The Au Sable Institute is a Christian environmental education center in Mancelona, Michigan. This post is the first of five excerpts from Au Sable Institute's 2021 workbook Liturgies of Restoration ¸ a five-week study on how our habits can shape us into people who serve, protect, and restore God's earth. Additional practices and resources mentioned here may be found in the workbook. Graduate students and emerging scholars can order copies of the workbook and also sign up for a fall online workbook study hosted by … [Read more...] about Liturgies of Restoration (#1): Who is at the Center?
environment
Environmental Science: A Prayer of Thanksgiving
We continue our series of prayers for field areas today. Our hope is that each prayer will encourage those in a particular subject area in the specificity of their daily work, while also giving those in other fields a glimpse into how their colleagues are glorifying God in different areas of inquiry. If you're inspired by the series and want to contribute a prayer, you can submit a prayer for those in your field area and a short bio here. For others in the series, click here. The earth is a marvel, Lord. Sky … [Read more...] about Environmental Science: A Prayer of Thanksgiving
Science Corner: One Man’s CO2
Saprotrophs. Picture-winged flies. Dung beetles. These are the "another man" who find the meat in our poison. The Earth is basically a closed system with respect to chemical elements. The ecosystem needs every organism's ... output to be someone else's input, thus closing the loop and keeping those elements cycling. Otherwise one or more critical elements would wind up stuck in an unused form no one wants, and we'd all eventually run out of it. But of course if some element did accumulate in a particular form, there'd … [Read more...] about Science Corner: One Man’s CO2
Book Review: Let Creation Rejoice
Let Creation Rejoice: Biblical Hope and Ecological Crisis by Jonathan A. Moo and Robert S. White. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014. Summary: A scientist and a theologian get together to assess both environmental trends and biblical teaching and contend that there are reasons for serious concern, concerted action, and because of the gospel, for hope. … [Read more...] about Book Review: Let Creation Rejoice
Science Corner: I just want to say one word to you — Plastics
That bit of wisdom was offered as investment advice in 1967's The Graduate. Plastics were the future then, and almost 50 years later, plastics are still the future, albeit for different reasons. For example, nearly all seabirds will be eating plastic by 2050 according to a recent study. There's a lot of plastic debris floating in the oceans, most of it in tiny pieces. Birds (and fish and other marine life) inadvertently eat it to their detriment; the negative consequences can be immediate or cumulative. … [Read more...] about Science Corner: I just want to say one word to you — Plastics