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Children’s Classics Updated for the Age of Climate Chaos

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, “I am running away!” “If you run away,” said his mother, “I will come along. Because our homeland is now far too hot and drought-ridden for our people…

Debra RienstraOctober 26, 2019

Calvin events climate change

Hevel and Hope in the Midst of the Climate Crisis

“Is this the end of the world?”“It usually is.” That zinger appears near the conclusion of the kooky and wonderful Post-Rapture Radio, Russell Rathbun’s 2008 novel, which inventively satirizes American Evangelicalism for its shallowness and materialism. Toward the end of the novel, an eccentric, quasi-prophetic figure…

Debra RienstraSeptember 14, 2019

climate change nature spirituality

Little Pockets: Refugia Basics

I've been working this summer on a podcast based on the idea of “refugia.” I wrote about this idea here at The Reformed Journal blog last May. Thanks in part to the encouragement of my colleague Dave Koetje, Professor of Biology at Calvin University, I’ve been exploring…

Debra RienstraAugust 17, 2019

climate change nature spirituality

Refugia

When Mount Saint Helens erupted in May of 1980, it lost 1,300 feet of elevation and gained a new mile-wide crater. The debris avalanche and ashfall from the volcanic blast devastated the mountain and its surroundings, crushing, burning, killing, and coating everything in ash. Everyone…

Debra RienstraMay 11, 2019

climate change nature

Psychoterratica: New Words for a New Earth

English has always been a hungry language: it readily devours words from other languages and from inventive word-crafters, assimilating new words into its own rich, varied vocabulary. English never seems to lose its appetite for new morsels, borrowed or fresh. These days, in response to…

Debra RienstraMarch 30, 2019

climate change theology

Does Theology Make Us Passive on Climate Change?

“Does ‘image of God’ make us lazy?” I jotted this in my notebook earlier this week, between phrases like “hinge point in history” and “geophysical tipping point.” I was listening to a lecture by Kathleen Dean Moore, a moral philosopher, nature writer, and environmental activist.…

Debra RienstraMarch 16, 2019

climate change nature review

Climate Fiction: Three Vectors

As you spend a few last hours this summer in your Adirondack chair under a shady canopy of leaves—with that feeling of autumn’s imminence causing you to contemplate decline, aging, and the end of civilization—you might consider distracting yourself with some “climate fiction.” Sometimes short-handed…

Debra RienstraAugust 4, 2018

Calvin events climate change cultural commentary review

Incandescence and Despair: Further Thoughts on First Reformed

But neither Toller’s problems nor religious despair in general are particularly Calvinist, nor do I think that’s what Schrader means to suggest. Schrader has long thought about what it means to capture the holy in art, and a portrait of despair is one stunningly effective…

Debra RienstraJune 9, 2018