As far as music goes, there are special moments, I think most would agree, that have shaped each of us in unforgettable ways. In my case, there was a joy-filled accordion player during my youth. On the North Shore of Minnesota, a sixty-year-old family friend made the world dance for me during summer nights as our family gathered at his family’s log cabin which he’d built with his own hands. Then there was a particular solo, sung during a wedding in Seattle, based on a folk tune from Appalachia. You could hear a pin drop in that sanctuary because of the score’s lyrical power, the melody’s haunting simplicity.
More recently, I was present when a jazz saxophone player improvised sounds, echoing a recorded wolf howl during our community’s Choral Society’s spring concert. Tears streamed down people’s faces in our city’s Kaufman Auditorium during the choir’s evening performance of Paul Winter’s “Earth Mass.” That night, music wove together spirits of the earth’s creatures and the very depths of the human heart.
I discovered, only weeks ago, that lessons from what goes on behind the scenes in the music world can be as fascinating as the music itself.
Recently, I sat on our home’s historic front porch with a retired music producer from Austin, Texas. He’s had years of experience producing quality recordings for diverse, well-known artists and songwriters. I learned some things.
He introduced me to what professionals in his business call “auto tune.” It’s what recording technicians use, with computer technology, to correct pitch, vocal effects, and voice-instrument balance. My visitor informed me auto tune is almost universally used in high level digital recordings. I learned there are a few exceptions in his field. He’s one of them.
“Sure,” he tells me, “I’ll use a foundation of technology to build on the music, enhance it. But that’s it. Too often, musicians who come into the recording studio say, “Just use the auto-sound.” I’ll say ‘Nope.’ Here’s why. I tell them I need to feel the music and the personality of the performer. Then I’ll make hand dial adjustments on the sound board. It’s a human thing. Technology is good but when I’m centered, I make decisions about volume, tone, and sync better than any computer. When I’m in my game, I can drive a piece of music into a listener’s bones.”
Life is like that. We can go on autopilot, use highly sophisticated systems to do the work for us. But we can choose to go acoustic: Find a mentor, a guide. Be open to assistance. Adapt. Adjust. Tune.
If we’re lucky, we find such connections. We’ll be able to make our own life’s music. Allow ourselves to be part of singing a sacred kind of healing song. One for which the world so deeply yearns.
Fall 2024 Equinox Newsletter
CONTENTS
JOURNAL NOTES
Appreciation to our hospitality team for the Institute’s 2024 Midsummer festival held on July 18th. Garee Zellmer, Barb Ojibway, Ken Kelley, Hope Connection Volunteers including Pastor Kristi Hintz and Jef Noble, Nick Johnson, Aryel and Brad Araynos, Laurel Kniskern, and Linda Carlson. Exquisite. Gracious. Mindful. Thank you!!
Welcome to Will Sharp, Social Work graduate student at NMU, who is working with CTI to coordinate, in months ahead, a hospice staff and volunteer training program with the Blue Cross Blue Shield Michigan Foundation. Last winter, Will co-facilitated a dream-work series with CTI and the Northern Great Lakes Synod (ELCA).
St. Ignace’s Public Library on September 20th, will feature a public showing of “The Return.” The evening includes conversations with Native leaders and community partners who, in 2022, helped the Museum of Ojibwa Culture return and rebury remains of Fr. Jacques Marquette, a 17th century French Jesuit. Volunteers with CTI played key roles in Fr. Marquette’s journey home. Thanks to Makari Rising for his notable 22-minute film documenting this event.
Farewell and blessings to Jim Duehring, Assistant to the Bishop of the NGLS, who retired from that role in August. Jim was a key advocate for Institute projects and remains a valued colleague, an insightful theologian, and community activist. Jim once served as a teacher on a remote American Indian reservation in North Dakota.
“The Gift of Water,” a collection of 45 essays by 45 local writers, is now in its second printing. Its reflections on ecology and the spiritual life were highlighted by five of the original writers at a community reading in the Peter White Public Library on July 8th. Thanks to a special gift from John and Pauline Kiltinen, Northern Michigan University’s public radio station is producing an audio book of these writings under the direction the editor Paul Lehmberg, our community’s Zen Buddhist priest.
Wild Church, an innovative, prophetic interfaith outreach of the Episcopal Diocese and the regional Lutheran Synod of the ELCA continues its notable work weaving together spiritual traditions with the natural world. Lanni Lantto serves as Coordinator. Ken Kelley, retired Social Work Department Chair at NMU, serves as a key organizer.
Our appreciation to Sue and Mark Bevins, proprietors of the Thunder Bay Inn, who hosted “The Mystery of Healing” on June 27-28 in Big Bay. Fourteen social workers, nurses, clergy, and physicians explored the riddles of meaning in the shadows of illness and mortality.
Guest presenters for that retreat included Mark Hallman (Austin, Texas), Fred Maynard, a retired physician of rehabilitation medicine, Dan Collins, retired dentist, Fred Groos, family medicine physician, Mike Grossman, one of our County’s Hospice Directors, community psychiatrist Kelley Mahar, and palliative care physician Lara Clary-Lantis.
Northern Great Lakes Interfaith Water Stewards representatives and CTI were interviewed in June by the Great Lakes Odyssey, a PBS affiliate program based on Sault Ste. Marie, Canada. The interview was aired on public radio stations in Cleveland, Buffalo, and Toronto. Its focus was on the ongoing work of the Water Stewards.
Taiji Chuan. Rick Pietila and Jackie Kosey, good friends and long-time supporters of the Cedar Tree Institute, traveled from Ottawa to Marquette for a visit in August. Rick facilitated a special morning seminar on body mechanics and health from a Tai Chi perspective. A magical Saturday morning with us exploring health and physicality.
Youth Exchange to Taiwan. Hurrah to Marquette high school student Berkeley who traveled this fall to Taiwan to begin an extended adventure with a Youth Exchange Program. She carried 12 small bottles of maple syrup from the Cedar Tree Institute as special gifts for her host family and new community. Thanks to Michael and Clare Sauer for helping make the connection!
Prayers of thanks for the life of Sarah Kamppinen who was buried in Park Cemetery on September 7th. Sara was the 44-year-old mother of a son Jordan. Her father Jack and mother Margie were proud of their daughter who, for years, worked with the Salvation Army as a case worker in Warren, Michigan.
HEALING THE EARTH
WATER STEWARDS 2024-25
A DRINKING WATER INITIATIVE
For the Northern Great Lakes Basin
On the evening of April 18th, Michael Broadway, Professor Emeritus of Geography at NMU, launched the 2024-25 Interfaith Water Stewards Initiative with a community gathering at Messiah Lutheran Church. Goals include
- Sponsoring four community forums addressing drinking water quality in our region
- Publishing a series of 10 columns in the Marquette Monthly titled “The Spirit of Water”
- Advocacy for neighboring tribal water projects
- Planting 1,000 cedar trees (to release pure water through transpiration into the biosphere), and
- Support for two drinking water projects in under-resourced countries.
The Mission Statement for this initiative will be printed in the October issue of the Marquette Monthly and will be distributed to dozens of faith-based communities across the Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin,
If interested in supporting this partnership, consider a designated donation to the Cedar Tree Institute to underwrite our planting efforts. The cost of 1 cedar tree is $10. The cost of 10 is $100. This summer, 350 cedar trees were planted by 24 volunteers as a first step to planting 1,000 trees by August of 2025. Summer sites included Silver Creek and the Yellow Dog Community Forest.
Our appreciation to Brad Pickens, of the Episcopal Diocese, who is serving as editor for our Project’s collected writings on this important topic. And also to Chuck Thomas, geologist and former supervisor for the State’s Upper Peninsula Drinking Water Management programs. Chuck will be our special presenter at Marquette’s Messiah Lutheran Church for a public forum in October. Thanks to Sarah Gimpl, NMU Class of 2024, for serving, these months, as coordinator for this Cedar Tree initiative.
A NEW PARTNERSHIP
“A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY THROUGH THE GREAT LAKES”
This fall, The Cedar Tree Institute is offering to support a creative initiative sparked by Dan Robinson and David Dempsey
Dan has a strong background connecting faith traditions with environmental and health challenges in the Great Lakes Basin. Dave Dempsey is author of several books and articles that deal with protection of critical ecology in this part of the world.
Their vision is a series of interfaith images, meditations, and written artistic pieces on specific sites that are of historical importance and others that are merging as “hot spots” for critical decision-making by regional and state authorities. The project’s website will be available and created for mobile devices to be conveniently used while at location. Or if preferred, remotely. Native American, Jewish, Buddhist, and Christian perspectives will be represented with sacred writings, interviews, and images.
Such projects are a part of a new consciousness that acknowledges that spiritual dimensions of environmental work are at the heart of a new land and water ethic. We believe this will bring a deeper, living relationship with the natural world, this place we call our home here in the Great Lakes Basin.
All Institute projects continue to integrate moments of refection, gratitude, and seek to incorporate diverse rituals to lift up the sacred bonds that give life its mystery and unique meaning. This includes the use of a variety of prayers, poems, bells, and songs. Below, volunteers join Jeff Noble to prepare for our first of two tree plantings at Chocolay Township’s Silver Creek.
Further details will be available regarding support and timelines in the CTI’s Winter 2025 Ecotone.
IN MEMORIAM
Ann Lois Rutkoske
1946 -2024
A yoga practitioner and gifted seamstress, Ann was proprietor of Superior Sewing Studio on Marquette’s Spring Street. She once gave some of us valuable advice during an introductory yoga class in which my wife Diana and I were participants. “Don’t compare. Don’t look at anybody else. You’ll get off balance. You’ll miss getting in touch with your own body. Your self-awareness.”
One of Ann’s legacies included providing dress alterations for Bay Cliff Health Camp’s annual Summer Prom. She helped young teenagers celebrate a special evening of music and dance. Especially those who, because of birth or accident, faced serious physical and emotional challenges as they entered adolescent years. She radiated a love for the natural world and, though gentle in spirit, “suffered no fools” in the best sense of that phrase.
Ann also tailored an “off the rack” black suit for the CTI Director days before his travel to London with a small delegation on behalf of a local activist group and the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community. They spoke on behalf of concerned citizens at an Annual Meeting of Rio Tinto. That international mining company, at the time, was proposing a sulfide mine in Marquette County.
Lift up prayers of support for her husband Tim, and family, Emily, Claire, and David.
Donna King
1954 -2024
Donna King served as Deaconess and ministry associate with the CTI Director during his years (1980-1985) of campus ministry at Oregon State University. She carried an ebullient spirit, loved cats, and knew how to laugh at the absurdities of much of church life. In 1990 she met John King, a student at Oregon State University. I remember looking down at a student reference card with a name ‘John King’ and saying to Donna, “If you’re up to it, why don’t you invite him out for coffee.” She did. They married in 1990.
Donna and John established a life together in Corvallis. She continued her work in various capacities with the faith community. John went on, after graduate school in physics, to study theology and served as a pastor in the North American Lutheran Church. We lift you up, John, for being by Donna’s side during a difficult last few months. Two days before her death, a small cloth bag of cedar was sent by UPS from Marquette. John hung it on her hospital bed. It was there during her last breath.
ON THE HORIZON 2024-25
AN EVENING WITH THE WATER STEWARDS
Messiah Lutheran Church, Marquette,
October 17th, 7–8:30 P.M.
“Pristine Water? A Reality Check”
A Presentation by Chuck Thomas, Geologist
with folk musician/composer Michael Waite
MIND /BODY PRACTICE
Tai Chi and Qi Gong
September – December
Wednesdays: 5:30 – 6:30 P.M.
St. Paul’s Episcopal Morgan Chapel, Marquette
SPIRIT OF PLACE
“The Spiritual Brain”
What Neuroscience Teaches us About Pleasure, Suffering, and Mystical Experience.
November 14th-17, Thursday – Sunday
Boulder City, Nevada
Learn more about The Spiritual Brain
THE EVERGREEN PROJECT
A training and support series for hospice workers, volunteers, and palliative care physicians
December 2024 – March 2025
BLESSING THE TREES
Thanks to Institute volunteers from all walks of life who planted 350 cedar trees during June, July and September.
May all my thoughts and all my deeds be in harmony with Thee; God within me. God beyond me. Maker of Trees
-From the Chinook Psalter (Pacific Northwest)
Since our origin in 1995, the Cedar Tree Institute has chosen to remain small and flexible in structure. We commit ourselves to carefully selected projects funded by individuals and, when available, grants. Partners have included fve regional American Indian tribes, two hospitals, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Forest Service, Northern Michigan University, Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine, Lake Superior Watershed Partnership, and two theological seminaries. CTI Board members Jim Elder and Steve Mattson serve as key guides, prudent financial advisors, and insightful consultants.
We own no property. Have no full-time employees. We exist in time. Not in space. Mindfulness and gratitude are our guiding principles. Eighty-percent of our core operation budget comes from donations. For those who have chosen to support us, our deepest thanks. We don’t plan to go away anytime soon.
CTI BOARD
- Jon Magnuson, CTI Executive Director
- Steve Mattson, Financial Consultant, Wells Fargo Private Client Services, Retired
- Jim Elder, Attorney
ADVISORY COUNCIL
- Larry Skendzel, Physician, Hospice Care
- Gareth Zellmer, Consultant, Trainer
- Ken Kelley, Professor Emeritus, NMU
- Rick Pietila, U.S. State Department
- Jan Schultz, Botanist, USFS, Retired
- Michael Grossman, Family Physician
RESEARCH ASSOCIATES
- John Rosenberg
- Ruth Almén
- Kent Fish
- Joseph Piccione
For information contact us at 403 East Michigan Street, Marquette, MI 49855 or contact us via email. Telephone & Fax: 906-228-5494
The Fall 2024 Equinox Newsletter is brought to you by Cedar Tree Institute.
