each other if we do not know clearly how it is that we belong to-gether and whether we are one family. Life together without any

sense of relationship would only be hell for us. It would mean be-

ing jammed together with strangers for whom we have no concern

and who have no concern for us. . . . It is this situation that makes

it imperative that we human beings know our unity and know an

immovable foundation on which that unity is established.” As the

world grows in its interdependency through economic, politicaland cultural systems, it becomes all the more necessary to under-

stand how we belong to one another. The question is not whether

or not we are united but what that unity will look like.



Prelude 11

Living in Ghana I was often delighted and inspired by the wis-

dom of Akan culture. For the Akans, symbols have been a rich

medium of communication for hundreds of years. They capture

essential truths and wisdom, and hold metaphorical meaning; they

are most commonly used as designs in decorative cloth and carved

into building structures. The meanings of the symbols are derived

from a variety of sources: traditional proverbs, historical events,

and expressions of particular human attitudes and behaviors.

The Funtunfunefu-Denkyemfunefu symbol translated “SiameseCrocodiles” encourages people toward unity marked with love

and compassion. It is associated with the proverb “Funtummireku-

denkyemmireku, won afuru bom nso wodidi a na wo pere so,” trans-

lated “two heads fight and struggle though they share one stom-

ach.” It would be futile for the crocodiles to fight over their prey,

destroying one another over the food that sustains them both.

They would be stronger, healthier and generally happier (with farfewer wounds) through a relationship of love and compassion.

The crocodiles do not need to strive for unity; it is a fact. We do

not need to strive for unity. God has established it by creating an

interconnected and interdependent world.

Augustine understood the depth of the kin relationship that

God placed upon creation. Forman recounts the story of Augus-

tine chatting with travelers who reported that in the far countrythey had seen two-headed men. Augustine had no idea whether

such men actually existed, but what he did know was that if these

men existed they were his brothers in Christ. Augustine grasped

that there was no human, no matter how different they might be,

who was not his fellow brother or sister in Christ. His firm convic-

tion was that God willed that all should live in unity, loving and

caring for each other.God’s will for unity is the secure foundation for it. God doesn’t

simply suggest unity and love but wills them. This foundation goes

deeper than human similarities, common interest, cultural knowl-



1

F o r t h e B e a u t y

o F t h e e a r t h

It is not possible to love an unseen God

while mistreating God’s visible creation.

— J o h n W o o l m a n

the Willamette River’s call to come play is nearly irresistible. So

on one irresistible summer evening, my daughter Megan Anna

and I loaded our kayaks into the pick-up and drove ten minutes to

Roger’s Landing. In another two minutes we were kayaking down-

stream. Herons watched us from the shore, and then lifted and

glided away when we drew close. A hawk soared overhead, a cou-

ple of fish jumped, and more than a few spiders went about the

business of catching insects in webs spun under the giant oak tree

we floated beneath as we explored a tributary off the river. Old

trees soaked gnarled toes at the bank of the river, moss dangling

from their fingers, playing with insects on the water’s surface.

Megan Anna was sure she saw the swirling water trail of an alliga-tor or two, not quite believing my claim that they don’t live in the

waters of the northwest. We saw evidence of a northwest clan of

homo sapiens: piers built one hundred years ago for lashing logs




together before sending them down to Salem and beyond, springs

from a twin bed now so rusted and set in the bank it seemed to be

part of the landscape. We left the river with hearts full, renewed

in our love of God’s good earth—home to so much more than we

see on any ordinary day.

On another irresistible summer evening something else alto-

gether came calling. That week our neighbors harvested the coni-

fer trees growing on their property—land they called home and

on which they had claim of ownership in a way rather peculiar tohomo sapiens. It took a rather short time to fell, strip and cart off

five acres of forest. We watched the massive felling of two-

hundred-foot trees, trunks cracking, branches splintering, ground

vibrating as the trees hit earth. With horrid fascination we watched

the monstrous machine that picked up trunks like they were

twigs, stacking and loading them on trucks that would take them

to the mill. In the night displaced insects arrived at our door,swarming around our house in search of a new home. Hundreds

of tiny gnats rushed inside when we opened a door to step outside.

They died in the night, creating a carpet of black on the wood

floors that we vacuumed up the next morning. Yet, our neighbors

needed the income, lumberjacks need work, and people like me,

watching from the second floor of a home that used a fair amount

of lumber in its construction, know my publisher will use trees topublish my book.

Two stories evoking different responses. The first invites reflec-

tion to pause, see and celebrate what is awe-inspiring, beautiful,

mysterious and consistent in its sameness through the ages. There

is sustenance and blessing for our soulish bodies in mountain

hikes, starry nights and kayak trips down the Willamette River.

The second is an invitation of sorts too. It is an invitation to thinkdeeply about living well in a modern and complex world. We all

need earth’s resources to survive, but the complexity comes in

knowing how brazenly to approach the harvesting of what we



For the Beauty of the Earth 15

need. Descriptions of felling forests, oil spills, strip mining for

coal, packing pigs into “feed lots” and stacking laying hens in

cages elicit a different set of emotions. Perhaps these provoke de-

fensiveness at a litany that sounds too much like Mother Earth

rhetoric, an overvaluing of creation when there are other, more

profound human problems confronting us.

Our hope is that whatever emotion this book stirs, it will pri-

marily invite you to celebrate God’s good earth and to live in ways

that foster the well-being of creation, this beautiful place we callhome. Walking gently is a dance of sorts. It includes enjoying the

good gifts of this bounteous earth while taking no more than we

need. In walking gently we provide for our children—for all chil-

dren—and for people and creatures yet to be born.

ThE Curr EnT CLiMATE

Conversations about caring for God’s creation are heating up thesedays—and not just figuratively. The debate about whether or not

global warming is occurring ended in 2007, at least in the political

and public sphere in the United States; the debate that remains is

whether or not, and how much, humans have caused it. A call to

do something about it comes from respected biologists, geologists,

ecologists, social scientists, journalists, politicians and commu-

nity organizers who write articles for Newsweek, Science, AtlanticMonthly and Christianity Today. Even the airlines are taking note.

On a recent trip I took to Chicago, the AmericanWay magazine

declared itself “the Green Issue” and was chock-full of articles

about green building construction, CEOs choosing environmental

practices, policies to preserve wetlands and encourage energy al-

ternatives. While flying across the continent, passengers could

learn about the value of fluorescent light bulbs, LEED ratings andcarbon footprints. There is some irony that an airline industry

dependent on a fair amount of fossil fuels is promoting ecological

sustainability—but I take hope in whatever form it comes. “Green”




shows up as a theme in our movies, in Super Bowl ads, and in

grass-roots movements such as Green America that hold rallies

and use the Internet to make up-to-date resources available about

how to live sustainable lives. Ordinary people are signing peti-

tions and writing letters, working together to change policies in

our neighborhoods, grocery stores, churches, corporations and

governments.

A lot of those ordinary folks supported the 2009 Disney movie

Earth by purchasing a ticket. Released on Earth Day, the film be-came a top-grossing documentary opener, and since the produc-

ers agreed to plant a tree for every ticket sold in the first week, 2.7

million trees were to be planted in the fragile rainforest of Brazil.

The film follows three animal families for a year as they trek to-

ward hunting or watering grounds to survive. I say “family,” but

mostly what we see are mamas helping their babies survive. We

also see a variety of creatures from the sea, land and air as theynurture, prod, carry, push and encourage babies along the way.

We are reminded of other species that call this planet home, and

seem to love life, and want to see their babies flourish about as

much as we do. A picture is worth a thousand words as the film

clearly depicts how flourishing is becoming more difficult with

global warming. Polar bear families in the Arctic are losing the

sheets of ice they need as platforms for summer hunting, elephantfamilies are losing water needed to survive in the deserts of Africa,

strange and beautiful birds are losing their habitat in the earth’s

rain forests.

So yes, okay, we’re supposed to appreciate creation. After all,

God created earth and its creatures, called it “very good,” and

seemingly entrusted it into the care of humans. But a lot of us

aren’t sure what caring for it means besides appreciating stars andsunsets and recycling our newspapers. Even if we’re convinced we

need to do something differently than we’ve been doing the last

hundred years, we feel mostly stuck. We need our cars to drive to




work, and don’t necessarily have the time, know-how or energy to

grow a vegetable garden.

Feeling stuck comes naturally enough. It took a couple of gen-

erations to trade in our knowledge about how to live off the land

for comfort and convenience. It happened so gradually we didn’t

much notice. Besides, we didn’t have to be overly concerned about

industries that dumped sewage into rivers since, for most of his-

tory, the human population stayed relatively small and our impact

didn’t amount to much. Our great-grandparents or even grandpar-ents didn’t drive an average of forty miles a day, eat imported to-

matoes in January, and ship tons (a lot of tons) of corn and lumber

around the globe. The world population and industrial expansion

pretty much grew up together, and now we’re like giant adoles-

cents tromping around the vegetable patch and mucking up the

water supply, although none of us want to be doing so.

As Christians living in the West, some of us have tended to be-lieve that earth is a temporary home that will one day pass away.

Since saving souls has mattered more than saving matter (whether

human, whale or tree), we’ve justified using this way station called

earth however we’ve seen fit so long as we’re working on saving

souls. Earth has been seen as God’s gift to sustain us until we reach

our final destination, where a new heaven and earth await. This

separation of the spiritual from the physical has meant that we’vesometimes pitted caring for creation against caring for people.

Caring for people has been a high priority for the church. But

in the twenty-first century we can’t adequately care for people with-

out giving some good attention to caring for earth. For most of hu-

man history earth has provided a seemingly endless supply of

resources, but in the last twenty-five years articles in reputable,

peer-reviewed scientific journals have been showing us that weno longer inhabit a planet with unlimited resources and an end-

less capacity to absorb the byproducts of our lives. Caring for

people, it appears, must now include caring about climate




change, deforestation and species extinctions.

African professor and theologian J. O. Y. Mante says attending

to creation is the foundation of all disciplines that are serious

about life. Mante says Western theology is ecologically bankrupt.

We spend our best theological energy talking about abstract doc-

trines such as sanctification, or covenants and dispensations, and

leave little energy for talking about doctrines connected to living

life. The result is that we live a non-ecological existence that is

gradually destroying both human and nonhuman life. How, Manteasks, is that Christian? African theology begins by talking about

the fundamentals of life that infuse how Christians live—a theol-

ogy of food, a theology of power. If we are willing to be humble we

may learn something of our blind spots by attending to insights

that come from Christians outside our own culture.

Thankfully, Westerners are already engaging in this conversa-

tion. Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute, has devel-oped a comprehensive plan for turning us around, a global plan

that requires global action. Continuing as we have takes us no-

where good—and fairly rapidly in the big span of time. The bad

news, according to Brown, is that we are destroying the world that

supports our economy and well-being. The good news is that our

political systems have potential power to bring about significant

change and are beginning to lean into that change. While Brown calls us to global action, he knows that change

starts with compelling people to look out for their own and their

children’s well-being. Christians following Jesus’ command to

love our neighbor as ourselves can become leaders in this effort to

look beyond our own well-being to that of our local and global

neighbors. What if Christians became models for loving our

neighbors by choosing to live more sustainable lives that don’t usemore than our share of earth’s resources? What a witness to the

world we could be, glorifying God and pointing people to Jesus.

It is easy for me to feel shame or guilt about how I live, but




those don’t motivate me to change nearly so much as when I feel

inspired to change. Maybe you feel the same. The writer of He-

brews tells us to encourage each other to perseverance and hope.

Let’s hold tightly to the hope we say we have, while bursting with

love and good deeds (see Hebrews 10:23-24). Love can compel us

to grow both our passion for the abundant life that God desires for

all and a virtue of care that considers the food we eat, as well as

the energy and stuff we consume.

GrOWinG PASSiOn FOr ThE WhOLE E ArTh

A group of boys at Lowell Elementary School, the school I attended

during my childhood years in Arizona, spent recess raiding black

ants from a black ant pile and dumping them onto a red ant pile. I

once watched the battle play out. The outnumbered black ants

were mercilessly attacked, bitten and pulled in half, slaughtered,

to the glee of the boys. The memory of it pains me still—forty-some years later. The motives of boys who randomly killed horned

toads, turtles and snakes didn’t make sense to me. I figured God

intended desert creatures to enjoy their lives too.

Perhaps senseless killing pained me so much because my father

encouraged me to notice and love God’s creation. I grew up admir-

ing sunsets, poking around in caves and imagining life on other

planets while looking at the stars from our roof. We nursed a fewwounded birds and squirrels back to health along the way, and

tried to discourage Dragon Lady, our family dog, from killing

things right alongside the neighborhood boys.

But despite my distaste for the tormenting of any creature, I

always figured a person could still be a devout Christian even if

they enjoyed staging wars between ant colonies. Caring for earth

was a matter of personal choice, I thought, a passion some folkshad, but not essential to faith.

While God’s grace is certainly large enough to cover children

and adults who take life and creation lightly, I don’t see caring for




Given that possibility, and the likelihood that the stuff they

buy, the fuel they consume and their family size choices are some-

how expressions of their faith, students are increasingly leaning

into these conversations. As the professor, I’ve asked myself what

students need to know to engage these cultural questions well, in

a way that is informed by their faith. That question drives the ap-

proach of this book.

Three kinds of information help us engage these questions well.

First, we need to know some of the backstory about issues beingdebated in our local papers, on the national news and at interna-

tional summits. Along with some of the history of a particular

conversation, we need to understand the cultural values that in-

cline a group of people (including ourselves!) to react one way or

another to an issue.

Second, we need to know how to check for inconsistencies in

how our faith bumps up against our culture’s values—which is aVery Difficult task indeed. Trying to do this by yourself is like try-

ing to remove a leech from your back. A stick might help, as might

rubbing your back against a tree or the ground, but the best way to

get a leech off your back is to get someone else to remove it for you.

The “someone else” could be Christians in other parts of the world,

people who share our faith but not necessarily our history, and

subsequent worldview and cultural values. As you’ve already seenin Megan Anna’s first prelude, we’ll be introducing you to some

African Christian worldviews and cultural values along the way.

Third, we need to know what we can do about it. Information

without tangible, practical suggestions can become disheartening

and downright unhelpful. We will have failed if you end this book

wanting to be a better citizen of earth yet feeling helpless and

hopeless about where to start. So we include a lot of practical toolsabout how to begin, or how to take the next step, or the next one

after that if you are walking gently already.

The most challenging of these three tasks is the second—see-




ing where our Christian worldview has been shaped more by cul-

tural values and context than our faith. Understanding the back-

story or having a pocket full of practical tools won’t motivate us

nearly as much as being convinced that living differently will

bring congruency to our faith and lifestyle choices.

Everyone’s thoughts about how they are connected to earth are

embedded in their particular culture’s ideas of what it means to live

well and responsibly. For example, I’m guessing that a number of

you would need a fair bit of convincing to believe that being goodstewards of God’s creation is as foundational to being Christian as,

say, evangelism. What if the belief that evangelism is more impor-

tant than creation care is influenced by our Western culture instead

of being a core Christian belief that transcends time and place?

Here’s my opening shot at supporting why being good stewards is as

foundational to being Christian as, for example, evangelism.

ThrEE r EASOnS Wh y WALkinG GEnTLy

iS ABOuT BEinG ChriSTiAn

In response to the question “What is the greatest commandment?”

Jesus answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your

heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The sec-

ond is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No

other commandment is greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31). Iheard Sandress Misska, a Malawian theologian and the country

director of World Relief, speak on this passage. His explanation of

this verse is the first reason caring for earth is foundational to be-

ing a Christian: To love God with our heart, soul and mind is to love

others as ourselves. One way of showing love to others is by caring for

their physical well-being.

Christians have a strong legacy of caring for people; we takeseriously the command to love our neighbor as ourselves. Around

the world Christians have built orphanages, hospitals and schools.

And Christians support organizations like World Vision, World




means to be Christian is because we are creatures of earth, and so

caring for earth is a way of caring for ourselves. We eat what grows

from dirt to live. We drink what flows from rivers. I grew up un-

derstanding God gave earth to humans to pretty much develop the

place and run it. We weren’t part of earth; we owned it! Because

we were made in God’s image, we sat above and apart from the rest

of creation. We were supposed to fill it with humans who would

ideally love God and each other and creatively manipulate earth

and animals to meet our needs. Nate Jones, who has spent morethan half of his life in Indonesia, is persuaded by another interpre-

tation of Genesis 1:28. He sees it as a great commission of the Old

Testament:

Instead of exercising our dominion to kill off our ecological

competitors and replace them with a teeming humanity, we

are to fulfill the earth, bringing forth its latent potential and

perhaps weaving wild lives and landscapes into a productive

and peaceable whole. Certainly, the commission instructs us

to lead the creatures of the earth into fulfillment with one

another, with ourselves, and with our common Creator. Our

first calling, then, is to garden the earth.

Maybe we don’t own earth at all. Folk wisdom suggests that

people who claim to own land are like fleas who claim to own thedog on which they happen to be hitching a ride and snacking on

in the meantime. Sure, the flea might think it owns the dog, and a

bunch of fleas could wreak havoc on a dog, but those outside the

flea population (other dogs, or perhaps humans) would think a

flea claiming to own a dog a ridiculous notion. For one thing, the

dog is going to outlast the flea, and if it doesn’t (if it, let’s say, gets

hit by a car), the flea’s cushy life will be severely compromisedanyway. Since the flea depends on the dog for sustenance, it seems

a bit audacious for it to claim to be the dog’s master and owner.

We are physically part of earth and dependent on it. We don’t




choose to exist in a dynamic relationship with creation; it is sim-

ply a fact of our existence, though one that is surprisingly easy to

forget. We have a unique place in creation as image-bearers of

God, but we are of the soil, of earth nevertheless. Maybe we should

see ourselves as gardeners, rather than conquerors. Maybe “filling

the earth” was more a commission to nurture and cultivate earth’s

potential to be a garden full of life rather than a mandate to popu-

late it with humans who would be in charge.

A third reason creation care is foundational to being Christianis that care for earth is an expression of respect and receptivity to

God because God made it, loves it and called it good—good enough,

in fact, that God became f lesh and dwelled among us (John 1:14). For

God so loved the world, cosmos, the entire universe, that he gave

his only son, Jesus (John 3:16), that the world might be restored,

redeemed, made right. We honor and worship God when we live

in ways that reflect God’s love for, and sustaining role as caretakerof, creation. How could we not love what God loves? Earth is our

home. God made it for all earth’s creatures. A new heaven and a

new earth await, and while we don’t know quite what that will

look like, Quaker philosopher and poet Arthur Roberts pictures a

new earth that is familiar—perhaps with places like Niagara Falls,

Mount Kilimanjaro, the Nile River and the Amazon—but fully,

completely, beautifully restored.This conversation elicits strong reactions. Sometimes I follow let-

ters to the editor in magazines that have tackled highly volatile sub-

jects about climate change and limiting carbon emissions, popula-

tion control and the humane treatment of animals. In both religious

and nonreligious magazines some of the most inflammatory letters

have been written by people identifying themselves as Christian.

The inflammatory letter writers find these conversations offensiveand misguided—deviating from a biblical call for humans to sub-

due and dominate creation, and to be fruitful and multiply, filling

the earth. Perhaps some of the response reflects fear that our cul-




ture is turning toward earth worship. Perhaps it also reflects ways

that Western values of manifest destiny, growth, power and inde-

pendence have come to define what it means to be Christian.

WhErE WE ArE GOinG

I want to believe that the inflammatory letter writers are in the

minority. The more I talk with people, the more I realize they care

about ecological questions but feel overwhelmed by what they

don’t know, and by the hugeness of the problems. Walking Gently

is a primer that helps Christians understand some basic issues,

offers ideas about how to live gently and inspires hope. We argue

for an ecological worldview that celebrates this earth as God’s

good gift, and then invites you to celebrate the goodness of earth

by living with an ethic of care. Since some of our best models for

walking gently come from the Global South, we infuse our ideas

with their wisdom. Megan Anna has spent time in Malawi andGhana, becoming a student of their worldviews, and at Princeton

Seminary she immersed herself in the study of African Christian

theology. She opens each chapter with a prelude introducing some

nugget of wisdom from the Global South blended with theological

reflection. Lisa writes the chapters, some of which offer more of

the backstory, some of which offer more practical steps; most of

them include both, as well as ways to examine your thinking as itis informed by your faith. Most chapters conclude with a resource

section to help guide you toward next steps, and a couple of ap-

pendices give those of you who want it more to chew on. You’ll

notice that most of the resources can be accessed through the In-

ternet. We all have information at our fingertips, though sifting

through reliable sources can be challenging!

° ° °

I take a morning walk up Williamson Road where I can see Mt.

Hood’s majestic silhouette before the sun crests the horizon. My




trek takes me past forests, orchards and pastures. Farmland and

vineyards pepper the hillsides across the valley. Sometimes I try

to imagine how God sees and loves the hawks, deer, coyotes, oak,

fir, cows, sheep, horses and people represented in this space. It

isn’t easy—most of the details are invisible to me. But maybe if we

could all see the world a little more like God does we would walk

in it more gently.

Maybe God sees earth bubbling with life just beneath the sur-

face as spring sun warms the soil, and readies bulbs, roots andseeds for bursting forth in new growth. God would see the worms

working their way through soil, breaking up clods, leaving resi-

due from their wormy digestion that fosters dark, rich soil. God

might also see a robin, a first-year mother flying low, eager to pro-

vide food for her newly hatched babies. If God sees it all, God

might pay particular attention to a useful, happy worm that comes

up to greet the sun (it is spring after all, the season when wormsgo wild with happiness). The robin sees it too, and engages in a

fight for life, pulling tenaciously at the worm until successfully

yanking it from the soil, giving it one magnificent moment to ex-

perience earth from above before alighting on her nest and feeding

it to three young robins with beaks wide open in anticipation.

Oh to see and love the world as God does, in all of its complex-

ity, beauty, sparkling clarity and color! Is God more sad, we mightask, for the worm that died, or happy for the mother and her ba-

bies who just filled their tummies? Perhaps that is the wrong

question—the question that leads us to put ourselves justifiably at

the top of the food chain, and the top of God’s list of creation fa-

vorites. Perhaps God would have us ask what kind of world is re-

quired to see that flourishing continue—for worms (who do

amazing things to enrich our soil), for birds who spread seeds, forcoyotes, sheep, cows, oak trees, whales. Yes, perhaps even for

whales. God sees it all, loves it all and wills for the flourishing of

humans—and the flourishing of all.

walking gently on the earth by lisa mcminn and megan neff

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