OXFORD • To commemorate Earth Day (April 22), many churches will build their services this Sunday around the theme of environmental stewardship.
Dillon Harrison has decided to build his whole vocation around it.
“I feel a call to do outdoor ministry with college-age students,” 22-year-old Harrison said. “I’m still young, so I feel like I can connect with them. It’s a time in life when a lot of people are sort of forgotten.”
Harrison, who is on staff at Camp Lake Stephens in Oxford, earned an undergraduate degree in computer engineering from Mississippi State University in 2019, and is now pursuing a graduate degree from Asbury Theological Seminary.
Harrison said an internship at the camp in 2017 began to turn his heart away from computers and toward ministry and the natural world.
“My call really started during our Adventure Camp,” he said. “We were in open-air cabins with no air conditioning. We had fans, but they didn’t always work. You were lucky if you got a breeze. In the heat of a Mississippi summer you learn what matters and what doesn’t.”
For Harrison, it was a sense of community and connection that mattered most.
“The rawness of that experience, of feeling totally immersed in creation, made me want to do ministry,” he said. “I’ve never felt that kind of connection with creation or with people before. That’s when I felt called to a life of fostering that kind of community in that kind of space.”
Harrison said the need for reconnection with the natural environment has never been greater.
“Reaching out to college students and helping them foster a positive relationship with creation is so important,” he said. “We’re so often outside of creation, when we’re on our phones or interacting with other forms of technology. They disconnect us from reality, and we live in a virtual world.”
While he believes technology is partly to blame for this disconnect from creation, Harrison said he is hopeful that technology can help overcome it as well.
“There is a place for technology to coexist with creation,” he said. “We have a long way to go, but technology can be part of the solution.”
Harrison said some forms of technology, like drones, can give people a new perspective — both literal and figurative — on their environments.
“Think about flying drones,” he said. “They can help us explore and appreciate our environment. If you can look at a place from 400 feet in the air, it changes your perspective. It changes the way you look at a place.”
Harrison said other forms of technology can also enhance our reverence for the natural world.
“There are apps for identifying birdsongs and species of trees,” he said. “There are even ones that use ultrasound to identify types of bats at night. Technology and the natural world have been at war for a long time, but I don’t think that’s necessary, and I don’t think it’s healthy.”
Harrison, who enjoys rock climbing, said his time “on the rocks” helps him stay grateful and grounded.
“Last time I went to Tishomingo to go rock climbing, it was in the spring,” he said. “There were so many trees in bloom, and wildflowers — what we’d call weeds — were everywhere. I thought, ‘wow, this is incredible.’ The place where we live is truly beautiful. It just takes humility to really see it.”
Harrison said the quiet days at Camp Lake Stephens, before the onslaught of the summer camping season, also reinforce the awareness of the holy in creation.
“Just sitting quietly, listening to the squirrels rustling through the trees,” he said. “The drumbeat of a falling branch. How else can you describe it? Sometimes I find myself at a loss for words.”
Harrison said even something as simple as a drive down the Natchez Trace is enough to awaken a sense of awe.
“I used to live in Houston,” he said. “So we drove down the Trace a million times when I was growing up. I used to think, ‘There’s nothing here to look at.’ It wasn’t until my experiences at camp that I could begin to really appreciate the beauty of it.”
Harrison said his outlook, as well as his framework for ministry, comes from his understanding of the creation narrative in Genesis.
“It comes from Genesis, from the Adam and Eve story,” he said. “They were placed in the garden to be stewards of creation, and we are, too. We are made for taking care of this beautiful place we have.”
"creation" - Google News
April 23, 2021 at 04:00PM
https://ift.tt/3sEJ4k0
Stewards of creation: Oxford man seeks the spiritual in the world around him - Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal
"creation" - Google News
https://ift.tt/39MUE4f
https://ift.tt/3bZVhYX
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Stewards of creation: Oxford man seeks the spiritual in the world around him - Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal"
Post a Comment