Care for the Earth – Messy Jesus Business

Episode 83 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.

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"I think so many of us are holding anxiety and grief and despair in our bodies all the time. And we're not letting it out....We don't have spaces for rituals around grief."

-Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

IN THIS EPISODE

In the latest episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh FSPA chats with Lydia Wylie-Kellermann, editor, activist, mother, and author of This Sweet Earth: Walking with our Children in the Age of Climate Collapse. They discuss Lydia's early influence from The Catholic Worker, and what it's like to live an embodied life of faith. "We don't know what life's going to be like for future generations," Lydia says, "but what is it that we want them to have in their bones to be able to summon when they need it?"

The two also discuss the two pulls of creation and resistance, resisting perfectionism in the messiness of discipleship, and the wildness of Scripture. Lydia suggests, "Think about discipleship being committed to not political boundaries, but who are the people who are fed by the same water."

Name Drops:

JesusLaura AlaryDietrich BonhoefferVincent HardingThe Two Loops theory of change

Topics Discussed:

Catholic Workerjustice and faithstorytellingembodied faithcreation and resistanceraising childrentechnologycommunityresisting perfectionismwatershed discipleshipbeing creaturescolonialism

Books Mentioned:

the BibleThis Sweet Earth: Walking with our Children in the Age of Climate Collapse

Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

ABOUT THE GUEST

Lydia Wylie-Kellermann?is a writer, editor, activist, and mother. She is the director of Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center and author of This Sweet Earth: Walking with our Children in the Age of Climate Collapse. She is the editor of?The Sandbox Revolution: Raising Kids for a Just World. Lydia’s writing has appeared in?Sojourners, Geez Magazine, and various Catholic Worker papers. She lives with her partner and two boys in Bangor, Pennsylvania.

MESSY JESUS BUSINESS is hosted by Sister Julia Walsh. 

Produced and edited by Colin Wambsgans.

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Episode 72 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.

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“We have to understand the environment and appreciate it, both aesthetically and scientifically --as well as historically. And so it means taking all of the modalities of exploration and understanding that God has given us and bringing those together.” -Molly Burhans

IN THIS EPISODE

This episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast is the second of two featuring Sister Julia Walsh’s conversation with Catholic cartographer Molly Burhans.

In this episode, Burhans and Sister Julia explore the mess of restorative land practices and using data for good. Burhans shares how her team was the first to make a global projection map of Catholic Church jurisdictions since 1801. Sister Julia asks Burhans to comment on what stewardship means to her and what Catholics are meant to be doing in movement spaces related to land justice. They also discuss the complexities of Catholic identity and devotion in a messy Church whose structural sins have caused injustice and abuse. Regarding persisting in faith, Burhans encourages, "we have to be brave.  And if we are the kingdom of God, we can build it. And I'll map it, if you need any help."

ABOUT THE GUEST

Molly Burhans is an award-winning Catholic environmentalist, cartographer and social entrepreneur. She is the founder of GoodLands, an organization whose mission is to mobilize the Catholic Church to use its landholdings for environmental and humanitarian good. Burhans was the chief cartographer for the first unified global map of the Church, which premiered at the Vatican in 2016. She was named one of Encyclopedia Britannica's 2022 “20 Under 40,” is a winner of the Sierra Club’s EarthCare Award, a U.N. Young Champion of the Earth, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and an Ashoka Fellow. Molly is a visiting professor at Canisius College and adjunct professor of urban design at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. In 2021 The New Yorker published a profile of her entitled How a Young Activist Is Helping Pope Francis Battle Climate Change.

(Molly wanted to give a special shout out to David Cheney, who runs the website catholic-hierarchy.com. David's volunteer work keeping track of diocese and bishop information is crucial to the land work that Molly is doing with the church.)

MESSY JESUS BUSINESS is hosted by Sister Julia Walsh. 

Produced and edited by Colin Wambsgans.

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Episode 71 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.

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“There's always a freedom, though, that I feel... even if I was totally wrong about everything, I have full faith that Christ and God still love me and are still there.” -Molly Burhans

IN THIS EPISODE

This episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast is the first of two featuring Sister Julia Walsh’s conversation with Molly Burhans.

In this episode Burhans, a cartographer, shares the intertwined stories of how she came to find her Catholic faith in her twenties while developing a love for maps and the power they hold for social and environmental change.

Together Burhans and Sister Julia explore how Burhans' appreciation for life and living brought her to environmentalism through a passion for regenerative land usage. Her love for the planet and devotion to the Catholic Church led her to look for something that wasn’t yet there — institutions devoted to conservation within the global Catholic Church. She then tells the incredible story of how all these interests — her faith, cartography and environmentalism — brought her into what was almost a cold-call to the Vatican in an attempt to inspire the usage of the Church’s landholdings for good.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Molly Burhans is an award-winning Catholic environmentalist, cartographer and social entrepreneur. She is the founder of GoodLands, an organization whose mission is to mobilize the Catholic Church to use its landholdings for environmental and humanitarian good. Burhans was the chief cartographer for the first unified global map of the Church, which premiered at the Vatican in 2016. She was named one of Encyclopedia Britannica's 2022 “20 Under 40,” is a winner of the Sierra Club’s EarthCare Award, a U.N. Young Champion of the Earth, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and an Ashoka Fellow. Molly is a visiting professor at Canisius College and adjunct professor of urban design at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. In 2021 The New Yorker published a profile of her entitled How a Young Activist Is Helping Pope Francis Battle Climate Change.

(Molly wanted to give a special shout out to David Cheney, who runs the website catholic-hierarchy.com. David's volunteer work keeping track of diocese and bishop information is crucial to the land work that Molly is doing with the church.)

MESSY JESUS BUSINESS is hosted by Sister Julia Walsh. 

Produced and edited by Colin Wambsgans.

Email us at [email protected]

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Episode 68 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.

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IN THIS EPISODE

In this episode of the Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh, FSPA, talks with Vincent J. Miller, the Gudorf Chair of Catholic Theology and Culture at the University of Dayton. Vincent shares how his studies awoke him to the harm technology and consumption can lead to; the impetus that, in order to explore deeper questions, changed his course from engineering to theology. Regarding consumer culture, Vincent says that although every material good has an origin story, “the world we live in makes us see certain things and hides other things from us.” Sister Julia and Vincent also explore how, even though awareness can be painful, global and relational consciousness is part of what it means to be Christian. They delve into the sorrow and horror of war, climate crises and environmental destruction, and how the spiritual response is to be centered in relationality, to respond to calls to love and hope. “We’re called to be part of the community of creation, and we’re called to realize the pain we’re putting onto creation,” Vincent says, adding that because of the brokenness of our planet, people and systems, we are meant to “embrace the blemished world and learn to love there."

ABOUT THE GUEST

Vincent Miller is the Gudorf Chair in Catholic Theology and Culture at the University of Dayton in Ohio. He is the author of Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture and editor of The Theological and Ecological Vision of Laudato Si’: Everything is Connected. He lives with his family in Dayton and is a regular contributor to America Magazine and Commonweal Magazine. Vincent has been featured in many publications as well as television and radio programs that include The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Guardian, Il Foglio, CNN, NPR, BBC, the O’Reilly Factor and Mongabay.Vincent Miller’s article on the Oregon fires in Commonweal: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/tears-ashes

MESSY JESUS BUSINESS is hosted by Sister Julia Walsh. 

Produced and edited by Colin Wambsgans.

Email us at [email protected]

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Episode 56 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.

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"Community extends beyond just a group I belong to... we need to extend that belonging to fellow human beings, no matter who they are." –Teré Maya

IN THIS EPISODE

In this episode of Messy Jesus Business, Sister Julia Walsh gets into the mess of community with Sister Teresa Maya. She and Julia discuss the ways that embracing the messiness of life and the Church sometimes means doing awkward things, like going to mass in a language you don't speak. Teresa also delves into the idea of encuentro--what happens when we come together and how it's bigger than any of us when we're separate. Later, Teresa speaks about her life as a historian, and how history can recover what we've lost in the pursuit of perfection. Other covered topics include how religious life is not going to look like it has in the past, how diversity can enrich spiritual life, and how discipleship is like dance.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Sister Teresa Maya is a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio since 1994. Her education ministry has spanned several decades: she has served as teacher, history professor, administrator, and speaker. She has passion for formation of ministers for Hispanics/Latinas/os in the United States. She has a commitment to life-long learning and a strong conviction in the future of consecrated life. Sister Teresa got her B.A. at Yale University, her M.A. at the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley and the Ph.D. in El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City. She served fourteen years in the leadership of her religious institute and on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) presidency from 2016-19. She currently accompanies other religious congregations as facilitator and consultant.

Teresa's recent Advent video for Catholic Women Preach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y6nzYRSowM

MESSY JESUS BUSINESS is hosted by Sister Julia Walsh. 

Produced and edited by Colin Wambsgans.

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Episode 55 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.

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"We all will be affected by climate change... can we learn how to understand each other as shared participants in this project of being on earth together?" –Dorothy Fortenberry

IN THIS EPISODE

In this episode of Messy Jesus Business, Sister Julia Walsh gets into the mess of creative writing amidst the climate crisis with playwright, screenwriter and essayist Dorothy Fortenberry. Dorothy tells about how she found her career and what it's like to be a Catholic in a television writer's room. She also speaks about the importance of having children even in the face of climate change, and how being pro-climate means being pro-humanity. Dorothy and Sister Julia also explore how creating is a connection both to the Spirit and the unknown. Other topics include trying to be a disciple of Jesus in a community as big as the Catholic church, handing out copies of Laudato Si' in Hollywood, and how recycling is like prayer.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Dorothy Fortenberry is a playwright, screenwriter, and essayist. Her plays include: PARTNERS (Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, Humana Festival), THE LOTUS PARADOX (Warehouse Theater), SPECIES NATIVE TO CALIFORNIA (IAMA Theatre), GOOD EGG (Red Fern Theatre), CAITLIN AND THE SWAN (The Management), STATUS UPDATE (Center REPertory), and MOMMUNE (Chalk Rep). As a television writer and producer, she has worked on “Extrapolations” (upcoming for Apple TV+), “The 100” (the CW), and “The Handmaid’s Tale” (Hulu) for which she received multiple Emmy nominations, the PGA Award, and two WGA Awards. She also writes essays for publications including Commonweal, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Real Simple and likes to talk on podcasts, especially Know Your Enemy. She is the 2021 laureate of the George W. Hunt, S.J., Prize for Journalism, Arts & Letters for outstanding work in the category of fiction writer or dramatist.

Dorothy's piece on climate change for America Magazine: https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/10/27/climate-change-catholic-church-tradition-laudato-si-241710

Her essays for Commonweal: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/users/dorothy-fortenberry

And her essay about going to Church: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/half-full-grace/

Dorothy's Twitter: @dorothy410berry

MESSY JESUS BUSINESS is hosted by Sister Julia Walsh. 

Produced and edited by Colin Wambsgans.

Email us at [email protected]

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Season 5, Episode 9 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, hosted by Sister Julia Walsh.

"Going barefoot connects me to the Earth, which connects me to the whole." - Sister Roselyn Heil

LISTEN HERE:

IN THIS EPISODE:

In this episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh talks with "Nature Nun" Sister Roselyn Heil about energy, oneness, and the physics of spirituality.

"Everything is energy," says sister Roselyn. "All energy is light."

They also talk about why Sister Roselyn loves going barefoot, how it connects her with the Earth and helps energy flow. They also explore how time functions differently with God, and the sacredness of the here and now.

"When life gets hectic and I get caught up in the chronological, I take a deep breath and go into the now, to the core of what is here," sister Roselyn explains.

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Sister Roselyn Heil grew up on a farm in Marathon, Wisconsin with eight sisters and three brothers. She made first vows with the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in 1970, left after nine years, and returned in 2004. She is a graduate of Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wisconsin, with a bachelor's degree in teaching/social studies and she also holds a master's degree in Culture and Creation Spirituality. She has served as a Liturgist, a National Park Interpretive Ranger, and as a Chaplain. She currently serves as a Pastoral Associate at St. Mary's Parish on the Bad River Ojibwe Reservation in Odanah, Wisconsin.

CONTEMPLATIVE MOMENT is John 16:12-13.

MESSY JESUS BUSINESS is produced and hosted by Sister Julia Walsh, and edited by Charish Badzinski.

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