The Perennial Waters Project

05/24/2026

05/19/2026

🗓️ On Thursday, May 21st at the Trenton Library, John Hartig of St. Philip’s Perennial Waters Project will be joined by Dr. Heinz Plaumann to share fascinating stories about the Detroit River, its people, and its environmental legacy.

✨ All are welcome to attend!

📍 Learn more and register here:
https://www.trenton.lib.mi.us/events-1 #/events/bZDeVK0hy2/instances/cEA0sJ5Dxq/

05/19/2026

05/19/2026

Hi folks, I cannot fully express how important my experience was a few years back, as a member of the inaugural class of Pacific Lutheran Seminary’s “Climate Justice and Faith” certificate program. The program is growing every year. If you have an interest in leadership where eco-justice meets faith — where, for me, Thomas Berry meets Thich Nhat Hanh meets Gary Snyder meets civic environmentalism and climate justice— if you have an interest in bringing together your faith experience and your ecological sensitivities, this will be transformative for you.

05/11/2026

Happy Mothers' Day from Perennial Waters Project and St. St Philip Lutheran Church.

St Philip Church (ELCA) Trenton MI. Presenter: Win Kurlfink-been struggling a bit with laryngitis. My voice is shot!Win Kurlfink is a therapist, addiction sp...

04/30/2026

04/18/2026

Thomas Berry did not use the phrase "Great Conversation" loosely.

He meant it as a description of the structure of reality. The universe, in Berry's understanding, is not a collection of separate things that occasionally interact. It is a communion — a community of subjects, each with its own voice, each participating in an exchange that makes the whole coherent. The birds are part of this conversation. The mountains are part of it. The soil is part of it. The rivers are part of it. And the water cycle — evaporation, cloud, rain, river, ocean, rain again — is one of its most persistent and eloquent expressions.

Water never stops speaking. It speaks in the language of movement, of nourishment, of return. It speaks in the carving of canyons and the filling of aquifers and the slow patient work of rain on stone. It spoke before there were ears to hear it and it will speak after every human institution has dissolved back into the elements it came from.

It is we who stopped listening.

Berry called this the greatest crisis of the modern period — not the loss of species or the warming of the atmosphere, though those are its symptoms. The root crisis is the loss of the capacity to hear what the living world is saying. We became, as he put it, a civilization talking only to itself. Fluent in our own languages. Deaf to everything else.
And a universe without communion is no longer whole. That is what Berry meant when he said we have shattered it. Not physically. Functionally. We broke the exchange that makes the whole cohere.

The Great Work begins with one act: listening. To a river. To the rain. To the body of water nearest you, which has been speaking all along and is speaking still.
What does it mean to you to listen to a body of water?

Explore Thomas Berry's vision of the Great Conversation at thomasberry.org

04/04/2026

Dr. Rev. Chad Rimmer (Prof. Chad, if I may be so bold) directed my cohorts’ study in the ‘Certificate of Climate Justice and Faith’ program through Pacific Lutheran Seminary a few years back. This was transformative for me and I cannot adequately express to him, or the program, my deep gratitude. He offered a Lenten homily to his home congregation a week or so ago. It’s more than worth a listen. This vid shows the entire service. His sermon begins. Around the 30 minute mark. It is a most important message in this moment!

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church

03/26/2026

Mirabai Starr speaks most beautifully of the deepest heart of perennial / trans spiritual wisdom and the guiding ethos of PWP.

The Revolutionary Task of Interspirituality

03/22/2026

Hi Folks, Reminder that I will be out of town on Thursday (4/26) and it has just occurred to me that the following Thursday (5//2) is Maundy Thursday so the church will be unavailable. See you after Easter.