Hold Coke Responsible at Earlham Petition

If you're an Earlham student, or Bethany student (or supporter), Sign this petion:Hold Coke Responsible at Earlham. More to come later.

Swords into plowshares, mortars into Frappuccinos

From Yahoo News:

"The farmers bring me mortar shells from the old battlefield," he says, gesturing north where Ethiopia borders Eritrea and the two nations fought a 1998-2000 war.

"The empty tubes are perfect for the coffee machines. Look, the bronze does not rust. And the shape is ideal."

Using the burnt-out mortar shells as the inner barrel of his coffee makers, Azemeraw and his half dozen workers need about a week to make one sophisticated machine capable of turning out the dozen or so different types of coffee drunk in these parts.

"We take these objects of war and turn them into objects of pleasure," says his son Mehany, 22, who works proudly beside his father. "Maybe, this is a message for the world."

Read more

Is that what you are wearing to church?

The Christ Follower character in this video does a good job of explaining the attitude toward Sunday morning dress at Richmond Church of the Brethren, where I attend worship.

Another blogging Poling

Check out my brother's blog, Secret Confections. When my wife heard the url, she daid "Yep, he's a Poling alright," refering of course to my side of the family's penchant for puns.

My brother's a self-confessed "confused early 30-something man in a career crisis," as his first post has it. He's blogging about becoming a New York City chocolatier, though I think it would be a lot more fascinating to blog about the career crisis, but that's just me. At least he has a vision, one that's more solid than my own...Which makes me wonder if it wouldn't hurt to spell out just what my vision for life might be.

But that's for another post at another time. As for now, it's back to the eschatology of Karl Barth!

Who are the Brethren?

Here's a preview from the current sociological study of Brethen in mainland US:

Brethren are "overwhelmingly white, and residing in non-urban settings" with only three out of 100 congregations classified as ethnic or urban. The leading states in terms of numbers of Brethren are Pennsylvania first, Virginia second, and Ohio third, with nearly two-third of all Brethren (63 percent) residing in just four states: Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia. Sixty percent of the church is female; two-thirds are 50 or older; 70 percent live in a small town or open country. Half have been members for more than 30 years, while 20 percent have been members for 10 years or less.

From COB Newsline, "Extra: Report from General Board Meetings" March 14, 2007. (This comes from Newsline's email newsletter just sent today. It is not yet posted online, but I'll link to it once it is.)

Seminary missions and principles

I just stumbled upon the Earlham School of Religion's Guiding Principles, and two points stood out:

• believes that discerning the leading of the Holy Spirit lies at the core of ministry preparation
• understands that ministry occurs in a multitude of vocations and contexts

I wonder if these principles can ever make it across the courtyard and into Bethany.

For its part, Bethany does have a couple good points in what it calls its Mission:

• Advocates a learning process that grounds theological education in spiritual formation within the life and ministry of communities of faith.
• Seeks to equip the whole church to better discern its faith and calling.

I can speak from experience that Bethany does not always fulfill its own mission. It's probably fair to say, however, that if Bethany is not perfect in living out its written commitments,ESR may very well be in a similar place. Still, the spirit of ESR seems to embody what they say more than Bethany embodies its own mission.

One thing that I appreciate from ESR's statement that is lacking from Bethany's is the affirmation that ministry can take place in myriad settings and professions, not just pastoral ministry. Bethany believes this, to an extent, but they do not explicitly say it as ESR does, and I think that matters. Students, faculty and administration all need to be reminded --students especially need it affirmed-- that you don't have to be in proper ministry to be a minister of Christ.

Bethany is not terrible. It is a good place for what it does. I'm wondering, though, if what it does is what is needed, or is more a continuance of old habits that die hard...but, down the road, die nonetheless.

Surviving seminary

Here's a wonderful photo from ESR of life at seminary...



...And yes, we take our coffee straight from the bag, as ou wonderful professor Lonnie is illustrating. Although, for the good of everyone concerned,Rachel really should take it away from him, and put the grounds in the basket to brew more. It will last longer that way, and keep us awake in our two and a half hour class right after Peace Forum.

A Place Apart @ Bethany Peace Forum

Do you wish you could slow down and make space for what is most meaningful in your life? Are you seeking to reconnect to the earth, to your neighbor, to yourself, to God in a community of sisters and brothers in covenant relationship of prayerful, joyful freedom and accountability? Are you yearning for the new way of being fully alive that Jesus offers us?

If you find yourself answering "Yes" to any of these questions, and desire to ask them together with others in a place of learning, growing and becoming alive, you are invited to Peace Forum in the ESR Dining Room at noon, Thursday March 15. Travis Poling and Anna Lisa Gross will show a short video and facilitate discussion around beginning an A Place Apart covenant group in Richmond. All who are curious are invited to attend. (A Place Apart is an experiment in "another way of living" by Brethren and others, based in Vermont but present wherever people "step apart to become a part" of new life in Jesus Christ. For more info, visit apartvermont.org)

New Orleans Wedding Second Line; October 7, 2006

This is a recording from my mp3 player of the band that played as we marched down the street in the French Quarter in New Orleans for a friend's wedding on the 7th of October, 2006.


powered by ODEO

Exorcising the Presidential Spirits of War

I read on Boing Boing that the Mayan people of Guatemala

decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace.

They might be on to something. I can think of another site that might need cleansing from a particular Presidential visit.

More Poems from Seminary

Here are some poems I wrote for a Writing as Ministry class last semester. Can you see the ministry taking place in the lines?

STILL LIFE

silent mother aware
sighs open the freezer

rocky road oozed
from its box and refrozen
rests precariously atop
three ice trays
to the right bags of
beans and peas nestle
along the fishsticks

dinner will wait for this

reaching past all these
into unknowable haze
behind leftovers and breadloaves
her hand finds the small
gerbil stiffly encased in plastic

the cat behind the oven again
meows
mother tells him
you have already had plenty
caressing the tiny twin dents
frozen with blood on the tiny pet’s neck
through the sandwich bag

THANKSGIVING

the road is the only real thing

when you drive for miles with weighted eyes
seeing only the destination

food means only as far as it carries you
and friends nothing more
than companions to get you there
like gasoline burning

the moment you start to move toward home

WINTER NIGHTS

you lie beside me, warm
breath turning inward, then out--
the stillness of time
your face serene, no despair
of yesterday, or even tomorrow
and I watch, wishing for your calm
your exhaustion of a day well lived
falling under a thousand quilted comforts
as the night bends toward daybreak
under blankets of new snow

BUSY

Slender fingers from smooth white hands
slice the air, flowing, as she speaks.

Through the oven of life she moves like this.

“How can you live with such a full plate?”
I ask, noticing her burns.

The reply comes slowly, as she watches the screen,
“The potatoes are still warm.”

THE DANGER OF POETS

A cat would fit, maybe two,
inside a glovebox,
but never a person.

Our torsos are too long,
our heads too large
to even think of it.

Why would you even imagine it?
You poets are too crazy to be trusted.
Let's rumple you into one
and see what you think.

ROOFWELDER

close gray clouds
a little sun
illuminate rising heat
in currents from a rooftop below

a bird chirps kyoo kyoo kyoo
a twirl in her tongue

kneeling on an eave a welder bursts flames
then turns sits to adjust his mask and
back around onto hands and knees tossing
slender sticks to swirling swishing wind
keeping warm by gloves boots clouds twirls and flame

Old Testament Poems

I wrote these poems for Intro to Old Testament last semester. They're not my greatest specimens, but hopefully serve to show ho biblical narratives can be seen in fresh ways.


ADAM AWAKES

purr, rurrour sniff fiff
aaughh a cat

rustle a pant, a pant, a
scamper, run run run gallop, away.

shear, here, still—

a fresh
snap, grass, gulp gulp.

flash orb, up going.
I, still here with what—pain, blood
from side, drip

then whoosh, flying
leaf
water
branch
—swirl

Stretching I stand.

moving there, flush

reaching shade, that one,
she
lips of that one, of she, part
like the whirlwind whispers, she says flesh

flesh I flush, my side at last painless.

ish she voices
and I ishshah.

THE PRAYER OF CAIN

On the day that the fields, no good for blessing, tasted blood
Cain at last felt death's pulse, a blade unwiped, unclean.
Like a tiger at the door, sin padded into his heart.
Rising up against all regret, the guilt of the first born's first born
mastered him, cursed him to wander east a marked man.

The assumptions of Cain wandered with him,
wild, uncentered: What is acceptance but a darkness
never embraced? What is doing well but acting in justice?

But so too did God walk with Cain, or at least the mark,
protecting him from falling victim to his own act,
even while building the first city, a magnet of death, a cycle of flowing blood.

If we are Cain, O God, and we are, where is your mark
of sevenfold vengeance upon our hearts?
We kill and do not suffer, are killed yet unavenged.
Tie the tiger to its own house, and plow under again the valley of its shadow.

SARAH’S FEAR

Abraham's face was twisted, haunting Sarah .
When Ishmael departed, that was the last time he was like this.
"What is it?" she implored, but no response ever came, only
a silent, lowered gaze, like no one walked this earth but Abraham. "Here I am"
is all he muttered, over and over. "Here I am"; "Here I am"; "Here I am";
it no longer sounded like words to Sarah, more like a tentative questioning. "Here I am?"
It was getting harder to convince Abraham to come to bed, and when he did, Sarah
could not sleep. He never answered her question “Is Isaac alright?” But
at the sound of the boy's name, Abraham would stare up, beyond her head and
cry "Which son?" She stopped mentioning his name in front of Abraham,
and asked her servant to keep an eye on the boy. At last report, he was fast asleep
in his tent, exhausted from a full day of milking his father's cattle. The servant added
at the last minute that she had heard talk among Abraham's servants about a secret trek
to someplace called Moriah. They asked the girl if she knew where it was. She didn't but said, "If
you ask me, it doesn't sound like a very nice place." This did not make sleep
any easier for Sarah, and along with Abraham's incessant whispers to some demanding,
yet annoyingly absent character, Sarah surmised that God must be involved somehow.
So she prayed. "Dear God, I don't know if I'm even doing this right. I don't know the right animal
to sacrifice for this or anything, but if you hear me, please protect Abraham, and especially
Isaac. I don't know what you're up to, but it better not get any worse." The prayer made her feel
only a little better, but she was tired of puzzling over Abraham's dilemma,
and too quickly fell asleep.

KINGDOM COME

His very first act when he gets his grubby hands on that crown
will be to draft all your sons to his army.
They’ll come back soldiers, if they come back at all.
Those who stay behind will harvest food and fashion swords for your children.
I hope you’ve got good farmers and blacksmiths.

And don't think your daughters will get to stay back either.
They won’t fight, won't work for the war,
just cater the kings drunken banquets,
or make perfume for his harem.

But he won't stop with your children.
He’ll take a whole tenth—the very best tenth—
of your gardens to give to his cronies.
He’ll get the prestige from your sweat,
the honor from your talents.

And when your king has taken everything from you,
you will beg for him to leave. But he’ll never give back
the power you granted him when you made him your god.

ELISHA ON THE ROAD

Elsiha cast death from a spring
with nothing but a bowl of salt and a “Thus saith the Lord.”
He knew what he was doing.

Restless from Elijah’s fiery ascent,
weighed down under this new mantle,
Elisha kept walking.

He expected the road to be deserted,
expecting peace walking the desolate path.
And then it happened.

“Hey, Baldhead!” someone shouted.
Elisha quickly looked around,
“No other bald guy but me.”

More shouts arose, were there fifty little brats?
And just like with the salt and the name of the Lord,
Elisha called on nature to turn, this time to curse.

The struggle did not last long.
The two sister bears made a quick lunch of forty-two;
they left Elisha out of it.

Elisha kept walking.

A LIMERICK FOR WISDOM IN THE STREETS

Lady Wisdom cries out in the streets,
While reporters are covering their beats.
If she cries loud enough
There won’t be enough fluff
To bury this headline in fleece.

Joyfield Farm: A Local Experiment in Living for the World

It was 1973. Bob Gross had recently returned to his studies at Manchester College. He had left because of the war, because of the suffering overseas in Vietnam. He left because he wanted to make the world a better place, but came home with the world not much improved. The world had not changed over the last few years, but Bob had. He was not a soldier as you might imagine, because Bob believed that to make the world a better place, he could not kill. He refused to fight and spent a year and a half of a three year sentence in federal prison for his convictions. The walls that surrounded and confined him, however, could not limit his mind or his heart, and he began to imagine how he could live so that no one would have to kill for him. He believed that no one should have to suffer so that Bob Gross could live in comfort. His thoughts took him past merely not killing, and led him to see that he would have to exist on the earth in a different way. He realized he must live in a manner that would allow creation itself to survive.

Bob married Rachel Kurtz, a fellow Manchester student, and together they formed a life that put their mutual compassion for their world into daring action, and remains just as vibrant today. They started their married life with a commitment to consume less. Rachel says that they enjoyed growing their own food, and appreciated staying apart from the consumerist mainstream, while remaining mindful of the ecological impact of their lifestyle. Joyfield Farm, just outside North Manchester, Indiana where they have lived since 1984, started out as, and continues to be an experiment in how Americans can live in a way that treats the world as if it really is something created and declared to be good by a good and loving God.

It’s 2004. Thanksgiving has just passed, and Joyfield Farm is ready for winter. My wife and I step inside the house and it’s warm. The heat always feels nice at Rachel and Bob’s. It has a texture to it that your bones can feel. That’s how wood heat feels to me, much preferable to the gas heat at our house. The Grosses could have gas heat, or more likely, electric. Their front door bears a brass medallion from decades ago proclaiming that the house runs entirely on electricity, but that had changed by the time the Grosses moved in. Instead they get their heat from their own toil, from chopping wood. Much of their sustenance likewise comes from close by–either from a local orchard, their own garden, or the store right in town. Just living locally impacts the world, Rachel explains. New Community Project, a nonprofit organization that grew out of the work of David Radcliff, a mutual friend of ours, agrees, reporting “The typical food items travel 1700 miles to get to our table” (School Report). Mostly it is to feed us rich Americans, while the people that really need it are the ones loading the produce onto our supermarket trucks. But tractor trailers don’t have to run constantly around the continent. There are alternative, more sustainable ways of living, as the Grosses have proven. If you look around their home, you may run across less trucked in products compared to the average home, although the Grosses have accumulated a certain amount of belongings that makes Rachel look around at the things they own and says “How did this happen!” As imperfect as it may be, the way Rachel and Bob live makes many others pay attention to their own lives, and that itself can change the world.

The first time I walked into their house three years ago, one of the first things I noticed appeared to be a tall wooden cabinet on the left wall of the kitchen. It stood in the place where it might make sense to put a refrigerator—under the cabinets and next to the sink. To further confuse the situation, I looked around and realized that there was no fridge to be seen. But as soon as I sat down at the kitchen table to a hearty, garden fresh meal, Rachel stood up from the table and retrieved a pitcher of ice cold water from what began to seem more than a simple cabinet. My curiosity could only be satisfied by asking a question I now realize they must get from every new guest, “Is that the fridge?”

“It’s the icebox,” Rachel replied. “Bob made it.” And then I found out about its styrofoam insulation and jugs of ice inside to act as the refrigerant. Part of the reason for constructing a non-electric icebox might be that chemical refrigerants are potentially harmful for the environment, but possibly more damaging is the electricity it takes to power an appliance that size. The Grosses aren’t against electricity or coolants per se; they have a freezer to make the ice for the icebox, as well as to preserve their garden vegetables. They just choose what products they can do without. Rachel says that Bob never agreed with money being the solution to all the world’s problems. She herself learned to be incredibly thrifty from her mother, and adds, “I married someone who can do everything” (Gross), including building an icebox, and other methods to do more with less electricity, or maybe more accurately, less machinery. Rachel’s scientist siblings aren’t convinced that she and Bob use less electricity. “But it’s one less appliance” (Gross), she says, her voice hinting at relief, and the Grosses are not the only ones their decisions bring relief to. One less appliance means fewer parts to manufacture and ship, and that much less fuel consumed, bringing their family that much closer to living more authentically and responsibly, and in a manner that creates less stress on humanity and the environment worldwide. According to David Radcliff, “since industry consumes 40 percent of the world's energy, cutting back on the things you buy directly affects energy consumption” (School Report). Another part of the living at Joyfield Farm is to not try and take advantage of their privileged position in society. Just being aware of our electricity use can remind us of what it’s like for the “two billion people around the world [who] do not have access to electricity” (Consuming Appetites).

Rachel says that someone once told her that heat is the most expensive use for electricity. The federal government’s Energy Information Administration confirms Rachel’s memory, stating that “almost half of the average home's energy consumption is used for heating” (Energy Use in Households). It might therefore mean that heat is also the most polluting application as well. To get around the environmental impact, but mostly the cost and use of electricity, the Grosses heat with wood. Their heating system is a wooden furnace for the winter, and much less ordinary, the wood stove that sits in the room next to the kitchen. Unlike the icebox, it’s pretty obvious what it is at first blush. It looks just like an ordinary wood stove, about five feet long, that one would use to cook with, which they do, as well as to heat the house during the fall and spring. But then I saw another of Bob’s creations that needed explaining, two pipes almost creeping out of the wall, and connected at the ends by a flat spiral of more pipe. Rachel fortunately explained it, saying that the pipes are part of the plumbing. When they need hot water, they just put the coil down onto the cooking surface of the hot stove, heating the water inside the pipes that distribute the water to the shower and sinks.

It might be true however, that burning wood is equally as polluting as the generation of electricity. The Environmental Protection Agency says, “Wood smoke contains hundreds of chemical compounds including nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, organic gases, and particulate matter...Several of these pollutants have demonstrated cancer-causing properties similar to cigarette smoke. In many urban and rural areas, smoke from wood burning is a major contributor to air pollution” (Energy Savers). It is perhaps too hard to gauge how much pollution is saved or created with one house that might use less electricity than average. One benefit could be that the money the Grosses do not pay to create electricity they do not need and to contribute unnecessarily to the industrial excess that dangerously warms the globe can be donated to organizations like New Community Project that work “in Central America, where deforestation is rampant [by] supporting tree nurseries in Guatemala and El Salvador” (If a Tree Falls).

Another way Rachel and Bob live locally and responsibly is by cooperating with their neighbors. The Grosses share Joyfield Farm with Cliff and Arlene Kindy. The farm was purchased together by the two families in 1982 and when the Grosses moved in two years later, the Kindys transformed what was then the corn crib into a small cabin style stone house for their own home. The Kindy house stands a few hundred yards away from the Gross home, and in between the two is part of a large vegetable garden. There the Kindys grow organic vegetables to sell at the farmers market in downtown North Manchester from early spring until it gets cold in November. What they grow and sell in season includes asparagus, lettuce, spinach, kale, collards, cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi, eggplant, peppers, radishes, carrots, parsnips, onions, potatoes, peas, squash, tomatoes, beans, rhubarb, and various berries (Kindy). The Kindy’s pamphlet listing all these products explains, “We strive to grow and sell quality produce not sprayed with destructive chemicals. We bring you reasonably priced, locally grown food” (Kindy). For their own sustenance, the Grosses preserve vegetables and fruit grown in their smaller personal garden and some from the Kindy’s market garden. Across from Joyfield is a conventional farm that sprays pesticides and fertilizer onto their own field. These chemicals leak nitrates into the groundwater and into the well shared by the Gross and Kindy families. This is part of the reason Rachel says they choose to stay away from chemically treated food from the supermarket, adding, “We already get it in the water” (Gross).

Another reason for choosing to grow and eat organically may be one that Rachel mentioned earlier in our visit. Bob and Cliff were in their twenties in the early 1970s when they met at their Brethren Volunteer Service (BVS) orientation. The Vietnam War was raging, and men their age were being called up by the thousands, by force of law, to go to Southeast Asia with a rifle in their arms. The U.S. government held the future of their youngsters in the balance. This power to induct men into the army, even against their freedom, and often their willingness, was symbolized by the draft card every man their age was required to carry. Bob writes in 2002, “It seemed like I was carrying a membership card in the whole war system” (Shoes of Peace). They entered BVS because they believed in a different future. Bob worked in a homeless shelter in Baltimore, while Cliff went to Mississippi to serve in a similar project. Their experiences as volunteers, combined with their religious upbringing in the Church of the Brethren led them to the conviction that all war is sin. This made their draft cards seem an abomination, and Bob and Cliff returned their cards to the government. As explained earlier, Bob landed in federal prison for a year and a half for resisting induction, and it was there that he got the idea to live in a different way. It is possible Bob was reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in prison, because her themes show up in his life’s course. In Living Downstream, biologist Sandra Steingraber paraphrases a very applicable passage by Carson: As veterans returned to America from World War II, and commercial pesticides were being developed from the scientific advances made possible by intentions to apply chemistry and physics to war, “the goals of conquest and annihilation were transferred from the battlefield to our kitchens, gardens, forests, and farm fields” (Steingraber 89). As Bob returned from prison as a protest to the inhumanity of war, he strove to transfer something other than “conquest and annihilation” to his kitchen and garden—his concepts of Christian compassion and justice.

Joyfield Farm is an experiment running directly counter to wartime inquiries into the limits of a hydrogen atom. It contains astounding discoveries made possible only by the desire to use human knowledge for the good of the world, and is one experiment worth learning about. The simplicity of the heating systems, the icebox, and the gardens of the Grosses and the Kindys all speak to a deep and sacred yearning shared by so many. Existence amidst the conquest of warfare and hunger, pesticides and pollutants, and consumerism and consumption will ultimately lead to annihilation of vital plant and animal life, natural resources, and of course, humanity. The trees can stand only until we topple them down. The animals can defend their habitat only until we destroy both creature and home. Fossil fuels, wood pulp, coal, and oil can support our lifestyles only until these same lifestyles dry up the wells. Human beings, on the other hand can put an end to these patterns. We will live as long as we stand up for the trees, protect the animals, slow down our use of natural resources, and continue to choose good deeds over warfare in our personal and international relationships. Just as important as the way we treat our next door neighbors and our enemies across the oceans is our relations with God’s good, yet suffering creation. Thanks to people like Rachel and Bob, Arlene and Cliff, and the myriad others who live in similar ways, the possibility still remains of reversing our patterns of conquest and annihilation with actions of compassion and justice.

Works Cited

Energy Information Administration. Energy Use in Households. 7 December 2004.

<http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/uses/residence.html>.

Environmental Protection Agency. Energy Savers: Air Pollution from Wood-Burning

Appliances and Fireplaces. 7 December 2004. <http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumerinfo/factsheets/ja3.html>.

Gross, Rachel. Personal interview with author. North Manchester, IN. 30 November 2004.

Kindy, Arlene and Cliff. Kindy’s Organically Grown Produce. Self published.

New Community Project. Consuming Appetites. 2 December 2004. <http://www.newcommunityproject.org/Consuming.htm>.

New Community Project. If a Tree Falls. 7 December 2004.

<http://www.newcommunityproject.org/if_a_tree_falls.htm>.

New Community Project. School Project on Energy Conservation. 2 December 2004. <http://www.newcommunityproject.org/energy.htm>.

Shoes of Peace: Letters to Youth from Peacemakers. Elgin, IL: Brethren Press, 2002.

Steingraber, Sandra. Living Downstream. New York: Random House, 1998.

The leopard shall lie down with the kid...

A friendship of prophetic,apocalyptic proportions has blossomed at a zoo in Indonesia.

A pair of month-old Sumatran tiger twins have become inseparable
playmates with a set of young orangutans, an unthinkable match in their
natural jungle habitat in Indonesia's tropicalrainforests.

...The four have lived side-by-side for a month without a single act of hostility.

Isaiah spoke of something like this:

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. (Isaiah 11:6-7)

via Boing Boing

Don't be afraid

I don't do this very often, but I went back and read my posts about A Place Apart, and came across one entitles 'We are the ones we've been waiting for' after a Message from the Hopi Elders. The statement is worth reading again.

I mention what Pope John Paul named our current "culture of emptiness", and read the story that I linked about what the Pope said. More than just the fact that our culture is an empty one in so many ways, I was struck by something I think is more profound, and that I don't think I saw a year ago:

To the people suffering because of the illnesses of the age, Christians should carry the reminder that "the Lord always hears the cry of the poor, the oppressed, the afflicted."

While it is absolutely crucial to remember that Christ is for the poor, the outcast, the ones we in the white middle class not only ostracize but dehumanize, Christ is also for those of us who think we have it all economically, politically, socially, but really are grasping at emptiness. It is in this grasping and coming up short every time that "the illnesses of the age" are manifest.

So how do we step out of this grasping at air and toward cradling the newness of life in Christ? Pope John Paul offered one part of the way:

Pope John Paul also reminded the religious that they must preserve and develop their own interior life, as a base on which to build up their apostolic activities. The quest for personal sanctity, he said, "is the best antidote to any dangerous form of interior fragmentation."

The interior life is certainly part of what A Place Apart is about, but there's more to it then nurturing your spirituality. Jesus said:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also

...“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. (Matthew 6:19-34)

This passage is directly economical: "what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear." And life certainly is more than all of these things. Interior life is of great value, but equally so is how we live in the most practical ways: food, drink, clothing. We need both, and we
need not worry. Christ is with us too. Christ is with us all.

Don't be afraid, my love is stronger,
My love is stronger than your fear.
Don't be afraid, my love is stronger,
And I have promised to be always near.
~From Iona Community

And what is my mind? This never ending race of thoughts...

Weaver Man says:

And what is my mind? This never ending race of thoughts, reacting, thinking of plans for the future, analyzing the past, on and on and click! It is an illusion. Once was is. Is to be is to flee. The grasp of knowledge. To seek or not to speak, that is the question?

A passing car. Did I hear it or not? Voices out my isolated grass hut, the sound of a cow mulching out my window. Miles Davis on the audio, thinking of 'Days of Wine and Roses', Mack the Knife, people have always been the same. Happy and bad times, we must look on the good.

I'll have to come back to it.


For now, back to the conversion of Paul. Hiho Silver! (Image from Catholica)

Mindfulness helps patients cope wth pain

NPR has a story about the value of mindfulness in treating pain patients. The practices does not heal as much as helps people cope and feel better. I've read The Miracle of Mindfulness in the past, and have been thinking it may be time to read it again.

Next steps with A Place Apart

A Place Apart finally has a website: apartvermont.org. It's still in development, but what is up is good for now. Be sure to check out the Intro to A Place Apart, the Warrior-Mystic-Nun/Monk lifestyle, and the Core Values and Prayer for A Place Apart. The prayer makes for good daily/hourly liturgy. And more than anything right now, I would say that A Place Apart needs our prayers.

If all goes well, I should be attending their next spring retreat in Ohio in the first weekend of May. I've also been in conversation about my personal involvement with a project of A Place Apart, and when those plans are closer to being ironed out, there will be be info here. Suffice it to say, it's becoming more than I imagined possible.

I'm planning on facilitating a couple informational sessions on A Place Apart here in Richmond about the possibility of beginning a local group. Let me know if you might be interested in getting involved.