Month: July 2022

Ecological spirituality workshop, day four

Summary session plan below.

My iNaturalist observations for today.

Suburban/urban nature walk

We took a walk from Ferry Beach Park Association to Camp Ellis. We walked along Surf Street until the pavement ended, then walked along the dirt track where Surf Street used to be. We turned inland at Lower Beach Road, where the dirt track ended, turned down Cove Ave and walked down to look at the Saco River, then down North Ave. to Bay Ave. to the jetty. On the walk back, we went along Route 9.

I’ve never written up full instructions on how to lead a suburban or urban nature walk, and unfortunately I’m not going to have time to write that description now. Suffice it to say the following: in a suburban or urban environment, there will be fewer native species and less biodiversity than in a landscape that is less dominated by humans. So a suburban / urban nature walk will look at what non-human species are present (and why they’re there), and in addition will look at the economic forces that shape the landscape.

Remember — the word “ecojustice” means both “economic justice” and “ecological justice.” Some of the thinking behind ecojustice is that economics cannot be separated from environmental concerns.

For reference: Ecojustice curriculum (gr. 6-8) on my curriculum website.

Saco, Me., to Bath, Me.

This afternoon, Carol and I drove up to Bath, Maine, to sing Sacred Harp on the gazebo in the center of Bath. It turned out to be an excellent place to sing, which may show that a good singing space does not need walls if you have a wood ceiling and a wood floor. And with no walls, we were much less worried about transmitting COVID, especially with the stiff breeze that was blowing. It also turned out to be an excellent group of people to sing with. As Carol said after the singing, “It was a really tight group.”

After the Sacred Harp singing was over, we got takeout food. We ate dinner in a city park overlooking the Kennebec River. This is the furthest east we will travel on our cross-country trip.

Carol looking east over the Kennebec River

A quick meomry from our cross-country trip that I forgot to write down earlier:

When we drove into Wyoming, a sign directed all vehicles with watercraft to pull into the Port of Entry for inspection — “including canoes and kayaks.” Signs directed us around the weigh station to a small building belonging to the Wyoming Fish and Game Department. A polite young woman carrying a clipboard and wearing a Fish and Game uniform greeted us. She was obviously checking for invasive species. She looked at the canoe on top of our car, and at our California license plates. “What was the last body of water you had the canoe it?” she asked.

I thought for a moment. We hadn’t used the canoe in the whole 13 years we’d lived in California. “The Atlantic Ocean,” I said.

She looked surprised. “Whereabouts?” she asked.

“Coast of Maine,” I said. “Saco Bay.”

She knew Saco Bay, and it turned out that she, like me, was from Massachusetts.

“Where’d you grow up?” I asked.

“Near Essex,” she said, and told me which town.

There was no one behind me waiting to have their boat checked, so we chatted for a bit. We asked what brought her out to Wyoming. She had gotten her degree in wildlife management at a university in New York state, worked for a while in the northeast, then decided she wanted to go some place completely different. So she chose Wyoming.

I told her I was glad that Wyoming was checking all watercraft for invasive species. “I’m a fisherman, and invasives have already ruined too many fisheries,” I said.

“Especially the mussels,” she replied.

So yeah. If you own a boat, remember: clean, dry, and drain.

Acton, Mass., to Saco, Me.

Abby and Jim’s back yard proved to be a very comfortable place to sleep. As we were packing up the car to leave, I noticed these charismatic European Paper Wasps (Polistes dominula) building a nest.

Native to Mediterranean Europe, P. dominula was first introduced to the United States in Massachusetts in the 1970s. Since then, it has spread to Maine, Pennsylvania, Michigan, South Dakota, Nebraska, Arkansas, Washington state, and perhaps elsewhere. Abby said she was going to kill the insects and remove the nest, which I am glad of — according to the Invasive Species Compendium website, P. dominula has been shown to displace native Polistes species.

Another dreary drive today, though only two hours long. Traffic was heavy and aggressive from Acton to southern Maine. We were glad to get off the highway, and set up our tent at Ferry Beach Conference Center, where I’ll be leading a workshop in ecological spirituality for the next week. I’ll post more about that workshop in the coming days.

Newfield, N.Y., to Acton, Mass.

We had a long breakfast with Paul and Gina this morning. After breakfast, the four of us, plus Allagash the dog, went for a walk at a nearby pond. Paul and I met in a field ornithology class, so we listened for birds: Summer Tanager, Dark-eyed Junco, Wood Thrush, Red-eyed Vireo, Hermit Thrush (maybe), and more. Gina noticed this spectacular Wood Lily:

Wood Lily (Lilia philadelphicum)

Then Carol and I started driving east again. After a long drive, we arrived at the house of my sister Abby and Jim. Now we’re sitting outdoors in Abby and Jim’s screen house talking after dinner. What do siblings do when they get together? Talk a lot, and goof around. Here’s a photo Abby took of me:

Just now Abby asked, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m uploading to iNaturalist.” She doesn’t know I’m actually writing on my blog while we’re sitting here in the screen house.

Conneaut, Ohio, to Newfield, N.Y.

I attended a morning session of the Religious Education Association annual conference. I wanted to hear two presentations on abuse and trauma as it relates to religious education. A significant part of my career working in congregations has been devoted to addressing the after effects of religious abuse and trauma (RAT). I’ve mostly dealt with the effects of misconduct by clergy and staff, and I found it helpful to learn about the wider scope of RAT. The presentations also introduced me to additional books and academic studies that I want to read.

But attending this REA session meant we got a late start. The drive started out dreary, but as soon as we got off Interstate 90 onto Interstate 86, the driving became much more pleasant — few cars on the road, fewer big rigs, the road winding through rolling green hills. We passed into Seneca Nation, and many of the road signs were in two languages.

Road sign in Seneca Nation in two languages

We soon arrived at Paul and Gina’s house in Newfield. They live on the edge of a 12,000 acre state park. As soon as we arrived, Paul, Carol, and I, along with Allagash the dog, went for a walk.

The woods were lovely…

Flowering plant in the woods

When we got back, we set up the tent on their lawn. Then we sat on their deck and ate dinner, and sang until dark.

Reimagining Sunday school

I finally finished writing a short essay titled “Reimagining Sunday school” for my curriculum website. This essay has been in the works for a while, both as a response to the “death of Sunday school” movement, and as a response to the de-funding of religious education programs that we’ve been seeing denomination-wide. I’m copying the entire essay in below the fold, or you can read it on my curriculum website.

Continue reading “Reimagining Sunday school”

Roseland, Ind., to Conneaut, Ohio

I got up early to attend an online session of the Religious Education Association (REA) annual conference. The presentationby Heesung Hwang of Chicago Theological Seminary, on how religious education could address burnout, was thought-provoking, to say the least. I’ll try to summarize her presentation in a later post.

Then it was time to hit the road for another dreary drive. The roadway of Interstate 80/90 through Indiana and Ohio is dominated by tractor-trailer rigs; at times, I estimated that half the vehicles on the road were big rigs. We drove through an industrial landscape. The industrial landscape continued on either side of the highway. Weary Midwest industrial landscapes alternated with industrial agriculture of soybeans and corn. An industrial corn field is green, and at first it looks pretty, but up close it is as bleak as a mall parking lot.

A bleak industrial corn field, somewhere in Ohio or Indiana

We checked into our motel in Conneaut, on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, at 3:30, just in time for me to attend another online session of the REA annual conference. This session, titled Sacred Pedagogic Texts in Dialogue, looked at non-Western religious educational philosophies by means of reading non-Western sacred texts (Analects, Bhagavad Gita, Guru Granth Sahib, Dao de Jing, and a Buddhist text.

It was an interesting presentation, but at the end of it I was ready to get outside. I started walking down the road next to our motel, saw a dirt road heading off to the left — no “No Trespassing” signs — and walked into the woods.

Woodlands in Conneaut, Ohio

None of the trees looked older than 50-75 years old, so presumably this land was either farmed or logged off in the mid-twentieth century. Under the older trees there was a fair amount of coppice growth, and on the ground growing in the shade were non-woody plants ranging from ferns to skunk cabbage to poison ivy to plants I wasn’t able to identify.

Stream behind the Conneaut Middle School

I wanted to stay in the woods longer, but I was scheduled to attend a session titled “Educating of Ecological Awareness” at the REA online conference. Carl Procario-Foley presented based on his paper “Good Ancestors Practicing a Holistic Vision for Ecological Conversion, and Vaughan Nelson presented on his paper “How Food Teaches and Why It Matters for Religious Education.”Again, two thought-provoking sessions — and again, I’ll try to summarize these presentations in another post.

It’s late now. There’s an REA conference session at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning. I better get to sleep.