Best stuff out there...

Best stuff out there...

Right now I think some of the best stuff that is being published is by Krista Tippet on Speaking of Faith. Every week I download the podcast, and every week I'm inspired and moved by the content.

This week was Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature, talking about Moral Math. Everyone should listen to it...

And then go back and listen to:
A Voice for the Animals, a conversation with Alan Rabinowitz about the Human - Animal bond.
The Ethics of Eating, Barbara Kingsolver on eating.
A Monastic Revolution, talking with Shane Claiborn about the new evangelicals.

How could I forget: Land, Life and the Poetry of Creatures with Ellen Davis and Wendell Berry.

So much good stuff.

In memory...

In memory...

Read this deeply moving remembrance of CPTer Tom Fox.

Book recommendation...

Book recommendation...

I just finished Wendell Berry's "Life is a Miracle". Here are my notes from my post in GoodReads:

Berry continues to astonish me. This is not a fast and easy read; you have to work and pay attention. But Berry writes as a prophet of our times and has put his finger on a core - maybe the root - cause of dis-ease in our century.

He writes a critique of rationalism and scientific thought that we need to pay attention to.

A few memorable passages:

"For a while I proposed to myself that the only things really explainable are explanations. That is not quite true, but it is near enough to the truth that I am unwilling to forget it.

"What can be explained? Experiments, ideas, patterns, cause-effect relationships and connections within defined limits, anything that can be calculated, graphed or diagrammed. And yet the explanation changes whatever is explained into something explainable. Explanation is reductive, not comprehensive; most of the time, when you have explained something, you discover leftovers. An explanation is a bucket, not a well.

"What can't be explained? I don't think creatures can be explained. I don't think lives can be explained. What we know about creatures and lives must be pictured or told or sung or danced. And I don't think pictures or stories or songs or dances can be explained. The arts are indispensable precisely because they are so nearly antithetical to explanation." (p113)

"The time is past, if ever there was such a time, when you can just discover knowledge and turn it loose in the wold and assume that you have done good.

"This, to me, is a sign of the incompleteness of science in itself - which is the sign of the need for a strenuous conversation among all the branches of learning."

"In our present economic predicament, ethics, ecology, environmental law, etc. won't as specialties have much corrective force. They will be used to rationalize what is wrong." (p145)

I'd really enjoy a conversation about his book with Lew and Irregular Reflections.

Politics & Religion...

Politics & Religion...

In the last few years there has been a stream of more thoughtful conversation about the role of religion in politics and the role of politics in religion. A friend passed along this link to a speech at the Call to Renewal. An exerpt:

Because when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations towards one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome - others will fill the vacuum, those with the most insular views of faith, or those who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.

The fact that this speech was given by the new President-elect back in 2006 gives me hope that we're on the right track.

In other news, I went for a walk last night at dusk down the mill race. They've lowered the water level, presumably for some repairs. In addition to the normal clusters of ducks and a few geese, I came upon two blue herons hunting in the shallows. Thanks to the weather I was the only walker on the race, and while they kept one eye on me as I passed they didn't fly. I could learn something about patience from watching them hunt.

Then when I got to the dam I spied seven swans a swimming. I am not making this up.

Back home I found that my garden is still able to contribute some swiss chard and rosemary to an omelet for supper. Homegrown food always cheers me up.

I'll sleep better tonight...

I'll sleep better tonight...

It is such a relief to know that global warming is a sham and that once america starts extracting oil from the continental shelf, all our problems will be solved.

I know this because my barber told me.

Sigh.

He learned it from Fox News.

It is also such a relief to know that there is still one remaining bastion of truth in the news media.

Catch that knee!

Drat - I couldn't stop it.

So now I have no one to blame but myself if I have a streak of bad hair days for the next few weeks. Never argue with your barber until you're out of the chair.

He conceded that there are gas guzzling cars out there and that we could do more to conserve what we have. I told him that I'd agree to off-shore drilling when the new car standard was 40 mpg. He couldn't go there: "We'll just have to agree to disagree because I'm not going to change my mind."

Which is, I guess, the same thing I said.

What I don't get is his theology. He says "He" won't let us destroy the earth.

What happened to man's free will? Isn't that the cornerstone of the religious right ...er wrong? (I saw a button on a liberal's hat tonight that read 'The religious right is neither'.) Aren't we free to choose sin or morality? Life or Death? Salvation or Damnation? Isn't it possible ....

S#*$ - don't get me started.

Theology I can live with...

Theology I can live with...

If... there is God, and I ask you why not?