While the setting sun cast long shadows over the land, residents of the Sacred Stone Camp gathered near a community campfire as volunteers nearby prepared the evening meal. Children and a handful of dogs welcomed the night as if it were day, running and playing, oblivious to the changing weather and the cause that brought so many to the Missouri River in Cannon Ball, North Dakota.
“All of us have to educate ourselves. All of us have to make an extra effort to understand the other.” That’s the crux of the message Dr. Sayyid Syeed, national director for the Office for Interfaith and Community Alliances for the Islamic Society of North America, brought to Redwood Falls, Minnesota, when he spoke at the First Presbyterian Church and other locations in that community Sept. 15-17.
Bolz-Weber, the unconventional Lutheran minister who’s been known keep her audience tuned in with humor and an expletive now and then, spoke to more than 300 people at the Sept. 27 meeting of the Presbytery of Milwaukee in the auditorium of the city’s Art Museum.
As the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline continues near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, the Earth Care Team from the Presbytery of Northern Plains delivered supplies late last week to sustain those demanding an end to the pipeline’s construction.
The sounds could be coming from any busy school office responding to myriad requests: Someone needs first aid for a scraped elbow. Someone else is turning in a missing nametag. Someone else wants to change classes.
But this school is different. It’s Synod School, the annual midsummer ministry of the Synod of Lakes and Prairies. It’s a nearly weeklong event—Sunday afternoon through Friday noon—that always runs the last week in July at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa.
