EARTHKEEPING NEWS A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY Volume Eleven, Number Five July/August 2002 EARTHKEEPING CIRCLES: RECIPES FOR A TASTY STEW by Greg Todd One of the key initiatives launched by NACCE in the past year has been to introduce Earthkeeping Circles into local church communities. ECs are small groups that meet on a regular basis to experience the nexus of Christianity and ecology in an informal setting. While autonomous, successful ECs incorporate scripture reading and reflection, study, ritual, celebration and fellowship. Since our EC started meeting on a monthly basis in September at the Park Slope United Methodist Church in Brooklyn, New York, we have tried a lot of different things. First, we found that the more prepared we were, the more interesting the experience. If we each brought something to share, either a reading, an object or a story from our experience, we seemed to have a more lively event than when just one person tried to do it all. We tried to ask each member to do something for the next service. Second, we found that having outside speakers helped enliven our meetings. Bringing in a friend who has some special knowledge or a local expert on some topic can be very invigorating to the group. For the March meeting we invited a church member who was raised in Ireland and was familiar with Celtic spiritual traditions. She introduced us to the Celtic spring equinox festival of St. Bridget. She taught us Irish music and tales of Irish saints with pagan ancestry. In May we invited a Native American from the Lakota tribe, who played a wooden flute, to share with us spiritual traditions from his culture. He told us of being reared in Christian schools in North Dakota (not pretty!). Third, we found that meeting outside of the church or parsonage greatly increased attendance. Many of the participants in our circle we found were not church members. Many would never consider attending a church service and were quite alienated from the church. Yet they felt the need for a spiritual connection that they found lacking in traditional environmental organizations. Since January, our circle has been meeting in a small bookstore called EcoBooks. The proprietor, Rachel, has a number of groups with an environmental focus meeting in her space, and maintains an email list in which she promotes each of them. We have gotten a number of new attendees from the email list. We hope to make this column a regular feature of this newsletter. If you have experiences to share about your Earthkeeping Circle, please forward them to us through our guestbook, www.nacce.org. GUEST EDITOR Gregory Todd, MBA, is Marketing Director of BEC New Communities housing organization. A member of the Park Slope United Methodist Church, Brooklyn NY and an NACCE Board member, Greg and his wife Nellie Bright have been experimenting with various forms of local circles for a number of years. He welcomes comments on your experiences. He may be reached at gntodd@cs.com. Home     Table of Contents