By Mallory McDuff
The Huffington Post
September 02, 2010
“I Sing a Song of the Saints of God” was one of my grandmother’s favorite hymns: “And one was a doctor and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green. They were all of them saints of God and I mean, God helping, to be one too.”
Religious-environmental saints are acting with conviction to conserve the places I love. One is a writer, and one is a priest, and one is a mother, just like me. If I can find these saints in my small circles, these natural saints are among us all.
- LeeAnne Beres: “A thousand acts of kindness can be wiped away with a single act of Congress,” says LeeAnne Beres, executive director of Earth Ministries in Washington State. Among its many programs, Earth Ministries provides training in environmental advocacy skills for congregations. This organization has brought together interfaith religious leaders and legislators in a campaign to transition the state from coal to clean energy by 2015.
- Rev. John Rausch: In his work with the Catholic Committee on Appalachia, Father John Rausch has led countless tours of mountaintop removal sites for seminarians, community members, and interfaith groups. This Sept. 11, Rev. Rausch will lead an interfaith prayer service facing a mountaintop removal site to pray for jobs that build a just society and steward creation. He often ends these services by giving wildflower seeds to participants to scatter amid the rubble as a sign of hopeful action.
- Jill Rios: Jill Rios and her daughter Aja worship at La Capilla de Santa Maria, where her husband is the priest for this Episcopal parish that ministers to Latino immigrants. With her leadership, La Capilla has weatherized the sanctuary, planted a garden, and built a cob oven as a microenterprise for parishioners. As the former director of North Carolina Interfaith Power and Light, she also created a program to weatherize 300 low-income homes and provide climate justice tours for congregations.
- Rabbi Larry Troster: Rabbi Larry Troster fosters the next generation of religious-environmental saints through his leadership with the GreenFaith Fellowship program. This training builds the skills of interfaith leaders to care for creation using a framework of justice, spirituality, and stewardship. Based in New Jersey, GreenFaith also promotes initiatives such as solar panels on sanctuaries and an environmental certification program for congregations.
- Will Harlan: A practicing Buddhist and environmental writer, Will Harlan lives off the grid with his wife and son on their farm in Western North Carolina. His spirituality connects him to the earth and to his avocation as an elite ultramarathoner in places like the Appalachian Mountains and Cooper Canyon, Mexico. Last year, Harlan completed a 72-mile run in the Smoky Mountains to raise awareness about mountaintop removal.
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Together, these people of faith represent a communion of saints rooted in God’s earth, but moving forward, one step at a time. And I mean to be one too.