Ramadan 2009: Day 3
You can read two beautiful postings from Peace Moms Soraya and Nadyne here.
Day 1 was a little harder than I expected, especially between about 4 and 8 pm. Hunger wasn't too bad, as I've fasted quite a bit through the years. But I don't think I've ever gone for more than a few hours without a drink of water in all my 53 years. So that was a new experience, a little extra challenging down here in the Florida heat where sweating is inevitable if you're outdoors as I was for much of the day. Grace was kind of enough to delay her dinner to coincide with mine ... and she could tell how happy I was for sundown to come so I could have a tall glass of cold water. With Day 2, I knew what to expect so things went smoother. Both days were good!
Again and again I've been thinking about people who live every day with food and water in short supply. Knowing that relief awaits me in a matter of hours, I wonder what it would be like to be a child and not have that knowledge ... or to be the parent of that child, feeling responsible for his or her well-being. You pray for your neighbors in need in a different way when you're hungry and thirsty.
Here's my prayer from Day 2 (after the jump):
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Q & R: Lutherans and Wesleyans have been ignored for too long!
A note from a Lutheran and a Wesleyan. More after the jump ...
From a Lutheran ...
Q: First, thank you for sharing your writings and thoughts. I am exceptionally grateful for your "A Generous Orthodoxy."
In fact, when given the opportunity to lead a small group this past spring at a small progressive Lutheran church..., I chose this book. I am not a life-long/cradle Lutheran; rather my religious upbringing is quiet eclectic - raised in a conservative Christian home I was baptized Southern Baptist ..., became a member of a Mennonite Brethren church ..., and attended a fundamentalist non-denominational church ... during my high school years. Given this background, plus a few years of being anti-Christian for perhaps all too obvious and typical reasons, I appreciate your willingness to seek out the best in the various branches of Christianity. Still, I cannot help but notice that there not a section on "Why I am Lutheran." I am certainly not criticizing; my small group and I were simply curious.
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well done, travis reed
If you don't know the work of Travis Reed and friends at theworkofthepeople.com, you should. I can't imagine more punch, emotion, and impact being packed in less than two minutes ... here's Hell in a Handbasket, part of an interview with theologian John Goldingay:
HELL IN A HAND BASKET from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.
thanks, sivin kit!
Another relevant quote from Richard Rohr after the jump:
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Wisdom on the wind … Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof get it right
Thomas Friedman, learning from an experience on safari in Botswana, gets it right in his NYT editorial today ... Quotable quote:
We’re trying to deal with a whole array of integrated problems — climate change, energy, biodiversity loss, poverty alleviation and the need to grow enough food to feed the planet — separately. The poverty fighters resent the climate-change folks; climate folks hold summits without reference to biodiversity; the food advocates resist the biodiversity protectors.
They all need to go on safari together.
“We need to stop thinking about these issues in isolation — each with its own champion, constituency and agenda — and deal with them in an integrated way, the way they actually occur on the ground,” argued Glenn Prickett, senior vice president with Conservation International. “We tend to think about climate change as just an energy issue, but it’s also about land use: one-third of greenhouse gas emissions come from tropical deforestation and agriculture. So we need to preserve forests and other ecosystems to solve climate change, not only to save species.”
This was exactly the insight that smacked me upside the head when I was researching Everything Must Change. You can't deal with discrete symptoms without getting to the deeper disease-issues that underlie them.
It strikes me that we need to keep this holistic, systems-thinking approach engaged as we deal with health care here in the USA. For example, when restaurants and grocery stores know they can make more money selling us oversized portions full of and coated with high-fat, high-sugar, highly-processed gunk, and when we keep buying what they're selling, and when that produces an obesity epidemic - and obesity is becoming a bigger health-care problem than smoking, by the way - then we have to realize that health care is related to diet, and that one of the "externalized costs" of the food industry's profits is a sick health care system treating sick people and creating a sick economy. (Nicholas Kristof captures one facet of the sickness of our soul-less calorie-factory food industry in his NYT editorial today, a fitting companion to Friedman's, as they both call us to re-situate ourselves within creation.)
So today is a good day to remember Solomon, that icon of wisdom, who, for all his flaws, knew there was a lot to learn from observing natural systems in their amazing interdependence. He was no one-issue expert who had climbed tall into the silo (aka ivory tower) of one narrow discipline; he pursued multi-dimensionality in his life. For starters, he was (in his early years at least) a truly spiritual man, having prayed for wisdom over riches, fame, power, etc. No wonder he said, "The reverence for the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." He was also an artistic man - with obvious gifts for poetry, for music (like his dad), and for architecture as well. These qualities, together with his attention to plant and animal life, seemed to give him the kind of integrative, big-picture wisdom that we need a lot more of today. Here's how he was eulogized in 1 Kings 4:
God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore... He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a thousand and five. He described plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also taught about animals and birds, reptiles and fish. Men of all nations came to listen to Solomon's wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world, who had heard of his wisdom.
If he were here today, I think old Solomon would have given Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof a hearty "amen," maybe even a high-five.
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