A Matter of Spirit Spring 2022 - Seasons of Justice

A P U B L I CAT I O N O F T H E I N T E R C O M M U N I T Y P E AC E & J U ST I C E C E N T E R • N O. 13 4 • S P R I N G 2 0 2 2

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Ecological Conversion • Water Gives Life: Reflections on Line 3 Creating Change in Moments of Rest • Running on Sacred Ground

From the Editor

All of life and nature is cyclical and seasonal. We move through life interconnected to each other and the Earth.

Reflecting on the Earth’s natural patterns—the ebb and flow of the ocean tides; agricultural seasons of planting, growth, and harvest; the cycle of metamorphosis and the phases of the moon. We, as persons of faith, cannot separate ourselves from our being, Creator, and creation. As co-creators with God, and inhabitants of this planet, our lives are innately incarnational and interconnected. In other words, in every season of our lives, we experience births, deaths, and resurrections repeating the Earth’s natural seasons.

This issue of A Matter of Spirit is titled “Seasons of Justice,” as our lives mirror the natural seasons and cycles of the Earth, as does justice work. Justice moves through seasons. Some seasons, like summer and spring, are ripe with growing and planting.

In other seasons, justice work slows down and feels dormant like winter or fall. When justice work slows, that is the time to go inward, taking the time to learn, listen, and prepare for the next season. Each season of our lives in faith-filled justice work leads us to opportunities for growth, renewal, and replanting.

Each article of this issue, written by four bold climate activists, represents a different season. With the growing climate crisis, there is no better time to connect ourselves with the Earth, the sacred soil beneath our feet, the air that fills our lungs, and the water that sustains us than in this season of justice.

May this issue of A Matter of Spirit challenge and inspire us to connect with nature bringing about new growth and change, uprooting weeds of injustice, and harvesting a sustainable life for the next generation.

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The art on the cover and on p. 2, 4, and 14 are from Molly Costello’s Art for Community web page in which some of the images are available for public use “to support the movement for abolition, to challenge the culture of white supremacy and to help imagine a world beyond capitalism.”

Note: All of the articles begin with season introductions written by the editor.

S U M M E R “Glance at the sun. See the moon and the stars.

Gaze at the beauty of earth’s greenings.

Now, think. What delight God gives to humankind with all these things.

All nature is at the disposal of humankind.

We are to work with it.

For without we cannot survive.”

—HILDEGARD OF BINGEN

Summers are a time for planting and regrowth. Tilling and preparing the soil helps prepare for the fall harvest. The planting and harvesting seasons are essential for providing us with the food that will nourish and sustain us through the long, darker days of winter. Without this nature cycle, we cannot sustain our ecosystems, bodies, or beings.

Each year summers are getting increasingly hotter. We have seen more floods in the south, increasing wildfires in the west, and heatwaves across the country. How are we to plant and prepare for the next season if we are constantly fighting fires, droughts, or evacuating from floods?

In a world in crisis, it is hard to identify our role in actively stopping the climate crisis. Reveling and relishing in the beauty of God’s creation can be difficult when we struggle to breathe, grow, plant, and live. However, when we do get a chance to marvel at the stars on a hot summer night or hear the cicadas chirp their songs late into the evening, and when we can feel the warmth of the sun while digging our toes into sandy beaches, we are given a gentle reminder of our interconnectedness to the earth that bore us and continues to sustain us. In this season, let us reflect on how we can bring out regrowth in our lives through planting something that will cultivate life for ourselves and our communities.

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Ecological Conversion

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BY NICHOLAS COLLURA

e might, perhaps, make coffee when we wake up. Shower, respond to texts and emails.

Breakfast quickly, or not at all, or in a leisurely way, and then get in the car if we are commuting to work or prepare ourselves for Zoom calls if we are working from home. If this is a day of leisure or if our week is more unoccupied, perhaps our routine will feature more time in bed or in front of the TV. What else do we do as the day unfolds?

Prepare meals, care for our pets, reach out to friends or family, work, play—all of this accentuated if we are raising children in its midst.

This may not be a normative experience for everyone, but as we imagine the elements that make up our routine, we can still scrutinize our little itineraries and ask ourselves: How regularly do we touch the natural world?

And by touch, I mean touch―with some part of our body. I hope we all have a window to let in fresh air in the spring and

let in natural light in the silver-skied winters. That, already, is a start, given that our life is so circumscribed by technology and rooms, and the protective safety―in times of distancing or quarantine―of walls. Maybe some of us are fortunate to have dogs who insist that we take them into nature, rain or shine. But more than that, does our nose touch flowers, do our hands graze tree bark, and do we ever feel the earth beneath our feet?

Inattention to our embodied connection to the planet carries many consequences. A pernicious dualism between us and the rest of creation can arise when we sequester ourselves from other living organisms: We can imagine ourselves a superior lifeform, and we can treat the natural world as material to be exploited.

Even an ethical responsibility and concern for creation can suffer from this dualism if we see ourselves as the protectors of nature but not as part of it, so that our spiritual practices (including practices of self-care) are divorced from our activism and our consciousness as a whole becomes less organic.

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We may even be closing down avenues to the divine and impoverishing our religious imagination. On retreats I have led, I have sometimes asked participants, “Who can share a spiritual experience you’ve had with an animal or in a natural landscape?”

I am not sure I have met anyone, yet, who has not been able to provide an example of one or the other. By the way, I say this as someone who is unapologetically a “city person” and neither of whose thumbs is remotely green. Temperament is one thing; spiritual essence is another.

And all of us belong to a moment in history in which eco-spiritual renewal is necessary. So many people are finding patriarchal, anthropomorphized images of G*d to be alienating, and at last we have a language to name the suffering inflicted by dualism writ large (like structural racism, sexism, ableism, and speciesism). The poet Rilke anticipated this a hundred years ago, “We must not portray you in king’s robes, you drifting mist that brought forth the morning.” In place of imperial images, organic ones. (Not incidentally, the etymology of the English word “holy” comes from the Germanic word “whole.”)

But the crises of the pandemic, climate change, and biodiversity loss are accelerating an epochal and salutary shift in our religious nature. Paradigms (in labor practices, in historiography, in the economy) are changing all around us: Can our religious paradigms follow suit?

There is much that gets in the way, and it is not just our built environments. The power of fear, the sway of uniformity, is strong. We may find ourselves transferring the innate human desire for wholeness, for belonging, to social institutions that keep us in a tribal mind space. For instance, I hear from people at workshops all the time that they are afraid of being labeled as “pantheists” or “tree-huggers.” The judgment attached to these words is quite fearful, indeed.

It’s an attitude born, I think, of a bias towards cerebral experience. So accustomed are we to rehearsing the right “ideas” about G*d that we have lost the felt experience of sacred connection. It’s a vicious spiral: Centering even social experience in our minds (through the “metaverse,” for instance) reinforces the notion that knowledge of G*d is intellectual, not experiential.

This cerebral bias can infiltrate even a spirituality that yearns to “find G*d in all things,” because the word “God” still feels necessary as a doctrinal reassurance that we aren’t a heretic or a pagan.

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Many religious traditions are in a funny tension in this regard.

The Catholic faith in which I was raised is “sacramental,” “incarnational,” and yet very squeamish about the body and its most basic and obvious longings, just as it’s also very doctrinal and academic. The Jesuit Adolfo Nicolás astutely observed that the Western appropriation of Jesus of Nazareth often only honors one third of Jesus’ self-proclaimed identity (Jn 14:6): We are very good at relating to him as “the truth,” but do we encounter this messianic figure anymore through the literal practice of pilgrimage—of walking—or in tracing a “way” through a forest?

Or in celebrating with our entire bodies, in encountering the breathing “life” of other beings?

Here is an interesting intersection with justice concerns: In order for us to celebrate our relationship with creation, we must be liberated from a lot of baggage that institutions, even well-meaning ones, continue to carry into a century that will demand a very different ecological approach than the ones that came before it did. But if we can be courageous enough to overcome the cognitive bias and concern for our religious image, it can rejuvenate the pastoral circle: “See, judge, act” (where vision and judgment are, we must admit, a little heady) can become “touch, experience, respond,” a somewhat different set of words for knowing and loving.

Photo -Unsplash © Nine Koepfer

For instance, I underwent my own conversion to the work of faith-based organizing one day when I found myself near Bartram’s Garden, a quiet idyll in West Philadelphia, after work.

I decided to stop by and wound up lost in a reverie by a gentle brook. The first phrase that came to me was a line from T.S. Eliot: “The still point of the turning world.” The second phrase was a question: “Would you fight for this?” Organic belonging and the stirrings of a response came together.

It so often comes back to images of the divine. In my work as a chaplain, my patients will often ask, “Why me? I have been a good churchgoer all my life—why have I been given cancer?”

The logic here may be tenuous, but the experiential cry for meaning is very deep. It isn’t easy, after all, to accept a change in an image of God that we received as children. It isn’t easy to allow the puppet master God to die in order for the G*d of love to live.

Ecological conversion from limited ideas about G*d will take no less courage than the work of the dying person. But the emergence of new life from the compost heap of the old is a motif held in common by gardeners and by believers in the Resurrection. In fact, the Risen Christ was mistaken, at first, for a gardener.

Did I read this article indoors? If so, could I take it outside and re-read it, reaching out sometimes to touch the ground, to round the circle between my thoughts and my earth-body?

Or could I sit by a plant that is helping me in its small but crucial way to breathe, and thereby connect the experience of my brain, my eyes, my lungs?

This could be the beginning of a paradigm shift in the way I do other things, as well. I may also intuit that my own journey is not an isolated one; it’s part of a large-scale evolutionary process to which the natural world is always, silently yet unrelentingly, inviting itself.

Nicholas Collura is a spiritual director and visiting retreat director at St. Raphaela Center in Haverford, PA. A boardcertified chaplain, he directs a pastoral care team for a Catholic hospice organization in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and co-coordinates EcoPhilly, a faith-based organizing initiative dedicated to creation care in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

His website is www.nicholascollura.com.

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F A L L “When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late,that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”

—ALANIS OBOMSAWIN

Fall is a season of death, but it is also a remarkable season of vibrancy and life.

Through the beauty of the dying and changing leaves, we experience warmth and comfort. The heat of summer subsides and suddenly, for the first time in months, we may experience the brisk winds of fall.

In autumns past, bonfires used to mark its commencement.

Now, with wildfires blazing, campfires and bonfires are banned in many places. Fall foliage has altered because of global warming and invasive insects (i.e. emerald ash bores, spotted lanternflies) have begun to appear in the fall killing trees and crops.

The crunch of rusty and golden leaves beneath our shoes causes nostalgia and reminds us of the reality that we can no longer live the way we once did. Our climate passivity has changed the way we celebrate nature and points to the harsh reality that we have created. In this season, we can be inspired to protect and preserve the natural beauty that enshrouds us.

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Sasha Beaulieu, Red Lake Treaty Camp, Photo © Jaida-Grey

Water Gives Life Reflections on Line 3

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BY LUKE HENKEL

ate last summer, I stood at the edge of the headwaters of the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota watching the sun descend towards the pines and the reeds.

It was the end of a very long day, at the end of a very, very long week. The twilight unfolding in front of me was symbolic—the sun was setting on the hopes of all of us gathered at the edge of the marsh, it seemed. Line 3 was moving ahead, as implacable as the onset of darkness, and the resistance against it felt weak suddenly, fading, like the strength of summer at the far end of September 2021. It was hanging on, but barely, and winter was not far away.

Sadly, hope seemed to be slipping below the horizon a lot more quickly than the sun. I stood with my affinity group of

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water protectors, a band of six of us from Seattle who had come out to help defend these sacred lands against the black snake of Enbridge Corporation’s Line 3, which was now nearing completion. In just a matter of weeks, it was slated to start pumping thick, heavy, crude, tar, sands, and bitumen right through the area. Here, the mightiest river in the United States was a foreshadow only, a series of unconnected marshes, but despair was already a threatening current, starting to flow strongly. It pulled the ground out from under me as if I stood at the ocean instead and the ground shifted with every wave.

Our planned protests had been canceled because of a COVID-19 outbreak; the action I’d come for was not going to happen. The construction on Line 3, however, very much was.

intimate as the one that draws Catholics to the Eucharist: It is one of divine connection, of ultimate union, of such interconnectedness that you can’t talk about one without fully talking about the other. Imagine taking the sunshine out of the flower—without the sunshine, the flower simply couldn’t exist.

This is not just poetry or metaphor or nice imagery. It is a fundamental reality. It is a truth so essential, it is beyond words, beyond comparison. I came to understand this over my time in Minnesota on the front lines of the fight, with deep, bodily knowledge. The land I stood alongside is not just home to the Indigenous. It is being. It is relationship. It is love, life; it is everything. The water, the soil, the rivers, the trees, above all the sacred wild rice (manoomin in Ojibwe)—it is all a relationship of the most unimaginable beauty. It’s pure love, expressing itself in a language without any human words. This is the language that the soul speaks to the rhythm of heartbeats, heartthrobs, heartaches, heartbreak.

This is also a truth completely ignored in the Line 3 saga (and in Indigenous struggles against extractivist fossil fuel

honorearth.org

October was the goal for the completion of the pipeline—one month away. At that time, 760,000 barrels of oil a day would be rocketed through the belly of this black snake on its way from Canada to Wisconsin. After a 1,000-mile journey from west-central Alberta to the terminal on the edge of Lake Superior, it would be refined and shipped elsewhere in the Midwest, to eastern Canada, and south to the Gulf Coast, and then around the world.

Nearly all 330 miles in northern Minnesota were already complete, and every day that we’d been in the area, more miles were laid down. Even without the COVID-19 outbreak rupturing our plans, it was increasingly difficult to organize an action, simply because the pipeline was going in the ground so quickly. Enbridge had a very tight deadline— and they were pulling out all stops to make it.

We stood then in encroaching darkness, both my small affinity group and the overall movement. Just that morning, we’d had a tough conversation with a Collective leader, a two-spirit Northern Arapaho organizer who informed us the resistance camps faced an uncertain future. As close as Enbridge was to its goal, the legal charges against water protectors were ratcheting up. So was the violence. Protesters were facing heightened felony charges, and there had already been police raids at one camp earlier in the summer.

Police brutality landed several water protectors in the hospital, two with potentially permanent damage.

Indigenous protesters were facing much more serious police aggression, and they were specifically being targeted. There was a very palpable feeling overall that the resistance was making its last stand. New strategies were needed straight away, but that path forward was as unclear as the muddied waters of the Mississippi further south. What to do in the face of this devastating and dangerous pipeline, which threatened the very waters in which I stood?

This wasn’t just the birthplace of the mighty Mississippi.

This was the sacred land of the Ojibwe, who know this area as gichizibbi, or “great waters.” This land is home for the Ojibwe in a way that I will likely never fully understand as a white individual.

And it is being gutted by a pipeline passing stolen oil from one land to another. (Stolen, because how can this whole process ever be one of true consent in the first place, no matter what consultative processes are followed? Despite Enbridge Corporation’s claims of having met with the Tribal bodies and followed the proper procedures, how can anybody truly consent?) This land is being ravaged for profits and for benefits, this place will never see.

Line 3 is a violation of Indigenous land. As such, it is a violation of Indigenous identity, of Indigenous humanity. This is because the land in and around the headwaters doesn’t just belong to the Indigenous nations of the Ojibwe, Anishnaabe, White Earth, Leech Lake, and Red Earth (at least not in the political or legal rights sense we use to talk about ownership). This land is the Ojibwe, Anishnaabe, White Earth, Leech Lake, and Red Earth peoples’. The people are the land, in a relationship as

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expansion in their territories throughout the world). This reality, this truth, has been ravaged and distorted just like the land.

When the land is ravaged, it is the people of that land who are torn apart, gutted, poisoned just the same. I myself felt gut-wrenching anguish that Line 3 was probably going to finish. But for the Ojibwe, Anishnaabe, White Earth, Red Lake, and Leech Lake natives, experiencing the tar sands pipeline rip up the wild rice fields and pass through their waters is like having it pass through their own veins. It’s like having your insides poisoned. This, too, is in no way metaphorical. Water is life. Human blood, which keeps us all alive, is 90 percent water. Nibi 1 gaa-bimaaji’iwemagak. Destruction of water means death then, as surely as toxic sludge pumping through your arteries. This is an expression of truth, again as fundamental as the existence of our Creator.

Being gutted might not be the most pleasant thought to dwell on, but oddly, it left me thinking about hope. I thought a lot about hope just then, and how difficult it is in the face of yet another pipeline through the Indigenous territory. My natural inclination was to talk about hope. But how to do this in the face of such terrifying darkness?

Some say they don’t want to hear about hope. I have heard that aplenty in activist circles—even activist Greta Thunberg famously said, “I don’t want your hope. I do not want you to be hopeful.” Some have told me that hope, in a lot of ways, is a privileged, white thing to go on about. It is easy to talk about hope, really, if all in your life has been ok. It is easy to talk about hope if you have never fully been in the pit of despair. You can certainly talk freely about things like hope and light when it doesn’t cost anything for you to do so. Hope and all things getting better and being ok is a great topic when you’ve never paid the full price of them being very much not ok.

These people—I could not deny that I am one of them—have hope to spare, and lots of it. But in the end, this talk of hope can be dismissive if not downright damaging, to people who face the violation of their sacred lands. Hope can sound like a smarmy thing indeed to go on about in earshot of someone who’s facing the destruction of their land, their bodies, their souls in one great ravaging.

When your land—when you—are being poisoned? Come back and talk about hope when you’ve had that oil run through your body and blacken your own insides.

I felt this truth as much as I felt the chill of the burgeoning night. I felt it more fully than ever after a week of failed actions and fear—fear of COVID-19, of time running out, of a pipeline leaking into the headwaters, of an ever-more-urgent climate

crisis. How could I even think about hope? Line 3 is just one of the dozens of Enbridge lines that crisscross North America— there are currently more than 17,000 miles of line across the continent. While the Keystone XL pipeline was successfully shut down last year by the Biden administration, Line 5 is currently undergoing upgrade and reconstruction with a proposed tunnel underneath the environmentally sensitive Straits of Mackinac in Michigan—another Enbridge project that would add the carbon emissions equivalent of an extra six million cars on the road every year. Even if Line 3 did not go operational, one less pipeline will

◀ U.S. Customs and Border Protections helicopter flew over non-violent protesters opposing Line 3, Photo © Syndney Mosier ▲ Photo © Luke Henkel

“My natural inclination was to talk about hope. But how to do this in the face of such terrifying darkness?” not stop or reverse the climate crisis. Enbridge actually used that as an argument for Line 3: There will be no end to the demand for oil any time soon, so Line 3 is the best-case scenario.

Nor will ceasing operation on this line halt or reverse the ravaging of Indigenous communities.

What then to do?

I realized in that darkening water that hope is not mine alone to talk about unless I am willing to stand in the darkness, the night, the depths of fear. Hope is not mine to give, even, unless I have received the ravaging despair that comes from losing your land, your belongings, yourself.

Hope is not mine alone unless it is all of ours. It is like those flowers in a field. The sun does not just shine on one of the flowers and leave the rest in total darkness with none. So, it is with hope.

The water that poisons one, poisons us all. If we talk about hope, we talk about hope for all. And better than talking—if we work for hope, we work for hope for all.

Luke Henkel is an activist and water protector, former Divine Word Missionary (SVD) Brother, current graduate student, and lifelong spiritual seeker. He spent much of summer 2021 on the frontlines and in the resistance camps of northern Minnesota against Line 3 and is actively engaged in fighting fossil fuel expansion in the Pacific Northwest with the Protectors of the Salish Sea. He is currently pursuing his Master’s

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in Climate Justice remotely through Glasgow Caledonian University.

W I N T E R “Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”

— RACHEL CARSON

Winter can often feel like the bleakest and darkest of seasons. In colder climates, the snowfall can last until after Easter. During the frosty, cold winter days, trees and plants are often mistaken as dead when they are only dormant. Animals slip into hibernation and the earth seems quiet and still.

In a world of overproduction and commodification, it is easy to dismiss the importance of rest. When animals and plants rest, they come back from dormancy and hibernation in spring to blossom and flourish. What about us?

Not every season, even in justice work, is an active season. We are often, especially in the face of injustice hasty to act, which frequently leads to sloppy encounters and missed marks.

Where is nature calling us to embrace a season of rest to prepare ourselves for a season of growth and action?

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Creating Change in Moments of Rest

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BY SEN. REBECCA SALDAÑA

am writing this in winter, which is the “busiest” time for the Washington State Legislature. In sixty days, over a thousand bills will be drafted and introduced, hundreds will receive a public hearing in both chambers, six budgets will be developed, debated, and turned into three budgets, and dozens of bills sent to the governor’s desk for his signature.

Among all of these will hopefully be a new type of transportation investment package that incorporates environmental justice, equity, and strategic investments to decarbonize our transportation sector.

If this transportation investment package gets realized, it will 1 be because the Healthy Environment for All (HEAL) Act became law on May 17, 2021, along with the Climate Commitment Act and 1

https://doh.wa.gov/community-and-environment/health-equity/ environmental-justice 2 https://medium.com/wagovernor/inslee-signs-climate-changelegislative-package-9ebcef3015e

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the Clean Fuels policy. The HEAL Act was a result of three legislative sessions; two years of a task force of community, business, state agency representatives holding meetings in every corner of our state; one robust report; and a year with an unprecedented global pandemic, wildfires, flooding, and heatwave. A summer’s worth of convening labor, public transit, ports, disability, and environmental justice organizations, and legislators learning together about each other and the intersection of environmental justice, climate, and transportation policies.

The HEAL Act began as a dream from a seed planted more than twenty-five years ago when Senator Rosa Franklin commissioned the first environmental justice study in Washington state. A seed of hope germinated among a group of community leaders—children of immigrants from all corners of the globe and the descendants of the Duwamish, who together call the lands home where the Duwamish River meets the Salish Sea. Where seed took root in a place made sacred despite its designation A M AT T E R O F S P I R IT

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traumas and diseases like depression, anxiety, and addiction.

Hulls had been left strewn upon the earth. I felt it was my job to gather the hulls, to remember and honor the sacrifices of so many hulls.

It took this pandemic, the death of my eldest brother, the death of four elders who helped form me, an urgent care visit, and my body to break out in painful shingles to realize holding tight onto the hulls was crushing me and them. I am seed and hull.

“Grief never ends, but it changes. It is a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness or a lack of faith. It is the price of love.” This is a quote shared with me when my brother died.

The Gospel reading from the last Sunday of Ordinary Time as industrial land and waterway, and before the Lenten season begins reminds where the air is so polluted our children us what winter is about: A time to allow can’t breathe without assistance from an the hull to burst open, so germination inhaler. The cumulative effect of living in can begin. Time also to perceive the big these neighborhoods was a shorter life— wooden beam in our own eye. Time to eight years shorter than other residents on cultivate the determination to remove it. average in Seattle and King County, and Time also to grieve the loss of the wooden thirteen years shorter than the well-off beam in our eye. It served a purpose. It 3 neighborhood of Laurelhurst. provided a shield and created distance Thanks to all this work, “environmenfrom having to look into the eyes reflected tal justice” is now defined in state statute: in the mirror and see so much sorrow “Environmental justice means the fair and suffering. Time to honor the wooden treatment and meaningful involvement beam and give it a new purpose. A beam of all people regardless of race, color, for a new building to house happiness national origin, or income with respect or kindling for a fire to bring light and to the development, implementation, warmth to these long winter nights. and enforcement of environmental laws, This winter and Lenten season, I will rules, and policies. Environmental justice use this time to continue my daily prac(TENTATIVE TRANSLATION includes addressing disproportionate tices of reflecting on daily scriptures, O F D A I S A K U I K E D A) environmental health impacts in all laws, chanting nam-myoho-renge-kyo, and rules, and policies with environmental exercising my body. I will continue to see impacts by prioritizing vulnerable populaa therapist. I will continue to attend Nartions and overburdened communities, the equitable distribution Anon meetings. I will pray for determination to stand aside and of resources and benefits, and eliminating harm.” Seven agen- let God’s will be done so that I can free myself from personal cies are covered by the law and must incorporate environmental anxiety and a mistaken sense of responsibility. Nar-Anon teaches justice into their strategic plans, policies, and practices. An envi- that I am powerless, but not helpless. I can do my work. I can ronmental justice task force is now formed to provide oversight. weep. I can laugh. I can dance. I can cup my hands like a nest But at what cost? As the prime sponsor of HEAL Act legisla- gently holding the hulls. I can take a breath, and with my exhale tion, I know I made compromises. I made decisions and deals gently send them free. directly against the will of the environmental justice leaders I grew up with and worked alongside. There is law, but also loss and hurt. Who grieves for the hull of the seed that had to burst open for the roots to reach soil? Who mourns for the microbes that might be displaced as the green sprout pushes up through Sen. Rebecca Saldaña is the Washington State Senate Deputy the soil towards the sun?

Majority Leader and represents the 37th Legislative District. Rebecca I am seed. I come from a line of seeds that have had to find is vice-chair of the Senate Transportation Committee and sits on the root in lands and waters polluted by xenophobia, colonialism, Labor, Commerce & Tribal Affairs Committee and the Human Services, environmental degradation, racism. Roots tangled up with Reentry & Rehabilitation Committee. Additionally, she is co-chair of

“Faith is an unremitting struggle against resignation and feelings of powerlessness.

The force that will open the future exists in your own heart!

Strengthen and deepen your conviction.”

the Senate Members of Color Caucus. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in 3

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Theology and Humanities from Seattle University and lives in Rainier Beach/Skyway with her husband and two youngest children.

S P R I N G “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”

—CHIEF SEATTLE

Spring is a season of new life, rebirth, and growth.

Nature born anew. Plants once dormant during winter begin to flower, develop new growth. Animals return from a long season of hibernation, and many are born.

Our bodies and minds begin to renew. The temperate winds and budding, fragrant blossoms of spring remind us that change and new life are present.

Who is bringing new life and leading this change?

Young people. In September of 2019, 7.6 million young people worldwide participated in a strike for climate change. A global climate movement lead by youth and

young adults reminds us that our only hope for the continuation of our habitat lies in the hands of the next generation.

Spring is fleeting. It remains for a moment until summer heat comes in. The ephemerality of this season parallels the climate crisis. That is, we do not have much time to act for climate change. Each time we step out into a fresh, spring morning, we are presented with an opportunity to mobilize and act for climate justice. We must seize this opportunity to act now so that the next generation will have a future filled with beauty and vegetation.

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Running on Sacred Ground

BY AIDAN PARR

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n the verge of vomiting, I looked at the hill in front of me, my body wanting to give up. This was the second prayer run I had taken part in. We participated in the prayer run not only to pray, but to raise awareness for a site that is sacred to the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona, and all Apache: Oak Flat. Oak Flat is currently at risk of being destroyed by a multinational mining company called Rio Tinto and their subsidiary company Resolution Copper. Rio Tinto discovered the world’s largest copper deposit underneath Oak Flat. The mining of this copper brings many environmental drawbacks such as a crater that is two miles wide in diameter.

This results in the destruction of land sacred to the Apache and forces them to forfeit their First Amendment Rights.

The type of mining processes Rio Tinto plans on using for this proposed mine require an excessive amount of the world’s most precious resource: water. Water is a scarcity issue in many places but water scarcity plays a prominent role in the Sonoran Desert where Oak Flat is located. The lack of disregard for Indigenous rights and First Amendment Rights, the multitude of environmental problems, and the history of this company destroying Indigenous sites are why Brophy Native American Club (BNAC)—of which I am an active member— became involved. It began with a typical Thursday after-school meeting at Brophy. Mr. Davis, the moderator of BNAC, showed us a video about a place called Oak Flat and asked our opinions on it. After the video, I thought that this was going to be another sad story that I would learn about and then continue on with my day, but not this time. Mr. Davis asked me, “If we could do anything about it, should we?” Without a second thought, I immediately said yes. At the next meeting, we started discussing what we could do with the leaders of a grassroots organization, Apache Stronghold. They told us how they were having a prayer run and that the group coming from the North dropped out. Mr. Davis asked us if we would be down to do it, and me, being a long-distance runner at school, said “Of course!” So, we started preparing for a 188-mile run all the way from Flagstaff to Oak Flat. This part of my story is where my life begins to drastically change.

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“My involvement with this movement has led me to discover and explore social and environmental issues that I am extremely passionate about. The small step I took to get involved with Oak Flat has opened a door to a whole new world.”

We started the first run at the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff, Arizona. In relay fashion, we ran 188 miles from Flagstaff to Oak Flat. As the run progressed, I began to fully realize what we were doing and why we were doing it. I could feel it when my feet hit the ground. Finally, it got to the last quarter mile, the point where the entire BNAC would run together. When we finished that last quarter mile, a feeling which I can only describe as spiritual overtook me and all I could do was cry. At that exact moment, I could tell that this sacred place was calling to me. I could not quite wrap my head around why anybody wanted to destroy such a beautiful place that had such a spiritual presence.

I literally felt it with an intensity that was something strong and incredible.

From this experience, I learned how impactful a small gesture of solidarity can be. My first taste of this was the day after the first run. We were at school, tired from the run but sustained with energy about Oak Flat. The Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is required for the land to be transferred from the government to Rio Tinto. It lays out the environmental impacts that the mine will have. This specific EIS was rushed through by the Trump Administration during the former President’s last 100 days in office. However, the day after the run, the EIS was rescinded. This put a pause on how long the land could be transferred, but to me, I saw this as an opportunity presented to us by the sacredness of Oak Flat. I saw this as an opportunity

Scenes from the Oak Flat Prayer Run, Article Photos © Shaun Price ◀ Author pictured here, second from right top

for more time for advocacy. BNAC, having heard this news, was ecstatic. That Monday, we were featured on a local Arizona news network and newspaper. Immediately after being interviewed, we met and began brainstorming on what to do next. Our first step was to devise a plan to meet with politicians at the federal level. We decided to lobby Arizona senators and representatives who could provide support to rescind the land swap.

When we met with Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s office we faced some serious pushback. They wanted BNAC and I, with zero political experience, to produce alternative economic solutions to the mine. It was more like giving the “kids” a homework assignment. We had little knowledge of mining town economies, so I took it upon myself to learn the ins and outs of the small mining town of Superior, located about 60 miles east of Phoenix.

Through this process, I became a student lobbyist who took it upon myself to become well-versed in the world of economics, especially the numerous impacts of mines on mining towns. I developed a presentation using all sorts of sources. I talked to various experts on mining—environmental scientists as well

as policy experts at the federal level. When we came back to present our findings to Senator Sinema’s staff, they were duly impressed with what the “kids”—particularly this kid—presented with our depth of understanding of the implications of the mine, and other more sustainable avenues of economic development.

I knew then, even though I doubt Senator Sinema will vote to stop the land swap, that the sacredness of Oak Flat and the Oak Flat experience will keep me moving forward. My involvement with this movement has led me to discover and explore social and environmental issues that I am extremely passionate about.

The small step I took to get involved with Oak Flat has opened a door to a whole new world. It has shown me what impact small things, such as a 188-mile run and the sacredness I encountered at Oak Flat, can have on the rest of the world.

Aidan Parr is an Indigenous student and senior at Brophy College Preparatory in Phoenix, Arizona. He is very involved with the Brophy Native American Club and the Student Climate Coalition at his school.

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Reflection Process Now that you have sat with these articles, we invite you to reflect with the following process using excerpts from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

“ Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”

nnThe work of peace and justice is draining and exhausting.

How do we keep hope alive? How can we choose joy and gratitude daily so as not to fall into despair?

Find and support Native owned bookstores at blog.libro.fm/indigenous-owned-bookstores/

“ Among our Potawatomi people, women are the Keepers of Water. We carry the sacred water to ceremonies and act on its behalf. ‘Women have a natural bond with water, because we are both life bearers,’ my sister said. ‘We carry our babies in internal ponds and they come forth into the world on a wave of water. It is our responsibility to safeguard the water for all our relations.”

nnHow can we become better ancestors? How will we

safeguard water and all life for the next generation?

“ Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.”

nnChange begins within. What do we need to heal ourselves?

How can we allow the earth to heal and renew us?

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“ In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top—the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation—and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as “the younger brothers of Creation.” We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out.”

nnWho are our “younger siblings of Creation” that we need to learn from?

nnWhat reorientation do we need in how we relate to Creation?

SPRING 2022

Our Collaborative Efforts Walking with Holy Families Since I Been Down Racial Justice Workshop Planting Seeds of Hope IPJC co-hosted four major events from the end of January through March. We were able to gather communities for events focused on migration, restorative, environmental, and racial justice. Our collaborative events engaged over 1600 people and resulted in over 500 actions for justice!

Spring Benefit Sunday, May 1, 2022 4–5 pm, PDT Gather with us virtually to celebrate and support our common mission! We will hear from an Aberdeen Women’s Justice Circle Facilitator, Jessica Molina, reflect on IPJC’s work, and new artistic and hopeful works of justice.

We hope to “see” you there! To register go to ipjc.org

Synodal Listening Session ▲

Planting Seeds of Hope, Youth panel Q & A

Justice for Women IPJC has been invited to facilitate a leadership development training for the Aberdeen Women’s Justice Circle as the group plans its next phase and looks to grow its impact!

IPJC is proud to co-sponsor a synodal gathering to make space for communal prayer and discernment devoted to women and the future of leadership in the Church. Join us to pray, discuss, and learn what the Spirit is calling forth from us.

More information at seattleu.edu/ictc

SEASON TWO | GUEST INTERVIEWS Transformative Justice with Dr. Gilda Sheppard, Feb. 23

3-PART LENTEN SERIES Modern Day Saints with Gracie Morbitzer, Mar. 9 Communal Prayer with Kelly Latimore, Mar. 23 The Universality of God with Rev. Dr. Mark Bozzuti-Jones, Apr. 6 Look forward to more episodes! | ipjc.org/justice-rising-podcast

Donations IN HONOR OF

2022 Adrian Dominican Jubilarians, Judy Byron, OP, Linda Haydock, SNJM, Marilyn Lewis, Ann Marie Lustig, OP, Mary Pat Murphy, OP, Tacoma Dominicans, Mary Lou Williams, A Matter of Spirit on Dismantling Racist Systems IN MEMORY OF George Burrows, Agnes Conlon, OP, Anne Marie Lustig, OP, Todd Richmond, Susan Snow

A M AT T E R O F S P I R IT

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Gretchen Gundrum Vince Herberholt Kelly Hickman Tricia Hoyt Nick Mele Catherine Punsalan-Manlimos Will Rutt Editor: Samantha Yanity Copy Editor: Gretchen Gundrum, Erica Eberhart Design: Sheila Edwards A Matter of Spirit is a quarterly publication of the Intercommunity Peace & Justice Center, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, Federal Tax ID# 94-3083964.

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Earth teach me quiet—as the grasses are still with new light.

Earth teach me suffering—as old stones suffer with memory.

Earth teach me humility—as blossoms are humble with beginning.

Earth teach me caring—as mothers nurture their young.

Earth teach me courage—as the tree that stands alone.

Earth teach me limitation—as the ant that crawls on the ground.

Earth teach me freedom—as the eagle that soars in the sky.

Earth teach me acceptance—as the leaves that die each fall.

Earth teach me renewal—as the seed that rises in the spring.

Earth teach me to forget myself—as melted snow forgets its life.

Earth teach me to remember kindness—as dry fields weep with rain.

— A U T E P R A Y E R