…. It takes a whole community to raise a child!  (author unknown)

We have been otherworldly ever since we hit upon the devious trick of being religious, yes even “Christian”, at the expense of the earth…. Whenever life begins to become painful and oppressive, a person just leaps into the air with a bold kick and soars relieved and unencumbered into the air.  A person leaps over the present, disdains the earth, is better than it, and has his easy eternal victories next to the temporal defeats. 

          Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

…. This is the sound of all of us

                                         Singing with love and the will to trust

                                         Leave the rest behind it will turn to dust

                                        This is the sound of all of us….

                                                This is the sound of one voice

                                                One people, one voice

                                                A song for every one of us

                                                This is the sound of one voice

                                                This is the sound of one voice.

From the lyrics of “One Voice” – The Wailin’ Jennys

…. Only the eyes of faith can make the invisible visible, and only those who risk living as if it is true will ever know if it is.  John Westerhoff III, Living the Faith Community, p.71.

…. The universe is itself the primordial revelation of God.  But the path to understanding God as creator comes by way of the distinctive, though not exclusive, revelation of the suffering and redeeming God seen in Jesus and his way.  That redemption’s scope is all creation is not at issue, then.  But the route by which it is known is via the formation of a people whose mission is to display redeemed creation as just community.         - Larry L. Rasmussen

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  John 1: 1-5 NRSV

Blessings to all at Christmas…. And we all, with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.  II Corinthians 3.18

 ….When there is no time to do it, that’s when you most need to unclutter the calendar and go apart to pray.  When the gridlock in your schedule relentlessly forbids it, it is the time you most need to retreat.  That is when your heart beats against the prison walls of your enslavement and says, “Yes, Lord, I want to spend time with you.”  Emily Griffin

Man lose cannot discover new oceans until he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.  (author unknown)

….Change penetrates so deeply into the matter and energy of the universe that the ultimate meaning of our lives may be perceived in the promise of perpetual newness.

Astrophysicist J. McKim Malville, The Fermenting Universe, 1974.

Kurt Hahn, the visionary German expatriate educator and founder of Outward Bound, once enumerated the seven forces of decline that affect the modern world as follows:  the decay of fitness, care, skill, initiative, self-discipline, imagination, and compassion. Hahn saw this decline as the path to “spiritual death”.  Quoted in “Wooden Boat” magazine, August 2009, p. 66.

People come from all different backgrounds and all different levels of spiritual maturity, and belief will fluctuate accordingly.  But what should properly hold the body of Christ together is right praise, the ability to transcend all these differing viewpoints and in one voice (though maybe varied harmonies) offer glory and thanksgiving to the Master whose life transforms the human heart.   P.15, The Wisdom Jesus, Cynthia Bourgeault.

True love demands sacrifice, because true love is a transforming force and is really the birth-pangs of union on a higher plane.    –the Recapitulation of the Lord’s Prayer (anon. quoted in The Wisdom Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault)

Earth Day was started in the US in 1970.  In 1990, 200 million people in 141 countries took part. In 2007, an estimated 1 billion people participated around the world in Earth Day!  We had a great day here on Texada, didn’t we?  Thanks to everyone who pitched in to make it a success, and thanks to all who came out to celebrate this little planet we call home!

Man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard;  (the Lakota) knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too.

                              -Luther Standing Bear (c.1868-1939) in Last Child in the Woods:  Saving our Children from Nature-Defecit Disorder by Richard Louv (p.123) (an awesome book!)

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost, that is where they should be.  Now put foundations under them.” 

-         Henry David Thoreau

New leadership in the USA – exciting times we live in.  New world indeed!  Can we all see this as an opportunity to move forward into new life?

New world – big horizon
              Open your eyes and see it’s true
              New world – across the frightening
              Waves of blue
                                -David Wilcox

The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self-mastery.                 – Reinhold Niebuhr

To be glad instruments of God’s love in this imperfect world is the service to which men are called, and it forms a preparatory stage to this bliss that awaits them in the perfected world, the kingdom of God.                                                                      –Albert Schweitzer

My own sudden yearning – it’s almost an ache within me -……makes me believe that there is room for a church more mystical than the one we have now.  Such a church would be capable of calling home to it those young people who are carefully mapping and guarding ancient trees, or handing out information about global warming.  Such a church would cherish those times when its members break the artificial boundaries (sometimes created by Christianity itself) between humans and nature.  This is a church that could shelter environmentalists and poets, because, as a body, it would cherish the earth and mystery.  It would feed the spiritual hunger of the age.  (Donna Sinclair – from Jacob’s Blessing, Wood Lake Books, 1999) (preview the book here)

To trace the history of a river or a raindrop, as John Muir would have done, is also to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body.  In both, we constantly seek and stumble on divinity….          - Gretel Ehrlich