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Living earth college station7/31/2023 ![]() ![]() I received a number of thoughtful responses to my last blog post entitled Longing for the Belonging of Church. By learning from Creation and creatively applying its lessons, she ultimately found her enjoyment of life there resurrected. Diversifying her homestead’s landscape attracted other wildlife as well.Īnd that changed the direction of Kirsten’s life. She was once close to giving up on their farmstead. Stopping the use of the chemical dewormers allowed dung beetles to return with benefits for the soil. ![]() When we work with Creation, we should remember that God is looking over our shoulders and observing whether reverence for God is in our hearts.Īnd what I ultimately responded to in Kirsten’s story was the joy and life that emerged from it. Perhaps this is why the Bible teaches us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We need to consider its needs and patterns. Our tendency is to create “simple” industrial approaches built on our chemistry and engineering prowess without caring about the impacts of those approaches on our neighbors and Creation. The chemicals-dependent approach that she moved away from is a microcosm of our dominant food and farming system. This is a far different from relying on chemicals while ignoring the factors that made the parasite infections happen in the first place. She made the farmstead landscape more complex in terms of layout and vegetation management. You can’t help but notice that Kirsten’s approach was complex. I encourage you to launch into the study of Creation as a lifelong pursuit. What a wonderful example of how knowing the “players” in Creation is valuable and fascinating. It builds our wisdom muscles.Īnother thing that stood out to me was how the characteristics of specific plants, like black locust and chicory, were helpful allies to her. Creation stewardship is a lively, interactive endeavor. ![]() New insights came to her as she proceeded. She didn’t have all of the details of her new systems in place when she stopped using chemical dewormers. The second was how Kirsten learned as she went. How often do our systems of producing food and even living itself come out of careful learning from Creation? They should. Which of these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind. The passage reads: But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you, or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. In my interview with John Kempf, he shared one of his favorite Bible passages – Job 12: 7-10 That passage especially resonates with Kirsten’s story. The first was how it occurred to her to study how grazing animals in nature generally avoid dying from parasites. There are several things that struck me about the story of Kirsten’s creative stewardship journey. I believe you’ll enjoy the thoughtfulness and logic of her presentation’s structure while also appreciating her tenacity and values. In the video, Kirsten Robertson details how she creatively found natural solutions to replace the chemical dewormers she had previously been using on her goats and sheep at her family’s 10-acre farmstead in South Carolina.Īs you’ll see, Kirsten brings both an engineering background and extensive grazing experience to her situation. So I encourage you to watch this video of a webinar hosted by Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT) to get a sense of what Creation stewardship looks like on a small scale. This is especially true when it comes to producing food. Whether you call our obligation and calling to tend God’s earth “stewardship” or “Creation care,” it’s easy to feel like the concept is a little vague. ![]()
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