Posts Tagged: god

Intro-Extrospection on a Winter Fall Day

The bitter-cold air batters my face as I cycle to work under the elm trees. December two and the yellow-orange-pink foliage are still giant brush strokes against the blue sky. Full of leaves. Such beauty! And such horror, as we clock up yet another “warmest year on record.” We are riding the wave of the… Read more »

God in Your Salad

The Trinity. God in 3 persons. Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Heard it since you were in Sunday school right? Well, have you ever compared the Trinity to salad dressing? Or the church to palette flavors? Probably not. Have no fear- it’ll all make sense by the end of this post! Salad dressing, as we learned… Read more »

Grounded Scriptures: created in God’s image

AND A PRAYER. Great God, you have created us in your image, and imprinted upon us your attributes. You have created us to be creators, you have created us to be creative. Deep in our souls is imprinted your limitless vision of this world’s fertility and abundance; sharp on our hearts is your call to exercise good stewardship and loving care over what is entrusted to us. We feel the true goodness of the world you have created And the particular goodness of our little corner of the world. We are standing on holy ground; ought we to have removed our shoes? Great God, Into your servants breathe the inspiration of your holy spirit, Scrub away whatever is covering your image hidden inside. Allow us to pray and to think and to speak from that place of creativity, of wisdom, of love and tender care. Be in our work, and in our play. Be love in our hearts today. In the strong name of Jesus Christ we pray, Amen.

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Grounded Scriptures: Humus humans

Many of us have heard too many times in the Adam & Eve story that “Adam means dirt.” Humans are made of humus, blah de blah. How cool and ancient and mythical and overimaginative of those ancient Hebrews – right? No, there’s a little more to it than that. First of all – “dirt.” Mistranslated “dust of the ground” by King James and the RSV family of Bibles, the word means “fertile soil.” Adamah in the Hebrew (you see how closely it’s related to Adam). This is a particular word, not just any old dirt. It is soil – arable land. Think not about the dust of a desert, but about potting soil… an obviously fertile soil, the stuff from which all land plants and animals ultimately take their nourishment. But our potting soil is usually pretty blackish brown, and this is not the adamah’s color. The words adam and adamah are not only related to one another, but are related to the word adom, “ruddy,” reddish. This is particular soil – for the Israelites this is the color of the hills of home. It tells them not only THAT God made them, but WHERE God made them. Egyptian soil and Babylonian soil have nothing on that particular soil from which a chosen group of people were made. We can all say that God made us here – on this earth. Some of us have (over the millennia) wandered to northern regions where our skin didn’t need the melanin so much, and so we got a little paler, and so it’s funny, nearly ridiculous, to say white people were made from soil. Contrary to the pictures in many a Children’s Bible, however, people in biblical times didn’t have that problem. They understood that they belonged to that land, as surely as their skintone matched the fertile soil. In a world of cheap travel, adventure, frequent voluntary relocation, and of the nonvoluntary diaspora and exile of many people-groups… we lose our sense of belonging to a land. Where do you belong? Where were you made? What color is your dirt? What is the land you cannot abandon?

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Climate and social justice (Cancún #1)

Blain Snipstal, HEART Road Trip alumnus, is currently in Cancun during the UN COP-16 Climate Talks on a Rural Coalition delegation and sponsored by the Presbyterian Hunger Program. Along with thousands of people from civil society, many coming by caravan through Mexico, he is participating in the Alternative Global Forum on Climate Change and Social Justice (see news report about small farmer participation). Here are some of his thoughts prior to going to Cancun on Dec. 3rd, while finishing up his college studies. I write this to you as I am experiencing the final days of my academic experiment (well, at least for now). Academia, for me, was a microcosm for experiencing the dualities, tri-alities, and quasi-alities that our collective amalgamation of life, which we call the world, can offer. In my final days; the world is shrinking; its once enormity is now no more than an infinitesimal dot or splash in a sea of consciousness. Perhaps, nothing is what it seems.

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The Sacred ‘neath Your Soul!

“…the soul is the animating element of our humanity and the way we touch the divine. But the spelling is wrong. Soul is properly spelled s-o-l-e. Where is your soul/sole? On the bottom side of your bare feet, in touch with the sacred ‘neath your sole, the soil.” One more snipet to make sure you read the treasure below — “But let’s not lose the main point: cultus (worship), culture and agriculture—we belong to these as the miraculous clods who are cultivators by calling. We are here to maintain the fertility of the soil for on-going life, to “renew the face of the earth,” in the phrase of Ps. 104, and to give glory to God. The ancients would have understood Wendell Berry well. “In talking about topsoil,” Berry says, “it is hard to avoid the language of religion.” So put aside the superstition that soul and soil are separate categories. Decent land-use is not about economics, it’s about cultivation and the state of our souls.”

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Talking ‘Bout Serious Change

I want Upton Sinclair’s change. I want God’s change. I want the change that gets us out of thinking and living “better grab all that I can get ‘cuz there won’t be enough” and into trusting the life-giving Commandments to love God and to love our neighbor.

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