Luther House Students Host Earth Day Scavenger Hunt

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On Wednesday, April 20 Lutheran Campus Ministries hosted an Earth Day Scavenger Hunt and Action for students from UNM and CNM. 16 people competed in 3 teams to find 5 scavenger locations on the main campus of UNM. Each location required an action from the team: recite a prayer for climate justice, call a Senator to demand climate justice action, commit to no longer using single-use plastics etc.
Teams reunited at Luther House, received prizes for participating, and discussed several ways to love Mother Earth better. Students were also invited to attend the film screening of “Youth vs. Gov” with First Congregational UCC and will return to Luther House on Wednesday, April 27 to join in the webinar discussion with IPL.
Location 1: Prayer: Duck Pond- Breath Prayer- “God of Creation, As we breathe the air that sustains, fill us with your love for Mother Earth. Breathe into us solidarity with the suffering caused by our irresponsibility. Move us into action to serve our Earth and build your sustainable kin_dom. Amen”
Location 2– Educate/Organize: Smith Plaza- Advertised the “Youth vs. Gov” film screening and film discussion.
Location 3- Action: Statues: “Flood the phones, not the planet. Call Senator Lujan and demand climate justice now!”
Location 4– Commit: Mother Earth Fountain- “Commit to love Mother Earth even more. No more single use plastics”
Location 5– Joy: Center of the Universe sculpture: “Don’t forget to make joy the center of it all” (Hop Scotch)
(Information courtesy of Rhonda Newby-Torres, a former NMEP-IPL board member and lay pastor at Luther House-Lutheran Campus Ministry at UNM and CNM)

300-Mile Walk to Secure ‘Rights of Nature’ for Rio Grande Gorge

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By Todd Wynward

former board member of New Mexico El Paso Interfaith Power & Light

Starting April 10, I’m joining a diverse band of people to walk part of a month-long, 300 mile water walk along the Rio Grande watershed–from Santa Fe to its headwaters outside of Creede, Colorado. 

This month-long pilgrimage is dedicated to securing “rights of nature” and legal personhood for the Rio Grande Gorge watershed and its tributaries.

I’m disrupting my “business as usual” to join a wildly diverse group of other water walkers because of the seriousness—and the sacredness—of our historical moment. If we humans do not treat the Rio Grande as kin—as a precious member of our interdependent community with her own legal protection—then we are going to lose her to extraction, pollution, exploitation and our own short-term thinking. If we keep treating the Rio Grande watershed simply like a resource to control, purchase, and diminish, you and I both know that she won’t be here to nourish and support our children and our children’s children and all the life that teems in this precious watershed we call home.

We are a diverse group of nonprofits, activists, citizens, students, educators, artists and religious groups seeking legal personhood and Rights of Nature for the Rio Grande and its tributaries. Our mission is to create change in the legal system so that these rivers are treated as vital and protected members of our society. Throughout time people have seen nature as part of their communities deserving of respect, rights, and well-being. It is time we re-learn and restore this right relationship between human society and the Rio Grande. It is time we change our hearts, our habits, our laws and our economies. It is time that our local, state and national governments adopt this same reverence for the Rio and its tributaries, leading to a healthy future for our bioregion and our species. It is time.

Would you like to get on board with the Rio Grande Water Walk yourself? I hope so! We need all of us to make the change. Here are seven ways to do so: 

  • Learn about the Walk and register at water-walk.com
  • Engage in a Zoom on-boarding meeting this Tuesday, April 5 at 6 PM.  Respond to this email to tell me you want the link. We can connect then!
  • Participate in public events and gatherings: April 8 at the Santa Fe Railyards; April 9 at the Santa Fe Roundhouse; and Apr 22-23 over Earth Day Weekend in Taos. 
  • Join the walk yourself for some specific legs, like I’m doing. The schedule within the “Walker Packet” can be downloaded soon at water-walk.com. As for me, I plan to join the start of the walk for the first two days coming out of Santa Fe April 10-11, join it south of Taos as it reaches the Horseshoe Overlook April 16, and take part in the many events the Water Walk is hosting in Taos over Earth Day April 22-23, and then engage as it arrives in Questa April 26. We’ll be offering a “rest and learn” opportunity there, sharing how we’re transforming a neglected trailer park into a vibrant village.
  • Donate at this Water Walk GoFundMe Link to help with the essential costs of hosting such an ambitious walk such as support buses, food and kitchen expenses, liability insurance, rentals, event promotion and educational materials.
  • Be an ambassador for the Walk: repost, reshape, recruit and report! I and others will be posting from along the journey as the water walk travels north. I’ll do so on my Facebook, Instagram and email. Others will be too! Let me know if you want to take the role ambassador seriously, and that you’re willing to spread the news within your expanded networks in a disciplined way.
  • Educate yourself about the growing “Rights of Nature” legal movement that is emerging across the globe and re-shaping how we humans relate to our precious earth. To start, you can google topics like “Rights of Nature New Zealand,” “Rights of Nature Ecuador,” and “Rights of Nature: Can an Ecosystem Bear Legal Rights?” Also, as an author I have been writing for several years about the rights of nature and what it means to become a person of place in today’s dis-placed culture. In the near future I will be sharing a few of my thoughts on the subject.

From Santa Fe to Taos, this Rio Grande Water Walk is walking alongside the Global Peace Walk, which has done so for 27 years. Come and join our great confluence!

Walk for the Water. 

Walk for the Rivers. 

Walk for our Future. 

Walk for Peace.

You Can Participate in a Virtual Iftar-Seder

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The Shalom Center and partner organizations invite you to a virtual “Iftar-Seder,” a gathering to eat and think together about our shared future in America. It will happen, by Zoom, from 7:30 to 9:30 Eastern time (4:30 to 6:30 Pacific) on the evening of Sunday, April 10. The Iftar-Seder is free. We welcome you to join with us, by registering here

After you register, the organizing committee will email you additional information about the event, including a Zoom link and the program outline. Stay tuned for that email as we continue to finalize the program!

Background

This year, we celebrate the Iftar and the Seder together, to celebrate each other and to beckon toward a future in which American Muslims and American Jews can work and pray with each other and with all the world — free of Islamophobia, Antisemitism, and racism; free from threats to democracy as a whole; free from lethal threats to our Mother Earth, our shared and nurturing home; and free to grow beyond our own spiritual “stuck places” as individuals and communities. Those four liberations will be connected in our Iftar-Seder with four cups (of grape juice) that shape a traditional Seder.

We had originally hoped that the COVID-19 virus would have become so minor by April 10 that we could safely eat together in Masjidullah, a mostly African-American Philadelphia mosque with strong outreach and commitment to liberation and justice, and a space for hundreds. (That was where we held the 50th-anniversary Freedom Seder.) But our planning committee felt that the virus is still too dangerous for a meal of hundreds together. So we will gather by Zoom.

We chose to do this because this Spring, the Jewish lunar “moonth” of Nisan — the first of months, according to Torah, and the bearer of the sacred eight-day festival of Pesach, Passover, will be the same moonth as the sacred Muslim “moonth” of Ramadan. In both traditions, there is a strong tradition of a special way of eating during the sacred season. For Muslims, it is a month of fasting to focus on God, made possible by eating a special dinner called Iftar each evening after sunset. For Jews, it is “Fasting” from all foods that contain even a smidgin of leavening — especially ordinary bread –and holding a special meal — the Seder –of symbolic foods and of Telling the story of liberation.

Originally, that was the story of liberation from the “NarrowPlace,” a country most Americans call Egypt where ancient Israelites had been enslaved by ancient Pharaohs.. Since the advent of the Freedom Seder in 1969, the Telling of liberation has broadened to include other struggles for freedom.

This event is being co-organized and sponsored by the following institutions:
– The Shalom Center
– Sisterhood of Salaam-Shalom
– Masjidullah
– CAIR-Philadelphia
– Interfaith Peace Walk