Since 1996 Cindy has volunteered with A Rocha in Portugal, on the Canadian Board of Directors, as a newsletter editor, and as community group leader in Edmonton until she moved to BC 15 years ago and became A Rocha’s Northern BC Representative & Community Mobilizer. Cindy is a graduate of King’s University College with a BSc, and a Naturalist certificate from the Au Sable Institute in Michigan. She is currently based in the beautiful Bulkley Valley in Houston, BC, where she lives with her husband Dennis and their children.
I attended Au Sable in 1993 and started dreaming about opening a Canadian Christian environmental school. It was why I became involved in A Rocha. In 2015 several of us had the idea to open a fish hatchery and nature centre and the community got excited.
This summer, after 10 years as an international trustee, I retired from the board of A Rocha. How is it that the son of an immigrant fisherman from Japan came to be involved with creation care?
Some would say that Debbie’s transformation and impact aren’t the stuff of ‘planet-saving’ but at A Rocha we think they most certainly are.
‘So, how’s the commune?’, the man asks. I answer, ‘It’s great, but it’s not a commune. It’s a community.’ He laughs. ‘Can’t fool me. Lots of people. Organic gardens. Shared living spaces. Sauna. You’re a commune.’ We’re not! I want to protest. And then I wonder, Why am I feeling so defensive?
In these days drawing near to Easter I am mindful of Christ’s work of redemption – of His design to reconcile ‘all things’ to Himself, as Paul says in Colossians. His work of redemption not only transforms human lives, but all of creation as we participate with him in his reconciling work. Allow me to illustrate.
The theme at church this past while has been “the Good Seed” and the good seeds of the Kingdom – seeds of love and justice and grace that are sown in seeming obscurity and randomness, but grow like invasive weeds, big and strong and vibrant. This has been the A Rocha story around the world, and it’s been our story in our particular corner of the world in Canada.
