We Are The Asteroid

following California's drought from the headwaters of the Sacramento to the Delta

[projectasteroid]

Four separate Sunday services are needed to serve the community of Bethel Church at the massive College View Sanctuary in Redding California. The day's final incarnation of the nearly three hour worship service started at 6pm with an hour of music and the supernatural arts - two interpretive modern dancers, three painters, a 10-person band including four guitars, keyboard and drums fill the worship hall with the energy and excitement that make the church world renowned. Two video cameras on 30 foot booms swing around the sanctuary, documenting the weekly event for distribution to bethel.tv subscribers worldwide. #wearetheasteroid #projectasteroid #climateforchange #stewardship #californiadrought #water #bethelchurch

[projectasteroid]

Wende and her boyfriend left everything and went west. I met her, and an abused pit bull she adopted and named Charlie, in the parking lot of the Redding Walmart. After her boyfriend got picked up by cops in Eureka and sent back home to Missouri, she and the dog were working their way back to Kansas City in a rusted out F-150. She uses coupons at the local casino to gamble for free - last night she walked out with $27 - and she picks up scrap metal on the side of the road to sell back at scrapyards for gas money. She got to take her son on a road trip this past Spring, before he hung himself in July. She believes Jesus died to save her. "We got to go through Yellowstone. Old Faithful went off the minute we got there. We had a lot of fun - seen things I never would've seen... It's painful now to be broke, but I wouldn't trade it for the world." #wearetheasteroid #projectasteroid (presso Walmart Redding)

[projectasteroid]

Natalie and her two daughters fill up drinking water into dozens of bottles to take back home from Magic Spring, a trickle off a mountain in Calistoga that needs no filtering of any sort. As we sat refilling water bottles, she thought about the future of the planet her children will live in. She attributes much of the destruction to industry and it's influence over our political systems. "I think there is something sacred about life everwhere - not just on this planet - in the universe in general. I believe life is sacred, and if we are disconnected from spirit, then we are personally doomed in some way too. We also (are personally doomed), as we function as a group, dooming the planet. So the closer we are to spirit, the closer we are to ourselves and nature, the more hope there will be." #wearetheasteroid #projectasteroid #climateforchange #stewardship #californiadrought #water #peoplesclimate (presso Magic Spring)

[projectasteroid]

Fed by various headwaters, including he Box Canyon Dam is the northernmost dam of the Sacramento, forming Lake Siskiyou, the River system's northernmost reservoir. Low water levels expose piping and what used to be lakebed. Larger boats have been pulled from the lake and tourism is down an estimated 60% compared to average. #wearetheasteroid #projectasteroid #climateforchange #stewardship #californiadrought #water #peoplesclimate (presso Lake Siskiyou)

[projectasteroid]

"[Buddha] realized he needed to share his teaching. There was a part of him that just wanted to live a peaceful life, but then he realized that he really wasn't going to be able to do that, that he needed to share it, so he began to teach. And so it kind of comes into fruition, now as we are looking at the situation that we are in. And what can we do. What is going to be helpful in working with it. And the important part that I see is finding common ground with people who have very varied ideas. We have to work together. And the stakes are very high. And we know how to do it. We can do it. We’ve done it before. And this is one of the key phrases in one of our scriptures. When the opposites arise, the Buddha-mind is lost. As soon as you start seeing good and bad, good guys and bad guy, I am right and you are wrong. As soon as you start seeing things in opposition, you have lost that ability to see that which is beyond and holds all of us. So that is one of our teachings that we talk about all the time. And we try to practice it here and it is very hard. We all have lots of views and opinions." -Reverend Kodo (not pictured) #wearetheasteroid #projectasteroid #climateforchange #stewardship #californiadrought #water #peoplesclimate (presso Mt Shasta)

[projectasteroid]

In the kitchen with the Buddhist monks at Shasta Abbey, where both male and female monks shave their heads and live a simple and contemplative existence. To minimize waste, they heat the monastery to 62 degrees in the winter, regularly shower by sponging and lathering with the water turned off to minimize waste, and eat an entirely vegetarian diet. Assigned to break the tough ends off the stringbeans during working meditation, at first I put little thought into the size of the broken ends I tossed into the compost. Reverend Shugo kindly cautioned me to not waste even the extra two millimeters I was breaking off. "Someone grew these, and even these little beans were sacrificed so we could eat them," she reminded me, and then with a laugh, "The right size is somewhere between wasteful and neurotic," and added, "I said that, not Buddha." #wearetheasteroid #projectasteroid #climateforchange #stewardship #californiadrought #water #peoplesclimate (presso Mt Shasta)

[projectasteroid]

Pentecostals in Mt. Shasta City meet for a GLOW meeting weekly on Tuesdays at a volunteer-run Christian coffee shop downtown. Through prayer, song, dance, touch and glossolalia, the predominantly female group channels the Holy Spirit through their bodies to minister to one another and the world. They recount stories of how their ministry has healed, saved and protected. "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land" 2 Chronicles 7:14 #wearetheasteroid #projectasteroid #climateforchange #stewardship #californiadrought #water #peoplesclimate (presso HomeGrown CoOperative Cafe)

[projectasteroid]

Grace Community Evangelical Presbyterian Church burned to the ground during the Boles Fire in September. 15 years prior, Joyce Oliver, who runs Weed’s Community Resource Center in the Mercantile Building, salvaged a discarded pulpit from the dump. It was set up at the front of a middle room in the Mercantile, where 40 members convened for Sunday services. Joyce made coffee and hot water, and cake was cut up and laid on a welcome table. A keyboard and amplifier filled the room with music. At the end of the sermon, Shannon Ray, whose house narrowly survived, raised her hand to request the congregation sing Onward Christian Soldiers. “We learned years ago that a church isn’t a building, it’s a people.” #wearetheasteroid #projectasteroid #climateforchange #stewardship #californiadrought #water #bolesfire #weedfire #peoplesclimate (at Weed Mercantile Mall)

[projectasteroid]

Mike, a logger and volunteer fire fighter in the summer, recently returned to Siskiyou County after living in Oregon. He fought the Boles Creek fire and was shipped off to El Dorado to fight the King Fire shortly after. He was raised Presbyterian but heavily influenced by his Cherokee grandmother. "I grew up in McCloud and am used to winters that drop 6 feet of snow like its nothing. Now, last winter, I think we might have had 3 feet of snow throughout the whole county. Something's up right there. I believe that there is major climate change happening... "People need to look at the bigger picture of the world, and take more into it. And love this. Look at the little things in life, and the little things around you. And have more respect for the animal and the nature of this world. I hate to say it, for most people, it's the almighty dollar." #wearetheasteroid #projectasteroid #climateforchange #stewardship #californiadrought #water #bolesfire #weedfire #peoplesclimate (at Weed, California)

[projectasteroid]

While the majority of firefighters have been shipped to the Kings Fire near Tahoe, some hot spots remained in the Boles Fire a full week after the blaze, and crews had just begun demolition work on the 160 lost structures. #projectasteroid #climateforchange #stewardship #californiadrought #water #bolesfire #weedfire #peoplesclimate (at Weed, California)

[projectasteroid]

Kenneth lost his home and all possessions except his car in Monday's Boles Creek fire. He and his wife, 13-year old son and dog Chewy are temporarily staying with his in-laws in a one-bedroom apartment in Weed. "Before this fire, man, I was anti-government. Against anybody. I don’t care what your problem was, I didn’t like you... But the way these guys are taking care of us man. Wow, I thought I was going to have to move my family. They’re getting us houses, bringing us food, clothes. It's humbling when you have one pair of clothes, or when your kid has one pair of socks, you know.... But the government is taking care of us... I believe this thing right here, I might have lost my house, my community might have lost half of their houses but if these guys didn’t kick ass over here, we would’ve lost the whole fucking town. You know what I mean. So, I was anti-government, 150%. I don’t care if you were a City Clerk checking the water, I didn’t like you. Now I am kind of thinking, you know, they’re alright." #wearetheasteroid #projectasteroid #climateforchange #stewardship #californiadrought #water #bolesfire #weedfire #peoplesclimate (at Weed, California)

[projectasteroid]

A wildfire ravaged the 3,000-person town of Weed, California in mid-September, destroying 168 structures and leaving 128 families without homes. Drought has exacerbated the risk of fire and increased challenges associated with fighting it. #wearetheasteroid #projectasteroid #climateforchange #californiadrought #water #stewardship (at Hi-Lo Cafe)

[projectasteroid]

Exploring the human and spiritual face of environmental change. Phase 1 - Drought in the Central Valley: Following the Sacramento River from it's headwaters at Mt. Shasta to the California Delta. Follow @projectasteroid on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram #wearetheasteroid #californiadrought #water #climateforchange #stewardship (at California State Route 20)

[projectasteroid]

Robert in Eugene Oregon

"I think it goes right back to early teachings in the church, that this is a garden, that God gave us a beautiful thing, that we should be good stewards of it, and being good stewards of it means passing it on to your children… What gives me hope is my reading of history – we are a very resilient species and there are a lot of good people you don’t hear about working to help us… the good stuff is there but we don’t hear about it. Faith. F.A.I.T.H. Inchoate. It’s just a faith that the future is not too dark… I was brought up with an ethos - way before there was any worry about energy - of never squandering a good thing, you just don’t take any more than you need. If everybody just didn’t take any more than they needed and they were aware of their needs, we wouldn’t have any of this trouble. People waste a lot… It seems to me that we have been taught to dispose of and to consider ourselves almost patriotic to consume – advertising and sales all have pitched us towards being avaricious. It comes from people with like minds – Wall Street people – people in corporate world that are disengaged from the rest of us that reinforce each other’s opinions towards getting more money. Avarice. They reinforce themselves into believing that teaching us to consume and throw things away is good. And they only have people around them that tell them that, and they are in power… So people are taught to be wasteful, and nobody feels guilty about it. It’s good to feel guilty. Guilty people tend to be quiet and careful. There is nothing wrong with that.”