Living Coast Ministries: Natalie Alderton Reflects

Natalie Alderton: Assistant Summer Director of Living Coast Ministry for 2024 and 2025

There’s something about the smell of fresh soil. Rich and grounding, I breathe it in deeply. It feels like a reminder that I am home. I can’t help but sink my hands into it, even though traces of the near-black earth stick under my fingernails for days.

I’m working in the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy native plant nursery with a few Living Coast students from Maryland. Our hands-on service project is to transplant young cordgrass plants into bigger containers. Hundreds of these plants are stacked according to different life stages. They will eventually be planted in the wetlands to provide habitat for the endangered Ridgway’s Rail, a marsh bird who depends on the precious few wetland ecosystems left in coastal California. The bird builds its nest in cordgrass, which both protects it from predators and allows the nest to rise and fall with the tides without being washed away.

I fall into the rhythm of our task naturally, a cycle of scooping soil and loosening root balls and tucking the little plants into their new homes. It is quietly meditative, and this air is healing. My mind wanders as my hands move. 

Fragments of scripture and story rise up in my mind. I think about the good soil in the parable of the sower. I see a picture of the Garden of Eden, where humankind works without toil, serving and protecting the ground. I hear the name Adam, a reminder of the soil-people that we were made to be. I remember the command to build gardens right where we are, even when the place feels like foreign ground. 

This, I think to myself, is what it looks like to co-work with God. This is what it looks like for the kingdom to come on earth. With each scoop of soil, we are preparing space for new life to flourish, which will become home to a whole host of creation. We act with the faith that our small contribution could be magnified into something greater.

I couldn’t think of a better metaphor for our work with Living Coast Ministry. 

We start by preparing good soil—crafting stories and creating connections and building spaces. We forge bonds with educators and advocates, with organizations that will connect us back to our roots and help us envision a better future. We craft a web of programming centering around the heart of the Back Bay and the body of the Pacific Ocean and the lifeblood of our watershed. We write worship with the soul of the Spirit which connects all things. 

We prepare in faith for the arrival of our saplings. They are green and healthy, but they will thrive with new ground to explore and question and connect with. Gently, we take their webs of roots and soil and place them in new containers, where they might continue to root down and grow. The new soil gives nourishment. The rain is the gift of wisdom which connects heaven and earth. The air is the breath of life and Spirit. The Sun is the miraculous light by which one grows.

Then, our paths diverge. We have to trust that these saplings, these youth will return to their native lands and root down there. That they might be a home and a haven for the vulnerable. That they might serve and protect the fragile creation around them. That they might build gardens of their own, right where they are. This is the body of Christ. We are creating a web of stewards bound by the same mission, propelled by the same faith.

• We act with faith in things unseen, in the seeds we plant deep in the earth and scatter across the land. We act with the faith that our work might outlive us, bearing fruit beyond what we witness. We act with the faith of resurrection—the faith that new life is here and now, if we only choose to grow it. This is what it means to be a Living Coast.

I am honored to have served in this ministry amongst this special community. You all are the good soil which makes this program possible, and for that, I thank you. My prayer is that we will continue to invest in Living Coast, because “all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth.” 

Let’s live as if it were so.

In faith, 

Natalie 

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1 Luke 8:4-15

2 Genesis 2:15

3 Genesis 2:7

4 Jeremiah 29:5

5 Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov