February 20th, 2024
Returning to Watershed Discipleship. 2024. Colored pencil on paper, 24x24in.
What an usually warm winter day to be crouching alongside the Greenbrier River in the mild afternoon. Guided by steady, gripping fingers, humming along to rushing currents, goldenrod scratches across the paper balanced on my knees. Colored pencils, thin tubes of wood-encased pigments, lie scattered among the decomposing bark around me.
I pick up the chestnut pencil, thinking about watershed discipleship. Theologian Ched Meyers uses this framework to engage the ecological crisis through faith rooted in a place–in bark and river–and invites us to ask: what do our sacred texts and wisdom traditions teach us about caring for our local places? What can we learn from our native watersheds about prayer?
Today’s reading from Isaiah illustrates this concept, illuminating parallels between the Word of God and the Water Cycle:
Just as from the heavens
the rain and snow come down
And do not return there
till they have watered the earth,
making it fertile and fruitful,
Giving seed to the one who sows
and bread to the one who eats,
So shall my word be
that goes forth from my mouth;
It shall not return to me void,
but shall do my will,
achieving the end for which I sent it.
Droplets of precipitation make the land arable and allow inhabitants to grow food–they have a place in the watershed. Reading this, I’m inspired to work towards prayer and art (and energy infrastructure!) that follows rather than disrupts the patterns, cycles and seasons of nature.
Olive, then Cloud Blue and Cerulean sink their pigments onto my paper. I spot shrubs peeking through melting frost: they bring me back to this riverbank last summer:
Here, my toes danced in sun-streaked ripples. My hands translated reflections from local musicians and faith leaders into watercolor, mud, and charcoal. My heart held vigil with others in a collective creative process. We were responding to the devastating news that the Mountain Valley Pipeline was resuming construction. The bioregion we call home was a sacrifice zone. We expressed our devastation here.
In the short space between summer and winter, a one-thousand-foot length of metal tubing the height of a toddler has arrived. In six short months, verdant mountain slopes slip into mudslides and neighboring creeks run cloudy rather than clear. I pick up Sap Green Light, to capture the hue of the pipe on the paper. The Mountain Valley Pipeline carries colorless fracked gas—I have no pencil for it. But we will continue to care for this Greenbrier River. This Lenten season, we will continue committing to watershed discipleship. Laying down the final passage of Indigo swirls, burnished with Cloud Blue, I’m still going to draw on active hope.
Casey Murano is a faith-rooted artist living at Bethlehem Farm, an intentional Catholic community in Appalachia. She is currently working on a series of drawings that explore themes of watershed discipleship. Learn more at www.caseymurano.com