Author: Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee, PhD is an Ecological Ethicist and the founder of Climate Resilience Leadership (www.climategrace.com), which offers resources for Climate-Proof Leadership and Unshakeable Hope. She studies intersections of ecofeminism, permaculture ethics, grief, and nature connection. She previously did graduate research on Alzheimer’s Disease and preventive research on Ovarian Cancer. She received a B.Sc. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.A. in Molecular Biology from Harvard University, and an M.Div. from the Boston University School of Theology. She lives in metrowest Massachusetts with her husband and two daughters, and enjoys gardening, canoeing, learning about medicinal and edible wild plants, and rewriting old hymns to make them more inclusive.

Even In This: The Sacred Power of Radical Trust by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

I remember back when I worked in biology, some of the labs used animal models, like zebrafish or fruit flies, for their research. Some of my family members even worked with mice, helping to develop insulin treatments for diabetes that would mean fewer needles for children; or treatments for burn victims that directly helped the children at the Shriner’s hospital across the street. Their work really inspired me. Partly because of the ways it was helping so many people, of course. But also because of the way they talked about the mice.

I’m not here to defend or condemn experimental mouse models. What I want to talk about today is sacrifice. Because in these labs, the taking of an animal’s life is never described as killing. Every single time an animal dies, it is called a sacrifice. Every time.

Every Bird in the Mountains: Wisdom for this Climate Moment by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

I found a bird’s nest the other day. A perfect, round little nest, with five pale blue speckled eggs. I’ve been working for several years to figure out how to support the birds who share our yard, with bird feeders, leaf litter and better soil for caterpillars and worms to feed the baby birds, yellow LED outdoor lights, and native plantings to attract more insects and pollinators. I knew that songbird populations are struggling, but lately I’ve learned even more about their truly worrying decline, and how we can all create ‘homegrown natural parks’ to help. It’s been a deep source of joy and hope, through the long pandemic, to see the tufted titmice, dapper chickadees, and bright red cardinals at our feeders, and the soft gray juncos hopping about on the ground. When we moved here a few years ago, a bird’s nest appeared right above the floodlight on our deck, and we got to see and hear the wee fledglings that spring, as if they were welcoming us to our common home. We loved those baby birds, and I’ve often wondered whether they are now among the visitors that seem drawn to the window feeder whenever we start to play music.

Will You Be My (Feminist) Valentine? by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

Valentine’s Day was never about romantic love in my family. Mom always gave us Snoopy Valentines. Dad would write hilarious rhymes. My stepmom created gorgeous tea parties with chocolates and flowers, and we even gave red treats to our dogs. It was a chance to tell each other how much we love each other, and it was… well, really fun! So it’s no surprise that we’ve continued these traditions, with our own kids and dogs, and we all look forward to St. Valentine’s Day.

Most people know Valentino was from Italy. That’s another thing I love. I really love being Italian. Whenever I go back to New York, I feel my family’s Italian history and heritage surging through my soul. My olive-skinned mother would get so excited for the Italian street festivals – you know, where the center of the pavement is the red, white, and green of the Italian flag, instead of double yellow? And we had to eat the street food, like sausages with peppers and onions, and pizzelle. We’d wander around listening to folk music, proudly wearing our ‘Kiss Me, I’m Italian’ buttons, and giving each other lots of kisses.

May Love Rest You Merry this Solstice, As Darkness Holds Us in Her Grace

I grew up with a beautiful Solstice tradition: the Blue Christmas service. Each year, on or near the darkest night, our churches would offer a ceremony to remember those who had passed that year and hold space for the specific pain of holidays without loved ones we so sorely miss. Christmas itself named a broader pain, of injustice, of our many earthly wounds, and it offered a word of hope, of healing: a vision and promise of justpeace for all Creation. But Blue Christmas was different.

Blue Christmas said, sure – there is much work to do. If we really want to be vessels of a mighty Spirit of Love, we’ve got to roll up our sleeves and get to work! But… not tonight. Tonight, our work is to pause. To look away from the holy preparations of Advent, from the festive and the merry, and from the coming cruciform Birth. To be still. To turn toward pain we do not want to face. To allow ourselves to rest a moment, in Mighty Arms of Love. And to light a candle.

This “Columbus Day,” Watch Frozen 2 (Or Watch It Again!) by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

(Yes, this post contains some SPOILERS. It might make you love the movie more, though, which happened to me with this article about Mad Max: Fury Road.)

When I was in high school, in the early 90s, a Methodist pastor I love preached a sermon about Christopher Columbus. She was the first ecofeminist I’d ever known, and she spent her ministry helping to heal racism, sexism, and the Earth, including building lasting community with the indigenous people where we lived. Among other things, she would invite native leaders to come speak to our churches and help the congregation understand their continuing presence and cultures. And she was the first person I knew who recycled, used inclusive language – I’d never even heard of it – or who lamented the wastefulness of convenience.

Sacrificial Gathering in the Long Covid Desert by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

I am a fairly private person; but I do like nice hugs. I grew up in a home that involved so much intentional love and affection that I came to see it as a normal part of any loving relationship. I’m pretty sure I startle my friends sometimes by saying such affectionate things; but they endure, and many of them claim to appreciate a nice hug, too.

I know there are plenty of people who have experienced unhealthy or abusive touch; in fact, I’m one of them. I also know that the way to heal those wounds is usually through healthy touch, in relationships of trust.

Gardening Through the Storm by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

I spend a lot of time thinking about gardens. I think there might be something to them.

It seems strange to talk about gardens during such an intense time. The crucible of injustice, laid so bare during the pandemic, is overflowing all around us in a volcanic eruption of protests and retaliation. And more and more, we understand how it’s all connected – poverty, violence, choking black men, choking women, a choking planet. All connected in a huge, toxic river of greed, fear, destruction, and death.

When the Tomb Feels Safer than the Garden by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

I have always loved Lent and Holy Week. When I was young, I enjoyed the challenge of fasting. Holy Week was the powerful culmination of it all, so I would try to make the fast even harder then, like a sprint at the end of a marathon. Chocolate quickly got boring, so once I gave up all desserts. Another year, I gave up lying. (I’m a PK – Preacher’s Kid; enough said.) And then there’s the famous year sometime in my 20s when I decided I’d better give up swearing. (PK, remember?) Both my sister Trelawney and my husband just love to remind me of how I literally swore while walking out of the Ash Wednesday service. And didn’t even notice. And when they finally explained why they were laughing at me, I, of course, immediately cursed again. Sigh. Well, I respond each time, that’s why I decided to give it up in the first place!

My kids and I have also had a lot of fun observing Lent and Holy Week. Each year, it teaches us something new about abundance – especially amid the wealth of intensity and ritual during the last week. We are not legalistic about it; we just want to learn and grow together. One year, we limited plastic as much as possible. And I’ll never forget the year we gave up paper products. That was the first year we didn’t get sore noses, because we used handkerchiefs instead of tissues. As Trelawney likes to say, we finally stopped blowing our noses on a tree. Continue reading “When the Tomb Feels Safer than the Garden by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee”

Joy to the World, the CEO Is Come; Let Earth Receive Its President by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

Ah, Christmas. So nostalgic. So sentimental. Fat, fluffy sheep. Singing angels. The ‘little Lord Jesus,’ asleep on the hay. Happy sigh.

Except… well, except that no matter the candlelit warm glow, the truth is that the communities who wrote the birth narratives about Jesus of Nazareth never intended them to be sentimental at all. They were meant to point toward his prophetic ministry of anti-imperialism and justice for oppressed and impoverished communities, a ministry that ended in torture and execution – and yet nonetheless insisted upon the resilience of hope, peace, even joy in the midst of gruesome, relentless violence. So… what happened? What… weakened Christmas?

I’ve been mulling this idea over many an Advent. Of course, when the Roman Empire tried to neutralize the Christian movement, adopting it as the Imperial Religion and making it over in its own image, the radical and transformative message was forced to move underground and to the margins. We all sort of understand how political power manipulates religious and secular ideologies for its own oppressive purposes, throughout human history and today. Continue reading “Joy to the World, the CEO Is Come; Let Earth Receive Its President by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee”

From the Biblical ‘Woman on Fire’ to Female Kurdish Fighters: The Women Who Mama Up by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

I was one of millions inspired by Greta Thunberg’s speech to the United Nations. In her usual courageous fashion, she spoke plain truths all adults need to hear about our failure to assure a future for generations of all creatures. Yet you all come to us young people for hope? How dare you? she rebuked us. How dare you?

The beginning of her speech actually struck me the most. This is all wrong, she said. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school, on the other side of the ocean. Her words echoed the words of the small, simple hobbit Samwise in Lord of the Rings, as he and Frodo journey into the terrifying, almost certain death of Mordor. In the film, Sam says: It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. Continue reading “From the Biblical ‘Woman on Fire’ to Female Kurdish Fighters: The Women Who Mama Up by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee”