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Peace with Creation Starts Here

8/29/2025

There are times when my world seems neatly divided into two camps: those who know what Season of Creation is and enthusiastically observe it every year and those who give me a blank stare when I say “Season of Creation”. If you’re in the former camp, I need your help. Keep reading. If you’re in the latter camp, keep reading.

The Season of Creation has its origins in the Orthodox church beginning in 1989. In that year, the Ecumenical Patriarch declared September 1st to be a day of prayer for Creation. The World Council of Churches extended the celebration from September 1st to October 4th, the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi. Since that time, Christians from around the world have used that time to reconnect with God by reconnecting with God’s Creation. The hope is that Christians all over the world would begin to embrace this as an annual celebration.

Over the years, the celebration of the season has led to new prayers and hymns being written, while also recognizing the richness of Creation-centered liturgy that has existed since the Church’s early days. In this time we recognize the living world both as our teacher and as our responsibility. Some have even taken to creating a special lectionary for the season to draw attention to the ways that Creation appears in Scripture and encouraging preachers to highlight ecological concerns from the pulpit.
This is all well and good but…

Do we really need another liturgical season?

As a former pastor, I know the kind of work that goes into leading a community of faith through our liturgical calendar. There is a pressure, particularly around Advent and Lent, to help people to have a spiritually meaningful experience of those seasons. And for some of us, the need to recognize that there are more than two liturgical seasons is an uphill climb that often feels futile. (Christmas and Easter are seasons!!!!) So the idea of adding another observance to the life of the church may feel like an unneeded burden.

And yet at their best, liturgical seasons draw our attention to what is happening in Creation. Advent coincides with shorter days and the need to find light in the darkness. Lent parallels the coming of Spring as new life enters the world. The Season of Creation coincides with late summer harvests, gradually falling summer temperatures, and the coming of autumn. For many, this is Creation at its best!

But perhaps more importantly, our liturgical seasons are times of rededication to our faith, periodic reminders of where our spiritual energies should go. This year, we celebrate the Season of Creation on the heels of a summer of record-breaking heat and humidity and as hurricanes begin to gather in the warming oceans. We enter this season as the science on greenhouse gases that has guided us for decades is being refuted at the highest levels of government. We enter this season shortly after the United States stood in opposition to a plastics treaty that would have been a significant move toward ending global plastic pollution.

In light of all of this, it feels fitting to rededicate ourselves to a faith that sees the beauty in all that God has created. It feels like the right time to reassert the belief that the vulnerable should not have to bear the climate burden that the powerful have created. It feels critical that this Season of Creation be a time when we purposefully declare that God’s world is worthy of our service and protection. This year, the global Season of Creation community chose “Peace with Creation” as a guiding theme and in a time where the natural world seems to be under assault, there is no better time to proclaim that we desire a new sense of harmony with the world that God has made.

Throughout this season, Creation Justice Ministries will be organizing Public Witness for Creation events. We will hold these in D.C., Grand Rapids, Michigan, Atlanta, Georgia, and Phoenix, Arizona. These areas were chosen because of their specific environmental justice issues and their legislative importance. These public witness events are a way for us to live out the command of Christ that we not hide our light, but that we instead “let [our] light shine before others so that they may see our good works and give glory to our God in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). In these dark times, it’s crucial that we show that there is a better way of living in harmony with the world God made in love.

So, if you are a church that has been celebrating the Season of Creation for years, we hope that your celebrations this year will be bright and loud for all of your neighbors to see and hear! We’d love to know how you are celebrating this year. Feel free to send us your pictures and stories at [email protected].

And if you are new to the Season of Creation, I hope that you will make space in worship in the coming weeks to recognize the goodness of Creation in your prayers, hymns, and maybe even in your preaching.

While every season is the Season of Creation at Creation Justice Ministries, we are thankful for the special time to join with Christians around the globe to observe a time of praise, lament, confession, and celebration on behalf of God’s beloved world. We hope that you’ll join us in making God’s love for Creation visible for the whole world to see.

Derrick Weston
Director of Theological Education and Formation
Creation Justice Ministries

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From Data to Dignity: St. Petersburg Thriving Earth Project Charts a Path Forward

8/1/2025

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When Creation Justice Ministries first joined the Thriving Earth Exchange (TEX) initiative, we envisioned local church communities becoming catalysts for environmental resilience—places where data, faith, and justice would meet. That vision has taken a powerful step forward with the completion of our first project in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The Thriving Earth Exchange is a national program of the American Geophysical Union that connects communities with volunteer scientists to tackle local climate, pollution, and environmental justice challenges. In partnership with Creation Justice Ministries, the program helps congregations and faith-rooted organizations translate environmental concerns into actionable, community-driven science projects.

Together, we identify priority issues—such as flooding, heat risk, air quality, or historical land injustices—and match congregations with technical experts who can provide mapping, data modeling, and scientific analysis at no cost to the community. Each project is shaped by local wisdom and guided by the values of justice, restoration, and love for neighbor.

Located in a region facing rising heat, severe storms, and aging infrastructure, St. Pete is no stranger to climate-related challenges. And like many communities across the country, these environmental hazards don’t impact everyone equally. The legacy of redlining and economic exclusion has left many historically Black and Brown neighborhoods with fewer protections and greater risk.

The Thriving Earth Exchange project in St. Pete set out to address just that. By identifying “areas of persistent poverty and social vulnerability,” this project used data modeling to map environmental injustice across the city. What it revealed was no surprise to residents who have long lived with the consequences—but what was once anecdotal is now evidenced in detailed maps and reports. This means more than just information; it’s a tool for action.

The completion of this project gives local leaders, congregations, and advocates a foundation they can build on—whether they’re applying for grants, organizing around policy, or simply having honest conversations about what equity really looks like in climate resilience.

This work echoes the biblical call to “seek the welfare of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7)—not only through prayer, but through preparation and persistence.

This is only the beginning. As more Thriving Earth Exchange projects reach completion, we hope to continue uplifting these local stories—where community knowledge, scientific tools, and faithful resolve come together to confront climate injustice head-on.

To learn more about the St. Pete project, visit the official project page here.
Stay tuned—we’ll be sharing more photos and updates from the project site in the coming weeks.

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The Danger Season: When Disasters Become Normal

8/1/2025

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However, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said. - Exodus 7:13

Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect - Romans 12:2

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 288, 250,111 people in this country are facing an extreme weather warning as of the time of this writing. 98% of those people have been under a warning of some kind since May 1. There was a week in early July that had four once in a thousand year storms. These same scientists are now calling the months between May and October, “Danger season”. Whether it’s drought, wildfires, extreme storms or excessive heat, the middle of the year has become a time when it feels almost impossible to avoid news about some natural occurrence that is putting lives at risk…

… and that has become the new normal. What were once thought of as “disasters” are now being considered to be regular occurrences. We’ve forgotten that it wasn’t that long ago that these events were more rare. We’ve talked ourselves into thinking that it’s always been this way. The truth is that in most of our lifetimes, weather patterns have changed dramatically and, like the proverbial frog in a boiling pot, we’ve adjusted as the temperature rose. The phenomenon in which we gradually begin to change the idea of what “normal” is, is called shifting baseline syndrome. As Bryan Hamilton wrote in this 2022 article on the National Park Services website, “Our tolerance for environmental degradation increases and our expectations for the natural world goes down”.

Certainly there is something to be said for human resilience. We adapt to the new circumstances and develop ways to survive in changing conditions. It is part of the genius of our species. And yet our resilience often happens at the expense of those who are not able to adapt so quickly, both human and no-human. Those on the frontlines of these climate emergencies aren’t always afforded the time necessary to make their habitat more liveable. And though resilience could be one positive explanation for our shifting baselines, there is another possibility that must be considered.

The Exodus story is one of those that we know so well that we sometimes think it has nothing new to teach us. As Moses confronts Pharaoh with the demand that the latter release the Israelites from their slavery, he performs a sign, turning his staff into a serpent. While the court magicians are able to duplicate the trick, Moses staff devours their staff-turned-serpents. It’s an ominous sign, but in the immediate aftermath, we are told that “Pharoah’s heart was hardened”. So the plagues begin. With each new plague, each an environmental disaster of some sort, we’re told either that Pharaoh hardened his heart or that God did. In any case, Pharaoh’s hardened heart allowed swarming flies, festering boils, devouring locusts, and rivers of blood to become the new normal. In fact, the only new normal to which Pharaoh couldn’t adjust was the liberation of the Israelites, again because his heart was hardened.

I fear our adjustment to our changing climate is less a function of resilience and more that of our hearts hardening to the world around us. We call it “compassion fatigue” or say it’s all too overwhelming and we allow ourselves to adapt to a reality in which the most vulnerable in our communities spend half of the year exposed to the elements in life-threatening fashion. It’s becoming easier and easier to say “that’s just the way things are now” and keep scrolling. In a chaotic world, a hard heart feels like an adaptation for survival.

And yet it is because of this shifting baseline that Paul’s words ring out as a loud caution for those of us who are trying to faithfully navigate this danger season. We cannot conform to a world that has become complacent in its struggle for environmental justice. We can’t allow the extremes of weather that we are experiencing to become normalized to the point of invisibility. We can’t continue to hide behind our temporary adaptations while frontline communities are consumed, especially not as the frontline is getting closer to each of us everyday.

The renewing of our minds can happen in many ways. For some of us it will be actively seeking information about what is happening to our climate while authorities actively work to silence that information. For some of us it will mean finding ways to be of service to those dealing with the aftermath of the climate disaster nearest you because, make no mistake, there has been a climate disaster near you this summer. For many of us it will be remembering that it hasn’t always been this way and considering what has been lost for our children and grandchildren.

Whatever that renewal looks like for each of us, it should lead to the kind of transformation that softens our hardened hearts and fills us for compassion for those for whom adaptation is either costly or impossible. It should be the kind of transformation that resists a status quo that continues to tilt toward environmental collapse. It should be the kind of transformation that stands boldly in the face of the increasing heat, the rising storms, the raging fires, and the insistence that we be silent on these issues and loudly proclaims, “this is not normal and this is not okay!”

Bob Pierce, the founder of the relief organization World Vision, is often credited as being the first to pray a prayer that echoed across the decades:
"God, break my heart with the things that break yours."

Instead of allowing ourselves to grow numb during this season of rising danger, may we be transformed into people with hearts of compassion, conviction, and courage.

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Peace with Creation Starts Here

From Data to Dignity: St. Petersburg Thriving Earth Project Charts a Path Forward

The Danger Season: When Disasters Become Normal

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