Earth Care Fellowship

We’ve Changed Our Name—Please Join Us

In an effort to broaden our mission and membership, the Earth Care Committee has changed its name to Earth Care Fellowship. We warmly invite anyone who’s interested in learning more about the Fellowship’s work, initiatives and earth vesper celebrations to come to this meeting and help us think about and plan the coming year’s activities.

Las Huertas Creek Restoration Field Day
for July 12, 2008 has been canceled.  We hope to reschedule a similar field day next Fall or Spring.

Las Placitas Association and the Earth Care Fellowship of Las Placitas Presbyterian Church are organizing a Restoration Field Day on Saturday July 12, from 9AM to 1PM, at the site of the quarter million dollar river restoration project along Las Huertas Creek (formerly a river feeding into the Rio Grande). All Placitans and others interested in the project are invited to participate.

The morning begins with a tour of the main site at the creek, with brief presentations by local experts on the long and colorful history of the area, its ecology, and the specifics of the extensive planting and restoration activities to date. So far, a thousand beneficial trees and shrubs have been planted, trails and holding pond dams constructed, and other structures set up to induce meandering of the creek (reducing erosion).

The project has been funded by the New Mexico environmental agency and the Federal Environmental Protection Agency. Las Placitas Association administers the grant. The goal is to decrease the major erosion into the creek and thus the silting of the Rio Grande during big rains. Other major benefits include restoring traditional flora and encouraging the abundant wildlife habitat of former times.

The site is near the location of the historic Las Placitas Indian Pueblo as well as the the San Jose de Las Huertas Land Grant Village, the largest unexcavated Spanish colonial town in the American Southwest, now owned by the Archaeological Conservancy.

After the tour, participants will break up into small work groups for an hour-plus of hands-on experience of the restoration: watering the planted areas; weeding out the exotic, non-native Siberian Elms and Salt Cedar, detrimental to the river ecology; making erosion gully brush and stone silt dams as well as Zuni Stone Bowl mini-water catchments, and river trail making.

Then all meet back for refreshments and lunch and wrap up presentations on the project. Lunch is potluck, with dishes and beverages to share.

Presenters for the day include Reid Bandeen, a hydrology expert, president of Las Placitas Association and author of the publication, "Best Management Practices for Erosion Control” and other work on local water harvesting. Other speakers will address the history and ecology of the Placitas area.

Participants should bring the requisite NM outdoor kit: hats, sunscreen, water and work gloves. The event goes from 9am to 1pm. Participants can meet at the Las Placitas Presbyterian Church at 8:30 AM to carpool to the site, a few minutes away. Detailed directions will also be posted at the church. Or you can contact John G for information and directions.

HIGHWAY CLEANUP

LPPC has adopted a portion of Highway 165 for cleanup.  Our section is between mile markers 4 and 5.   We usually meet  at the beginning of mile marker 4, on  the west side start of the S curve early in the morning. It takes about one hour to complete the job. If you care to join us Contact John G. Wear sturdy shoes, long pants and a hat.  We will provide vests, gloves and garbage bags.  Youth age 10 and older and adults are needed. 

The Spring highway cleanup was held on Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 8:30am.  Thanks to the HIGHWAY CLEANUP CREW for their work on sprucing up the LPPC’s mile of 165. It’s a great service to the whole Placitas community.

The Highway 165 cleanup of mile 4 to 5, on Saturday, November 3, went well with ten participants, and a quick bag pickup on the following Tuesday. Thanks to those who turned out and got it all done. Leland B was our dauntless can man, and so we got the aluminum separated out and recycled. Though it may not seem inviting to pick up trash for a couple of hours early on a Saturday morning, it’s quite a satisfying job done. And since you never know what you might find, it’s sort of a treasure hunt-with low expectations.

Saturday, October 14, 2006 was the first cleanup scheduled. We collected dozens of sacks of garbage from the roadside between mile 4 and mile 5. The second clean-up day was on Saturday, April 28^th at 8:00am.  As La Pastora reminded the children, it is part of our church’s Earth Covenant to respect and care for the Earth as God’s creation in trust to us. Please don’t litter. And speak up when you see others showing disrespect for the earth’s fragility.

Saving the Earth with a Lifetime of Gentle Irresistible Persistence

a message from the Earth Care Fellowship chair, John, 1/31/08

Helping to change human consciousness one mind at a time is probably mission one: to facilitate change in a fundamental attitude toward the earth and living on it, in it. This is ultimately so much more powerful than laws, coercions and penalties for destructive behavior, necessary though they may be. We know the change can happen because it’s happened (is happening) to each of us, in various and ever deepening ways. That’s what attracts us to something like Earth Care Fellowship.

So how do we go about it? A few ideas:

First we live the change as best we can, as lifelong students and practitioners. Then we preach it, write it, and teach it. We reach out, sometimes with bold words and actions, but mostly we press forward with gentle irresistible persistence over the remainder of each of our lives. This may sound like a mild response to our predicament, but I believe the key to its power is a deep intention sustained over a long period of time. Irresistible persistence. Saving the planet is a project of many generations, starting with ours. That’s the time scale for such a vast goal. To me no other cause is more important. If humans can’t survive and thrive on and with the earth into the deep future, then all our efforts to raise children and grand children and send them well-equipped and healthy beyond us down the years, all our religion, all art, the fruits of civilization, history, discovery, science, technology and social progress are moot—a brief, fascinating but failed experiment in this little part of the cosmos.

We need to venerate the earth and the web of life--and always more. None of us are finished or particularly advanced in this.

We seek ways to help individuals transmute their sense of themselves in the world, as ours has been and is being transformed—usually not in one bold flash of light, but slowly over time, with thought, wonder and incremental revelations and observations of how things are. And particularly we would hope to influence how children are taught and raised to see themselves as inseparably part of all that lives, with a deep responsibility to honor and protect it. That’s where change becomes powerful and robust and long lasting.

A few more thoughts:

• Let’s minimize hand wringing. It takes too much energy away from the task at hand.

• Each of us finds what he or she can and wants to do, and then does it (and evolves it) year after year. There’s no prescribed path, no proven ideal approach. We need and are beginning to get thousands of approaches to ceasing and ameliorating humankind’s depredations and abuse of the creation. We surely need thousands more.

•  Find and create a web of alliances of like-minded people and organizations. This is clearly far too big a project for individuals or small groups going it alone.

• Find ways to make loving and being aware of the earth and all that issues from it a regular part of our spiritual practice, daily if possible.

Faith and the Environment Discussion Group

2008 Monday Night Earth Forums

The Monday Night Group recently concluded a series on American Transcendentalism, looking at the work of three superb women writers on spirit and the environment. Thanks to Charles Little for producing the series and for his fine introductory essay—and to Ila L, Bunny B, and Joy P for anchoring it with able leadership.

An Inconvenient Truth

The Earth Care Committee highly recommends the film "An Inconvenient Truth."  For more information click on the following link:  About the film 

On Wednesday , Oct. 11, 2007 at 7:00 pm, many of us attended the free viewing of  the film shown here at Las Placitas Church.  This documentary film about global warming, narrated by Al Gore, is highly recommended. The film is one hour and 40 minutes in length.  A very brief panel discussion followed the viewing.

New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light

LPPC is a member of the New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light (NMIPL), which mobilizes an active response from faith communities to the reality of global warming by promoting energy conservation, energy efficiency and renewable energy in our personal lives and those of our congregations.

  Click here to link to the New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light website.   

"On Faith and the Environment in America: Can Religion Save God's Green Earth?"
Lecture by Charles E. Little.

Thursday, October 6, 2005   ~   7 - 8 pm

Mr. Little spoke on how and why there has been significant religious involvement in environmental issues since the early 1990s; the origins of an American earth spirituality as expressed by Thoreau, Muir, and Leopold (all nonchurch-goers) and Native American beliefs; the uneasy association of organized religion with the environmental movement; and some observations on the potentials for a non-sectarian "place-oriented" religious
environmentalism in the future.
 
Charles E. Little is a writer on American land, landscape, and the environment. Among his recent books are Discover America (Smithsonian), Sacred Lands of Indian America (Abrams), The Encyclopedia of Environmental Studies (Facts on File), and The Dying of the Trees (Viking-Penguin).  Formerly head of natural resources policy research at the Library of Congress (Congressional Research Service) and president of The American Land Forum, a Washington, D.C., think-tank, he now lives in Placitas, New Mexico. Little's current projects include a book on religion and the environment and a study of economic and ecological recovery in the Great Plains.

This was the first lecture of The University of New Mexico Geography Department Fall 2005 Lecture Series.

Click here to link to the Earth Spirituality website to read the lecture.