October 12, 2023
by Sarah Werner

ELKHART, Indiana (Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary) — Nearly 40 Bridgefolk participants joined with other Christians for the sixth Rooted and Grounded Conference on Land and Christian Discipleship, hosted by the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS) in late September. The conference focused on the theme, “Pathways through Climate Doom: Resistance and Resilience.”

“The focus on confronting climate doom resonated with many people, especially the young adults who attended,” reflected Janeen Bertsche Johnson, MDiv, AMBS Director of Campus Ministries and Rooted and Grounded Conference Coordinator. “I was grateful for the ways in which speakers, workshops and worship sessions helped us imagine a variety of responses — curiosity, trauma-informed care, scriptural resources, deep attention, art and music, prayer postures, engaged dialogue, historical truth-telling, lament, hope, and so much more.”

A total of 150 participants from the United States and Canada gathered for keynote sessions, workshops, paper presentations and worship, with 30 more attending online.  Bridgefolk co-sponsored the conference instead of holding its own annual conference in 2023. Bridgefolk participants led morning and evening worship services for all, then gathered for reflection and a Bridgefolk footwashing / agape service on Saturday afternoon.

The Rooted and Grounded theme offered an opportunity for Bridgefolk to follow through on its recent conference topics. Since 2018, annual Bridgefolk conferences have invited Mennonites and Catholics to look together at their shared calling to address racial injustice and the legacy of land theft from indigenous peoples in order to nurture a just peace.

Resistance

On the evening of Sept. 28, Kaitlin Curtice, a Potawatomi Christian author, poet and speaker, presented a keynote address during the conference’s opening worship session on the need for resistance in the midst of climate doom. She suggested that resistance includes cultivating relationships – with Mother Earth, with one another, and with fellow creatures. Resistance is also the way in which people use their everyday lives to resist the “toxic status quo of our time” and choose an alternative way that is rooted in relationships.

Curtice shared about her upbringing on the Citizen Potawatomi Nation reservation in Oklahoma and how she had to overcome a sense of disembodiment that resulted from her ancestors having been uprooted and having had to start over in new places.

“Colonialism disrupts our connection to the land, our bodies and each other — no matter our background,” she said. Resistance represents a lifelong endeavor to rebuild these connections and heal from the intergenerational trauma of disconnection, she noted, reminding those present, “The land is everywhere. If we listen, the land is speaking.”

During her workshop on the morning of Sept. 29, Curtice expanded on the theme of resistance by sharing from her latest book, Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day (Brazos, 2023). She described how four realms of resistance provide a moving, cyclical framework for understanding life — communal, ancestral, personal and integral.

Curtice explained how people are bound up in community with both their ancestors and those who will come after them. The actions of their ancestors have led them to where they are now, and the actions that they take in turn affect the generations that come after them.

People will make mistakes, feel exhausted and move from realm to realm to figure out life, Curtice told her listeners. Things will be hard, and they will grieve. She reminded them that the current plight will not be fixed quickly, for this is lifelong work, but they are not alone in it.

Resilience

Leah Thomas, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care at AMBS, provided a resilience training on Sept. 29 in the afternoon. She defined resilience as “the capacity to face and handle life’s challenges with flexibility and creativity.”

“Resilience means rediscovering and cultivating forms of inner strength that we may not realize already reside within us,” she continued. “It is the capacity to tolerate difficult feelings, which also expands our capacity to experience greater joy. Resiliency helps us grow beyond our current comfort zone to develop a fiercely compassionate and honest engagement with life.”

Drawing from social psychology, Thomas explained how trauma affects people’s emotional and spiritual lives and can be transmitted across generations.

“The climate crisis is a collective trauma — an intergenerational trauma,” she said. “The exploitation of the natural world is interconnected with other types of exploitation/oppression — including colonialism, genocide, enslavement, racism, classism and sexism — all within a society marked by capitalism’s overarching narrative of exploitation.”

“This collective trauma has damaged the ‘social tissue of community’ similar to how the tissues of the mind, body, and spirit can be damaged, and it continues to be passed from generation to generation.”

In the context of climate doom, Thomas said that resilience is the ability to remain grounded and retain a sense of well-being in the face of the collective trauma caused by climate change. During the training, she offered practical exercises for remaining grounded when feeling overwhelmed. She encouraged participants to take a break and wander outside, taking time to notice the sights, smells and sounds around them.

Seeking hope

During the evening worship service on Sept. 29, Jackie Wyse-Rhodes, PhD, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at AMBS, shared her keynote address, “Seeking Hope when the Path is Crooked: The Bible and Climate Change.” She discussed various types of paths in the Bible — straight paths, crooked paths, paths yet unknown, and ancient paths.

Straight paths are often extolled in the Bible as good and righteous, she said, making for a journey that is accessible and predictable. Crooked paths are the opposite — untrustworthy and difficult.

While it seems that climate change is leading humanity on a crooked path to destruction, Wyse-Rhodes reminded her listeners that they are not the first to despair or to lose hope. She called them to remember various people from the Bible and how they navigated challenging journeys.

Wyse-Rhodes also looked to Wisdom literature for guidance in forging a path of justice and faithfulness in difficult times.

“The ‘path yet unknown’ is a future path, yes. But it is not linear,” she said. “The past and the future inform one another. The crooked path loops back upon itself, and if we seek diligently, maybe we can find an off-ramp to the past, where we can set up a marker to welcome future generations back home. For the road to our future will ultimately take us back to God’s own ancient pathways.”

Additional conference information

Along with the keynote sessions, 10 workshops and 13 paper presentations provided participants with practical tools for dealing with climate doom as they engage in the work of restoring a fragile and damaged earth.

In addition to Bridgefolk, other co-sponsors were the Anabaptist Climate Collaborative, Mennonite Creation Care Network and Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen (Indiana) College.

Prior Rooted and Grounded conferences were held in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2021.

Located in Elkhart, Indiana, on ancestral land of the Potawatomi and Miami peoples, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary is a learning community with an Anabaptist vision, offering theological education for learners both on campus and at a distance as well as a wide array of lifelong learning programs — all with the goal of educating followers of Jesus Christ to be leaders for God’s reconciling mission in the world.

This AMBS press release was supplemented with information from Bridgefolk.