Kellie is a singer, songwriter, wife and mom. A former widow, Kellie has lived through tragedy and found hope and joy on the other side. Her music draws from real-life stories of beauty, heartache, hope and the celebration of life. Kellie is an artist partner with A Rocha USA.
To have dear friends who carry great wisdom is a profound blessing. I seek to glean all I can from every moment we get together. Miranda Harris has poured so much into my heart. Each time we’re together she propels me further on the path towards living into my calling.
Biodiversity is a word you won’t find in the Bible, but the concept is profoundly biblical. As we look through the great themes of the Bible, the pattern is clear: God has a passion for biodiversity that runs from beginning to end.
I remember being 13, and watching David Attenborough walking through a jungle, talking about its beauty and vulnerability, and I remember thinking that I was so glad that people like him were in charge, because he would save the rainforests. It feels as if we have been saving the rainforests for my whole life.
Pentecostalism and the work of the Holy Spirit have featured little in the growing Creation Care and Ecotheology movements. However, if we turn to the Bible, we see that the Holy Spirit is intimately connected to all God’s work from the start of creation to the completion of the new creation.
Extinction Rebellion’ (XR) has been getting plenty of media coverage recently. It’s a new nonviolent, direct-action movement aiming to provoke discussion and transform the climate change agenda. In over 80 cities across 33 countries, XR has closed bridges and roads, protested outside fossil fuel companies, and seen hundreds of people arrested. When interviewed, most XR activists have spoken of their fear or eco-anxiety for the future, and their anger at the lack of action.
How do you feel about environmental problems? In the environmental movement and in natural sciences, people usually ask ‘What do you think?’, but we have reached a time when more attention should be given to emotional resilience, the ways in which we might survive psychologically in the midst of rapidly changing environmental conditions.
When I was a young lad, Church Mission Society (CMS) had a young adults’ newsletter which I read avidly. The title of one article has stuck with me ever since: ‘Has God called you to stay where you are?’
At the time my family lived in a quiet Midlands village with a somewhat sleepy church, so the idea that mission meant travelling the world and seeing exciting, exotic places appealed greatly. By the time I reached my 30s I’d lived in over 20 different places, visited lots of countries, and God was saying something rather different to me.
How do you imagine the places we do not know much about, such as the deepest trenches of the oceans? Dark, scary, full of ugly creatures with teeth made for ripping flesh? Unknown monsters lurking in a dark soup? How do you feel about these being damaged by human activity, such as deep-sea mining, changing ocean acidity and temperature, and bottom trawling?
At the launch of our book, Low Carbon and Loving It, I was asked a difficult question: ‘Flights go everyday from Sydney to Johannesburg. Whether or not I book a ticket and get on that plane, it will go. So what difference does it make if I fly or not?’
She wakes up. She knows she is ready. Ready for her big day. The sun has never been brighter. The sky has never been bluer. This is the day she’s been waiting for all her life. This is the day she has been working so hard to get everything ready for.
