Cutover Dreams: Michigan Folk Songs Updated 
Maybe this is why my favorite songs on the album are the most melancholy.
Debra RienstraNovember 9, 2019
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
Learning about Gratitude from the Onondaga
I realize we’re planning way ahead here, but if you happen to be in charge of an Easter Vigil service next spring, you should definitely order a big beeswax candle for the occasion. Why? Because in the ancient liturgical prayer for Easter Eve, called the…
Debra RienstraJuly 20, 2019
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
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
Blizzard, Looking Out
Morning, west window The sky feels oddly bright, considering the snow thickly falling in clustered flakes. The wind gusts, whirling flakes into powder, snowglobing my backyard vista. For a moment, a cloud of white obscures the trees, the neighbors’ backyards, the whole world. I exist…
Debra RienstraFebruary 2, 2019
O Rejoice in All Your Works
The red planet and seed pods: an odd juxtaposition. But as I padded quietly through the gallery, it seemed to me that what the two exhibits have in common is the way they, like those two scripture passages, invite us into altered perspective.
Debra RienstraSeptember 15, 2018
Pitcher’s Thistle
What is the value of a thistle? We don’t entirely know. I suppose God does. I suppose the little prickler gives praise to God in its own thistly way, just by being itself in cooperation with other nearby creatures being themselves. Is that enough for…
Debra RienstraAugust 18, 2018
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
Birdsong
Suddenly I’ve realized how stupid I am. I’ve lived in this climate and latitude most of my life, surrounded by these fellow creatures going about their quick, fluttery lives, and I know almost nothing about them, not even how to recognize their voices.
Debra RienstraMay 12, 2018
