Hello and welcome to Nomad Podcast.

This episode has been put together in the style of one of our Nomad Devotionals, which are

available to our monthly patrons.

You can find out more at nomadpodcast.co.uk.

Today we're hearing from Ched Myers, who wrote the book, Binding the Strong Man,

which is a commentary on Mark's Gospel, and one of the most extraordinary things I've ever read.

More recently, he's co-authored Healing Haunted Histories with Elaine N's,

a settler discipleship of decolonization.

I asked Ched to reflect

theologically and ecologically on rivers, and this is what happened.

This is what happened. The

The The

The It's Chad Myers here at beaming in from the Ventura River watershed in Southern California, half a

planet away. Delighted to be part of Nomad podcast. You'll talk a little bit about rivers from both

an ecological and theological perspective. My wife and I and our small community live and work in the Ventura River watershed nestled at the northern end of the Southern California coastal bio region.

Our home and ecological sustainability project stands ascared 50 meters away, perched above the Ventura River midway, down its short 16-mile course

in a little blue-collar unincorporated town of about 4,000 people. We moved here from East

Los Angeles, the great world metropolis some 15 years ago. So a little bit about my ecological context. The basin of the

Ventura River covers only 230 square miles with more than a 6,000 foot elevation fall from

mountains to ocean. So our watershed is relatively small. The Ventura is a seasonal braided river that meanders and

regularly shifts its course. It has no recorded Shumash name, the Shumash are the indigenous

people of this region. A local Shumash colleague explained to us during a recent tour of the watershed we didn't name

...