Fruitful Living

 Fruitful Living

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Curt Karns
at Utqiagvik Presbyterian Church
1265 Agvik St, Utqiagvik, AK 99723
April 28, 2024



Fruitful Living 













Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gardening with a gun on my hip

Image
Yesterday really felt strange to me.   On the one hand it was a great afternoon to be outside.   The snow is gone, the ground is drying out, and the mosquitoes are not biting…much.   I found myself reveling in the work of cutting out some dead wood and making room for the new growth we are planning this year.   I almost never get to do brush-work when there is no snow and no mosquitoes.   What a day! On the other hand, I was doing this work with my Smith-and-Wesson .44 magnum handgun hanging on my hip.   You see, the day before yesterday our neighbor was attacked by an 800 lb grizzly bear .   The bears are particularly hungry this time of year, given that they haven’t had much to eat in six months, and that the salmon won’t be in our river for another six weeks.   The bear chased our neighbor down, clawed him up a bit and the, mercifully, left him alone.   As I enjoyed being outside preparing ground for permaculture-style ga...
Read more

06 02 11 Rediscovering Enjoyment

Image
We hadn’t lived in our bioshelter home very long before Cindee began teaching me about permaculture. In brief, permaculture is about a way of life where the land feeds the people, the people tend the garden in a way where gardening feeds the land without chemical fertilizers (more on this later—but some plants actually build up and feed t he soil, even while producing food), and where the waste from each process of life on the land becomes the resource for feeding something else. In short, it becomes a more-or-less self-sustaining system t hat cares for itself with relatively little labor on the part of the people. From my perspec tive the problem of permaculture is that it takes time to develop the plants and the land. This is especially true for us, because we had more than pure permaculture in mind. We are both allergic to cottonwoods, and our whole 1.9 acres is a cottonwood grove. Why not replace the cottonwoods with berries and fruit trees? We need some paths to go...
Read more

07 14 11 Why This Blog?

Image
There is a method to my writing, although I don’t follow it with great discipline. My writing tries to combine the passion and experience of living in a bioshelter home with the principles of permaculture and the theology of the Christian faith tradition. My Christian reflections are certainly biblical, but have also been heavily influenced by German theologian Jürgen Moltmann’s writing, especially in his book God in Creation ( God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God. Harper and Row, 1985). Reading his book was life-giving to me. Unfortunately, Moltma nn’s writings are largely impenetrable to the average reader, filled with philosophical and theological jargon that is difficult for the lay-person to unpack. Although I read and understood much in his writing, allowing the new thought to take form in my life—that is an integrating sense of living and understanding—has proven to be hard work. It would be easy to read his book and walk awa...
Read more