The Green Good News is about "green" as in new, about "green" as in sustainable ecological blessings to share. It's about "good news" as in gospel. Author T. Wilson Dickinson lives in Central Kentucky, where (among other activities) he serves as director of The Green Good News, an organization rooted in educating and cultivating communities into joyful ways of creation justice and simplicity.To heal individuals, communities, and the land, we need to lessen behaviors that violate creation, rupture community, and cause death. At the start of this calendar year, I announced 2020 would be my year of Living Local. Although COVID-19 had started to spread, the virus still was unknown to the USA. But now for everyone worldwide, one of the paradoxical gifts of needing to stay locked down close to home for however long means living local is more necessary and it's easier to do. Having the opportunity to consider the content of The Green Good News The Book has been a timely fit as it reminds us to read food and environmental realities in the bible as they present themselves, and not solely as spiritual metaphors—though most texts easily stretch to include that essential dimension .
"…Mary Magdalene turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. Jesus asked her, 'Woman, why are you weeping? Who is it you are looking for?' Supposing he was the gardener…" John 20:14-15
The Risen Christ is a gardener! Not exactly a local guy stopping by for his weekly cemetery-tending gig, but Jesus of Nazareth crucified and risen is the ultimate gardener through whom everything was created. He was there at the beginning and has been there all along! Though the entire bible reveals good news about God's reign of grace, we particularly associate God's living Word Jesus of Nazareth with the gospel that incorporates all creation from its start in the garden with a river of life and tree of life to its end where the garden has grown into a verdant city with a river of life and trees of life.
With aspects of autobiography, scripture study, and experience-grounded practical ideas for greener living as family and community, The Green Good News feels like a journal as it interweaves religion, economics, politics, ecology, and anthropology, as it helps us discern the unavoidable link between the environment and justice for all.
Dickinson describes what his own families and communities have done to move away from reliance on empire into covenantal lifestyles that help transform food systems while restoring land and waters in order to heal both individual bodies and the social bodies individuals create. And, of course, those social bodies include the church, the body of the Risen Christ. Your own church or biological family might enjoy chronicling its own journey of greening and resurrecting!
• The Green Good News website
• Facebook Page
Notice of Material Connection: I received a copy of this book from The Speakeasy with no expectation I'd write a positive review. As always, opinions are my own.
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