Katrina Martich

My first of the month blog posts are dedicated to the practice of Living Connected. This month we focus on the connections made by our cell phones. Notice Look at your cell phone; not the screen, the phone itself. Consider what it’s made of. Notice the different materials that you can see. What other materials might be inside of the phone, and where in the world do they come from? Give thanks for the many gifts of creation that make a cell phone possible. Connect Cell phones

My spouse brews the coffee in our house as an act of self-defense. The first thing I do every morning is grab a cup of coffee. My brain isn’t fully engaged until after that first cup. Only then is it safe to talk with me. In my house, we jokingly call coffee “the nectar of life.” I recently was reminded of the extent to which ecological injustices are interwoven with my life when I read an article about the impacts of climate change on coffee. Both the availability and qualit

Most of us are fortunate to live in a place where we have the things we need to be comfortable. Look around your household for a moment. You’ll probably see things you use each day, and things that make your place feel like home. These material goods are an essential part of our daily life. They’re also part of our economy. You’ve probably heard it said that the U.S. economy is a consumer-driven economy. That means most of the money spent in the U.S. is spent by people like y

I love camping, the kind of camping that is up in the mountains at the end of a forest service road, next to the trailhead into a wilderness area. Usually, the campground only has a pit latrine for a bathroom. If we’re lucky there’s water from a well, but sometimes we must bring all our water with us. One of the many things I appreciate about camping is its reminder of how little I really need to be happy: shelter from the weather; food and drink; companionship; and something

I live in a state where the lieutenant governor suggested grandparents should be willing to expose themselves to, and if necessary, die from coronavirus, so their grandchildren will not suffer economic hardship. Like me, you may have heard friends echo the lieutenant governor’s sentiment or considered it yourself. His statement is almost a month old, and yet, I think the statement is still relevant, as we approach the 50th celebration of Earth Day on April 22nd. The first Ear

Horses have taught me a lot over the years. Most of the lessons came when things weren’t going well. The training rides where everything went wrong, sometimes leaving me in tears of frustration, were the ones that led to breakthroughs in my understanding. Those rides forced me to stop focusing on what I wanted to do, and instead, observe what was happening in the moment. Reflecting on what the horse was telling me caused me to confront my own limits and taught me the importan

The polarized nature of our society today seems to make every choice a test. Are you for or against…? Do you support or not support…? Do you do this or that? I am regularly asked these types of questions about environmental issues and find them troubling. Let’s look at an example. Do you use a plastic straw or not? I don’t know how this one got started, but I’ll assume the intent was good. Questioning the use of something as ubiquitous as a straw helps us see the extent to wh

I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. One reason is their all or nothing nature. They seem to be a set-up for failure. Being human, it’s inevitable that I’ll break my resolution at some point. New Year’s resolutions also seem to discount the new start I get each and every day of my life. A bad day doesn’t mean a failed resolution for the year; rather, it’s the opportunity to repent and start over with the grace of a new day. This perspective is rooted in my Lutheran th

The holiday season is now in its full flurry of excess, and I can no longer avoid the unease it brings me. I often hear talk about the cost of holiday excess on my health and my budget. There’s another cost that I seldom hear mentioned, and it’s the source of my unease. Living in a city, where I’m disconnected from the source of things I buy, it’s easy for me to forget that everything I buy and consume during the holidays has a creation story. These stories are found by traci