Bearing Witness to Grief: Climate Collapse, Resistance, and Grounded Hope
Continuing the Conversation Six Months Later
In July 2024, the Ekklesia Project gathered in Monrovia, CA to reflect on “Bearing Witness to Grief: Climate Collapse, Resistance and Grounded Hope.”
On January 20, 2025, we will convene for a follow-up conversation from 4:00 pm until 5:00 pm EST on Zoom.
On that day—January 20, 2025—the US government will enact a liturgy which, like all liturgies, rehearses a sacred imagination of time and space, ritually remembering the stories a people tells about itself. As with every presidential inauguration liturgy, Americans will be expected to affirm their faith in the salvific power of the apparatuses of the state.
January 20 is also the national holiday marking the life and witness of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A year to the day before he was killed, King spoke these words:
“We must rapidly begin the shift from
a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society.
When machines and computers,
profit motives and property rights
are considered more important than people,
the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism
are incapable of being conquered.”
These “giant triplets” name powers that are still with us: powers that continue to fuel our ecological crisis and for which the church must grieve.
On this day of rich significance, we hope you will join us. If you weren’t with us in Monrovia, we’d still love to have you join us on January 20th. Feel free to look through papers and presentations on our website beforehand. Or just come for the conversation and community.
If you were with us in Monrovia, what still resonates with you from our time together? What seeds did our summer gathering plant? How goes the ongoing work of cultivation and what fruits they are bearing? What new griefs have surfaced? What work are you and your communities being called to do in these uncertain times?