Ecological Posts

purple, pink, blue flowers in a garden with a low stone wall in front, concrete planter with geraniums, wooden fence behind even more white pink purple flowers, small ceramic statuette on the right side, American flag in the distance near some trees.

Back in the day, when I served for a score of years as what we used to call an “urban minister,” I and my neighborhood pastoral partners sometimes used to muse: what makes an urban church urban? Best answer atRead More →

I began talking publicly about caring for creation in my first book, Brother Earth (1970). As the ecotheology movement grew in succeeding decades, that construct, which was never just mine by any means, found a place in the then growing discussionsRead More →

old white man in blue jeans and a long sleeved white shirt and baseball cap, swinging a scythe at flowering buckwheat

This is a question I’ve thought about a lot lately, because I’ve recently been reminded, by my daughter and one of her two daughters, that it’s much on the mind of younger generations these days. While those two key womenRead More →

view of earth from space, blue oceans and green and brown land

For me, April 22, 2020 was not just the celebration of the first Earth Day fifty years ago, it also was a more parochial time to begin some ruminating. I published my first book in ecological theology the same yearRead More →

“A shoot shall come forth from the stump of Jesse…” (Is. 11:1) In front of our old farmhouse in southwestern Maine, I witnessed a sign from heaven this past summer. Several years ago, we called in a tree-man to cutRead More →

stone statue of St. Francis in an open space with trees in the backgroud

Prepared for Lutherans Restoring Creation Commentary (lutheransrestoringcreation.org) Lectionary Series B 2014-2015 September 27, October 4, October 11 A series honoring St. Francis of Assisi Note: Sunday, October 4, 2015 is the Festival of St. Francis. This series affords the preacherRead More →

They asked me what I thought.  An academic and church consortium brought me to lovely Adelaide in southern Australia in March of 2015 to present a paper on ecotheology and spirituality.  That I did (the paper will be published inRead More →