Tuesday, April 14, 2015
3:00 – 9:00pm
Wake Forest University
Brendle Recital Hall, Scales Fine Arts Center
1834 Wake Forest Road
Winston-Salem, NC, USA
Our guiding metaphor is the ecotone, a transition zone between two ecosystems. An ecotone is not so much a place as it is a heightened transfer of energy between two distinct entities. In these ecological edges between field and forest, scrub and grassland, we find the greatest exchanges of life taking place. Ecotones are rich and fecund, brimming with abundance. They are also places of risk, uncertainty, and death.
For those of us working on issues like food justice, sustainable agriculture, or climate change, we find ourselves simultaneously inhabiting places both rich with opportunity and aching with loss and defeat. Today’s challenges call for a strenuous, sustained response. Yet how do sustain our spirits in the face of hunger, social inequity, and ecological ruin? How do we develop a spirituality for the long haul? And what riches do we find in the Christian contemplative tradition that might aid us on our journey?
Join us as we bring four thoughtful speakers for a sustained conversation on these questions. Contemplative ecology is the place where action meets contemplation, where we hold in tension the groaning of creation with Isaiah’s assurance that “By waiting and by calm you shall be saved, in quiet and in trust your strength lies.”
• Dr. Douglas Christie, author of Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes on a Contemplative Ecology,
• Leah Kostamo, author of Planted: A Story of Creation, Calling, and Community,
• Gary Paul Nabhan,W.K. Kellogg Endowed Chair in Sustainable Food Systems at the University of Arizona Southwest Center, and
• Dr. Tyson-Lord J. Gray, religious scholar and an environmental activist.