Straw Bale Gardening: A Suggestion for Suburban and Urban (rooftop) Gardeners

This spring after reading an article about it in NY Times, I was inspired to learn more about the concept of straw bale gardening.  I ordered and read the book
Straw Bale Gardens: The Breakthrough Method for Growing Vegetables Anywhere, Earlier and with No Weeding by Joel Karsten.

American Society Encourages Slaughter of Innocents

There. I thought that headline might get your attention. Unfortunately, it is true, and I'm not talking about abortion.  I'm talking about how many innocents each year are slaughtered by gun violence.

"Should I Marry Him?" (Musings on Mother's Day 2013)

Mary Cassatt, Under the Horse Chestnut Tree

"If you want to gauge a man as marriage material, 

look at how he treats his mother.  

Because in ten years,

that's how he'll treat you."  

This was advice given to me by my grandmother, when I was less than twenty years old. Now, many decades later, I am more firmly than ever convinced that she was right.

Who Is My Neighbor?

A false god 

divides the world

 into 

friends 

(those the god loves) 

and 

foes 

(those the god hates); 

the true God 

loves all, 

and 

loves equally.

(Miroslav Volf)

Van Gogh, The Good Samaritan

Beggars in Modern Times

Acts Chapter 3

So one day, Peter and John were walking to the Temple to pray. As they were walking into the Temple gate, they were passing by this man who had been crippled from birth. Every day, someone carried that man to the gate so that he could beg from those who were going inside to the Temple courts.

Nicholas Poussin, Peter and John Heal the Blind Man at the Gate
Metropolitan Museum of Art 

BEGGARS

I don't know about you, but I've passed by this scene often, sometimes literally and sometimes figuratively. In the first part of this blog post, I'll talk literal. In the second part, I want to challenge each of us to think figuratively, in the sense of the bigger picture.

Letter From A Birmingham Jail

In the midst of national sadness stemming from a brutal act of terror and violence, let us not overlook one of America's shining lights for nonviolence and justice.  

Walking Into the Light

The Lord is my shepherd;

I shall not want.

He makes me to lie down in green pastures;

He leads me beside the still waters.

He restores my soul;

He leads me in the paths of righteousness

For His name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil;

For You are with me;

Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;

You anoint my head with oil;

My cup runs over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

All the days of my life;

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord

Forever.

Danielle Ridgway Knight, The Shepherdess of Rolleboise (1896)

courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes life gives rise to anxiety. 

When it does, we Americans tend to compensate by talking so much we can hardly hear ourselves think.

The Imagining of Peace

[T]he moral imagination requires

the capacity to imagine ourselves in a web of relationships that includes our enemies; 

the ability to sustain a paradoxical curiosity that embraces complexity without reliance on dualistic polarity; 

the fundamental belief in and pursuit of the creative act; and 

the acceptance of the inherent risk of stepping into the mystery of the unknown that lies beyond the far too familiar landscape of violence. 

Or, to express this more poetically:  

Reach out to those you fear. 

Touch the heart of complexity. 

Imagine beyond what is seen. 

Risk vulnerability one step at a time

Original photograph by 

Alexandria Skinner, copyright preserved

John Paul Lederach, quoted in Creative Beginnings, from the Moral Imagination Program, United Religions Initiative.  

(http://www.catalystforpeace.org/faithintoaction/MIPCreativeBeginningsURI.pdf, accessed April 12, 2013)

Fambul Tok: Building Peace in Sierra Leone

Between 1991 and 2001, a brutal civil war in the central African nation of Sierra Leone resulted in the deaths of about 50,000 people. Rape and maiming were deliberately used by soldiers as weapons to spread intimidation and fear. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced from their homes and many became refugees in Guinea and Liberia. No one was unaffected. Neighbors were pitted against neighbors. Entire communities were disrupted.


Following overthrow of the military dictatorship, how could communities so damaged restore a sense of peace? To answer this question requires asking questions like, "What is justice?"

Good Friday's Most Famous Quotation

Entire theological treatises have probably been written on the last words of Christ, uttered as he was dying on the cross.  Crucifixion causes asphyia, which makes inhaling air to speak difficult.  Thus, it is not surprising that the words actually uttered were short.  

Matthew 27:46 records that Jesus said, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"   In the gospels of Matthew and Mark, Jesus is quoted in Aramaic, shouting this phrase only and then cries out wordlessly before dying.  Is this not a surprising utterance, coming from one who proclaimed to be "one with the Father?"  Is this not proof that Jesus felt forsaken and abandoned by God?