Leah Kostamo is an earthkeeper and storyteller who is passionate about helping others live lightly on the earth from a place of joy and hope. For the past twelve years Leah and her husband Markku have spearheaded the work of A Rocha in Canada. She is the author of Planted: a Story of Creation, Calling and Community.
Perhaps you are like the rest of us who find it easier to count our irritations, challenges, annoyances, etc., etc., than count our blessings. Our gratitude muscles have grown flabby through lack of use. What we flabby would-be appreciators need is something to make us truly thankful. What better place to start than where we are and what we are standing upon. Dirt.
Through 2013, we’ve been celebrating A Rocha’s 30th birthday. But, in a world of disappearing habitats and species, just how long-lasting is our conservation work? If we believe God’s New Creation to be a renewal rather than a replacement of this world, will the best of our work remain into eternity?
My mother-in law wears a bikini. She is seventy years old and decades of gravity have done their work. But she wears a bikini nonetheless, with a devil-may-care nonchalance to what others her age are more inclined to cover in sarongs, ruffles and cruise-wear. She’s my hero.
Population, Consumption, Economics: three words that are desperately important for our future on planet Earth. They are linked by one problematic word, ‘Growth’: exploding global population, increasing per capita consumption, and political obsession with economic growth. How much is enough?
The first step toward living lighter—toward really rolling up one’s sleeves and caring for creation—is to get to know one’s own place. Here’s a little quiz to get you started.
A friend was recently on holiday in France and found a local Catholic newspaper with the headline, ‘Is ecology a luxury in this time of crisis?’ At first sight the […]
I have a small, determined grandson. He can insert an astonishing number of vowels into the word NO. Whether in two-year olds or adults, strong differences of opinion may need to pass through several stages before a degree of cooperation is reached − mutual listening, clear communication, appropriate compromise, and peace-making − which in his case means a cuddle.
Conservationists and wildlife enthusiasts often appear anti-urban. ‘Natural living’ seems to mean escaping from buildings, traffic and crowds. Those forced to find work in cities dream of escaping to a rural idyll… a little piece of heaven on earth. Isn’t in strange, then, that the bible moves from a garden to a city?
Community is a complicated word. Like one of those huge lorries that thunders past on the motorway, it isn’t always obvious what’s in it. It’s an emotive term which may awaken longing, panic, or just mild curiosity. Why is it so important? And why was John Stott so good at it on so many different levels?
Every species on earth has its ecological niche, where it can find resources to meet its needs. We humans are able to live in almost any of this planet’s ecosystems. As we have succeeded, so we have moulded the planet to our specific needs. Does this mean that we are some kind of planetary super-predator, and have no ecological niche? Or, does it suggest that whilst we may call ourselves Homo ‘sapiens’, we are failing to be wise?
