I’m Keith Hammer, retired ELCA pastor, Boise, ID. About a year ago, I jumped at the chance to be a part of an online community storytelling course. The project I engaged for that course not only showed me the power of community storytelling, it also kindled in me a passion to be a creation/earth care advocate! Here’s how it happened.

In February 2023, I was invited to be a part of an online community storytelling course facilitated by gifted storyteller Mark Yaconelli. At The Hearth Community, Mark offers community storytelling training “to use the power of personal storytelling to heal, enrich, and mobilize communities for good.” Our online cohort of some 25 persons met via Zoom from March to September 2023 to learn, practice, collaborate and support each other in community storytelling.

At the heart of this 6-month learning adventure was a personal community storytelling project. My project was a story circle focused on the question, “How Do You Love Your Mother (Earth)? Building Climate Care in Community using Story Circles.” I was led to this focus as a result of a workshop I attended at the 2023 NWIM Synod Assembly that highlighted climate change crises we face as Christians living faithfully in this time.

Our 6-person story circle (persons associated with Redeemer Lutheran, Boise, where my wife Bonita and I worship) met 6 times. Our meetings focused on the question/theme in the previous paragraph. Specifically, we told personal stories about being neighbors, connecting to the non-human parts of creation, sharing our hopes for sustainability and resilience for Earth, identifying creation caretakers/advocates who inspire or mentor us, and how we intend to live as Earth caretakers.

At the conclusion of our story circle experience, we who sat in the circle shared how we had grown in sharing personal stories and listening deeply to each other, thus leading us to grow in friendship and community. We also agreed that we had grown in our knowledge and the need to act/advocate on behalf of Earth. Some of us saw ourselves applying these learnings and continuing to expand our awareness and action for climate/creation care.

For me the experience ignited my passion to be an advocate/actor for creation care and justice for Earth and all life that lives here. There’s more to my story, but I’ll leave that for a future sharing. For now, I’d like to hear your stories of what excites you to speak and act for creation care and Earth justice.

So, I invite you to join several of us who have been meeting over Zoom as a NWIM Synod Nurturing Creation Care group (a “working name,” for now) since November 2023. You can learn more about us here. We welcome anyone who is curious or already an advocate for creation care. Our next Zoom meeting will be April 18 6:30 PM PDT/7:30 PM MDT. (Note that this is the third Thursday for this month only.) Please contact our facilitator, Deaconess Katrina Martich, at contact@katrinamartich.com for a Zoom link for the meeting and/or any questions about the group that you may have.