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CREATION JUSTICE MINISTRIES
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      • Participatory Education in Faith Communities for Climate Resilience
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    • Creation Justice Churches Program >
      • Resources for Creation Justice Churches
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      • Five Ways to Walk the Talk
      • Six Ways to Ignite Ministry with Theology, Worship, and Spiritual Practices
      • Five Ways to Expand Your Circle of Awareness and Advocacy
    • Tree Equity >
      • Austin, TX Tree Equity
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      • Durham, NC Tree Equity
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    • Thriving Earth
    • EcoPreacher Cohort
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    • Events >
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      • Multi-Faith Earth Day Celebration
      • Fighting for Higher Ground Movie Screening
  • Donate
    • Monthly Giving
  • Resources
    • Creation Justice Store >
      • Power of God
      • Plastic Jesus: Real Faith in a Synthetic World
      • Truth, Healing and Repair: ​A Resource for Churches on Environmental Justice with Indigenous Peoples
      • (Digital) Canopy of Trees
      • (Digital) Power of God: From Extractive Theology to Transformative Faith
      • (Digital) Plastic Jesus: Real Faith in a Synthetic World
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      • (Digital) Faithful Resilience: The Six-Part Guide to Building Spiritual, Physical, and Social Climate Resilience
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Blue Christmas: What the Blake Plateau teaches us about Advent

12/9/2025

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Off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina is an ecological treasure trove found in a region called the Blake Plateau. This extraordinary sacred ecosystem is home to the world's largest deep-sea coral reef habitat, where floating Sargassum seaweed meadows nurture colossal sperm whales, bluefin tuna, whale sharks, threatened loggerhead sea turtles, rare seabirds, and thousands of other species. 
When we think of coral reefs and the life they hold, it’s natural and easy to imagine bright colors and sunlight weaving through the water. What is fascinating about the Blake Plateau is how life is formed in complete darkness. The reef-like structures in the Blake Plateau are mainly made up of a deep-sea coral named Lophelia, which is a ghostly white. The Lophelia coral “mounds” grow in complete darkness over tens of thousands of years, supporting a diverse community of wildlife, including close to 100 species of fish.
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In addition to providing an important habitat for fish and marine life, the deepsea corals on the Blake Plateau consume organic matter that rains down from the ocean’s surface and recycle it into essential nutrients for the entire ecosystem. As the Gulf Stream rolls over the plateau, it pushes these nutrients back up to the surface, supporting the ocean’s wildlife. These nutrients ultimately sustain the region’s fisheries, and all of us who rely on them. 

As the Blake Plateau reminds us of the beauty of the darkness, the Season of Advent invites us to sit with the darkness, creating space for quiet and centering. Like the deep sea coral offers life giving nutrients across the Ocean, Advent offers hope and reignites our imagination of healing and restoration for all of Creation. This Advent, may we embrace this Season of darkness to sustain our collective work together.
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Madison Mayhew
Policy and Advocacy Manager
Creation Justice Ministries

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Celebrating World Fisheries Day: Honoring the Life of Our Oceans

12/5/2025

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World Fisheries Day is celebrated annually on November 21 and is designed to raise awareness about the importance of healthy aquatic ecosystems and the sustainable management of fisheries.  Millions of people depend on healthy and sustainable marine ecosystems to provide food for their survival and livelihood.  It is equally important that fish populations are protected from overfishing and allowed to thrive.  As we celebrate the protection and thriving of fisheries, we can also give thanks and feel gratitude for this amazing planet and all the life that it supports. 
 
As we recognize and feel the interconnectedness between people and all living things, such as the world’s fisheries, we expand the Body of Christ to encompass all of the natural world, not just humans.  We see how each ecosystem, when it is working in balance, sustains life and supports neighboring ecosystems.  It is humbling to slow down enough to think how amazing this planet is and how the Earth provides everything we need to survive and thrive.  And not just for humanity but for all of life from the microscopic organisms to the Blue Whales.  The Earth is truly amazing and life giving.
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Harbor Christian Church has established a program called Living Coast Ministry (formerly Blue Theology) that focuses on the interconnection between the natural marine world and the divine.  Our Living Coast Theologians enjoy a week-long summer residential program at Harbor Christian Church in Newport Beach, California.  Harbor is located just across the street from the Upper Newport Back Bay.  Being located in coastal Southern California gives us access to many wild places that most people never have the opportunity to experience.  Living Coast Ministry at Harbor supports participants in visiting these natural wonders while helping to develop an ecological spirituality.
 
What do we mean by ecological spirituality? Throughout the week, each group enjoys hands-on experiences that deeply connect them to the surrounding ocean and shoreline ecology. Each evening participants are led in discussions, sacred experiences and activities that support them in crafting their unique ecological lens on spirituality. In other words, Living Coast Ministry brings together real world experience and the sacred, allowing participants to ask new questions of their faith and to open to more expansive experiences of the divine. ​
 
We love the opportunity to host youth groups and their chaperones from all over the country.  To date we have hosted groups from Minnesota, Colorado, Maryland, Kentucky as well as local groups from Southern California. Our Living Coast Ministry team would love to hear from and potentially host you and your group. 
 
Click here for more information on Living Coast Ministry in Newport Beach.​
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Ryan Cullumber
Associate Pastor
Harbor Christian Church

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The Holy Work Happening Underground: How Advent Teaches Us to Prepare in Stillness

12/5/2025

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Advent is a season that teaches us how to live in the tension between what is and what could be. It invites us into the quiet, expectant posture of creation itself: the way the earth grows still while life below the surface gathers strength for renewal.
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In winter, the mycelial networks beneath the forest floor quietly expand. The earthworms move deeper into the soil, slowing their metabolism. The dormant seeds of wildflowers lie in wait, needing the cold to prepare them for growth. None of this looks dramatic. But it is holy work, the slow, faithful preparation that allows life to rise again.

This year, I’ve been holding close the truth that Advent offers: stillness does not mean stagnation. Waiting is not the absence of work. Hope is not naïve; it is preparatory.
Stillness does not mean stagnation. Waiting is not the absence of work. Hope is not naïve; it is preparatory.
And when I look at the movement for creation justice, I see that same holy, subterranean work happening all around us.
​

In a year when protections for God’s creation were rolled back and environmental harms intensified, our community did not retreat. Instead, it rooted itself.

Beneath the headlines, beneath the noise, something powerful has been stirring.


Here at Creation Justice Ministries, we have felt that stirring in so many ways:
  • In public witness, as Christians gathered in Washington, D.C., and across the country to pray, lament, and proclaim peace with God’s creation.
  • In pulpits and classrooms, where more than 250 faith leaders were trained through EcoPreacher and Creation Justice Coaches to preach hope and courage in a climate-changed world.
  • In congregations, where resources like Power of God and Truth, Healing, and Repair helped communities deepen their discipleship and root themselves in restorative practice.
  • In resilience work, where local churches in Baltimore, Austin, Orlando, and so many other places work toward planting trees, restoring ecosystems, and strengthening their capacity to care for one another.
  • In advocacy, as thousands of Christians spoke up to defend clean air, protect marine sanctuaries, and uphold the laws that safeguard God’s creation.​
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Season of Creation Public Witness (Washington, DC)
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Christian Leaders for Creation Justice Retreat (June 2025)
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Avery post preaching at New Hope Camp for Earth Sabbath
None of this makes the nightly news. But like the root systems beneath frozen soil, it is strengthening us for what is coming. It is preparing us to meet the world’s pain with the light of Christ, a light Advent promises is already on its way.

So I find myself asking this Advent:
What strength is God stirring in us now?
What quiet preparation is happening in our congregations, in our communities, in the corners of our own hearts?


My prayer is that we enter this season with the humility of creation, willing to rest, willing to listen, and willing to be renewed so that we can rise with hope into the year ahead.

Below you’ll find ways to take action this month. May each step be part of the strength we are stirring up together.
With the hope of peace on earth for all creation,
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​Avery Davis Lamb

Executive Director
Creation Justice Ministries

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Interior Department Proposes Plan to Wreck America’s Coasts with Offshore Drilling

12/2/2025

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Draft proposal of five-year offshore plan opens nearly all U.S. waters to drilling

​Press Release Date: November 20, 2025
Location: Washington, D.C.
Contact: Cory Gunkel, Megan Jordan | email: [email protected], [email protected] | tel: Cory Gunkel, 202.868.4061

Today, the Trump administration released a draft of its new offshore drilling plan for the next five years, which proposes opening the coast of California to oil and gas leasing. The plan also opens a portion of the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and vast areas off Alaska, to offshore leasing.

The plan proposes six offshore lease sales in California between 2027 and 2030. There have been no new leases issued in federal waters off California since the mid-1980s. The leasing proposal would also allow offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, including Florida, outside of a 100-mile “buffer.” The Arctic Ocean would also see lease sales in the draft plan. Almost a decade ago, oil companies abandoned leases they owned in the Arctic Ocean following a series of mishaps, fines, government investigations, and, most famously, the grounding of the drill rig Kulluk.

The National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program, also known as the Five-Year Plan, determines where the federal government will sell leases for offshore drilling from 2026-2031. The proposed draft plan would allow drilling across more than 1 billion acres of U.S. federal waters, including protected areas.

Oceana Campaign Director Joseph Gordon released the following statement condemning the new proposal:
​
“This draft plan is an oil spill nightmare! The last thing America needs now is a massive expansion of offshore drilling that could shut down our shores with catastrophic oil spills. Our coastal communities, and their multi-billion-dollar economies, rely on healthy oceans to survive. The Atlantic Coast will thankfully be spared, but this dangerous proposal to still sell off millions of acres of our oceans is a betrayal of the bipartisan voices — including U.S. lawmakers, business leaders, and the people who live along these coasts — who oppose more offshore drilling. Congress, and coastal state leaders, must stand together to defend all of our coasts and demand that the Trump administration go back to the drawing board to take their states out of the final plan. Our coastlines must be safeguarded, not given away to oil and gas interests.”

The introduction of this new draft opens a 60-day comment period in which the public can voice its concerns. After this comment period is complete, the Trump administration will issue a proposed program, with an additional 90-day comment period. Following that 90-day comment period, the administration will release the Proposed Final Program that will be sent to Congress for at least 60 days for consideration prior to finalizing the Five-Year Plan.

The process began with a Request For Information (RFI) on April 30 that started a 45-day comment period to allow stakeholders to provide input on offshore oil and gas drilling. The period closed with more than 85,000 comments, most of which opposed expanded lease sales.

A poll released by Oceana in July 2024 revealed that two-thirds of American voters (64%) support their elected officials protecting U.S. coastlines from new offshore drilling, with similar support among registered voters in coastal states (66%). 

“We cannot allow for offshore oil and gas expansion on the West Coast.  Coastal property owners, businesses, their communities and visitors were severely harmed by California’s 2015 and 2021 offshore oil spills,” said Grant Bixby, Principal Broker, Bixby Residential Group, and founding member of the Business Alliance for Protecting the Pacific Coast (@BAPPC), which represents over 8,100 West Coast business members. “Our own clients who operate vacation rentals received cancellations for months, and those visitors were lost to hundreds of other local businesses up and down the coast. Our harbors and beaches were completely shut down. Any offshore drilling is not worth the economic and environmental risk to our state which relies on a clean coast with open beaches, harbors, and wetlands.” 

“News that the Trump Administration’s Five-Year Plan dramatically expands drilling in the Gulf is a breach of the public’s right to clean and healthy waters,” said Martha Collins, Executive Director for Healthy Gulf. “The Gulf is already a sacrifice zone of air and water pollution and abandoned oil wells, and new drilling will be even more dangerous as the industry expands into deeper and riskier waters. The opening of the eastern Gulf to drilling directly contradicts Trump’s previous moratoriums keeping Florida waters off the table. Opening up waters from the high arctic to the Gulf will not move our country forward to a clean energy future and energy independence this administration so craves.”

“This plan is a dangerous gift to the oil and gas industry at the expense of our planet and shared future,” said Marce Gutiérrez-Graudiņš, Azul Founder and Executive Director. “This administration wants to open vast new areas of the West Coast, the Gulf of Mexico, and Alaska to drilling – gutting environmental safeguards and endangering communities in the process. Latino voters across the country, and across party lines, overwhelmingly reject more offshore drilling, as seen in our 2024 National Azul Poll. Our communities have lived the consequences of oil spills and pollution, and they are calling on our leaders to move us beyond fossil fuels.”

“When we consider the earth as God’s beloved Creation and our neighbor as deeply connected to the land, air, and water we share, we must question decisions which appear to favor short-term gain over long-term flourishing,” said Avery Davis Lamb, Executive Director of Creation Justice Ministries. “The proposed expansion of offshore drilling in our nation’s waters not only threatens precious marine ecosystems, but also threatens the livelihoods of our neighbors who will be more exposed to toxic pollution. This announcement fails to provide the vision and justice our times demand. We strongly oppose this proposal and call for a transformative way forward — one that honors Creation, protects the vulnerable, and sets a course toward renewed life.” 

“The Business Alliance for Protecting the Atlantic Coast lauds the exclusion of East Coast planning areas from the Draft Proposed Program, but we are disappointed to see what is still a serious expansion of oil and gas infrastructure in American waters. No coastal community deserves dirty oil drilling off their shores and the inevitable spills it will bring,” said Sandra Bundy, President of the Business Alliance for Protecting the Atlantic Coast. “Coastal economies across the country will be impacted for decades into the future if this plan is finalized and we continue to see the results of reliance on fossil fuels at a time when we know we can and should do better.”

“The South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce wants to thank all our state’s elected officials for their public opposition to drilling for oil in the Atlantic,” said Frank Knapp, President and CEO of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce. “Not only were their voices important at the beginning of this planning process, but they were extremely critical after the news several weeks ago that the Atlantic would be included in the drilling plan.  Appreciation is well-deserved for the advocacy of Governor McMaster and our Congressional delegation led by Senator Graham.”

Over the past decade, hundreds of municipalities, 60,000 businesses, and 500,000 fishing families — as well as thousands of elected officials from both parties — have opposed offshore drilling activities off their waters.

There are significant risks with offshore drilling today, and oil spills continue to be an ongoing problem. More than 7,300 oil spills occurred in federal waters between 2010 and 2022 — an average of more than one spill every day. Offshore oil and gas drilling causes harmful pollution at every phase of the process, including exploration, production, and transportation.

A 2021 analysis by Oceana found that ending new leasing could prevent more than $720 billion in damage to people, property, and the environment. The oil industry currently holds more than 2,000 leases, according to a 2023 Oceana report, with 75% of that ocean acreage unused.
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For more information about Oceana’s campaign to prevent the expansion of offshore drilling in the United States, please click here.
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This Black Friday, Choose Wonder Over Consumption

11/28/2025

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What if today, instead of opting to spend our money and energy online and in stores, we opted to spend our time out in creation? Today, our team is choosing to #OptOutside, pausing in gratitude and delight in God’s creation. #OptOutside was started by REI in 2015 as a way of encouraging their staff and patrons to spend the day after Thanksgiving not consuming, but rather delighting in an outdoor activity they enjoy. 

Our world today often feels frenzied, chaotic, and uncertain. I’m reflecting on how my own hurried purchases during this season might stem from a desire to control something, anything, in my daily life, as so much feels outside of my control. What would it look like not to buy our way into security and safety in this time, but rather be shepherded into the welcoming and protective presence of God through spending time in his creation?

Creation knows well seasons of upheaval and disruption and yet, abiding in God’s care, resiliently and steadily continues on, creating life and beauty that reflects its Creator. ​

Let us follow that example today, choosing to connect with the creation we are part of and express gratitude for the wisdom it shares with us on how to persist amidst uncertain times. Instead of spending the day controlling and consuming, let us learn, delight, and take refuge alongside creation, encountering the God who holds us and accompanies us through all seasons. 

Practice for Engaging Creation

When I’m needing to combat anxiousness or the need to control, I find grounding myself in the physical reality around me to be particularly helpful in tuning in to the Holy Spirit’s presence and peace. As you spend time out in creation today, take a moment to engage all of your senses, ground yourself in God’s creation, and encounter His presence. 
As you wander, find a comfortable spot to sit and take a few minutes in silence, paying attention to your breath as your body rests in stillness. When you are ready, take notice of the creation around you with: 

5 things you can see
4 things you can touch
3 things you can hear
2 things you can smell
1 thing you can taste

Give thanks to God for each of these things. I invite you to sit in awe and wonder of a creation that persists amidst upheaval, and be encouraged that in Christ and in community with creation, we can too.
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Marissa Salgado 
Church Engagement Manager
Creation Justice Ministries

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Love Is a Pilgrimage: Advent Reflection on Love

11/25/2025

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For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16

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​We throw around the word 'love' a lot.

​“Love it!” I often say in support of something. “Love You” I say at the end of phone calls. If you play song association, the easiest word to win on is “Love,” because most songs are about strong emotions that we usually characterize as love.

​In this advent Season, I'm challenged to think of love in relation to the incarnation of Christ. In light of Jesus joining the created world, I’m invited to think of love as a pilgrimage. 
In light of Jesus joining the created world, I’m invited to think of love as a pilgrimage. 
A journey that traverses realms and statuses to meet someone or thing where they are and care for them. If the Incarnation is a demonstration of Love, that perhaps love has less to do with strong emotion, and more to do with strong action.

As I seek to love my fellow creature, what realms must I cross? Is there a valley of woes separating me from my fellow human? Is there an emotion wall separating me from the trees in the land? Is the chasm of knowledge between me and my ability to advocate for creation too deep for me to wade through?

Perhaps it would be an act of love to traverse those lengths.

​Perhaps on the other side when I say “Love You” to my fellow creatures, it will be a summary of evidence rather than a declaration of sentiment.
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​Naomi François
Seminary Intern
​Creation Justice Ministries

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Waiting with Creation, Longing for Joy: Advent Reflection on Joy

11/25/2025

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Isaiah 35:1-6, 10

The desert and the parched land will exult;
the steppe will rejoice and bloom.
They will bloom with abundant flowers,
and rejoice with joyful song.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to them,
the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the LORD,
the splendor of our God.
Strengthen the hands that are feeble,
make firm the knees that are weak,
say to those whose hearts are frightened:
Be strong, fear not!
Here is your God,
he comes with vindication;
with divine recompense
he comes to save you.
Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,
the ears of the deaf be cleared;
then will the lame leap like a stag,
then the tongue of the mute will sing.
Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return
and enter Zion singing,
crowned with everlasting joy;
they will meet with joy and gladness,
​sorrow and mourning will flee.
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For much of my adult life with God, joy has been a significant, anchoring part of my faith. Through times of great delight and times of deep sorrow, the Spirit has graciously and kindly planted joy as the lens through which I both celebrate and mourn. It’s not a joy that removes or disregards pain; it’s one that anchors me in deep hope and in faith in a God who promises to make all things right. It has always felt like something not of my own doing, a gift for which I have been immensely grateful.

I must confess, however, that throughout this last year, joy as the lens through which to process all that I, my community, and creation are going through has been elusive. It’s been a year of grief, anger, loss, and confusion. I’ve waited for that replanting of joy to make itself known again, and in this season of Advent that longing has only grown.

In extended seasons of waiting, we can lose sight of what exactly we are in anticipation of. We can begin to feel as if we are alone in our waiting, sinking further into questions like: God, will the restoration you promise, the planting of joy from your Spirit and the making of all things right, truly come to pass?

Isaiah 35:1–6, 10 reminds us not only of what we are waiting for, but of who we are waiting with. 
Isaiah 35:1–6, 10 reminds us not only of what we are waiting for, but of who we are waiting with.
It offers a vision of human and more-than-human creation together being crowned with everlasting joy. The prophet tells us that the deserts will exalt the Lord and the flowers will burst forth in bloom and praise. We see those who are blind, deaf, lame, and mute finding healing, and all of creation being met by the Lord with joy and gladness. Sorrow and mourning are far from creation’s sight as we delight in communion with our Creator.

Though the full planting of joy I know is God’s desire for me is something I’m still waiting for in many ways, I’ve taken great comfort in waiting alongside the community of creation in this Advent season. The songs and prayers of my multilingual church family, the laughter of children, the sunset over the Pacific, the company of trees on long sabbath hikes… each has accompanied me in my waiting and has graciously invited me to accompany them in theirs.

This Advent, I’m in awe of a creation that chooses to persist, sometimes even defiantly, and continue living as it waits for its restoration. If creation can persist through chaos and destruction, I can too. We wait together, we long for joy together, we build a community expectant for our Messiah together. And that, I’m realizing, is an expression of joy in and of itself. When we find community and solidarity with creation - a creation that reminds us we are not alone in our waiting - our radical commitment to continue living together becomes a planting of joy, joy rooted in the Spirit of our Creator as he continues to work and move and usher us all into the kingdom.

In this Advent season, as all of creation remembers that it has waited before and waits once again for its Redeemer, let us hold joy for and with one another. May this joy be what sustains us as we wait, grounding us in the patience James 5 calls us to, especially in times of suffering.
We do not wait in suffering alone.
We do not wait in suffering without joy.
Though not yet complete, creation
 is singing.
Creation 
is praising our God.
Let us join that song, and let it be a proclamation of resistance and a proclamation of joy.
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​Marissa Salgado
Church Engagement Manager
Creation Justice Ministries

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Peace Will Be the Norm: Advent Reflection on Peace

11/25/2025

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Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.
What will you do on the day of reckoning,
when disaster comes from afar?
To whom will you run for help?
Where will you leave your riches?
Nothing will remain but to cringe among the captives
or fall among the slain.

Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away,
his hand is still upraised.
“Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger,

in whose hand is the club of my wrath!
I send him against a godless nation,
I dispatch him against a people who anger me,
to seize loot and snatch plunder,
and to trample them down like mud in the streets.
But this is not what he intends,
this is not what he has in mind;
his purpose is to destroy,
to put an end to many nations.
‘Are not my commanders all kings?’ he says.
‘Has not Kalno fared like Carchemish?
Is not Hamath like Arpad,
and Samaria like Damascus?
As my hand seized the kingdoms of the idols,
kingdoms whose images excelled those of Jerusalem and Samaria--
shall I not deal with Jerusalem and her images
as I dealt with Samaria and her idols?’ "
I​saiah 10:1-11
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Peace will be the norm!

Not only do these verses tell of the joyous coming birth of Jesus, but also the peace and unity that will manifest through the Spirit of God in Jesus. That same Spirit stretches across millennia into today’s world.

The text shares that Jesus would judge from a greater truth originating deep within, where the Spirit of God dwells, the seat of righteousness. What seems impossible to human senses will be the norm. 
What seems impossible to human senses will be the norm.
Jesus will advocate for the needy and the poor of the earth. The wicked will be measured and judged by Christ’s word - not by outdoing them in wickedness. Differences that normally divide will unite. Might will not threaten gentleness, and gentleness will not be disdained by might. Unity through interconnectedness, where each being has its fit, will flourish.

On the Holy mountain of God, no one and nothing will harm or destroy because to be in the knowledge of God is to be life-giving. The knowledge of God will saturate the earth as the waters cover the sea. And so, in the words of the great teacher Howard Thurman:
‘Do whatever it takes, whatever it takes, my friend, to tunnel all the way down through all these layers, until you hit this eternal residue in you. For it is where nothing can abide that is not authentic. It is where there is no barrier. It is in you. And when the God in your spirit makes contact with the God of life, then there is established, in that moment, a courage that can turn any darkness into light-- any darkness into light. 
​What seems impossible to the human understanding, for ushering peace and wholeness into the world, was declared possible millennia ago and continues to apply today.
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Shema Roberts
Seminary Intern
​Creation Justice Ministries

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Imagination Is Resistance: Advent I Reflection on Hope

11/25/2025

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It's a tricky thing to talk about hope these days. On one hand, we don’t want to be completely without it. Giving into cynicism and fear not only feels defeatist, but in this season of Advent, it also feels unfaithful. But there is a thin line between “hope” and a blind optimism that refuses to acknowledge the grim nature of reality. For hope to be the kind of hope that our world both needs and demands, it has to be a hope that is rooted deeply in the realities of our time.

​The world is crying for a hope that has a clear eyed vision of the world as it is and yet has the courage to imagine the world that can be. 
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Imagination, we’re finding more and more is a muscle that needs to be exercised. As a friend said to me recently, “everything that now is was once imagined”. Believe it or not, the world that we live in is the world that someone (or groups of someones) dreamed into existence.
Hope, then, demands better dreams, better vision, and better imagination.
But hope also demands that we do a little bit each day to remind ourselves of those better dreams and that we work a little bit each day to make those dreams a reality. So then this work of hope is the work of imagining a different future and then doing everything in our power to have the present be a little more like that imagined future. 
​

It’s a tricky thing to talk about hope these days. Trickier still if that talk isn’t matched with hopeful actions.

So may this Advent be a season not just of waiting, but of building. May our hope be bold enough to imagine, and brave enough to act.
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​Derrick Weston
Director of Theological Educations and Formation
Creation Justice Ministries

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Giving Thanks, Telling the Truth: A Thanksgiving Reflection Rooted in Justice

11/25/2025

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As the season turns and the trees outside my window give themselves back to the soil, I find myself reflecting on what I’m most grateful for. At the top of that list is you — this ecumenical community committed to protecting, restoring, and rightly sharing God’s creation.

Thanksgiving is a complicated day. It carries both the language of gratitude and the legacy of harm. It’s a holiday that invites us to give thanks even as it sits atop a history of violence and dispossession of Indigenous Peoples and lands.

In a world of wounds, gratitude and truth-telling belong together
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This year, I’m holding both.

I’m grateful for you — for the congregations learning to love their watersheds again, for the pastors preaching courage in a climate-changed world, for the advocates who refuse to look away. And I’m committed, with you, to the ongoing work of repair: listening to Indigenous neighbors, facing the truth of our history, and tending the land and waters that sustain us.ot your gratitude in place:
As you gather around your table, I invite you to take a moment to 
root your gratitude in place:
Learn the land and watershed where you gather.
A simple practice of orienting ourselves to place — and to the peoples who have stewarded it since long before this country existed. Use our Faithful Resilience StoryMap to help identify your watershed and the Indigenous communities historically and currently connected to your area.

Offer a word of acknowledgment and commitment.
Not as a performative gesture, but as a small act of truth-telling: a reminder that gratitude requires responsibility. Hear Vance Blackfox’s reflections on Land Acknowledgement as a first step, and find his example as a starting place. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America also offers a Land Acknowledgement Guide for those who are looking for references on how to do so within their church.

Consider a gift of repair.
Contribute to a settler land tax (or back rent). Consider including this as part of your Thanksgiving offering. Voluntary reparations funds support Indigenous groups who have experienced land dispossession and genocide. Explore the Shuumi Land Tax and the Wiyot Honor Tax as examples.

​Wherever you find yourself this week — around crowded tables or in quiet, wild places — may you sense the mercy that holds us all. May your gratitude deepen your courage and commitment to justice, especially for our Indigenous siblings. And may the God who dwells in river and soil, in forest and feast, draw you into the sacred work of healing the world.

 
I am deeply thankful to do this work alongside you.
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Avery Davis Lamb 
Executive Director 
Creation Justice Ministries

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