Celebrating Earth Day with First Pelagius Lutheran Church

It is Earth Day; on my seminary campus on Thursday, we celebrated by using natural materials to dye silk scarves.  We had a pot of black beans, a pot of turmeric, and a pot of turmeric blended with iron water, which is created by soaking rusty nails in a jar of water and vinegar.

We will hang them up in the courtyard on Tuesday, and people leaving chapel can take one.  That means that my Chapel Visuals class had the joy of dying extra scarves on Thursday.  I experimented not only with dyes, but also with leaves and tree detritus that I picked up off the ground.  We left everything soaking in dye, and my teacher took everything home with her to soak, and later this week-end to dry.

It took me back to Girl Scout days, where I worked on a merit badge by dying cloth with onion skins or beet chunks.  And yes, I do get class credit--ah, the joys of a seminary program that has a track for theology and the arts!

One of my classmates has two small children, and they've been having fun with chalk and sidewalks.  She's been having fun too.  

I noticed one theology on the sidewalk in the picture above, and decided to add another:

My problem with so many theologies of the cross is that they leave us all up there on that cross, crucified together with that message of sin and the worthlessness of humanity.  But that discounts the very first chapter of Genesis, which I paraphrase in my chalked walk.

To me, this contrast says much about the modern church, about 2000 years of Church History, and about Earth Day and the future.

I'm thinking of the last discussion post we are writing for my Church History II class.  The prompt concludes this way:  "With that in mind, come back to Tutu's remark, and look ahead a little bit. Where might be a place where the Christian enterprise would serve its mission, not by "raising the voice" but by "improving the argument" and how?"

I concluded my post this way:  

"I think that Christianity can “improve the argument” by moving away from our more common message of sin and unworthiness, and moving to a message of the inherent goodness of all creation, the creation that God proclaims “good and very good” (Genesis 1: 31, NIV). So please join me in worship at the First Pelagius Lutheran Church where we will have a Mimosa Mass every Sunday at 11:00 a.m. and a Creative Arts Worship experience every Wednesday at both 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. (this last sentence is just a dream at this point, but if you should find such a church, I’d love to know about it—and so would lots of other people, I’d be willing to bet)."