Policy: We encourage ourselves as individual members of this seminary—students, staff and faculty—to care for creation in our offices and in our homes, knowing that our habits and practices are connected to key environmental issues. We seek to foster a closer relationship with nature so that we can live simply and walk lightly upon the earth.
People: Dean of Community Life; Chaplain; faculty in spirituality; spiritual directors; leaders of small group processes; all members of the community—students, faculty, and staff.
Goals: To foster a personal commitment to disciplines that respect earth community, that seek to restore creation from human degradation, and that enable us to relate closely with nature.
Actions: Here are some ideas to carry out these commitments:
1. Covenant with Creation: Develop a personal “Covenant with Creation” that lists a variety of actions to be taken by the members of your seminary community. Participants check the practices they agree to follow. They give one copy to the Greening Committee and keep another to post in their apartments/homes. You may want to consider making this covenant part of a worship service with a brief liturgy and to give it as an offering.
2. Training: You can hold brief training sessions for students (at orientation), faculty (within regular faculty meetings), and staff (at regular staff meetings) as a means to encourage people to participate in the Green Seminary Program: recycling instructions; paper use guidelines; turning out lights; using natural light; and so on.
3. Brochure: Make a brochure that outlines the personal commitments involved in being part of a Green Seminary.
4. Support/ interest groups: seminary students often form together in small groups around an interest or commitment. Support for environmental practices and disciplines can serve as a focus for groups that form. Groups that meet around a meal could learn about food and practice discipline related to eating.
5. Group Study: Foster the formation of groups around an educational course on Simple Living or the Ecology of Food. Consider the educational materials for small groups available from the Northwest Earth Institute (www.nwei.org). Offer a study/support group using the book Simple Living, Compassionate Living. ( a resource from Earth Ministry: www.earthministry.org)
6. Devotional materials: There are devotional materials available for earth-keeping. Consider the booklet, Stewardship of Creation: 30 Days with Nature or Earth Prayers from around the World, edited by Elizabeth Roberts.
7. Witnessing/Sharing: Make use of meetings of the Greening Committee to allow students to share with each other their personal environmental practices and disciplines.
8. Creation-care at home: Provide resources for an environmental guide for use in the home/apartment to foster restoration of creation around issues such as energy, food, water use, water run-off, lawn maintenance, recycling, composting, transportation, and so on. Hold training sessions.
9. Get in touch with Nature: Encourage people to appreciate the natural beauty of the seminary property and surrounding areas. Plan trips to a local arboretum, gardens, or lake/river area. Hold meetings in a place of natural beauty. Where feasible, procure the services of a naturalist.
10. Local opportunities: Arrange for members of the community to participate in public efforts to restore a habitat, clean up a beach, rally for clean air, protest a polluter, do write-in campaigns for environmental legislation, and so on. Cooperate with national/local environmental agencies.
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