Cambridge, Ontario is the place I call home. It is the land on which I stand and from which I breathe along with other beings who also call this place home. It is also here where I locate myself as a person of faith.
The Grand River is one of the largest rivers in Ontario. It starts from the base of the Bruce Peninsula and flows out into one of the Great Lakes: Lake Erie. The Great Lakes are the largest group of freshwater lakes in the planet.
The Grand River watershed covers an area of about 7,000 square kilometers embracing places like Grand Valley, Elora, Waterloo, Kitchener, Paris, Brantford, Caledonia and Cayuga and Cambridge.
So then, how might I be a disciple of this watershed that is home, not just to me, but for “all my relations”: the birds, the fish, the animals , the forests , and the plants. How do I as a follower of Jesus live into right relationship with the land and the water, the trout and the bald eagle, with everyone and everything that draws life-energy from this watershed?
For many of us, the Grand River is the source of the water we drink. What might happen if its waters were poisoned? What would happen to us all if this watershed we called home were destroyed ?
Now why is this important? Because as the environmentalist Baba Dioum says “In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught.”
“We won’t save places we don’t love. We can’t love places we don’t know. We don’t know places we have not learned.”
So on that note, how do I learn about discipleship and watersheds as a person living in Cambridge? And how might we teach each other to go down in the river to pray?
by Rafael Vallejo @KAIROS Great Lakes Saint Lawrence bioregion Cambridge Ontario, December 2013
