LIVING LIGHT

Welcome! You have found the site of the CreationKeepers team (Christ Church's Eco Church Committee), which shares ideas and experiences about how we can all lighten our environmental footprint. We do this because we see our planet and its resources at a breaking point and believe in the power of personal examples. Most weeks, we will reflect on some aspect of living, working, shopping, consuming, reading, learning, etc. These are all local experiences and can easily be adopted by others in our community. Our authors (Rosie and Monika) look forward to any comments or ideas that you may also have and want to share. Send us your ideas at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Blog #67: Kiss, the Cook - Locally Sourced, Fresh & Fair

April 21, 2022
Monika Weber-Fahr

One of the beauties of living with electronically minded people is that they know how to use their devices for all sorts of useful things that regular folks like myself did not even know were possible. The world’s best husband is one of these astounding individuals, and last weekend he surprised me with the insight that ever since I had been writing this blog he had marked - on one of his apps - restaurants serving food that was either locally sourced or vegetarian or otherwise planet friendly, essentially helping their patrons to live lightly. It’s a rather eclectic list, not just your garden variety “10 vegan places in Vienna”; instead it was built from newspaper tips, recommendations from friends, and from having walked by places that seemed interesting. As it turns out, I now have access to an actual map of potentially good and fun coffee houses and restaurants in Vienna that would be worthwhile to review for readers of the Living Light blog. So now that spring-time and lower Covid risks make restaurants attractive choices again, here is the first of hopefully many more reviews that we will do for you here.

Kiss, the Cook is the somewhat misleading name of a rather extraordinary place in the 2nd district, literally 3 minutes by foot from Nestroyplatz: Rather than suggesting perhaps undesired attention to be brought to the kitchen staff, Kiss is the name of one of the Chefs - Tamasz Kiss. He and his partner in crime, Marcelo Alves, bring culinary experiences from Brazil, Hungary, Austria, France, Italy, and the broader Mediterranean to bear. Together, they have created a restaurant experience that combines a number of quite unique features.

Picture: Beautiful salads are part of the Kiss, The Cook menu and buffet - here as part of a delicious Falafal dish.

Firstly: The menu is short and changes daily. The cooks will prepare only what they can get fresh, seasonal and local. Each day, there is a choice between two soups, three main dishes and one dessert, plus one can combine things differently at the buffet. If you want to go, you might want to check out the menu first on https://kissthecook.at/menue/menuplan/.

Secondly: The restaurant operates on a canteen basis - an element of self-service is combined with table service. As a result, the prices are very affordable. A large plate of good soup - with Tafelspitz - went for about 6 Euros. The most expensive dish runs up to 16 euros, the cheapest (a starter soup) was available for 2 Euros.

Picture: A delicious soup is part of the rinexpensive and egular menue- this time we tried the one with pasta and Tafelspitz. And yes: there are vegetarian and non-vegetarian options on the locally sourced and seasonal menu.

Thirdly: The opening hours run only from 11:00 - 15:00 am, mondays through fridays. Perfect for the working crowd in the area, but of course also feasible for anyone close to the U1.

Fourthly: They bake their own bread - based on sourdough - daily. They also have low-calorie healthy desert choices.

Fifthly: While they do offer meat, the selection of vegetarian choices seems to be substantial. The dishes offered are prepared without artificial taste amplifiers and other quick-fix elements.

The restaurant’s interior - not that it matters perhaps as much for the green-minded customer - is pleasant, spacious and simple. They also have some outside seating. And if you can’t or don’t want to go: They are on Mjam.

Given that the menu is changing regularly, telling you too much about the dishes we ate may not make a whole lot of sense. What I can say though is that what we had was fresh, delicious and made us walk away with the firm conviction that this is a place to come back to. Definitely worth a place on the Local&Fresh&Seasonal Food list

Inspired? Thoughts or reactions? Or ideas for forthcoming blogs? We look forward to hearing from you - best via email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Blog #66: Easter Joys in Nature

April 14, 2022
Monika Weber-Fahr

Easter is a joyous feast. We celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, confirming our belief in life after death, telling each other and anyone who cares to listen that - yes! - Christ has risen! He has risen indeed! Easter is also the Christian feast most closely related to nature - or so I always thought. Why? Well, many of our Easter rituals relate back to (Western European) pagan traditions focusing on fertility and reproduction. Also, the timing of Easter is driven by nature: We celebrate it on the first Sunday after what is called the Paschal full moon - the first full moon in the Northern Hemisphere on or after March 21st. But in the end, the simple fact that Easter coincides with the early weeks of spring makes it a feast destined to offer an opportunity to appreciate nature’s riches.

Here in Austria, as in other German-speaking parts of the world, the Easter feast’s connection to enjoying nature has created - or is reflected in - a particular tradition: The Osterspaziergang or Easter Stroll. After church, and when breakfast or lunch are over, families or groups of friends congregate and jointly go out for a walk, enjoying and appreciating flowers, bushes and trees along whatever path they will be taking. There may be a religious background to the custom - seeing a link to the Walk to Emmaus seems not far fetched. Either way, there is no Easter without an Osterspaziergang in this part of the world. In German-speaking literature, the Osterspaziergang has been famously immortalized in Goethe's Faust, describeing the happy commotion going on whenever “rivers and streams are freed from ice” as the “the colorful crowd” emerges from the churches and “will take the sun today..and feel they are resurrected”. The poem concludes with the narrator exclaiming: “Here I am human, here I can be”, expressing a deep feeling of belonging - with nature, and with those out on their Easter stroll.

Picture: Going for an Easter Stroll - or Osterspaziergang - is a dearly held tradition in Austria and other German-speaking parts of the world. Taken from an old postcard, this picture illustrates the Osterspaziergang Scene in Goethe's Faust - where Goethe describes the walk in nature as "the people's heaven".

Indeed, enjoying nature does make us happy: There is plenty of research out there that confirms what might have been more of a hunch when the 18th century poet and writer Goethe penned his text for the Osterspaziergang. The health benefits of being out in nature are somewhat obvious - in terms of movement and air. But even just being in nature, doing no more than looking at trees, flowers, rivers, and so on, seems to reduce anger, fear, and stress, making us feel better emotionally. Why is it that nature can make us kinder, happier, and more creative? The reasons seem unclear - but the studies all point in the same direction: We are our better selves when being out there.

Here in Vienna, we are right now in the middle of what promises to become yet another gorgeous spring, and so nature lovers will have no trouble finding joy just by walking along the many green parts of the city. Vienna’s ranking as #1 on the list of the World’s ‘greenest cities’ - cities with lots of public green spaces, high walkability, broad recycling, and many people using public transport - surely helps. Whether your Osterspaziergang will take you to the Botanischer Garten right behind our Church, to the Stadtpark, the Prater, or elsewhere, there are many different ways of enjoying nature here; the list of parks is long and hence your options are plentiful. Exploring what the city has to offer as the first rays of sunshine have cherry trees and forsythia in full bloom - what a gift!

Picture: Vienna offers many parks and places where we can enjoy the beauty of Nature and celebrate Easter through a joyful stroll.

Holy Week is a busy time for those of us offering and attending to the week’s services and its rituals. From foot washing on Maundy Thursday, through the commemoration of Jesus’ suffering and death, the darkness of Good Friday, then on to the Easter Vigil, followed by resurrection’s joy on Easter Sunday: It’s also quite an emotional ride. In many ways, the week is a mirror of the cycle of life that we see throughout the seasons in nature all around us. And a wonderful reminder of the riches that God’s creation offers to us. So let’s make sure we make time, take a moment or two - and find Easter Joys in Nature.

Blog #64: On Dominion, Mustard, and Fish - the Last Stretch of Lent

April 7, 2022
Monika Weber-Fahr

One more week to go, and we will conclude Lent with the celebrations of Easter. Many of us will have found time to reflect and prepare for Easter, some maybe not (as much) as they might have wanted. Six weeks ago, Blog#59 had invited you to plan for a green lent and get a fresh start, introducing some spiritual resources relating specifically to our joy about and responsibility for God’s creation. In catching up on what happened since, we want to share with you three resources for the last stretch of lent - from a CreationKeepers’ perspective. I myself had followed - on-and-off - two online resources, the Anglican Churches #LiveLent: Embracing Justice reflections and the Bible Society’s Lent Encounter. The former came with an app, a theme for each week, a reading, a reflection, and a prayer, as well as some suggestions for how to take lenten practices into one’s family life; the latter had a 2 minute video, a prayer, a conversation starter, a reading, and some further reading and questions. Perhaps somewhat surprising, at least to me: Both lenten courses had plenty to say about God’s creation. Here are my “picks for the last stretch”- curated for your consideration.

Justice in Creation was the theme of the first week of the #LiveLent course, inspired by Genesis 1,26: "Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." It’s a beautiful part of our scriptures, and yet one that demands so much of us - in understanding what having dominion means and what it brings in terms of responsibility, tasks, and care. The reflections offered by the course asked us to think about fairness in creation - asking us whether our vision of creation is one where “human beings’ relationship with one another, with God, and with the whole of creation is balanced, right and fair, with no exploitation, no barriers and no hierarchies.” It asked us to “listen to the cries of unfairness” so that we may “discover the world we long for – and ask whether our hopes and longings are shaped by God’s principles in creation”.

Picture: Mustard plants - featuring in the Parable of the Mustard Seed - are all around us here in Austria, offering a moment for us to reflect on how we want to live, what kind of spice we want to offer the world.

Mustardseeds were at the heart of the Bible Society course’s suggested reading Mark 4:30-32 on Day 26, in late March. “The Kingdom of God is like [...] mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such brig branches that the birds can perch in its shade.” The course invites readers to “make this Sunday wonderful by getting outside and reflecting on the mustard seed and the kingdome of heaven”. There is also the suggestion that we check out Wonder Walk 3, one of several gospel inspired nature walks that the Bible Society of Scotland had put together last year. Indeed, the instructions therein are easy and simple - yet powerful even following them by yourself, simply suggesting a mindful look at the trees (in this case) that you may encounter during a walk. I don’t want to venture into interpreting the parable of the mustard seed here, but I can say that I found it inspiring to reflect on the characteristics of mustard - small in size but large in effect in any meal. Here in Austria I saw plenty of mustard plants when cycling last summer. Apparently, nearly 90% of all mustard seeds grown by our host country comes from Niederösterreich, right around the corner from us in Vienna. Depending on when mustard seeds are put out, one can see the plants blooming between May and September, easily to be confused with Rapeseed.

The third and last amongst the ecologically inspiring treasures from my lenten courses that I wanted to share here came courtesy of the #LiveLent course again. From Scarcity to Abundance: Feeding the Hungry was the overall theme that day, inspired by Mark 6:30-44 , the story of the “five loaves and the two fish” that end up nourishing five thousand people. The story resonates so much with what is at the core of the ecological crisis we are in. It’s a great instigator to take a moment and reflect on our planet’s abundance that can indeed feed us all in terms of our need - but not in terms of our greed. And to reflect on the care with - or without - which we tend to treat the resources we are given and use. “When Jesus fed a crowd he made sure the leftovers were collected and shared”, the #LiveLent course’s readings remind us. “What is enough?” we were asked us on that day, suggesting we go through our belongings, hunting for things that we do not or no longer need. “And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish.”

Picture: Five loaves and two fish fed five thousand people, reports Mark 6:30-44. The text offers great inspiration for how careful we want to be with scarce resources - and how far they can go when we do.

There are many more good inspirations and prayers that I could have shared here - drawn from the #LiveLent and the LentEncounter courses. Lent-focused and drawn from the old and new testament, the texts provided offer the opportunity to lament about, pray for and say thanks for God’s creation. Lent is the time when we look to leave old things and habits behind and to make space for new ways of life. Maybe, on this last stretch of this year’s lent, there is space for you to consider becoming even more of a CreationKeeper? To venture into taking (more) responsibility for God’s creation under our dominion, being like a mustard seed that brings spice to the world, and using the resources we have carefully and with measure....

Blog #64: Sowing the (right) Seeds

March 31, 2022
Monika Weber-Fahr

As a freshly minted beekeeper, I was committed to have my garden be a beautiful little habitat for the newly arrived ladies. Or so I thought. Last year, when I got my first bee hives, a beekeeper from the neighborhood dropped by and scolded me for what I had thought was a perfectly respectable lawn. Turns out, weekly lawn mowing and keeping one’s grass short is really not leaving much fun to be had for insects of any kind. Indeed, ever since we moved there, I had not seen many butterflies or even wild bees. So I began to read up about lawns - English lawns, flowering lawns, wildflower lawns - and I discovered that those of us with a garden have a lot to contribute to nature; only where gardens are occupied by a diversity of plants, and only where one is sparse with fertilizers and pesticides, can insects find a place to live. Many of you will know that insects are disappearing from our environment at an alarming rate, driven by the dramatic losses in diverse habitats that is occurring all around the world, including in our gardens. As it were, this Sunday, April 3rd, across Austria, many towns and counties celebrate Blühwiesensonntag (Flowering Lawn Sunday) - a day when you might even be able to pick up seeds for free for your wildflower garden. So, today’s Blog in our LivingLight Blog series explores what we can do ourselves about bringing wild flowers back. And it’s not just for those of you who have a garden, but also for those who know someone who does.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First we need to ask why anyone would want to even consider a flowering lawn or a wildflower lawn - instead of that beautiful, symmetrically looking, pleasing-for-the-busy-eye patch of straightforward green? I am myself in that latter camp, or so I was, loving the idea of this English-looking garden behind the house. Well, aside from the aesthetics - and these are, as we know, in the eye of the beholder - there are three great practical reasons to go on the wild side with your garden. Firstly: It’s less work. You only mow your wildflower lawn twice a year. Secondly: it’s less resource intensive. You don’t need to water your lawn, no small argument when thinking about the dry summers here in Vienna and its surroundings. In fact, your wildflower lawn, much in contrast to your English lawn, likes it dry. And thirdly: You don’t need to buy all that pesticide or fertilizer. At least if you commit to not only having a flowering lawn but also an ecologically maintained flowering lawn.

Picture: The Natur im Garten plaque in Austria signals that there is someone here who allows wildflowers to bloom - and who uses neither pesticides nor fertilizers. Maybe something to think about doing yourself - or helping your friends do?

Ecologically maintained sounds complicated. Complicated is the last thing I would want. The good news is: Help can easily be had. Just over 20 years ago, someone in Niederösterreich started a movement called Natur-im-Garten that evolved into an agency and then a network, promoting ecological management of wildflower gardens (Naturgarten in German). By now, they have offices in all of the Austrian states with the exception of Vienna, and they have partners in a number of German states as well as in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Natur-im-Garten teams are available to anyone interested to learn about ways to have an ecologically maintained wildflower garden, offering classes and advice. And, if you commit to their no-pesticide-no-fertilizer idea, they will give you a beautiful plaque that you can fix outside of your garden. In fact, when walking through villages in Austria, you will see the plaque in many places; at least in this part of the world, the Natur-im-Garten ideas seem to be taken up. The best part: You can simply call them, tell them about your wildflower plans, and they will advise you. In gardening for dummy-terms: Buy the (right) seeds, make sure your garden is in a good place for the seeds to take hold, check the soil, the time of the year, and so on, and then just put them there. And for just a little bit more inspiration: check out this little article from the Guardian's Gardening Advice column.

When talking to Natur-im-Garten myself I learned a lot of interesting things that I had had no idea about. For example, I had not realized how many of the flower seeds that one buys in the large supermarkets are not indigenous but rather imported. That makes it not only difficult for a number of plants to grow - it can be tough to adjust to our climate - but they may also not be ideal for our bees and other insects. Natur-im-Garten wants us to consider using local seeds that are adjusted to the location of our gardens. You can’t get those in the big retail stores - but the Natur-im-Garten folks can point you to the right place. At this week’s Bluehwiesensonntag (Flowering Lawn Sunday) you might be able to pick some up directly. With some patience - it seems that Wildflower Lawns may take a year or two to come to full fruition - you can then welcome butterflies, birds, bees, and wildlife of all kinds to your garden again.

Worried about weeds? Well, maybe it’s not that much to worry about. The dandelions, crabgrass, chickweeds, do they really have to go? This week, March 28, was National Weed Appreciation Day, and so I figure if someone has the time to declare an entire day for us to appreciate weed - maybe it’s time for us to relax about that part of our garden. Certainly my bees love their dandelions.

In conclusion: This is the right time to consider action - in terms of wildflowers, renouncing pesticides, and letting your weeds bloom. Whether you want to turn your own lawn into a wildflower lawn or the lawn in your friend’s garden. Surely, she’d love your help (and advice) (just kidding). I am no great gardener myself, but it seems in this part of the world the time to put out flower seeds runs from March to May. So your time is now!

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