Month: October 2025

Pope Leo’s Ice Blessing

We need to hear this in our Protestant churches in the United States every Sunday (and Wednesday and Sunday night and Tuesday during gatherings, etc.). Glad to see Leo taking on the ecological mantle from Francis.

Emphasis mine in the quote here…

Pope Leo XIV blesses glacier ice urging global leaders to act on climate change – India Today:

Citing Francis’s text, Leo recalled that some leaders had chosen to “deride the evident signs of climate change, to ridicule those who speak of global warming and even to blame the poor for the very thing that affects them most.”

He called for a change of heart to truly embrace the environmental cause and said any Christian should be onboard.

“We cannot love God, whom we cannot see, while despising his creatures. Nor can we call ourselves disciples of Jesus Christ without participating in his outlook on creation and his care for all that is fragile and wounded,” he said, presiding on a stage that featured a large chunk of a melting glacier from Greenland and tropical ferns.

R.I.P. Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall, legendary primatologist, has died at age 91 : NPR:

In just a few months, Goodall a made a major discovery. Chimps could make and use tools — as she learned by watching a chimp she’d named David Greybeard. (Goodall has called him “my favorite chimpanzee of all time.”) He stripped leaves off a twig, then used it to fish termites out of a mound. Goodall later told NPR that her mentor, Louis Leakey, was impressed.

“He said, ‘Well, it’s always been considered that man is the only toolmaking animal. So we now have to redefine tool, redefine man, or include chimpanzees with humans,’ ” she recalled.

The New Ecozoic Reader

Prof. Sam Mickey discusses the volume he edited titled The New Ecozoic Reader this week. If you’re anywhere interested or adjacent to the study of Religion and Ecology, I highly suggest listening to the podcast episode here as well as reading at least the Introduction here to The New Ecozoic Reader (available for free download or you can order a print copy as well)! 

Lisa Dahill’s chapter on rewilding Christianity was particulary fascinating to me.

Season Five | Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology:

In this episode of Spotlights, our host discusses a very special issue of The New Ecozoic Reader that has just been released. This special issue, edited by the Forum’s own Sam Mickey and Sam C. King offers retrospective and prospective views on the field of religion and ecology: looking at where we’ve been, where things stand now, and how the field, and our work together, could evolve going forward. The issue is very intergenerational and includes essays by both esteemed and established figures in the field, and younger scholars, just emerging on the scene. The issue includes a foreword by Iyad Abumoghli of UNEP Faith for Earth Coalition, a preface by Sam King and Sam Mickey, an Introduction by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, and contributions from: Heather Eaton, David Haberman, Elizabeth Allison, Whitney A. Bauman, Ibrahim Ozdemir, Jason Brown, Kim Carfore, Sarah Pike, Lisa E. Dahill, Nancy Wright, Jim Robinson, Melanie L. Harris, Christopher Key Chapple, Dan Smyer Yu, Charisma K. Lepcha, Philip P. Arnold, Sandra L. Bigtree, Graham Harvey, Russell C. Powell, Rachael Petersen, Terra Schwerin Rowe, and Larry Rasmussen.

Lost Connections

Great post from Merianna about relational being and our real need to have connections that will help us imagine our way out of our modern spiritual crisis in the context of Hurricane Helene…

Lost Connection – by Merianna Harrelson:

Without thinking I asked, “Where you all right? How about your house? How about your neighborhood? Do you need anything?” The lost connection actually helped me search for connection with complete strangers. Suddenly, no one was irritated or frustrated waiting in line or waiting for a plug to charge what they needed. Instead we were all thankful to see each other.

A year later as I think about the way we as a community started to congregate in places that had power, I realized that this is what is missing. We have become so used to being connected all the time to news streams, events from around the world, and posts and comments that we have lost connection to the people we pass every day. We have forgotten that these connections are the connections that remind us that we are all God’s beloved children and we have all lived through something that has shaken us to our core.