Category Archives: global warming

don’t know

Posted on by
3

I don’t know much about a lot of things.

I don’t know how it is governments can poison their own people (or any people).

I don’t know how it is children are victims of gunshot wounds at the hands of those who are barely out of childhood themselves who are armed with metal death.

I don’t know how as the planet continues to wobble in ways more and more dramatic there is a continued unwillingness to claim culpability for global warming.

I don’t know how it became politically incorrect to share sorrows and questions.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that there is Holy Heart beating in the midst of the pain.

I do know that when people come together to remember who they are the world breathes hope.

I do know that what I can do is “love from the center of who I am” (Eugene Peterson’s voicing of Paul, Romans 12) and trust that in so doing I am naming and claiming the source of life.

I do know that in our flailings we are not alone. We can chose love and resistance to thuggery and we can use the wonderings of our heart to get us out in the world in order that grace might be communal heart beat.

Is there any other way?

What would we live that does not have hope in it?

I don’t know.

not winter

Posted on by
Reply

The bit of snow we had is running down the alleys.

It is once again Spring.  In January.  In Minnesota.

Even as I celebrate the lack of swaddle in going about these days, I’m thinking about what I am missing.

I miss the crackle of really cold air.  Somehow, the crisp that instantly freezes noses brings with it clarity and a sense of being very alive.

Are the stars as brilliant?  The hush that happens when snow blankets the ground seems to heighten awareness of the stars.  When the world is true winter the basics somehow shine brighter.

And what have we Minnesotans to complain about?  The self-congratulatory parlayed into a communal sense of getting through winter is missing.  We seem a bit lost without it.  Certainly we talk plenty about the weather – it’s so warm, so balmy! – but the chatter has lost a flavor I have come to realize I value: sanctified suffering.

And the chatter underneath the chatter?  Worry.

Say what you will about how fine it is to celebrate a mild winter. I’ll join you.  But what does this mean?  What sorts of human abuses of this living thing called creation has prompted this warm?  What does the summer hold with so little water on the earth?  What have we wrought?

I am seeking to live the celebration that is now.

And, the questions will not leave me.