Eco-spirituality movement grows among Lawrence faithful

Members of Peace Mennonite Church will experience a different kind of worship service April 21.

Titled “Honoring the Faith of God,” the service will feature as its centerpiece something called the “Council of All Beings.”

Member Doug Hitt is helping to coordinate the service at Peace Mennonite, which meets at Ecumenical Christian Ministries, 1204 Oread Ave.

“The council is a ritual in which we will give different endangered species a chance to speak to us, both from their wisdom and about the perils they face,” he said.

Ten members have been given the name and description of a plant, animal or environment that is endangered. This year, the council will be made up of “beings” that inhabit Douglas County or other parts of Kansas.

Accompanied by drumbeats, members will move through the congregation while carrying totems  pieces of artwork, such as masks, hung on a pole  that represent their assigned plants, animals or environments.

Then two members will read aloud a special liturgy written for the ritual, in which each “being” will speak about its experience, ending with the phrase, “I am a faith of God  respect, honor and recognize me.”

The ritual was developed in the 1980s in Australia by environmental activists John Seed and Joanna Macy as an all-day or weekend event in a retreat setting, Hitt said. Since then, it has been performed by groups throughout the world and has become closely identified with what has come to be called the eco-spirituality movement.

Peace Mennonite has tailored it for use in a service that will help mark Earth Day, which is April 22. This is the second year the church will do the ritual.

The environment and good stewardship of the Earth are important to many Peace Mennonite members, reflecting a central value of their faith.

“We see, at the foot of the ecological crisis, a fairly significant spiritual disorientation. Our failure as humans to regard creation as sacred  that is the basis of the problem,” Hitt said. “We hope that people come away from this ritual honoring the voices of those beings that speak (during the service), the voice of the other-than-human creation.”

Prayers for healing

Embracing the Earth and promoting responsible stewardship of its natural resources has come to be a deeply held spiritual value for other people and congregations in Lawrence, too.

Like those who attend Peace Mennonite, members of Unity Church of Lawrence, 416 Lincoln, believe it’s important to respect the blessings of nature.

“It’s just so much a part of who we are,” said the Rev. Sherry Schultz, Unity’s pastor. “Our understanding is that we’re here not to control creation, but to live side by side with it. We’re not interested in controlling plant and animal life, but in honoring it.”

Recycling is a central ethic among the church’s members, and many of them are active in the Rolling Prairie Farmers Alliance, a local organization that supports organic farming.

Ten percent of funds that come into the church is donated to community service groups and other organizations that are active in caring for nature.

Concern for the environment guides even small details of congregational life, like the decision to not use chemical weed killers or other toxins on the soil in the church’s yard.

At Unity, nature and spirituality are entwined.

“Every week in our service, we meditate on sending love and peaceful thoughts to people around the world, and to the Earth, so that the Earth will be healed,” Schultz said.

Connection to God

Alexandra Fraser, who worships primarily at Ecumenical Christian Ministries, has found meaning by viewing nature through a prism of faith.

“I was raised in a conservative Christian home, and my Christian spirituality has always been important to me,” said Fraser, an ecologist who works at the Kansas Biological Survey. “But as I developed more of an environmental world view, I had difficulty reconciling a lot of the materialistic lifestyles I saw around me, including in the church.

“I felt that Christianity was at risk of teaching human dominance. I have become interested in seeing us more as humble creatures of God who have a place in the environment  who are part of the puzzle, rather than being people who play with the puzzle.”

Twice a year, Fraser leads a weekend event called the wetlands immersion, a nature walk through the Baker Wetlands for anyone who wants to come and learn about the area south of Lawrence. The free walk is sponsored by Ecumenical Christian Ministries. The latest one was earlier this month.

In the last two years, Fraser  who is also a doctoral candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology at Kansas University  has attended two Christian ecology conferences: a meeting of the North American Coalition for Christianity and Ecology, and a gathering of the Presbyterians for Restoring Creation.

“Being at these conferences strengthened my sense of connection to God and gave me hope that we could engage in more healing activities,” she said. “It was inspiring to be with people who felt that one of their greatest responsibilities as Christians is to care for the planet.”