Monthly All-EcoFaith National Zoom Gathering
Beginning in the summer of 2019, EcoFaith Recovery is offering Zoom webcam meetings grounded in The Practices for Awakening Leadership.
This gathering will help you learn how to engage The Practices and connect with others across the country to share what we are learning with one another, inspire one another to more creative and strategic action, and mentor one another in our leadership development as we seek to organize our communities.
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NEXT MEETING:
TBD
5:00pm – 6:30pm PST
(6:00 p.m. MST
7:00 p.m. CST
8:00 p.m. EST)
TBD
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If you have questions, please email office@ecofaithrecovery.org.
PAST MEETINGS:
April 16th
How to be a Chaplain for the World: Ecofaith Monthly National Zoom Gathering with EcoFaith Intern Allie Knofczynski
Most of us consider the act of chaplaincy as one meant for healthcare settings. However, can we take that role beyond the hospital walls? What might it mean to chaplain to all of Creation? Join Communications Intern Allie Knofczynski as we explore how to expand our definition of “spiritual care.” Through the Practices and thought-provoking questions, we’ll discover the innumerable possibilities for living with your “chaplain hat” on and with more compassion.
March 12th
Pattern Wisdom and EcoFaith Practices: EcoFaith Monthly National Zoom Gathering 
In this EcoFaith Monthly National Zoom Call, we invoke Practice Seven as we consciously align and re-align our lives with the rhythms of the universe.
First, we pay homage to woman wisdom, who the ancient scribes understood is the fountain of life. Along with the wisdom of ancient Hebrew scribes, we find wisdom also in the words of Audre Lorde, who reminds us that
“When we view living, in the european mode, only as a problem to be solved, we then rely solely upon our ideas to make us free, for these were what the white fathers told us were precious. But as we become more in touch with our own ancient, black, non-european view of living as a situation to be experienced and interacted with, we learn more and more to cherish our feelings, and to respect those hidden sources of our power from where true knowledge and therefore lasting action comes.”
And so wisdom is not logic but first and foremost poetry.
Then, we turn to the poetry of patterns in the world, which are also wisdom: from fractals, to the torus, to the constructal law, patterns shape the world we inhabit.
We will explore the wisdom of a system-pattern called the adaptive cycle, and learn how this might inform our personal and organizational wholeness.
February 13th
Undamming Our Hearts: Ecofaith Monthly National Zoom Gathering
“Of all the dangers we face, from climate chaos to nuclear war, none is so great as the deadening of our response.” – Joanna Macy This month, we are going to be exploring with our network of courageous and grounded spiritual leaders how we best honor and feel the grief, anger, and fear that are normal and healthy responses to living in a time of climate crisis. We will take a dive into what the Practices of Awakening Leadership have to teach us about sitting with and welcoming hard emotions; our own and those of others. Please join us for a night of vulnerability and brave expression of what it really means and feels like to be human at this time– so that we can move into greater miraculous potential and power together.
REPLAY:
January 9th
Imagine a Healed World: Ecofaith Monthly National Zoom Gathering
The ability to imagine something is often the first step toward living it out. We do not want our inability to imagine a healed world to block us from realizing beautiful, muti-faceted, robust, pervasive, soil-level healing. What if only through our dreaming we can know God’s dreams? We ask, “Can we imagine a healed world?” For our National Zoom Call in January, our Practicum Coordinator Sarah Molly is going to lead us in holy time to look at your life as is and use your best moral imagination to envision what living out healing for the planet from legacies of destruction could look like in your day-to-day context. What does the earth need to be healed? What could living into your full capacity for healing and restoration look like? How could you live into right-relationship with the indigenous peoples of your place? How could you co-create with the land on which you live to serve the most vulnerable of your place—people, plant, and creature? What would healing your neighborhood and community look like? Join us in this powerful iteration of Practice #6 which will include individual reflection, sharing in pairs, and a group discussion. See you then!
December 12th
Imagination & Reflection with Intern Coordinator Sarah Molly
This month, Sarah Holst will lead a deep-dive into the importance of Practice #6 in cultivating cultures of reflection and moral imagination. Come ready to ask yourself, “What does living into your full capacity to contribute to the earth’s healing and restoration look like in your context?” Through the practice of reflection, we access our ability to change and grow into more and more courageous spiritual leaders for a time of climate crisis. This will be an excellent end-of-the-year gathering! We hope you can join us!
November 14th
Community Carbon: Join the Movement with Pastor/Organizer Robyn Hartwig and the St. Andrew Community Carbon Team
Join us from the comfort of your own living room or office as leaders from St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Beaverton share their experience as EcoFaith’s Recovery’s first Community Carbon pilot community and help inspire other communities to get involved. This year EcoFaith seeks to engage 3 – 5 Community Carbon pilot communities and 25 congregations in developing “Carbon Gardens.” We welcome you to gather online with us via Zoom webcam meeting to learn first-hand what it is like to be part of a Community Carbon pilot community from congregational members who are excited to share their experience with others. St. Andrew Soil team co-chair, Carol Harker, will talk about what the congregation is learning about how to sequester carbon in suburban yards. Minister of Music, Allison Katsufrakis, will talk about how the initiative is weaving into the congregation’s worship and ritual life. MACG Organizing co-chair, Pat Christiansen, will talk about the Listening Season the congregation plans to launch to hear stories about their members’ relationship to soil and the land. Pastor Robyn Hartwig will talk about the energy and enthusiasm she has observed in a time of climate despair and the possibilities this initiative holds for greater justice among those who work the land. If you are interested in getting engaged with Community Carbon yourself and engaging your particular community in the powerful relationship between humans, soil and climate.
REPLAY:
October 24th
SOIL 101 with Practicum Intern Ariel Aaronson-Eves
Practicum Intern Ariel will be offering a brief overview of soil science and the potential of well-managed soil to sequester carbon. Ariel brings a Unitarian Universalist theological perspective that emphasizes the values of community, cooperation, and the inherent worth and dignity of everything. The word humus, that rich organic matter that gives fertility to soil, comes from the same root as the words human and humility. How might nurturing the soil contribute to the flourishing of our communities?
REPLAY:
Thursday, September 26th
Practice #4: Mentor One Another
Nathan Holst will be our guest leader sharing stories about how he showed up in relationship with a City Councilor in Duluth and was instrumental in changing that Councilor’s vote on a pivotal issue. You too can mentor key leaders in your community and see that change that can happen through these relationships.
Thursday, July 25th
The Importance of Telling Our Climate Justice Stories (Practice #3)
We will be focusing on Practice #3: Discover Our Stories. Sarah Holst will be leading us in reflection and practice of telling our climate justice stories in order to more fully understand ourselves and our role in this movement, and to move people to join us in this work.
Sunday, June 23rd
The Art of One-to-One Conversations for Effective Organizing (Practice #2)
Many of us have heard or even believe that one-to-one relational conversations are important to our work of organizing with our communities so that we can be part of the change we want to see in the world. But why, exactly, is this work so important? How does this intentional, spiritual work of developing relationships grow our power for organizing? How does such an intentional practice of developing relationships change us, change others, change our communities, and change the world?
This online gathering (Zoom technology) will engage us in these larger questions of developing relationships, enable us to review characteristics of powerful one-to-one relational conversations, demonstrate a model one-to-one conversation during the gathering, and give everybody the opportunity to practice a short one-to-one conversation and reflect upon the experience afterwards. Together we will cultivate the art of one-to-one conversations for effective organizing capable of accomplishes lasting change
Friday, May 31st
Meetings that Fill our Cups rather than Emptying Them: What a difference the EcoFaith Practices make!
This month, we will be joined by EcoFaith Leader and Coach Rev. Solveig Nilsen-Goodin. Solveig was a founding member of the EcoFaith Recovery Core Team in 2009, Solveig is a spiritual director, activist, organizer, teacher and EcoFaith Recovery leadership coach. She is also a certified ELCA coach. Solveig will lead us in an interactive teaching on utilizing the practices to facilitate meetings. We will dive into the power of The Practices for Awakening Leadership on a very practical level within your community.