Coming home to your ecological self

LOUISVILLE — This week Presbyterians for Earth Care offered a webinar on “Coming Home to Your Ecological Self” featuring a member of its Steering Committee, the Rev. Dr. Shannan Vance-Ocampo.

Vance-Ocampo is General Presbyter of the Presbytery of Southern New England, where she spends some of her spare time gardening and raising backyard chickens.

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Her doctoral research included work she put in last year on land, food and faith formation. Among other things, Vance-Ocampo wondered what prevents pastors from preaching on climate justice. She formed a cohort to test some of her ideas, and heard from clergy that some parishioners heard such preaching as political rather than biblical.

“One thing that came out is folks feel disconnected ecologically. Many didn’t have a good connection to the natural world,” she said. “It got me to thinking about this issue of the ecological self. We need to be connected ourselves before we can do the work with others.”

Briefly, Vance-Ocampo modeled a process that people in faith communities can use. “We often don’t know the stories of the people around us,” she said. “More people than we realize are pretty disconnected theologically.”

Vance-Ocampo displayed a number of photographs outlining her own ecological journey, including photos of the Jersey Shore and a beach in Puerto Rico, as well as the Catskills and Colombia, from which her husband hails.

“A whole new landscape became part of my story,” she said, displaying photos of her mother-in-law’s home along Colombia’s Magdalena River, where the family has lived for nearly three centuries. Mango trees her mother-in-law planted 60 years ago are now taller than oaks, Vance-Ocampo noted.

“During the pandemic, I supercharged my gardening here in Upstate New York,” she said, including adding a few chickens. In the summer the chickens enjoyed treats including frozen watermelon, the subject of another photo.

“Those sweet animals helped me reconnect,” Vance-Ocampo said. “It was a place to engage in prayer and have time to let my mind wander. The garden and the work I have done on it has been a significant point of reconnection.”

They constructed a pond near the garden, and have rewilded the space around their house. One photo was of the alpha male American bullfrog who lives in and around the pond. The photo depicted him all alone on a rock. “He owns that rock,” Vance-Ocampo said. “No other frog will come onto it.”

Her mother-in-law died eight years ago. Vance-Ocampo and her husband work on the gardens she created when they’re in Colombia. “It’s a very different environment. I know what to do in the Northeast,” she said. Still, her ecological reconnection “has changed how I preach and what I focus on, and has given me a lot of new language to consider,” she said.

Webinar attendees then spent time in small groups discussing their own ecological stories. Some reported back.

“It was good to hear from others, and it wasn’t surprising that all of us had positive experiences in nature,” said one. “Our formative years were in a natural setting.”

The group then read John 1:1-5 and verse 14, which describes Jesus as the completion of God’s Word. Vance-Ocampo quoted Victoria Loorz, the author of “Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us Into the Sacred”: “To position Jesus as more than a man crucified by the state, John sought to identify him with the logos: the divine indwelling, ‘through [which] all things were made,’ an interconnected relationship underlying and holding together the whole universe.”

Questions for further reflection included:

• How do you organize and order your life ecologically?
• What kind of ancestor do you want to be?
• Where are you engaging with the God of Creation in your life?
• How do you feel disconnected and want to reconnect?
• How does this show up in your personal discipleship or, potentially, in your ministry leadership?

“I am interested in hearing about places that have a plan for reconnecting people in their congregation to ecology,” said one participant. “We have a long way to go in our church. Not a lot of our church members are on board.”

“We may long for a simpler life, but the world is whizzing by,” said another. “We have to work hard to [highlight] things that thank God for Creation and that use Creation for good.”

“Everyone has an ecological story,” Vance-Ocampo said. “By sharing them with others, we get to know people more deeply — and we get to know God in a deeper way, too.”

In 2026, Fortress Press will publish Vance-Ocampo’s first book, “A Garden for Renewal: Regenerative Ecological Practices for Life and Ministry.”

At 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Dec. 4, Presbyterians for Earth Care will offer a webinar on thinking environmentally with Presbyterian young adults. Emma Marshall of CANOPY, the Creation Action Network of Presbyterian Young Adults, will lead the presentation.