To answer such a question, says author and professor Debra Rienstra, we must first ask a more basic one: what is the good life? “We have assumed that it is affluence and upward mobility,” she says, “but that good life is not sustainable.” If a good life is one of purpose and healing, then it is precisely the Western ideal of success that is eating away our ability to live good lives. In this episode, we discuss her book ‘Refugia Faith’, in which she makes the argument that “the created world is not just our grocery store and sewer,” and that to live a good life, we must care for the planet on which the good life takes place.
What on God’s green Earth does climate change have to do with living a good life?
Episode Transcript
Lee
[00:00:00] I'm Lee C. Camp, and this is No Small Endeavor - exploring what it means to live a good life.
Debra
What is the good life? We have assumed it's affluence and upward mobility, but that good life's not sustainable.
Lee
That's Debra Rienstra, professor of English at Calvin University, and author of the book, 'Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth'.
Today, a discussion about our planet's ongoing climate crisis, and the role people of faith have played in the healing or the destruction with regard to that crisis.
Debra
The created world has a relationship to God apart from human beings. It is not just our grocery store and sewer. So when we think about, you know, what is it gonna take for us to address climate change? You know, the first fear I think that we all have, is what am I gonna have to give up?
Lee
All coming right [00:01:00] up.
I'm Lee C. Camp. This is No Small Endeavor - exploring what it means to live a good life. On our show, we have previously broadcast episodes on the widespread consensus regarding the scientific reality of climate change, which arose in the mid 20th century, but then various corporate interests commissioned and funded campaigns to deny this reality, and climate change denial was born.
Such denial has taken root in a variety of contexts, with some evangelical and conservative Christian contexts among them. This has been due in part to bad theology, or so it seems to me. It's a theology - to geek out a moment - grounded in a very old philosophical tradition that was, in fact, seen as a heresy in the second century AD.
It was a theological and philosophical claim that minimized materiality. Or [00:02:00] more, saw materiality, physicality, the created order as inherently evil, while the so-called spiritual was seen as good. Fast-forward eighteen centuries, and many moderns, and many modern Christians, have picked up on this ancient view, which early Christians saw as heretical.
And this heresy then further exacerbates the dismissal of concerns for the Earth to our great shared detriment. Our guest today is Professor Debra Rienstra, who argues however, that Christian faith can and must provide deep resources, both for caring for the earth and tending to the ominous climate change developing even now.
Debra Rienstra, professor of English at Calvin University, where she's taught since 1996, specializing in early British literature and creative writing. She's the author of four books, as well as numerous essays and poems. Debra was raised in Michigan, holds a BA from the [00:03:00] University of Michigan, and a PhD from Rutgers.
She and her husband Ron have three grown children. Uh, but today we're discussing her most recent book, 'Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth.'
Welcome, Professor Rienstra.
Debra
Thanks, it's great to be here.
Lee
Well, we're pleased to have you with us today. Your, your book is beautiful.
I really like reading books that engage theology by people who know how to write as you writers and, uh, literature folks are, and it's just a, it's a, it's a moving and beautiful book and congratulations on it.
Debra
Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that.
Lee
And it's not a, even though as, as we'll discuss, there are plenty of places of encouragement and possibility and fruitfulness in your book, it's nonetheless many moments that are laden with a great deal of heaviness to it.
Debra
Hmm.
Lee
And so I, I, I guess you're taking, [00:04:00] seriously taking for granted the scientific consensus regarding the grave moment in which we find ourselves in the history of the earth.
Describe to us some of the particulars that are especially striking to you or that stand out to you, that remind you of how grave or serious the moment we are in, in human history.
Debra
I came to writing this book really through other books. I'm a Renaissance and early modernism British literature scholar. That's my field. So it, it does seem kind of out in left field, so to speak, to be writing this book.
But I've also taught creative writing at Calvin University for a long time, and for a long time, uh, I was involved in our Festival of Faith and Writing where we invite writers to campus every two years and have 2,000 guests on campus and have this amazing kind of book party.
And as part of the planning committee for that, I got to know a lot of nature writers and was sort of taken by nature writing, [00:05:00] and that became part of my scholarly work too. And when we had Bill McKibben to campus, I read a bunch of his books and was really convicted by his 2010 book called 'Earth', E-A-A-R-T-H, and it's spelled weird in order to make the point that the Earth we live on now is not the same planet that we lived on 30, 40 years ago and will not go back. So that book I found really convicting, and then I sort of went down that trail and learned a lot more about the climate crisis. And you do have a, a response immediately of despair. That book and many others, you know, they will trot out all the statistics and the first thing you think is, oh my gosh, we're not gonna survive. You know, like this is the end. And so you have this, this reorientation of despair.
But there is something that comes out the other [00:06:00] side of that, and I, I think I've been reading about this long enough to understand there is another side to it. You sort of go through that despair window and then you reach this kind of resolve and conviction, and even, I would say, a kind of passion or excitement.
And for me, I don't know if I'm strange or what, but sometimes when you just read someone telling the truth or hear someone speaking the truth without any kind of spin or attempt at deception, there's something really exhilarating and it's almost a relief to hear somebody just speaking the truth.
So as I went down this road of learning more about the climate crisis, yes, it's frightening, yes, it's upsetting. But there's also this kind of exhilaration of, oh, okay, so this is what we know. As much as human beings can know anything, this is what we know.
So for me, you know, the, the latest [00:07:00] IPCC reports, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which are all available online, the executive summaries are readable by people who are not academic scientists. And just reading those has been convicting and gives the kind of basics of where we are.
So, for example, the 2018 special report - and this is the one that got a lot of attention in the media and was a wake up call for a lot of people. The 2018 report is the one that sort of gave the science behind why it's really important to have the goal of keeping average global temperatures to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial average.
We're at 1.1 degree, so we're already on our way to 1.5, and it's pretty likely we're gonna hit 1.5. The other indicator that a [00:08:00] lot of people refer to is carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, parts per million. And the goal there is, we would really like to be at 350 parts per million, no more than that. And where we are now is 419, 422, so we're already over that one too.
The modeling that the IPCC reports, especially the most recent ones, demonstrate, with their lovely, beautiful scientific charts and graphs, they model several scenarios. The worst case scenarios are really horrific. So when you look at that, it does cause this kind of, alright, conviction. We cannot let these worst case scenario things happen. The extreme weather events, the droughts, the wildfires, and all the implications of that are just too horrific to let happen.[00:09:00]
Lee
You say at one point, "The professional scientists I know best are also Christians and they wonder, why aren't more Christians sad or angry? Why aren't Christians the most outraged people on the planet over destruction we have caused to one another and to the community of creation?"
Debra
Hmm.
Lee
What's your, your own short answer to that question that you raise?
Debra
Yeah, so there are a lot of Christians, to be fair, who are deeply involved in the climate movement. Bill McKibben himself is a practicing and devout Christian, he's a Methodist. And there are many, many people who are doing this - many Christian groups, denominations who are attempting to, you know, sort of get the people in the pews, so to speak, or chairs, or whatever you sit on, or don't sit on, [00:10:00] to get people involved. But it's a slog.
And I think partly there are just normal human psychology reasons for that. And partly there might be some particular, reasons particular to Christian theology and the Christian Church, kind of sociologically speaking.
So some of the reasons that are just human psychology is, like, nobody wants to face a terrible, scary truth. Uh, we are so, so good at denial. And I, I think we all feel that in ourselves about this or other things. So it's just kind of natural to-- people talk about the climate crisis is so big that you can't get your mind around it.
And so we're sort of wired not to look. We're wired to focus on smaller things that we can manage. Which might explain why different Christian groups are so obsessed about what some people see as really small things. We love to major in the minors, you know? So that [00:11:00] might be an explanation. It's because looking at the big things is too frightening.
So I think there's a kind of human psychology piece to it. But over these past few years, I've been thinking and reading a lot of other people and trying to figure out the answer to that question too. I'm certainly not the only person asking that question, like, why are Christians not in this? Why are they not full-on in this?
And, you know, there are any number of reasons. Some of them might be theological, and or biblical. It might have to do with the sort of big overarching redemption story that's in people's minds, whether that's truly Christian or truly biblical or not. So one common story that's in people's minds is that basically human history is this drama of human redemption.
And the earth itself is just kind of this theater set that that drama occurs on. So the [00:12:00] earth is not in itself valuable. When this human redemption drama concludes at the eschaton, and it resolves with a happy ending, well then we just strike the set. So why do we care if the set gets shabby, is the idea.
So this is the, you know, the world is gonna burn up in the end anyway, so why should we care? And, and it's surprisingly, it's surprising how often you hear that argument. That's, that's not one that I've been exposed to really, in the kind of Reformed spaces that I've been a part of. But it's out there, surprisingly.
And, you know, I was talking about this with a group of doctoral students that I'm working with this week, and they too, you know, had seen that argument out there. And we commented that that is an argument that works if you are very, very privileged. Because if you think, you know, oh well, there's gonna be a lot of suffering on the way between now and the apocalypse, you're assuming that that suffering isn't gonna happen to you. It's gonna be [00:13:00] shunted off to somebody else. Or, you are in a position of such desperation and so stripped of agency that you have no hope for the here and now and the by and by is all you've got.
So it was kind of interesting to, to come to that realization with these students - and I don't take credit for that, we kind of came to that together - that, to feel okay about that argument, 'well, this world doesn't matter because it's all gonna, it's all kind of disposable', either you're so desperate that you've been stripped of human agency, and that in itself is a tragedy, or you're so privileged that you figure, I'm gonna be fine and I don't care about other people.
Neither of those feels like a good narrative that we wanna, like, promote, you know? And I don't think it's orthodox. I don't think it's biblical or orthodox. So I, that's one thing that people have pointed out, is this kind of big, bad eschatology. Uh, the sort of big mythological story [00:14:00] that allows us to tell ourselves that story so we don't have to deal with the here and now.
I think, you know, other perhaps theologically based possibilities have to do with our sense of passivity, that our job is merely to bow down and worship.
Lee
Yeah. You, you have this, this striking line about that, where you say, "I wonder sometimes if Christians are especially prone to the infantile authority fantasy."
[Laughs]
Debra
Yeah. Right?
Lee
Which, ouch, ouch. That's a bit, a bit painful. But yeah, tell us more about that.
Debra
Oh, you know, we're all guilty of that. Don't we just want someone else to fix things? And of course, that's a kind of infantile attitude. It, it's a, a drawing back from a sense of responsibility and agency - which once again, I acknowledge, you know, not everybody has the same amount of re-- of agency, but for those of us who do have a certain amount [00:15:00] of agency, our job is not to be passive little serfs in the Kingdom of God.
Our job is not to wait around for God to do everything. That's not what Providence is. Our job is to be the friends of Jesus in a resurrection community. And sorry to say, but that comes with responsibilities. Jesus' disciples didn't just sit around and twiddle their thumbs, [laughs] wait for the eschaton. They were out there preaching, and actually healing, too!
So this idea that we just wait around or that someone else will take care of it, it, I mean, it's, I can see why that seems like a really good thing to feel, but it's, it's just not the testimony of Scripture, I don't think, and it's not good theology. We're called to be witnesses, and that means not just witnesses of theological ideas, but witnesses of the work of God, the [00:16:00] redemptive work of God, here and now in creation, here and now.
Lee
You're listening to No Small Endeavor, and our conversation with Debra Rienstra on her book, 'Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth'.
I love hearing from you. Tell me what you're reading, who you're paying attention to, or feedback about today's episode. You can reach me at lee@nosmallendeavor.com.
You can get show notes for this episode in your podcast app, or wherever you listen. Those notes include links to resources mentioned in this episode and a PDF of my complete and extensive interview notes of our extensive interview notes, including material not found in this episode.
Coming up, Professor Rienstra and I further discussed the role Christianity may have played in furthering the climate crisis, as well as what [00:17:00] people of faith might have to offer as methods of healing and hope.
Last bit I wanna raise here about your critiques of American Christianity. You say, "In the United States, many American Christians have been seduced by Christian nationalism, militarism, and wealth. They have succumbed to what we might call the Church of Empire."
And, you know, I, I would imagine that there's a lot of folks who would say, yep, that's, that's right. But it might not be so obvious to a lot of folks as to why that sort of critique might be made in a treatise on climate change. So could you unpack that for us [Debra laughs] and show, show, show the connections there?
Debra
Yeah. It's relevant in every way.
So one of the ways we have gotten to the climate crisis is that we have had this attitude of domination over the created [00:18:00] world, over the built environment, over the natural environment, as if our calling was to just-- you know, we talk about stewardship, or 'dominion' is the word that's used sometimes, driving from Genesis 1. And of course, since the industrial revolution, that has literally been used - you can see it happening in the literature over the centuries - that idea of human dominion has been used to excuse destruction and exploitation.
And it is in the interest of extractive capitalism to have this wonderful theological underpinning for what is required to continue this sort of machinery of growth and exploitation, despite the fact that we have now outpaced what the earth can offer or heal from. We are so many people now, and we are so powerful that we can extract out of the earth more than [00:19:00] the earth can heal from.
And you know, I should be the first to say, I don't pretend that I'm stepping outside of this and pointing fingers. I am totally embedded in Empire, and to some extent the Church of Empire too. I mean, have benefited from extractive capitalism and I like my comfortable life. I don't wanna pretend that I'm, you know, some holy hermit out there.
We're all hypocrites, 'cause we're all part of this system. But we have reached a point where allowing that theological underpinning to continue to support and allow for the continuation of that kind of dominance, that kind of violent, over-the-top dominance of the created world, we've reached the endpoint of that. It's simply not sustainable.
So we have to sort of examine those idolatries underneath that. The idolatry of growth. The idolatry of bigness. We have to examine those and name them for what they are. They're, they're kinds of [00:20:00] idolatries. They are stories we tell ourselves that we have to, sort of, un-tell ourselves now.
I think one of our jobs right now, as people who are interested in theology and in Christian practice, is to go back and examine, you know, sort of, where did we go wrong? Cause sure, you can take Scripture and justify the idea that, look, humans are way above creation, we're special, it's all about us, and everything is for our use.
You can find places in Scripture to justify that, but that's not the whole testimony of Scripture. And that, in fact, becomes this kind of distortion. So right now, there's a lot of going back and looking at Scripture again through different lenses, including Indigenous thinking, the lens of Indigenous thinking.
I know that's a generalization, but there are people doing that in different ways and saying, actually, there's this whole thread in Scripture, this ecological motif, in which God values the rest of creation apart from [00:21:00] human beings. It is not just our grocery store and sewer.
The created world has a relationship to God apart from human beings. And you see this in places like Psalm 104, that beautiful symphony of creation psalm, where, sure, you know, human beings are in there, but mostly it's this kind of delight between God and creation. And oh yeah, there's the people doing their cute little agriculture things and creating wine and bread and doing their little things, but they are not at the center.
The end of Job is another example, where you see the suffering of Job, and, and, you know, the big question of Job is, why do humans suffer? And in particular, why do good human beings suffer? And 40 chapters go by, or 38 chapters go by, and God does not answer. And at the end of Job when God finally answers the question, the answer is something like, 'can you look at this amazing creation I [00:22:00] made?' And you know, poor Job is sitting there going, 'but, my suffering'.
So it's this sort of non sequitur answer, but it puts our human selves in this perspective of, there is a whole existence out there that is not about you. It is God's delight in this created world.
I think we're in a space now where we have to be taken down a few pegs as human beings, and in imagining our, our specialness, which I don't deny - I definitely affirm this beautiful scriptural testimony that we are made in the image of God. And you know, of course there's been much consideration over the centuries, okay, well what does that mean?
And I [00:23:00] think right now we have to focus on the idea that being made in the image of God means that we have moral responsibility. That's the distinction. We are the ones called to account. So I would love to say that the squirrels who eat the birdseed off my feeder should be called to moral account for what they're doing, [Lee laughs] but I don't think that's how it works. [Lee laughs]
So we are special because we have this particular vocation, not necessarily to, like, be bosses of the earth, or to fix the earth, because frankly, we're really good at destruction. We're less good at stewardship or care, or you know, fixing things. We, that's a capacity we've gotta work on. But we are called to account morally.
So if we think of ourselves as being made in the image of God, yes, that makes us special, but it also makes us responsible. And I think that's where we have to kind of focus our theological attention on that doctrine these days.
Lee
In thinking about those broader cultural trends that we [00:24:00] began alluding to a few moments ago, you do a lot of beautiful description of Michigan and the history of Michigan. And when you think about the myth of progress or the myth of manifest destiny and the ways in which various imperialistic conceits and demand for evermore economic growth and so forth has played out around you, what are kind of some of the stories you discovered or some of the kind of pictures you carry with you of things that you've seen and learned about where you live that stand out to you?
Debra
Yeah, thank you for mentioning the Michigan-centric nature of this book. And that's partly because, yes, I love Michigan, but it's also partly me trying to demonstrate that going through this sort of awakening process to who we are and where we are in history and what our responsibilities are now, part of that process is learning to look around you and dwell where you're dwelling.[00:25:00]
It's very easy to live in 21st century America and not have any, you know, interface with the particularities of where you live. You go to the grocery store, which is kind of the same everywhere. You go to Costco, which is the same everywhere. You go to the movies, which are the same everywhere. And you can easily pay barely any attention to the watersheds, the soils, the trees, the plants, the flora and fauna of where you live.
So part of the task I assigned myself, um, even before starting this book is to learn a lot more about the history of this place. To learn about the Native peoples, the Potawatomi and the Odawa who used to live here and were caretakers of this place. To learn about the history of the cutover, which is when the logging industry came through, really swept the United States from East Coast to West Coast.
Michigan was a big part of that, in the [00:26:00] late half of the 19th century and early 20th century when the logging industry just swept through and shaved, you know, this, these amazing forests off the face of the earth in the name of building civilization. And so, there, you know, I have to say, my lovely lifestyle now is a result of that cutover.
But I have to also reckon with that. And, and actually learning about the history of white settlement and the history of the cutover and mining. Now mining isn't so big here in lower Western Michigan, but it's much bigger up north. The damage that was done, and sort of the bad faith damage of the logging industry, which was like, 'cut down and get out' was the philosophy, leaving this kind of devastation in its wake, which then went to the care of the US government.
And so the result was basically the externalities of that industry were left to the American taxpayer, basically. [00:27:00] You know, typical. So just to kind of reckon with the unfairness of that and the devastation of that. So on the one hand, I, I came out of this study of my own home place with this sort of sense of awe at, wow, industrialization is powerful and full of ingenuity, and you know, just sort of impressed with it. And on the other hand, I also started to look around and think about the sacrifices that were made, but also that are still made.
So I talk about 28th Street, which is the big commercial corridor in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And I've started to see, sort of hideous ugliness of it. And think, on the one hand, it's so convenient. I mean, I have, you know, everything I could possibly wanna buy on 28th Street. And on the other hand, I now have this sense of missing the beauty that was cut down, the species that were sort of scuttled out of the [00:28:00] way to create this. So I have this sense of what has been gained for sure, but also what has been sacrificed.
So when we think about, you know, what is it gonna take for us to address climate change, you know, the first fear I think that we all have - I do, too - is like, what am I gonna have to give up? Like, how is my life gonna get worse because of this? But I think it kind of helps to realize, we've already sacrificed a lot.
Even people of privilege, there are beauties that we have lost and ugliness that we just take for granted every day that is necessary to create this lifestyle. Not to mention all the injustices that are perpetrated on people that we don't see and places that we don't see.[00:29:00]
Lee
At one point you, you raised the question, should we turn back the clock on our industrial infrastructure? Unravel our technological achievements and tear down our cities? You indicated a sort of qualified 'no'. But then what you do go on to say is that, whatever we do, we must take seriously the costs, give a full accounting of the cost.
And what I hear you saying there is that, typically in free market language, we have this sort of naive notion that the accounting only looks at sort of a profit and loss statement, but doesn't take into account all the other sort of significant costs that are saddled off on someone else.
Debra
Mm-hmm.
Lee
Is that, is that a fair enough, kind of, summary of what you're getting at there?
Debra
Exactly. So in economics, for example, you have people who are thinking through what we use as metrics to measure economic health. And you will always hear on the news, you know, what's the GDP for this quarter, the [00:30:00] gross domestic product for this quarter. Which is more and more being recognized as a really blunt instrument for economic health.
There's a lot that it doesn't take into account. In business, businesses, sort of these cutting edge businesses who are thinking, alright, we need to have integrity, just because integrity is good, but also because we'd like to survive, like with everybody else, we'd really love to survive. Businesses who are thinking, alright, what if we did account for all these externalities?
So you have businesses who are thinking through, like, the whole lifetime of their product. They're not just making a product, you know, extracting the resources, making the product, throwing it out into the market. And, you know, once a person purchases the product, pshh, the company is not responsible for what happens next.
So what you have is this vast amount of waste plastic, for example. Who's responsible for the waste plastic? Well, nobody. You as a consumer are responsible for recycling, so the onus has come to the [00:31:00] consumer. And businesses with, sort of, a lot of integrity are saying, but that's not fair. You know, why don't we take responsibility for the whole lifetime of the product and think of ways to create this circular economy where we not only figure out how to produce the thing, but how to recycle the thing.
We partner to make those next steps in this kind of circular process so that we don't produce all this waste, and so that we're thinking about sourcing. So, you know, there are a lot of people who are doing that work, but I think Christians have been able to be sort of blissfully unaware for the most part.
They're just not paying attention. And I, I think it's time for us to get much, much more involved in kind of the day-to-day nitty gritty practicalities of asking the question, you know, sort of, what is the good life now? We have assumed it's affluence and upward mobility. We have assumed that's the good life, but that good life's not sustainable.[00:32:00]
So shouldn't we as Christian people be part of this conversation, having this kind of moral and wisdom tradition that we have of rethinking what the good life is, and then being involved with the sort of nitty gritty of what does that mean.
Lee
You're listening to No Small Endeavor, and our episode with Professor Debra Rienstra, discussing her book 'Refugia Faith'.
We're going to take a short break, but coming right up, the beautiful and hopeful meaning of the word 'refugia' and how it might inspire us towards constructive practices in the fight against the climate crisis.
Well, that kind of brings us to the, the title of your book that we've not alluded to yet, 'Refugia Faith'. So why don't you first kind of tell us where you get this notion of 'refugia' and how that informs your description of possible [00:33:00] constructive practices.
Debra
So this was a moment of epiphany when Kathleen Dean Moore, who is one of these wonderful nature writers, she's also a moral philosopher, retired from Oregon State University. When she came to Calvin University's campus for the Festival of Faith and Writing, I got to know her for the first time. And then we invited her back in 2019, and she gave this barn burner of a lecture. It was amazing.
And I read her beautiful book, 'Great Tide Rising', which I highly recommend. And in four pages, in the middle of that book, she describes the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, and how after the eruption, it was this sort of wasteland of super hot ash. It was terrible. It was like a moonscape. And biologists looked at the mountain and said, oh man, you know, we're not gonna see anything green on here for decades. But lo and behold, 25 years later, the mountain side had already greened up.
And so people [00:34:00] went out there and they were, you know, sort of researching out there, thinking, what happened? And the answer is that even under that layer of apocalyptic death ash, there were these pockets of life. And those are called 'refugia' in biology.
So this was already a biological concept, uh, mostly from paleontology. So it was kind of an answer to, how did life survive the ice age? And the idea was, well, there were these little pockets where things survived in the midst of this enormous epochal disturbance. And so these refugia were the places where the little plants or tiny little creatures or insects kind of hid under logs or in little safe pockets, and out of those little spaces, the mountainside started to green up. So these refugia sort of spread, and then connected with each other, and next thing you know, you've got, like, renewal. And I read those four pages and just was immediately struck with that as a metaphor. 'Cause I'm an English literature person, so yes. [00:35:00] [Lee laughs] Straight from biology to metaphor.
Lee
You know a good metaphor when you see one.
Debra
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I can recognize. And it just occurred to me instantly, wait a minute, as people of faith - and for me, particularly Christians, but I think this applies to all people of faith - shouldn't we be the people of refugia? Isn't that what we're supposed to be?
Like, we're supposed to be the people who curate, you know, keep safe or find or nurture these little places of life amid disturbance, and attempt as best we can to let those little refugia places spread and connect and grow. Isn't that what we should be doing? So I started to research biological refugia a little bit, which turns out to be a really fascinating field.
Refugial conservation biology is a fairly recent field, and it, it's really the study, especially in the, in the context of climate change, it's the study [00:36:00] of why certain trees or fish or whatever survive in the midst of disturbance when others don't. So is it something about the temperature of the stream in that spot? Is it something about the genetic diversity of this particular pine species that allowed it to survive the wildfire?
And the more we understand about what capacities those creatures have, or what situation they have, situational characteristics they have that allow them to survive, the more we can create management practices that sort of encourage that to happen.
So as I learned about that, uh, I found the sort of official biological definition of 'refugia', which is this: 'refugia are habitats that components of biodiversity retreat to, persist in, and can potentially expand from, under changing environmental conditions'. So, right. They're basically [00:37:00] places where life endures in a crisis, for particular reasons, whatever those reasons are for that life in that crisis.
And I'd started to think about Scripture, and think, you know, isn't God the God of refugia? Doesn't it seem like that is how God works? I mean, if you think about the Israelites, for example. This is not a big dominant empire. This is a tiny little tribe. Nobody knows or cares about them, right? They're so sort of small and insignificant, and yet this is what God chooses to create the seeds of redemption.
Or if you think about Jesus and the disciples. Jesus does not come with a dominating army. Jesus comes in a little Palestinian backwater to an unimportant young woman and her family, and chooses twelve disciples and has a bunch of followers, and it's this small seed.
And then he tells stories about the kingdom of God, which is like a mustard seed or a, a bunch of yeast. [00:38:00] And so I, I just started to rethink the scriptural witness through this lens of the people of God as the people of refugia. It is through these refugial spaces that God loves to work - the hidden, the insignificant; not through people who hide in a bunker and create boundaries, and not through people who have conquering armies and dominate culture.
It's through these refugial spaces that God plants seeds and nurtures those seeds by the Spirit. So then I set myself the task of, of thinking, all right, so if we're gonna be people of refugia now, what does that even mean? And so that's really what the book is. It's, it's seven transformations, the cha-- there's seven chapters, and each one is about a transformation.
So for example, from consuming to healing. [00:39:00] Transforming our way of thinking about ourselves from being consumers to being healers. And then each of those transformations is kind of mapped onto the liturgical year, which was my way of sort of sorting out the theological themes into seven baskets so I could manage them. [Laughs]
Lee
Yeah. [Laughs]
Debra
Um, and it just worked out really nicely that each of those seven baskets-- so for example, the, the liturgical season of Epiphany, the Feast of Epiphany in the season that follows it is about the life of Christ and Jesus' ministry, which had a lot to do with healing. So that theological theme of Christ as healer is the one that I emphasized in that chapter, the transformation from consuming to healing.
So that's kind of how I sorted out the book.
Lee
I will just note for those listening that the, the seven that you include are the constructive practices humility, inclusivity and hospitality, lament, challenge, healing, [00:40:00] reorientation, and joy, all of which get unpacked in beautiful ways. But given that we only have a few minutes left, tell us a bit about unpacking, let's say two of these. The first one being moving from mean consumers to thinking of ourselves as having a call to healing. What might that look like and mean for you today?
Debra
So I'm working with these doctoral students, my husband and I together. My husband is a, a professor of preaching in worship at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan.
And so we are working with seven doctoral students, all of whom are pastors in various ways. And we're asking that question together - what does it mean to think of ourselves as healers and how, how would that look practically on the ground? And they're just beginning their, sort of, exploration. And so one of the things we're trying to do is do, we call 'em 'refugia sightings'.
So looking around to, to watch churches [00:41:00] who are doing this. So I'm talking about churches in particular. So one example might be the church that says, we have a pretty big property here. This is one of our assets and it's this gorgeous lawn. What if we asked ourselves, this land probably does not want to be a lawn. It wants to be something else, right? [Both laugh] We have, we have created it into a lawn because it was something else before. And what happens then is that you basically depauperate your ecosystem. Grass does not provide a lot of food or support for pollinators or creatures, and so you're, you're kind of creating this depopulated landscape, naturally speaking.
So there's a whole movement now of renativizing land, and that to me is a redemptive and healing practice. Not just because there's something, like, inherently more wonderful about milkweed than fescue, but because native plants support, have evolved with native [00:42:00] insects and wildlife, and so they create habitat in ways that our beautiful lawns don't necessarily do. Or our imported beautiful Asian trees just don't support a lot of life here because the local life has not evolved for it.
So there are churches who are using their own land or buying land or partnering with other people to renativize landscape. And the process of doing that is actually really instructive for the congregation too.
You have to learn a lot in order to do this well, and you have to think about what it means to own property as a church and what your responsibilities are. So rather than just saying, oh, well we wanna be like every other church and have a beautiful piece of property so that people will find it attractive and come so that we can grow, which is a sort of business mindset, right?
The motivations behind it are, we wanna spread the gospel. But it becomes this kind of almost business mindset, you know, marketing mindset. And what if we asked ourselves, well, what would it [00:43:00] mean to heal this land?
Lee
Let's, uh, let's close with your last practice of, of joy, and you, you're pointing to the way in which that must arise out of gratitude.
And, and, and I'll say too, I think that you quote Wendell Berry early in the book and talk about his pointing us to the necessary practice of affection, of learning to pay attention and grow in affection for where we are in our space. But could you close us out with a few comments just about affection, joy, and gratitude in this work that you're doing?
Debra
One of the things I've been trying to be a learner about is the need for those of us who have more privilege and security to look to people on the margins who have always lived with insecurity and trouble and desperation and oppression and suffering, and all those things. And these are the folks who have kind of the, the superpower capacities now, they know how to do it.
Not like it's [00:44:00] fun. I don't wanna, uh, pretend that it's fun. But one practice that we might be able to observe from people on the margins is the understanding that gratitude and joy are survival skills. They're not things that you feel first and then do. They're things that you practice, not so much so that you feel nice for a while, although that helps. But they are long haul survival skills. And uh, I think maybe those of us who have assumed that the future will go on just fine for us, are going to have to exercise our gratitude and joy muscles more intentionally in order to endure when things are not so awesome and we're not in control so much anymore.
And I say that not because I really know what I'm talking about. I realize I need to start learning this, this capacity. [00:45:00] And I, for me, the, the best way to practice that is through music and worship. One of the gifts that worship can give us, good worship, is practice in gratitude, practice in joy. And I love music, I'm a musician, sort of, myself. And so for me, that's how it comes. But there are lots of other ways to do it. Dancing or feasting together.
And these are things you, we have to practice even when we don't have affluence and abundance, even when we're in the midst of trouble. And once again, it's not 'cause you feel so fine or everything's just groovy, it's because you know that these are important survival skills.
So that's, I think, people in the, in the climate movement, outside of any faith context, talk about this kind of long haul resilience too. I mean, that period of despair I mentioned before, it's not like that goes away. You get through it and it goes away. People fall back into it. And I, I think I felt this myself too.
And so [00:46:00] in the kind of climate movement conversation, you will often see people reminding each other, practice gratitude, practice joy. Just as a, a survival skill. And I, I think that's deep in the Christian faith. We have the resources, we should know how to do that. But I think we have to do it intentionally now as a way of building these long-term capacities as people of refugia.
Lee
We've been talking to Professor Debra Rienstra, author of 'Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth'.
Thanks so much, Debra, for your work and for your beautiful work in this good book.
Debra
Thanks so much. This conversation has been a joy.
Lee
You've been listening to No Small Endeavor, and our interview with Debra Rienstra, professor at Calvin University and author of the wonderful book, 'Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and [00:47:00] the Healing of the Earth'.
Check out the show notes for this episode. There we have links to the books and resources that Debra mentioned in this episode, plus a PDF of my extensive interview notes, which include material we did not cover in our conversation. You can find those in your favorite podcast app or at nosmallendeavor.com.
Also, check out our interview with the famed climate activist and writer Bill McKibben, who was mentioned several times in today's episode, as well as our interview with climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, as well as an interview with Peter Harris, founder of A Rocha International.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of Lilly Endowment Incorporated, a private philanthropic foundation supporting the causes of community [00:48:00] development, education, and religion, and the support of the John Templeton Foundation, whose vision is to become a global catalyst for discoveries that contribute to human flourishing.
Alright, thanks to all the stellar team that makes this show possible. Christie Bragg, Jakob Lewis, Sophie Byard, Tom Anderson, Kate Hays, Cariad Harmon, and Tim Lauer. Thanks for listening and let's keep exploring what it means to live a good life, together.
No Small Endeavor is a production of Tokens Media, LLC and Great Feeling Studios.