COFFEE BREAK 91

+ updated at 2:49pm EST

+ Yearning for God offers "Wake Up for Advent" quoting Christine at Abbey of the Arts:

I invite you to awaken right now – begin by breathing in the beauty of this very moment. Pause for just a moment and allow your breath to bring you to the present until it opens before you in all of its expansive grace. Consider taking on a practice for Advent of cultivating presence, of saying no to something you find draining to create a holy pause in the day so you might discover the poem written in a grain of sand.

+ Two Friars and a Fool offers "Follow Up On GOP Doctrinal 'Resolution'". There is excellent analysis here of the blatant hypocrisy and fantasy orientation of the current GOP.

+ SHUT DOWN THE COAL-FIRED POWER PLANTS + I usually like what Chris Hedges has to say and the follwing is no exception.

There are some 614 coal-fired power plants in the United States, and it is up to us to shut them down. No one in the White House will do it. No one in Congress will do it. And no one at the coming U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen will do it. We will build local movements to carry out acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to halt the burning of coal, or the polar ice caps will continue to dissolve, the Greenland ice sheet will disappear, the glaciers in the Alps, the Himalayas and Tibet will melt, and widespread droughts, rising sea levels and temperatures, acute food shortages, disease and gigantic mass migrations will envelop the globe. We are killing the ecosystem on which human life depends. One of the major polluters is coal, which supplies about half of the country’s electricity. NASA’s James Hansen has demonstrated that our
only hope of getting our atmosphere back to a safe level—below 350 parts per million CO2—lies in stopping the use of coal to generate electricity. We are currently at 390 parts per million carbon dioxide.

A Colleague led me to this statement. You can find it at http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/refuse_allegiance_to_coal_20091123/

+ MAKING OUR GREEN ECONOMY COME ALIVE AND THRIVE is the slogan of Green Local 175 which is led by Richard Morris. He is now spearheading an effort to get churches in the Mohawk Valley invoved. I attended a meeting last night as a Presbyterian representative. We also had a Lutheran, a Catholic and 3 Unitarians. We hope to recruit more people and build momentum for a greener Mohawk Valley and planet.

+ eco-journey offers "GreenFaith Resource on Sustainable Food" by Katie Holmes. It begins:
Does your church want to start serving more sustainable food, but you're not quite sure where to start? GreenFaith has just released Restoring Eden, a guide to providing more sustainable food for your congregation. There are ideas on where to purchase healthy and sustainable food, how to grow food on your property, how to educate adults and youth about food issues, and success stories from houses of worship that have undertaken sustainable food projects.


+ At a meeting last night I heard these quotes by Pope Benedict XVI:

• "Before it is too late, it is necessary to make courageous decisions to curb climate change."
• "The impact of climate change falls heaviest on the poor."
• "Respect creation while focusing on the needs of sustainable development."

+ Today is World Aids Day. Shuck and Jive offers "World AIDS Day 2009: Universal Access and Human Rights" by John Shuck. It begins: "The theme for World AIDS Day 2009 is Universal Access and Human Rights."

+ An Advent verse:
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
-- Isaiah 2:4