The Scholars, or Team Purple, include those who engage with creation care through scholarship: intellectual, theological understandings of creation care.
Some might be interested in hearing and understanding the philosophical and intellectual ideas of creation care, including land sustainability, use of chemicals and pollution, species protection, global racism and the impact on the Global South, and climate change. This group may bring in speakers, panels, discussion groups, or read books or view movies for discussion.
Scroll down for info on current and upcoming book and film studies, and to sign up for a mailing list to be notified of upcoming meetings and get the Zoom link if you’d like to attend virtually!
Book Study – Wednesday, August 28, 2024
During July and August, join Team Purple in reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. We’ll meet on Wednesday, August 28 at 6:30 p.m. to discuss what we’ve read, in person in the Sojourners Room or on Zoom. (See below to request the Zoom link.)
Book description from the Field Museum Store website:
“As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on ‘a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise.’ (Elizabeth Gilbert).
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings―asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass―offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.”
Have you joined our Team Purple Facebook group yet?
Sign up for the Team Purple email list, and you’ll receive the Zoom link for this and notification of future upcoming meetings when they become available!
![](https://firstbaptistlawrence.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Braiding-Sweetgrass-cover.png)
Book Study – Wednesday, October 30, 2024
During September and October, join Team Purple in reading Habitat Threshold by Craig Santos Perez, with a particular focus on the poem “Love in a Time of Climate Change.” We’ll meet on Wednesday, October 30 at 6:30 p.m. to discuss what we’ve read, in person in the Sojourners Room or on Zoom. (See below to request the Zoom link.)
Book description from the University of Chicago Press website:
With Habitat Threshold, Craig Santos Perez has crafted a timely collection of eco-poetry that explores his ancestry as a native Pacific Islander, the ecological plight of his homeland, and his fears for the future. The book begins with the birth of the author’s daughter, capturing her growth and childlike awe at the wonders of nature. As it progresses, Perez confronts the impacts of environmental injustice, the ravages of global capitalism, toxic waste, animal extinction, water rights, human violence, mass migration, and climate change. Throughout, he mourns lost habitats and species, and confronts his fears for the future world his daughter will inherit. Amid meditations on calamity, this work does not stop at the threshold of elegy. Instead, the poet envisions a sustainable future in which our ethics are shaped by the indigenous belief that the earth is sacred and all beings are interconnected—a future in which we cultivate love and “carry each other towards the horizon of care.”
Through experimental forms, free verse, prose, haiku, sonnets, satire, and a method he calls “recycling,” Perez has created a diverse collection filled with passion. Habitat Threshold invites us to reflect on the damage done to our world and to look forward, with urgency and imagination, to the possibility of a better future.
Have you joined our Team Purple Facebook group yet?
Sign up for the Team Purple email list, and you’ll receive the Zoom link for this and notification of future upcoming meetings when they become available!
![](https://firstbaptistlawrence.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Habitat-Threshold-cover.png)
Book Study – Sunday, December 29, 2024
During Advent, join Team Purple in reading All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings by Gayle Boss. We’ll meet on Sunday, December 29 at 6:30 p.m. to discuss what we’ve read, in person in the Sojourners Room or on Zoom. (See below to request the Zoom link.)
Book description from the Paraclete Press website:
From the bestselling author of Wild Hope—a beautiful book for Advent.
Open a window each day of Advent onto the natural world. Here are twenty-five fresh images of the foundational truth that lies beneath and within the Christ story. In twenty-five portraits depicting how wild animals of the northern hemisphere ingeniously adapt when darkness and cold descend, we see and hear as if for the first time the ancient wisdom of Advent: The dark is not an end but the way a new beginning comes.
Short, daily reflections that paint in vivid detail the intricate and astonishing ways that familiar animals, from the honeybee to the porcupine, prepare for winter. Paired with charming original wood-cut illustrations, this daily devotional will engage both children and adults. Anyone who feels tired of the consumer hype of “the holiday season” will be refreshed and awakened to the eternal truth the natural world reveals, and will welcome this book.
Advent, to the church Fathers, was the right naming of the season when light and life are fading. They urged the faithful to set aside four weeks to fast, give, and pray—all ways to strip down, to let the bared soul recall what it knows beneath its fear of the dark: that there is One who is the source of all life and is ever creating, One who comes to be with us and in us, even, especially, in darkness and death. One who brings us a new beginning.
The more I’m with animals and the more I learn from them, the more I know they can be more than our companions on this planet. They can be our guides. They can be to us “a book about God…a words of God,” the God who comes, even in the darkest season, to bring us a new beginning. —Gayle Boss, Introduction to “All Creation Waits”
Have you joined our Team Purple Facebook group yet?
Sign up for the Team Purple email list, and you’ll receive the Zoom link for this and notification of future upcoming meetings when they become available!
![](https://firstbaptistlawrence.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/All-Creation-Waits-cover.png)