EARTHKEEPING NEWS A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY Volume Fourteen, Number One January/February 2005 Where Are You? From the Hudson River Bioregion The following is adapted from A Manual for Earthkeeping Circles, a work in progress by Rev. Finley Schaef. Earthkeeping Circles are small groups of Christians who meet monthly to express their concern for the environment in ritual and communion. Rev. Schaef leads an Earthkeeping Circle in Woodstock, New York. For further information you may reach Finley at schaef@hvc.rr.com. As recorded in Genesis 3:19, Yahweh / God searches for humanity (Adam and Eve) and, not finding them, calls out to them. Yahweh's call represents the primal question to humanity: Where are you? Yahweh is not looking for an answer of location from Adam and Eve but is challenging all of humanity to say where you are. In that command is contained a fundamental human purpose: examine your environment, for a large part of Who we are is Where we are. At some time along the evolutionary path a rudimentary wonderment arose: What is this place? Where are we? It is not enough to describe this wonderment as a thought in the mind or a feeling in the heart. It is the beginning of religion and philosophy and its origin is divine — a question from Yahweh in the original Garden of Eden. "Where are you?" In our Earthkeeping Circle curriculum, we are concerned about our bioregion before all else because this is the name that we have given to the region where we are, in which we live — that portion of the Earth that possesses common natural characteristics, such as a range of mountains, a forest, a vast plain, or a majestic river and its watershed. Home     Table of Contents