The AllCreation Podcast

Shmita and the Climate Crisis.
In this insightful podcast, Joelle Novey and guest editor Yaira Robinson discuss Shmita, who "owns" the Earth, the rhythms of Jewish sacred time, how to sustain activism, living with paradoxes, and more.

About Joelle 

Joelle Novey is director of Interfaith Power & Light (DC.MD.NoVA). She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University where she received a BA in Social Studies and a minor in the Study of Religion. She is also co-author of Green and Just Celebrations, a purchasing guide that Jews United for Justice (JUFJ) distributes to local congregations for assisting families in making greener purchasing decisions around weddings and bar/bat mitzvah celebrations. She is also an active leader in her local Jewish community.

About Interfaith Power & Light

• National office
• State affiliates

References

• Joelle's purchasing guide (book): Green and Just Celebrations
• Jewish community Joelle co-founded: Tikkun Leil Shabbat
• Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb
• Environmental Torah
• Dobb’s source sheet (to inform a Jewish response to climate change)
• Rabbi Joseph Karo
• 5782 is a Shmita year
• Faith community land acknowledgements 
• Jewish Brachot (blessings said before eating and at other times)
• Rabbi Simcha Bunim
• Rabbi Levy, Talmud scholar 
• Katharine Hayhoe, Saving Us
• Joelle Novey and Katharine Hayhoe discuss Saving Us

Quotes 

The older I get the more I feel like we just have to live with irresolvable paradoxes and that if we can navigate through them with some kind of balance, and feeling tension on both sides, that's the wise path, that's the way forward. 

I think we have to have weekday consciousness in one pocket and Shmita consciousness in the other pocket.

I am grieving for so much that I love. I am grieving for the people I love who will experience a warmer and more dangerous world. I am grieving for the species that will not make it. I am feeling grief that is grounded in tremendous love. And then suddenly, with my heart open and my hands open, that's a tremendously powerful thing. It's like, I'm gonna be a warrior in the world for the things I love. I'm gonna have fierce, mother-bear protective energy for all that  I love. And, I'm in the fight of my life for all that I love.

What I appreciate so much about what I think a lot of our sacred traditions are bringing to this moment is putting an asterisk next to our feeling that we own the Earth, and own land. And there are many ways that I think Shmita and the teachings that, whether or not it feels like you own land, on a regular cycle you have to release it back to some collective--is one way the Jewish tradition, at least in principle, was trying to vet out a way of living in which everyone would sort of have a permanent asterisk after the idea of "owning the Earth." And I see so many ways that the communities we work with are trying to add that asterisk in a world where we are encountering so many negative consequences of not understanding our position in the world as interdependents.

Shmita forces everyone to think differently about land ownership and to put huge brackets and a big asterisk next to the idea that we have pieces of the Earth that we own, on which we can do anything we want, without thinking about our interdependence or the consequences to other creatures and species.

We have to make time to release and restore.

There’ s a role for everyone that’s completely authentic to who they are... Everyone already is who they need to be, to respond to the climate crisis, because they all already love someone who will be harmed by the climate crisis. And, we can never invite people to be someone else, but we can always invite them to be more fully who they are. 

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Thanks for listening.
This podcast is part of our Winter 2021 series, Shmita Now.
Visit the AllCreation podcast site or AllCreation.org for more. 
Produced and edited by Chris Searles.

The Rev and Rav Talk Sabbatical Year (Shmita). Austin clergy Rev. Daryl Horton and Rabbi Neil Blumofe talk about Shmita, the sabbatical year practice described in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy—exploring concepts such as economic justice, human nature, faith, and enoughness. Daryl and Neil are each respected faith and community leader in Austin, TX. They've each served as directors of Interfaith Action of Central Texas, working towards a common good for all. 

About Our Guests
Rev. Dr. Daryl Horton is Pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Austin, TX. He has served the Austin community in different capacities and leadership positions. Pastor Horton stands boldly for equity and justice as a leader and resource. His goal is to mobilize disciples for mission throughout the Austin community. Read his full bio here. Rabbi Neil Blumofe serves as Senior Rabbi at Congregation Agudas Achim in Austin, TX. He is involved in Jewish teaching and learning locally, nationally, and internationally, and is active in civic life and leadership in Austin. Read his full bio here.

Connect
Visit the "Rev and Rav" Facebook page here.

References
Question 1: Adventures

• Interfaith Action of Central Texas
• Rev and Rav Road Trips
• Rev and Rav Road Trip travel videos
• National Civil Rights Museum (Memphis, TN)
• The Legacy Museum (Montgomery, AL)
• The Civil Rights Memorial (Montgomery, AL)
• Pettus Bridge (Selma, AL))
• Slave trade tip of Manhattan (tiny plaque photo) 
• Slave trade Manhattan
• Ellis Island
• The Peekskill Riots
• Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
•  "" "" > Certificate in Jewish-Christian Relationship

Question: 2 Rest for the Land

• Exodus Chapter 23: 10-11
• Sharecropping 
• Historic St John's District Association (Austin, TX)
• St. John's District Association garden 
• Dominion
• God grants Adam and Eve dominion over animals (Genesis 1:26)

Question: 3 The Release of Debts

• Deuteronomy 15: 1-2
• "If we mistreat the land, then the land will vomit us up" (Leviticus 18:28)
• Theem Suum, getting out of your own way
• Payday lending 
• Hebrew Free Loan Society 

Question 4: Jubilee (Freedom & Returning Home)

• Leviticus 25: 10
• The Emancipation Proclamation 
• Juneteenth (June nineteenth) 
• This is the Hebrew year of 5782
• The Hebrew calendar
• 5782 is a Shmita year
• Shmita practices occuring in Israel now 
• "First Right of Return" (Austin, TX program; the opportunity to return to your neighborhood)
• Composting

Quotes

God is saying, "You do not have dominion over the Earth." Rather, the Earth is the Lord’s, as it says in Psalms, and you are in fact part of a larger system, a larger ecosystem, a larger rhythm of how this world, your world, functions." — Neil

God is saying, do you have faith in me enough to let the land lie and rest for a year? And I think that that kind of challenge is an incredible challenge, and it’s something that in every generation we get to decide if we are up to. — Neil

So the land is providing food, but we have to understand too, that underneath all of that, ultimately, God provides for us, and we shouldn’t take that partnership or that sense of obligation of that land for granted in our lives. — Neil

Debt is a burden that can bury one or prohibit one from living a free life… How can we help our young peo...

Coming 12/21/21, our next collection, Shmita: The Sabbatical Year. The full collection, guest edited by Yaira Robinson, explores the meaning of "Shmita: The Sabbatical Year" today and features articles, artworks, and interviews. This podcast features a few short segments from our upcoming podcasts. We are excited to welcome six new guests. Heard in this collection, in order of appearance: 

• Deirdre Gabbay (fndr,dir., Shmita Project Northwest)
• Joelle Novey (exec. dir., Interfaith Power and Light D.C.MA.NoVA.)
• Yaira Robinson (guest editor, AllCreation.org)
• Dr. Mirele Goldsmith (co-founder, Jewish Earth Alliance)
• Dr. Rev. Daryl Horton (senior pastor,  Mt. Zion Baptist Church)
• Rabbi Neil Blumofe (senior rabbi, Congregation Agudas Achim)
• Naomi Edelson (snr. dir., National Wildlife Federation).

The full collection will be published on the Winter Solstice, 12/21/21.
Thanks for listening - Allcreation.org 

Amber Morning Star Byars is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and a descendant of the Chickasaw Nation. In this podcast Amber reads her reflections from the Line3 pipeline resistance at Red Lake River in Northern Minnesota. View Amber's article on AllCreation.org to see a photo gallery from the resistance effort and read the text in this recording. This piece is part of AllCreation's Fall Equinox 2021 collection, Sacred Relationship, exploring the Native American sense of sacred relationship with Earth’s other living creatures. The photo here (by Amber) shows Red Lake River, one of just 15 rivers in the world that flows north. Red Lake River, the homelands of the Anishinaabe, and the Mississippi River are currently threatened by the Line3 tar sands pipeline replacement project.

Visit StopLine3 to help support the resistance.

About Amber
Amber Morning Star Byars has a BA in Indigenous Liberal Studies and an AFA in Studio Art from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She will graduate from the University of Arizona College of Law in 2022. 

Selected Quotes

Janene Yazzie is a Diné Asa Navajo entreprenuer, community organizer and human rights advocate who has worked on development and energy issues with Indigenous communities across the United States for over 12 years. In part two of this interview, Janene shares about rights-based solutions, community-led efforts to regeneratively care for Creation, ways the world religions are related and connected to Mother Earth and our non-human relatives, and offers some words of encouragement. Janene is interviewed by Vance Blackfox, guest editor for our Fall 2021 collection exploring the Native American sense of "Sacred Relationship" with Earth's other living creatures. 

About Janene
Among her many accomplishments, Janene Yazzie is co-founder/CEO of Sixth-World Solutions and a co-convener of the Indigenous Peoples Major Group to the United Nations High Level Political Forum on the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, where she works on climate change, water security, food security, energy development, and nation building. She is also a program manager for the International Indian Treaty Council and a co-founder of the Navajo Nation Little Colorado River Watershed Chapters Association, where her work ranges from infrastructure policy-making to restoration and protection of traditional ecological knowledge. To learn more about Janene, visit Sixth-World Solutions.

Selected Quotes

“Our challenges are so complex. Our histories are so complex, and our solutions need to mirror that. In order to protect and restore biodiversity our solutions need to have the same type of diversity, informed by the limitations and types of relationships that exist within our ecosystems.”

“What are the social/cultural structures that need to be created so that we’re creating communities that are sustainable and regenerative? Those are the types of solutions we need everywhere... It’s going to look different everywhere.”

"Don't give up. Don't give up. A beautiful world is possible and it’s being birthed right now, and it needs all of us to be there to help guide it into existence. We do that by breathing love into the work we’re doing. By breathing love into the relationships that surround us. By breathing love into ourselves, because we often forget ourselves in all of this process. And if we can do that then we can find ways, no matter what challenges we’re facing, to continue to stand in our power and bring life to the solutions that are needed for our world and our communities." 

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Listen to Part 1 of Janene's interview: https://share.transistor.fm/s/99049ea8. 

Janene Yazzie is a Diné Asa Navajo woman from the Navajo Nation. She is a community organizer and human rights advocate who has worked on development and energy issues with Indigenous communities across the United States for over 12 years. In part one of this interview she talks about her background and identity, steps for personal and societal transformation, and how to stay "in a good way." Janene is interviewed by Vance Blackfox for AllCreation's Fall 2021 collection exploring the Native American sense of "Sacred Relationship" with Earth's other living creatures. 

About Janene
Among her many accomplishments, Janene Yazzie is co-founder/CEO of Sixth-World Solutions and a co-convener of the Indigenous Peoples Major Group to the United Nations High Level Political Forum on the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, where she works on climate change, water security, food security, energy development, and nation building. She is also a program manager for the International Indian Treaty Council and a co-founder of the Navajo Nation Little Colorado River Watershed Chapters Association, where her work ranges from infrastructure policy-making to restoration and protection of traditional ecological knowledge. To learn more about Janene, visit Sixth-World Solutions.

References 

Philmer Bluehouse (in memoriam)

• "Our objective is harmony"
• On Navajo peacemaking

Selected Quotes

“Where do the stars know your name? Where is that place, that moment where you have that first memory of looking up to the stars and recognizing that you’re this speck in the universe. Where is that experience rooted? And how can you use that to reclaim your connection as a human being living on this Earth, tied to an interdependent and interconnected relationship to everything from the stars in our universe to the soils under your feet."

"ALL of our places need to be protected. We need relatives that are willing and able to stand in defense of all sacred life and do it in a way that is meaningful, in a way that is authentic and genuine to their real histories, to where they’re connected, to where they come from."

“When you don’t understand the histories of where (our) practices come from, then you’re not honoring them the way you think you are."

“If we’re not able to tap into something deeper, into a deeper connection and a deeper imagination based on where we’re connected to, to place, then we’re gonna continue to be limited in our solutions and our understanding by that dominance worldview.”

"That’s part of the beauty of it: It’s not a quick fix. We can be patient with ourselves. We each have a responsibility to take on that journey, to take on that path of self-discovery. And when we do that and we invest in right relationship with those around us and with other forms of sacred life, non-human life, that’s how we win.”

“Not only do we inherit the resiliency of our ancestors, we inherit their tremendous love and their tremendous power of believing and hoping for a different way, a different future, different outcomes.”

“We’re not here to save the Earth. We’re here to re-establish and remember our deep connection to our Mother and what a gift that is. But, we’re actually here to really grow and evolve as a species and to remember and restore our connection to each other, and to rebuild our own ecosystem -- the ecosystem that sustains us as human communities so that it’s back in balance with the natural ecosystems that exist around us. And we’re perfectly capable of doing that. For everything we have done wrong, we are capable of creating a solution to heal that, to address it, to take responsibility for it and to create a new way. And that’s what gives me hope and that’s what keeps driving me.”

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Listen to Part 2 of Janene's interview here: https://share.transistor.fm/s/b0803102.

This episode of the AllCreation podcast, part 1 of our series exploring the Native American sense of "Sacred Relationship," was actually recorded during the interviews for our prior issue. Vance Blackfox, a citizen of the Cherokee nation and a breakthrough Lutheran theologian and minister, explained during that interview that the annihilation and relocation of Native American peoples during the colonization of North America didn't just tragically and traumatically affect Native American lives -- it destroyed sacred practices. Here, Vance shines a light on some of the gaps in the common understanding of Native American spirituality and relationship with our "non-human relatives." The Native American tragedy is not just about lives lost and lands lost, but also the loss of sacred relationships and ceremony.

About Vance
Vance Blackfox is Desk Director for American Indian Alaska Native Tribal Nations for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Indigenous Theologian and Coordinating Team Member for the ELCA’s Theological Round Table, creator and producer of the Vine Deloria Jr. Theological Symposium hosted at Lutheran School of Theology, founder/director of Other+Wise, and Indigenous Theologian for the Faith-Based Initiative for the City of San Antonio. He is also guest editor for our "Sacred Relationship" collection, Fall 2021.

Selected Quotes

"We weren’t worshiping the tree, or the land, or the plants, or the animals, or the waters -- we were giving thanks to and honoring the tree, or the plants, or the animals, or the water."

"Everyone says we have to give thanks to Jesus because he sacrificed himself for sins and our salvation… What is the difference between understanding that and understanding that we need to say thank you to the water for giving us life. We have to have water to survive, and this river is full of fish."

"We are dependent upon our non-human relatives for understanding how we are in relationship with Creator." 

“Grace is also something that can be understood from our pre-existence here in this land.”

More
Listen to our prior interviews with Vance here (part 1) and here (part 2).
Check out Vance's numerous contributions to the AllCreation website here. 

Mary DeJong, is founder of Waymarkers, a project offering an exceptional collection of curricula, retreat experiences, writings, spiritual companioning experiences, and nature-based art to help Christians and people of all backgrounds restore their relationships to the sacred in each other and the more than human world. "Waymarkers", the word, is derived from Jeremiah 31:21. Mary is also co-founder and chair of Cheasty Green Space, a 43-acre public park rewilding project in Seattle, and a noted theologian. In this podcast we discuss Apocalypse as the end of all things and Apokalypsis as a revelatory uncovering of transformative knowledge. 

Mary shares her views on: 

• The importance of place and how we understand the presence of the Divine
• Her journey into a Faith tradition rooted in Earth-based spirituality
• Apocalypse and Apokalypsis
• Living in "journey consciousness"
• What an optimal future looks like

To connect to Mary and learn more about her work visit Waymarkers.net. 

Key quotes

Rewilding is restoring whole relationships.

When we begin to recover ways of seeing the Earth as sacred, as recovering the numinous in Nature, of an imminent and wildly-present God — when we being to reconnect to that reality, then our posture shifts from this “I, it” way of relating to an “I, Thou,” with a capital T… where we see and interact with the Holy in every step we take…

"Put your ear to the Earth." (Job 14) Learn the basics... This is the Apokalypsis -- you’ll find revelation, you will find divine guidance and wisdom, you’ll find waymarkers when you listen well to your bioregion... When we do the work of putting our ear to the Earth, we find that we have revelation and great knowledge right, literally, in our own backyards.

Re-member who you are.

Randy offered me a challenge to convert my Western mind to an Indigenous mind. 

We have to have the courage now to emerge in new ways; through listening and learning from Indigenous communities, and that will bring us collectively into world views that will see the Earth as sacred once again.

Will this save us from the Apocalypse? ... Possibly. 

It’s very interesting to play with the idea of the apocalypse as invitation to "the (hero's) journey"... And we’re being asked to walk in or walk out, and when we return we’re going to hold The Village to account. 

We find the Apokalypsis through listening deeply to our journeys and finding the revelation that leaving the Village provides us, because ultimately the heroine has to come home. Because through this journey you return home utterly transformed.

What we are going for is a collective flourishing within the human and non-human communities alike. 

We have our courage as a resource... our flourishing is going to be dependent upon linking arms with everyone and no longer seeing ourselves as an isolated individual... "We are on a common journey on our common home." (Pope Francis)

Terms

• Indigeneity
• Numinous
• Rewilding
• Imminent
• Bioregion 

References

• Jeremiah 31:21 
• Job 14
• Martin Buber
• Hildegard of Bingen
• Veriditas
• Randy Woodley
• John Trudell
• Wendell Berry, "I go and lie down where the wood drake"
• Sallie McFague, "Talking about God in the metaphorical language of the Earth"
• Joseph Campbell
• Laudato Si, Pope Francis

This episode is hosted by Chris Searles, co-founder and exec. editor of AllCreation.org.

Waymarkers is currently offering "Wild Summer," part of a virtual rewilding course which provides guidance and accompaniment in moving through the seasons of the Earth with intentionality and sacramentality. Learn more at: waymarkers.net/wild-summer

"What does Black Advancement look like?" Louis lists numerous facets of Advancement for Black Americans, starting with dismantling White dominance and amplifying Black and multicultural existentialism. Louis discusses institutionalized racism, institutionalized privilege, new ventures for voices that have never been heard or are unvalued. "How do we keep investing into those minds that are going to shape the generations to come for hundreds of years?"

Key quotes

"The root, not the branch." - Nat Turner

In God's kingdom accomplishments, color, mistakes, preferences, will never matter.

In this season of Covid-19 we have been called to make a new mindset shift.

I'm trying to learn how to put flesh on my Faith in order to move forward in this fight for equal freedom of one another.

Terms

• Hegemony
• Assimilation
• Existentialism

References

• The Birth of a Nation (2016)

This episode is hosted by Chris Searles, exec. editor, AllCreation.org.
Listen to part 1: https://share.transistor.fm/s/ac361170

Listen to part 2: https://share.transistor.fm/s/3ee55c03

Ideas discussed

• How has community gardening been transformative?
• Tell us about working with recently-released incarcerated people

Key quotes

It took a while for church folk to get the therapeutic value of gardening.

They wanted to build fences.

You want to have the trust of your community.

Whatever the penitentiary wants to say, whatever the legal system wants to say, whatever society wants to say, we are still strong, beautiful and gifted children of God, who happen to be Black.
 
The gardens gave them a deeper feeling, a deeper presence of God.

But, yes -- it's definitely therapeutic. These are just individuals who wanted to contribute to God's creation. They learned skills and the effects of those skills and they were able to see what God could do, and has done, in their lives.

(The church) realized, "this isn't for us, this is for a greater purpose: the common good." 

What does it mean to be a steward? 

Success is doing it for a greater purpose. 

This episode is hosted by Chris Searles, exec. editor, AllCreation.org.
Listen to part 1: https://share.transistor.fm/s/ac361170

Listen to part 3: https://share.transistor.fm/s/d0eb3244