Monthly Archives: April 2021

Ep. 0521–Neddy Astudillo: Adding Environmental Actions to Our Spiritual Practices

General

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Simpler OneEarth Living Podcast
A co-production of Simple Living Works! and The Common Good Podcast (Jubilee OneEarth Economics)

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SHOW NOTES

https://www.linkedin.com/in/neddy-astudillo-067b449a

https://www.presbyterianmission.org/story/astudillo-receives-presbyterians-for-earth-care-annual-eco-justice-award/

https://justiceunbound.org/one-body-with-earth-a-wake-up-call/

SacredPeopleSacredEarth.org

GreenFaith.org

LivingTheChange.net

The climate emergency has been getting new attention from faith-based and spiritually-oriented organizations. As a result, a lot of environmental activism is enriched as spiritual practice. Eco-spirituality and eco-theology are rapidly connecting the language of faith and spirit to science and what’s happening in creation. The deep energies of spirituality are rising to face the dark energies of the destruction of life on our planet. And that’s the focus of our conversation in this episode of the Simpler OneEarth Living Podcast.

Learn here about the organization Green Faith and the special work of Neddy Astudillo, a pastor, farmer, and eco-theologian who works from a framework of faith to train groups of activists on specific steps by which they can help save life on our planet, and have it be part of their spiritual practices.

The climate emergency isn’t coming, it’s now … and it’s been with us for some time. Though slow at first, congregations, faith organizations, and faith-based campuses are now hurrying to develop actions that help save life on our planet. We see a growing awareness that creation is under enormous stress, induced by humans. The awareness includes that the huge changes that need to happen have a deadline. 2030, the year that hundreds of international scientists have agreed is the deadline for actions to keep Earth from heating over 1.5° above pre-industrial levels.

All faith-connected organizations need to lay out boldly that meeting the deadline requires costly discipleship. What we eat, where we bank, what we invest in—all of these are now spiritual practices. None of them is separate from faith. 

Our guest today understands the scope of what is needed. She’ll talk with us about how Green Faith is engaging the challenge.

We can all commit to do something really meaningful. . . And, please promote this important conversation to others.

Lee first met Neddy Astudillo on a farm in northern Illinois. This organic farm has a great story told in the movie, The Dirt on Farmer John. Neddy and her spouse, Tom Spaulding, started a Learning Center on the farm to teach all that goes into healthy soil, organic growing, and farming without pesticides or chemicals. That Learning Center has evolved to train new farmers in organic, regenerative methods. Revolutionary! But our conversation with Neddy today has a little different focus. 

As an eco-minister and eco-theologian, Neddy directs Green Faith in Florida and in Latin America. Be sure you go to the GreenFaith.org to learn far more about Neddy’s accomplishments and hopes. How they frame their work:

Religious and spiritual communities everywhere generate a moral awakening to the sacredness of Earth and the dignity of all people. Together, we are building resilient, caring communities and economies that meet everyone’s needs and protect the planet. The era of conquest, extraction, and exploitation has given way to cooperation and community.

The good life is one of connectedness—with each other and all of nature. It is a world of flourishing life that replaces despair with joy, scarcity with shared abundance, and privilege with justly distributed power.

Please tell us your thoughts on these subjects. Leave a message on Jubilee OneEarth Economics and/or Simple Living Works! Facebook pages.

If you’re not so sure you can plant or tend any trees, can you consider making a donation to the OneEarth Jubilee Tree Fund? In 2021, we will be getting trees in the ground in the San Diego region as well as two regions in Mexico. This  Fund also gives you a chance to compensate for the CO2 your travel and energy use put into the air. The trees you fund will take it out of the air. Either by planting or donating, we encourage action. The crises underway on our planet require us to act differently, to act in cooperation with nature as our ally. You can donate by check, payable to Jubilee Economics Ministries (designate that it’s for the Tree Fund), or online at www.oneearthjubilee.com/donations.

Earlier Episodes

Ep. 0421–Arborist Robin Rivet on Reversing Climate Crises through Informed Tree Actions

As we look for powerful allies in the continuing urgent work of reversing the climate crises, let’s call her Tree. What does Tree do? She is pulling CO2 out of the air, cooling where you live, saving energy, giving us healthy food, and that’s just some of what she does. You don’t need to pay lots of money to enlist Tree’s help either. Maybe none at all. In this podcast conversation, Robin Rivet gives us a do-it-yourself way to help save life on our planet.

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The content Robin gives us helps us know we—you and I and our organizations and congregations— CAN do something to reverse the multiple climate disasters by addressing the annual net loss of trees on our planet. If our banks lost that much wealth year after year, we’d be deeply concerned. Let’s see if we can match that level of concern when we learn of the tremendous loss of environmental wealth, or natural capital as it is also called, in the annual net loss of trees. Robin will tell us more about the wealth and treasure in our trees—a kind of wealth our systems and our eyes have not been trained to see.
Just to keep our conversation with arborist Robin Robin in perspective, listen for how it contrasts sharply with the news recently that billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Besos, and Elon Musk have committed to working on reversing climate change through grand technological and market-driven fixes. We do well to be wary of such promises. Markets have a history of being exploitive and technology’s history has extracted enormous amounts of resources from nature. They’ve gotten us to the climate mess we’re in. Gates, Besos, and Musk have all acquired extreme and excessive wealth from markets and technology. But they’ve taken nature’s wealth—commonwealth that belongs to all of us—to do so. No doubt there’s more money to be made from our planet’s climate crises. But will it be for the common good? The history of the industrial age gives little support to the thinking of the approach recommended by these high profile billionaires. And this conversation with Robin Rivet takes us in a refreshing different direction.

We can all commit to do something really meaningful as we gratefully celebrate Earth Day and Arbor Day. And, please, listeners, promote this important conversation to others.

If you’re not so sure you can plant or tend any trees, can you consider making a donation to the OneEarth Jubilee Tree Fund? In 2021, we will be getting trees in the ground in the San Diego region as well as two regions in Mexico. This  Fund also gives you a chance to compensate for the CO2 your travel and energy use put into the air. The trees you fund will take it out of the air. Either by planting or donating, we encourage action. The crises underway on our planet require us to act differently, to act in cooperation with nature as our ally. You can donate by check, payable to Jubilee Economics Ministries (designate that it’s for the Tree Fund), or online at www.oneearthjubilee.com/donations. 

More Info
https://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-y-rivet-0a004420
https://sdhort.org/Sys/PublicProfile/7644008
https://www.sdhortnews.org/search-results-page/Robin%20Rivet

 

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Ep. 0321–Mike Little: The Power of Money—Making All Our Money Accountable to Our Faith

How Lee’s benefited from Faith & Money Network. Visit FaithAndMoneyNetwork.org

Remembering ways JEM and F&MN have collaborated

Linking money to faith, when it affects ALL our uses of money and not just our giving, is itself a radical position.

Having this conversation now while the U.S. economy is being exposed for its inability to deal with grotesque income and wealth gaps—to wit, the stock market is at all time highs but the people without work and others who are underpaid are much too high for our economy to meet the standards of faith, financial morality, or an economy to hold up as a model.

The education and training that F&MN does

Your signature quote: “A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life.” — Wendell Berry. How is F&MN linking change of thinking values to change of practice?

Instances in which someone’s change of practice goes as far as  changing the economic and faith paradigms by which they live, e.g., is Christian faith naturally linked to the values of capitalism’s economic model? Do you see people shifting their faith and economic models?

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Ep. 0221–Economist Barry Shelley: Economic Assumptions and Initiatives for Change

The U.S. economy stumbled badly under the weight of the coronavirus pandemic. The new administration in Washington has inherited the worst jobs market in modern times. The challenge to find paths of recovery for households, small businesses, states, and more has been engaged. Here on the Simpler OneEarth Living podcast we pursue an economic model we call OneEarth Jubilee. Today we talk with an economist Barry Shelley, senior lecturer at Boston University, about assumptions that underlie the current national economy and initiatives people are taking that show different assumptions and economic models are possible.

In Jubilee Economics Ministries we benefit greatly from Barry because he is an economic advisor to JEM’s understanding and practice of an alternative economy rooted in creation more than wealth accumulation or maximization of profits. This conversation with Barry focuses in three areas: (1) the underlying assumptions of the prevailing economy and the challenges in moving our economy in new directions, (2) the discussions happening among professional economists about changes and different economic models, and (3) local initiatives he considers important in showing that alternative sub-economies can be created within the larger, prevailing economy.

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Ep. 0121: Grace Dyrness: Planning Economic Revitalization with Poor People instead of for Them. Wow!

Grace Roberts Dyrness is a community development consultant and professor. She has taught at the University of Southern California, Azusa Pacific University, and Fuller Theological Seminary, as well as institutions in Philippines, Indonesia and Kenya, with a focus on public service in an urban setting, social context of planning, community and transformational development, and sustainable tourism. Her approach has been to use advocacy planning and participatory approaches to engage people in communities in order to envision their own future and chart a path towards it.

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Invitation to Sign OneEarth Jubilee Covenant for the 2020’s

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