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Category: the natural world

“living with a sense of gratitude”

“living with a sense of gratitude”

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Barbara Kingsolver was interviewed by World Ark, Heifer International’s bi-monthly magazine, about her newest book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The book describes her family’s yearlong pledge to eat only locally-produced foods. In response to a question about “moments of miracle on this journey,” Kingsolver replied:

For me, the biggest miracle is the fact that this project, which may have seemed to us in the beginning to be an exercise in deprivation, very quickly guided us through a paradigm shift. Very quickly, we came to see this way of living with a sense of gratitude.

We moved from beginning each meal by asking. “What do I feel like?” to asking, “What do we have?” We would look at what’s coming in — what’s wonderful and abundant right now — and work from there. It was very valuable for our family, and it’s a wonderful way to live. It’s a paradigm shift that all of us could probably use in our lives.

We are easily seduced by convenience and quickly jaded by an overabundance of, well, just about everything. But convenience and overabundance mask the ongoing reality of a world where most folks don’t have even enough, and where we, who have more than enough, are often deprived, too. We are deprived of gratitude, because things come to us too easily, and we are deprived of joy, because the price of convenience is quality. What comes quick and easy and cheap IS quick and easy and cheap.

The Kingsolvers’ experiment is interesting — even if it was done for the sake of a book! — but what I find most interesting about it is this rediscovery of a sense of gratitude, of finding again the daily rhythm of prayer and thanksgiving to which Jesus invites us: “This is how you should pray … ‘Give us this day our daily bread.'”

chattering and scampering

chattering and scampering

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From inward/outward: The Worrier’s Guild by Philip Deaver

Today there is a meeting of the
Worriers’ Guild,
and I’ll be there.
The problems of Earth are
to be discussed
at length
end to end
for five days
end to end
with 1100 countries represented
all with an equal voice
some wearing turbans and smocks
and all the men will speak
and the women
with or without notes
in 38 languages
and nine different species of logic.
Outside in the autumn
the squirrels will be
chattering and scampering
directionless throughout the town
because
they aren’t organized yet.

seeing gray

seeing gray

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Writing in Sojouorners magazine (In the prison-industrial complex, is there hope for redemption?), Nancy Hastings Sehested, a Baptist minister and prison chaplain, describes a North Carolina maximum-security prison this way:

Colorful flowers mark the path to the gatehouse. Then the stripping away begins in earnest. It is a gray day every day in this prison. Gray walls, gray floors, and gray ceilings. The gray uniforms worn by the men can fade their faces into obscurity. The blue uniforms of the staff can create the same effect. Holding a gaze is crucial in seeing the person beyond the clothing. A simple “hello” can seem like a subversive act in a place where everyone is defined by role.

Now I know that prisons are not meant to be “cushy” places, and that justice — at least in part — is about punishment and the deserved forfeiture of rights and privileges. Nevertheless, after reading Sehested’s description, I found myself wondering what gray on gray on gray does to the human soul?

In creating a lifeless and colorless and despair-inducing environment, what do we hope to accomplish? It seems to me that such an environment would readily foster nihilistic thoughts and desperate acts and a soul-killing sense of resignation, hopelessness, and resentment.

I know what the colors and scents of a garden can do for my soul. I know how stepping outside and watching the ebb and flow of tree limbs in the wind or hearing the chatter of birds or taking my dog for a walk in the early morning sunlight can lift my spirits.

Justice — at least in part — is also about rehabilitation and restoration, and it seems to me that those things that can lift spirits and renew a love for life and restore a sense of beauty could provide invaluable aid in turning inmates lives around. I am no corrections expert, but I don’t see how we make a man or woman more human or more hospitable by sequestering them in an inhuman and inhospitable environment.

Within those prison walls, we literally have a captive audience. What a teaching opportunity! What an opportunity — not to confirm the fatalistic notion that the spoils go to the strongest and the “baddest” — but to show another way to measure value, another way to enjoy beauty, another way to satisfy the longings of the human soul. Only God can finally satisfy those longing, but it is the colors and scents and textures and vistas of all of creation that point us to God.

Maybe colorful flowers should mark the paths inside the prison walls, too …

sometimes you need to follow

sometimes you need to follow

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New York Times headline: Bush Calls for Global Goals for Emissions

It is not our place to take the lead on this one. We need to follow! Because on this issue, we are way, way, way behind the rest of the world. It is disingenuous and disrespectful to try to set the direction for a global response to climate change, when we are the ones, almost the only ones, who have been ardently resisting any credible response. The standards are already there and most of the world has agreed to abide by them. Let’s get on board! Let’s swallow our pride (or our megalomania) and follow!

thinking ahead about energy

thinking ahead about energy

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The U.S. economy depends heavily on oil, particularly in the transportation sector. World oil production has been running at near capacity to meet demand, pushing prices upward. Concerns about meeting increasing demand with finite resources have renewed interest in an old question: How long can the oil supply expand before reaching a maximum level of production, a peak from which it can only decline?

On Thursday, the U. S. Governmental Accountability Office released a report urging attention to the looming problems posed by a finite oil supply, the unpredictability of sustained production at current levels, and the potential for severe consequences, including a worldwide recession. The report recommends a strategy to coordinate and prioritize federal agency efforts to reduce uncertainty about the likely timing of a peak and to advise Congress on how best to mitigate consequences.

Read a summary of the report: GAO: U.S. needs a peak oil strategy.

“warring for control of the american soul”

“warring for control of the american soul”

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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., quoted from an interview with Mark Jacobson:

There is an ancient struggle between two separate philosophies, warring for control of the American soul. The first was set forth by John Winthrop in 1630, when he made the most important speech in American history, ‘A Model of Christian Charity,’ on the deck of the sloop Arbella, as the Puritans approached the New World. He said this land is being given to us by God not to satisfy carnal opportunities, or expand self-interest, but rather to create a shining city on a hill. This is the American ideal, working together, maintaining a spiritual mission, and creating communities for the future.

The competing vision of America comes from the conquistador side of the national character and took hold with the gold rush of 1849. That’s when people began to regard the land as the source of private wealth, a place where you can get rich quick—the sort of game where whomever dies with the biggest pile wins.

What is the American Dream? We will hear the American Dream extolled and re-promised many times over during this presidential campaign season. So what is it?

  • Is the American Dream an equal opportunity for every one of us for unlimited personal advancement?
  • Or is the American Dream a unique opportunity for all of us to make something together for the benefit of the rest of humanity?

And will the candidates, any candidate, be able to discern — and articulate — the difference?

hawking on global warming

hawking on global warming

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From an article by Steve Conner in The Independent: Hawking warns: We must recognise the catastrophic dangers of climate change

Climate change stands alongside the use of nuclear weapons as one of the greatest threats posed to the future of the world, the Cambridge cosmologist Stephen Hawking has said.

Professor Hawking said that we stand on the precipice of a second nuclear age and a period of exceptional climate change, both of which could destroy the planet as we know it …

“As we stand at the brink of a second nuclear age and a period of unprecedented climate change, scientists have a special responsibility, once again, to inform the public and to advise leaders about the perils that humanity faces,” Professor Hawking said. “As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth.

“As citizens of the world, we have a duty to share that knowledge. We have a duty, as well, to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change.”

And it is our duty as citizens of the world, as citizens of our respective nations, and as stewards of God’s good creation, to ensure that our governments act sooner rather than later to address the looming crisis of climate change, even as we do what we can as individuals to reduce our personal contributions to the problem. Even the smallest step in the right direction is better than taking no step at all.

pursuing all of the agenda of jesus

pursuing all of the agenda of jesus

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It is refreshing to hear of Christian leaders who are not boxed in by particular political constituencies, right or left, who are eager to follow where Jesus leads.

My quarrel with the religious right is that is often a lot more right than religious, that its priorities seem determined more by political ideology than genuine faith. So it was refreshing to hear today the concerns of mega-church pastor Joel Hunter. Hunter is a nationally-known leader in evangelical circles, recently tapped as the next president of the Christian Coalition.

Hunter has resigned the position, citing “differences in philosophy and vision.” He sought to broaden the agenda of the Coalition, to chart a new direction for the organization, addressing not only abortion and gay marriage, but also what he calls “all the agenda of Jesus, the compassion issues as well as the moral issues,” issues of poverty and care for the environment.

When we listen to Jesus, there is hope. There is hope that we will not get stuck in entrenched ideological warfare, but be able to listen to each other as we listen together to Jesus. People like Joel Hunter raise my hopes for future of the church.

The Christian Coalition’s founder, Pat Robertson, has done much to bring public shame to the name, “Christian,” with his narrow-visioned, arrogant, and even hateful pronouncements. Whether you agree or not with Joel Hunter’s positions on the issues — and quite frankly, I know very little other than what I have gleaned from this report — his humility, his sensitivity to the message of Jesus, and his desire to unite, not further divide, the followers of Jesus, is refreshing.

Listen to the NPR report and read a summary of the story.