Showing posts with label sustainable abundance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sustainable abundance. Show all posts

Saturday, February 15, 2020

JOYFUL WANDERING -- 68


+ Where have I been? Where am I going? It's a mystery, isn't it?

+ The New Faith for the New Earth #tnfftne
I have begun to offer tweets on The New Faith for the New Earth with the hashtag #tnfftne

February 5
+ The New Faith for the New Earth > #tnfftne is essential for all creation > #tnfftne is an idea whose time has come (again).  Ideas go round and round.  They come.  They go.  They come again. so #tnfftne is not a new idea but it is as old as life itself.

February 10
#tnfftne #2  THE NEW FAITH FOR THE NEW EARTH is now here and you are an essential participant right now.  You know what it is as well as I do because we are one.

#tnfftne #3  THE NEW FAITH FOR THE NEW EARTH unites all creatures everywhere with this CREDO > We are intimately, intricately, infinitely connected to a matrix of unconditional, unlimited, uniting Love which is miraculous, mysterious and marvelous.

#tnfftne #4  THE NEW FAITH FOR THE NEW EARTH is: non-hierarchical, free, open, loving, caring, compassionate, healing, energizing, inclusive, humble, non-judgmental, fun, creative, yours, mine.

#tnfftne #5 THE NEW FAITH FOR THE NEW EARTH is happening now.  It is essential.  You know when you see it.  It is all of us creating more and more Compassion, Peace, Justice and Sustainable Abundance.  You can consider more ideas at http://abundancetrek.com

#tnfftne #6 Since THE NEW FAITH FOR THE NEW EARTH is mysterious, it is hard to describe.  Actually it is impossible to describe.  But we have clues.  I have a take on what #tnfftne is and that's what I am writing about.  Sometimes I will be right and sometimes I will be wrong.
aq
#tnfftne #7 THE NEW FAITH FOR THE NEW EARTH is open to correction, revision, new ideas, new visions, new possibilities, new directions.  Let us all be open and committed to discovering new ways to create more compassion, peace, justice and sustainable abundance for all.

February 15
#TNFFTNE #8 + we are creating the new faith for the new earth which is creating #compassion, peace, justice and sustainable abundance for all breath after breath.

#TNFFTNE #9 + we are creating the new faith for the new earth which is creating #compassion, peace, justice and sustainable #abundance for all thought after thought after thought.

#TNFFTNE #10 + In the essential practice of #stillness you discover who you are, your purpose, your message, your path and there is simply no other way for you learn that. http://abundancetrek.com/stillness.html

+ Your Turn …

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

JOYFUL WANDERING -- 61

+ Updated on Tuesday, March 8 at 7:49am

Spiritual & Practice offers A Thought to Carry with You :
Way back in 1971, humorist Erma Bombeck wrote that it seems "rather incongruous that in a society of supersophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners." She was not only perceptive but prophetic. 

This week, help reverse the trend. Look for a way each day to listen to someone, letting go of any other agenda. Remember all the tools at your disposal: concentrated silence, a nod, simple words of support like "um hmm" or "oh?" or "wow!" Reflect back what you hear the other person saying, so that they can hear themselves more clearly. Ask follow-up questions like "How come?" or "What happened then?" Offer gentle encouragement to someone by your unconditionally accepting presence. It's okay if that someone is yourself.

+ Spiritual & Practice offers "Unleashing America's Shadow" by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. Excerpt: "'With media complicity, Trump has unleashed the beast that has long resided not far from the American hearth, from those who started a Civil War to preserve the right to enslave a fellow human to the Know-Nothing mobs who burned Irish-Catholic churches out of fear of immigrants.' This observation is from Timothy Egan's excellent article "The Beast Is Us" in The New York Times."

Patheos offers "The Making of Donald Trump and the Unmaking of a Nation" by Frederic Schmidt. Excerpt: "But Donald Trump is also the media’s creation. Together, since Richard Nixon’s appearance on 'Laugh In,' Presidents and the media have been erasing the boundary between entertainment and national leadership. Presidents make the rounds on talk shows and fawn over the hosts, treating them as the high priests of public opinion. They try their hand at stand-up comedy and they reduce policy debates into punch lines."

+ Dharma Wisdom offers "The Heart's Intention" by Phillip Moffitt. Excerpt: "Setting intention, at least according to Buddhist teachings, is quite different than goal making. It is not oriented toward a future outcome. Instead, it is a path or practice that is focused on how you are 'being' in the present moment. Your attention is on the ever present 'now' in the constantly changing flow of life. You set your intentions based on understanding what matters most to you and make a commitment to align your worldly actions with your inner values."

+ Weaving Home offers "Wilderness Places" by Naomi Kelly. Excerpt: "So we can come face to face with ourselves in the wilderness, with our fears, with what gets under our skin and makes us act in certain ways,. When we are on a Lenten journey, we take the time to see, to let our inner nature see the false self that so often holds us hostage. Seeng with the eyes of the heart can reveal all the pettiness and fear that tends to drive us into habitual directions of non-functionality."

+ Patheos offers "On Making America Great Again" by Erin Wathen

+ So, would a Bernie Sanders presidency be good for the economy?  An independent analysis suggests that it would be a dream come true for millions of hard working Americans who deserve much better than what the plutocracy has offered us in recent years. Common Dreams offers "Enacting Sanders Agenda Would Catapult Economy, Shatter Inequality" by Lauren McCauley.

+ Joyful Wandering posts 1 to 58 are found on The Abundancetrek Blog. You can find them all here.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

COFFEE BREAK 418

+ This is the current Facebook status of Interfaith Power & Light:

Happy World Water Day! It's a good day to appreciate and conserve the safe clean drinking water most of us in the U.S. have from our taps. An estimated 768 million people worldwide do not have access to clean water. The focus of U.N. World Water Day this year is the intricate link between water and energy. Read more: http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

COFFEE BREAK 411

+ updated at 1:54pm EST on Wednesday, February 26, 2014

+ Earth Policy Institute offers "Can the World Feed China" by Lester R. Brown. Lester Brown continues to promote a plan to sustain civilization.  We can be hopeful if we begin to implement this plan and we need to be quite alarmed if we don't.  Here are 2 excerpts: 

“It wasn’t until 20 years ago, after I wrote an article entitled “Who Will Feed China?”, that I began to fully appreciate what a sensitive political issue food security was to the Chinese. The country’s leaders were all survivors of the Great Famine of 1959–61, when some 36 million people starved to death. Yet while the Chinese government was publicly critical of my questioning the country’s ability to feed itself, it began quietly reforming its agriculture. Among other things, Beijing adopted a policy of grain self-sufficiency, an initiative that is now faltering.”

Concluding Paragraph: “The world is transitioning from an era of abundance to one dominated by scarcity. China’s turn to the outside world for massive quantities of grain is forcing us to recognize that we are in trouble on the food front. Can we reverse the trends that are tightening food supplies, or is the world moving toward a future of rising food prices and political unrest?” | Read the whole article | Consider buying the PLAN B video

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

COFFEE BREAK 374

+ On The Abundancetrek Blog I offer a brilliant statement by Barrett Lee on the importance of building a just society. He offers it in response to a quote by Jimmy Carter and a Facebook conversation which I highlight.

+ The God's Politics blog offers "Ten More Cliches Christians Should Avoid" by Christian Piatt. Here's one:

Love the sinner, hate the sin.
This is a backhanded way to tell someone you love them, at best. It also ignores the command by Jesus not to focus on the splinter in our neighbors’ eyes while a plank remains in our own. Bottom line: we all screw up, and naming others’ sin as noteworthy while remaining silent about your own is arrogant.

+ Truthdig offers "We Are All Aboard the Pequod" by Chris Hedges. Excerpt: "The self-destructive fury of the quest, much like that of the one we are on, assures the Pequod’s destruction. And those on the ship, on some level, know they are doomed—just as many of us know that a consumer culture based on corporate profit, limitless exploitation and the continued extraction of fossil fuels is doomed." | Read it all |

Friday, February 1, 2013

COFFEE BREAK 356

+ updated at 1:23pm EST on Friday, February 1, 2013
 
+ We need our hearts to be full, open, clear, and strong and that's the message of Day 1 of Heart Month at S&P.

+ Maybe we should pray for a change of heart by the Koch brothers and all climate change deniers during Heart Month which begins today.  The Independent offers "Exclusive: Billionaires secretly fund attacks on climate science" by Steve Connor. He reports that a new climate change denial effort is being funded by the Koch brothers and others.

Monday, January 21, 2013

COFFEE BREAK 351

+ A few lines from a great speech today:
 
For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.
 
We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.
 
...... we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war, who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends, and we must carry those lessons into this time as well.
 
Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.
 

Thursday, January 17, 2013

COFFEE BREAK 349

+ updated at 11:53am EST on Thursday, January 17, 2013
 
+
If you could get rid
of yourself just once,
The secret of secrets
Would open to you.
The face of the unknown,
Hidden beyond the universe
Would appear on the
Mirror of your perception.

-- Rumi
 
 
+ Urgent > Deadline Monday: Fight the largest coal export terminal in the United States

Dear Friend,

As climate change wreaks havoc across the globe and scientists issue dire warnings of a 9-15 degree increase in temperatures this century, the coal industry wants to ship more than a hundred million tons of dirty coal to Asia each year and make the problem much worse.

Peabody Coal and SSA Marine are moving forward with plans to build the largest coal export terminal in the country in Washington -- the Gateway Pacific Terminal. This is one of the most important fights against coal in the country right now, because if we lose, it will seriously undermine much of the progress we've made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the amount of dirty coal burned in the United States.

The Army Corps of Engineers is accepting public comments on the outrageous Gateway Pacific Terminal proposal to determine which environmental impacts of the project it should study.

Whether or not the Gateway Pacific Terminal is allowed to move forward could be determined by which factors the Corps includes in its impact statement. A full accounting of Gateway Pacific's impact on global greenhouse gas emissions would be devastating for the project, so our public comments are crucial.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/gpt_coal_exports/?r_by=53456-10635-Cesx_Mx&rc=paste2

Monday, January 14, 2013

COFFEE BREAK 346

+ updated at 5:19pm EST on Monday, January 14, 2013

Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice offers "Earth Walk" by David Siegenthaler. The author says the Environmental Movement is not as effective as it could be because it is not paying enough attention to core spiritual values which demand rejection of our current way of life. Excerpt: "If the main val­ues of the U.S. soci­ety may be dis­cerned from the per­sis­tent struc­tural fea­tures of our coun­try, it is ques­tion­able whether the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment presents a seri­ous chal­lenge to an econ­omy based upon accu­mu­la­tion of wealth for some, a pop­u­la­tion of labor­ers (often for­eign, migrant, or oth­er­wise ren­dered pow­er­less) will­ing to accept a lot less, and an increas­ingly tech­nol­ogy and lux­ury infat­u­ated pop­u­la­tion of con­sumers. Indeed, the envi­ron­men­tal­ists them­selves (our­selves!) pre­dom­i­nantly rep­re­sent priv­i­lege and wealth"

+ Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice A offers "Eco Justice and the Earth Court" by John Preston, a friend of mine and an environmental activist, colleague in ministry, Progressive Christian theologian, author. In this article, he challenges the church to be prophetic and daring and reformed especially as we face the real possibility of ecological and economic and social catastrophe.

Don't miss the whole article. It is so important. But I can't resist posting his final paragraph here: "Our Cre­ator is a God of Eco-Justice. Within the covenant between God and Israel there was a deep con­cern for the widow and the impov­er­ished that reflected God’s own con­cern for the wel­fare of the “least of these.” There was also a con­cern for the land, which was the foun­da­tion for sus­tain­able liv­ing. Today, for those who have the eyes to see, the plight of all crea­tures is tied to the wel­fare of the planet earth. The eco-justice story is also the earth story. It is this story that must come from a dim back­ground, kept in place by the illu­sion of old nar­ra­tives that are no longer viable, to the fore­ground of our con­scious­ness as Amer­i­can Chris­t­ian peo­ple. Bring­ing that story into the fore­ground of our con­scious­ness is the prophetic task. It is also the true pas­toral task in a time that strug­gles for meaning." | Read the article

+ We saw 4 great movies in recent days, 2 at the theater and 2 at home.  And, of course, Spirituality & Practice has great reviews of LINCOLN, LES MISERABLES, THE LADY and BABETTE'S FEAST (1987 Oscar for Best Foreign Film).

+ Moved from my December 19 post which was titled incorrectly > Lester Brown is one of the most compassionate and articulate voices promoting sustainable abundance on our planet. Lester Brown’s new book Full Planet, Empty Plates takes a close look at the variables contributing to the growing crisis of food scarcity.  Utne Reader offers a section from the book. Here is an excerpt: "We are entering a new era of rising food prices and spreading hunger. On the demand side of the food equation, population growth, rising affluence, and the conversion of food into fuel for cars are combining to raise consumption by record amounts. On the supply side, extreme soil erosion, growing water shortages, and the earth’s rising temperature are making it more difficult to expand production. Unless we can reverse such trends, food prices will continue to rise and hunger will continue to spread, eventually bringing down our social system. Can we reverse these trends in time? Or is food the weak link in our early 21st-century civilization, much as it was in so many of the earlier civilizations whose archeological sites we now study?" Read more

Friday, December 7, 2012

COFFEE BREAK 342

+ updated at 2:29pm EST on Friday, December 7, 2012

+ We are on an amazing journey.  I invite you to join me and explore some of the wonderful, fantastic places which we can and even must encounter sooner or later. I invite you to write about your journey. Go to my Let's Go series of posts

+ OK, since I'm thinking about some of my favorite places on the web, I must suggest that you think about including Theological Wanderings of a Street Pastor, that is if you like blogs with spiritual and theological and political and cultural depth.  Barrett's posts are simply fascinating most of the time. I'm a fan. And he's also a great friend.

+ And I am a big fan of Bill McKibben, a fantastic environmental writer and activist.  The New York Times recently offered "To Fight Climate Change, College Students Take Aim at the Endowment Portfolio" which features a campaign promoted by McKibben to divest from fossil fuel industries unless they change their policies.

+ Of course, I remain a big fan of Paul Krugman and his great blog. Here is "The Fiscal Ignoramus Factor." Oh how I wish our political leaders would heed the advice of the likes of Krugman and Reich.  Keynes was right.  Keynesian Economics is an important policy for us to choose as we move our planet toward more compassion, peace, justice and sustainable abundance.

+ I am becoming a big Robert Reich fan.  What a great blogHere is his latest: "Cliff Notes on the Three Real Perils Ahead." The real cliffs we face are: Growing Poverty, Rapidly Increasing Healthcare Costs and Global Warming.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

COFFEE BREAK 326

+ Democracy Now! offers "The Bipartisan Nuclear Bailout" by Amy Goodman. Excerpt: "This is mind-boggling, on the first anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, with the chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission warning that lessons from Fukushima have not been implemented in this country. Nevertheless, Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: They’re going to force nuclear power on the public, despite the astronomically high risks, both financial and environmental."

MY COMMENT: We will never get money completely out of politics but right now this rule by the elite is leading us to ruin, We can find ways to solve our energy problems which do not endanger us but the politicians now in power are not on board for sanity. Let us pray for sanity. Prayer includes action.

+ Democracy Now! offers "Michael Klare: GOP Promises of Lower Gas Costs Belied By Dwindling Supply of World’s Oil" which is available in video form or transcript.  Excerpt: "Since the beginning of the year, the average of price of a gallon of regular gasoline has jumped 16 percent to more than $3.80. Earlier this week, President Obama partially blamed his Republican rivals, saying one reason for the increase is rumors of war with Iran. Meanwhile, Republican candidates have used the spike in gas prices to attack President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline and his stance on expanded domestic oil drilling. Our guest, Michael Klare, says oil prices are destined to remain high for a long time to come because most of the remaining oil on the planet is no longer easily accessible. Klare’s latest book is The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources."
 
MY COMMENT: Even if these Republicans are right and the planet does have more oil than previously believed, what about the crisis of climate change due to soaring carbon emissions? Experts tell us that climate change has potentially disastrous consequences including dwinding food supplies.  It also really bothers me that those living now are using so much of the oil of the planet and not saving it for future generations.  We need to conserve far more than we are conserving now and we need to develop alternative energy sources far more rapidly than we are now.  We need to rebuild our railroads here in the USA and increase all forms of transportation other than oil powered automobiles.  I know I would use far less oil if I could depend on trains and buses here in the Albany-Buffalo corridor. 

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

APOLOGY TO MY FOLLOWERS

I haven't posted much lately on my 3 blogs.  I apologize to anybody who has come to read my blog posts with some regularity.  You deserve better.  I guess I have been distracted when I get in front of the screen by my Twitter and Facebook activities which I do find useful but I don't want my blogs to suffer.

So, I do intend to make a new effort to restore my blogging as a priority in my life.  I would love to see my number of followers increase.  That will depend on some consistency on my part in both quality and quantity. 

I do think I have something unique to offer as we trek together toward more compassion, peace, justice and sustainable abundance on this planet. 

Here goes!

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

COFFEE BREAK 306

+ For many years I have appreciated the motto: THINK GLOBALLY. ACT LOCALLY.  And so now I am involved in the local Green Movement. Naturally the current focus is on Fracking since it is threatening to become a reality in much of upstate New York. 

GreenLocal175 is working in a number of areas.  Lately the leader, Richard Morris, has begun hosting a weekly radio show on the Utica College station, WPNR 90.7 fm.  It is on every Tuesday from 6pm to 8pm.  Fracking was the topic last night. 

One of the guests, Bonnie Reynolds, is the campaign coordinator for Hydro Relief which is actively opposing any and all fracking in New York.

Monday, October 17, 2011

COFFEE BREAK 297

+ updated at 2:22pm ESDT on Monday, October 17, 2011.

+ In "America's 'Primal Scream," Nicholas D. Kristoff offers some important reflections on the Occupy Wall Street movement. He says it's resonating because most of us are quite aware of the growing income inequality here in the USA and elsewhere. 

+ In "A Movement Too Big to Fail," Chris Hedges offers some important reflections on the Occupy Wall Street movement. It begins: "There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn. The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant."

+ In his latest sermon, The Myth of the Call, John Shuck has some very profound thoughts about the call of Abram and how it relates both positively and negatively to our current movements for compassion, peace, justice and sustainable abundance.  Here is the conclusion of that sermon:

The myth of the call is rooted in patriarchal spirituality. The figure is Abraham. He gets the divine summons to leave what is familiar, to leave his comfort zone, and to be a blessing. The call to be a blessing is a source of power that we can tap into in our contemporary movements for justice and peace, such as the movement taking place around the country. That call to go out and demonstrate, to dream of change, and to act is a powerful and necessary thing.

The shadow of the call is fanaticism. Abram’s call involved a displacement of the Canaanites and the willingness to kill his own son for this vision. There is delusion, fanaticism, carelessness, and ruthlessness associated with this call. Abram needs a partner. He needs a strong Sarai. Before going off to sacrifice their son, he might ask her opinion first.

If there is a call, it is to all of us. It is a call to be as well as to do. The values of relationship, companionship, diversity, wisdom, partnership, nurturing, and compassion will make our movement for social and economic justice stronger, more sustainable, and will enlarge that circle of blessing.

+ It is high time for us Presbyterians to do what some courageous, prophetic Methodists are doing. Go to http://johnshore.com/2011/10/17/methodist-ministers-to-perform-gay-weddings-despite-ban/.

By the way, some prophetic and courageous Presbyterians are doing GLBT weddings but more are needed.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

COFFEE BREAK 287

+ updated at 10:18 on Wednesday, August 3, 2011

+ I thought I would see if W2AVS could be found on the Internet and sure enough I found it.  W2AVS was my Dad's Radio Amateur Call Letters from 1929 until he let it expire around 1940.  Later he got K2KJ, a really good one, because he was in a special category of early hams.  Go to http://hamgallery.com/qsl/country/USA/New_York/w2avs.htm

My dad is now 99 and lives in Chapel Hill NC.

+ September 24 has been designated as a day for worldwide action on behalf of dealing with the climate change crisis.  Here is a website devoted to this movement: 
http://www.moving-planet.org/

Friday, April 8, 2011

COFFEE BREAK 271

+ updated at 11:12am ESDT on Friday, April 8, 2011

+ The New York Times offers "The Truth, Still Inconvenient" by Paul Krugman.

Excerpt 1: "So the joke begins like this: An economist, a lawyer and a professor of marketing walk into a room. What’s the punch line? They were three of the five “expert witnesses” Republicans called for last week’s Congressional hearing on climate science."

Excerpt 2: "For years now, large numbers of prominent scientists have been warning, with increasing urgency, that if we continue with business as usual, the results will be very bad, perhaps catastrophic. They could be wrong. But if you’re going to assert that they are in fact wrong, you have a moral responsibility to approach the topic with high seriousness and an open mind. After all, if the scientists are right, you’ll be doing a great deal of damage."

Read it all.

+ Christian Century offers "Climate Report" by the editors. Excerpt: "Many national leaders talk about cutting spending so as not to burden future generations with the deficits created by this generation. These same leaders seem to have no problem, however, burdening the next generation with an overheated Earth, nor do they mind letting the next generation be the one to invest in renewable and sustainable forms of energy."

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

COFFEE BREAK 269

+ updated at 11:01am ESDT on Tuesday, April 5, 2011

+ Al Gore offers "Terrific Editorial in Today's Journal of the American Medical Association." Excerpt from the editorial: "Scientific evidence shows that the world's climate is changing and that the results have public health consequences. The American Medical Association is working to ensure that physicians and others in health care understand the rise in climate-related illnesses and injuries so they can prepare and respond to them." 

+ For April only, PBS is offering "Journey to Planet Earth -- Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization" on the internet. This is a powerful documentary featuring Lester Brown who continues to warn us that civilization is under great stress and we must deal with bthe danger or face the consequences.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

COFFEE BREAK 248

+ Updated at 12:45 pm EST on February 15, 2011

+ Shuck and Jive offers "From Cosmos to Cosmogenesis," a sermon for Evolution Sunday by John Shuck. Excerpt: "It is time to get off the fence regarding one of the foundations of human knowledge. So six years ago, Dr. Michael Zimmerman, a biologist from Butler University started the Clergy Letter Project. The idea was to procure 10,000 signatures from clergy who affirmed evolution to counter the viewpoint of some religious people that evolution and Christian faith were incompatible. As of today, 12,711 Christian clergy have signed the letter. That number goes over 14,000 when Unitarian and Jewish religious leaders are included. In addition to the letter, churches have been asked to raise the level of discussion in their congregations regarding science."

+ Cloudbusting

+ I love Kate BushEnjoy!

+ All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons by Jay Walljasper deals with the growing gap between the wealthy and the rest of us and how all of our wisdom traditions promote the common good rather than the competitive individualism embedded so deeply in current economic trends. Spirituality and Practice offers a book review by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. Here's an excerpt from this review: "Given the poor state of the American economy, the degradation of the environment, the confusion of the Internet, the disrepair of democracy, the decline of communities, the time is ripe for the newly emerging commons movement. Walljasper give us hope that it is taking hold as urban gardeners, hometown champions, Greens, whistle-blowers, health care advocates, defenders of libraries, fighters for water justice, and local artists are all involved in the creation of new forms of sharing. As Bill McKibben states: 'The commons is a crucial part of the human story that must be recovered if we are to deal with the problems now crowding in on us.'" Read the review.