Category: Creation & Ecology
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People of the Earth
This is good place to confess with pride that my Mom is a paleontologist. Her work honors the fascinating diversity and development of life past and present. I have heard her comment more than once that God must have a particular fondness for beetles, given their great abundance! Humanity is a very small fraction of…
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Let There Be Rest
This hymn began as an exploration of the commandment to rest and to ensure rest for the people, animals, and land around us. I was inspired by ongoing conversations about rest as an issue of justice including the work of Tricia Hersey, the “Nap Bishop,” who teaches that rest can be both resistance and reparation.…
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Morning Breaks
In October of 2022 I was a bundle of nerves as I prepared to attend a conference for aspiring hymn composers and text writers hosted by The Hymn Society of the United States and Canada. I was totally fascinated by the prospect of hymn writing and I had been spending more and more time experimenting,…
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Love these Human Bodies
Our bodies are gifts of God, but cultural messages, practical challenges, aging, and loss can complicate our relationship with this holy gift. This text is a reminder to care for ourselves and one another. Love these human bodiesfashioned, filled, and claimed,fragile yet resilient,fierce with will untamed,made of clay and spirit,made of flesh and bone,sacred sanctuary,home…
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Jesus, Faithful Ancient Tree
A few years ago I preached an Easter sermon on fungus: the amazing underground networks that connect trees so that a whole forest can operate as one organism. The hub of that forest organism is sometimes called a mother tree, an elder that shares memory and resources with others. Research on this phenomenon has been…
Hannah C Brown 