An early start on Christmas

WWJS? What would Jesus say? Well, I'm sure it would not be "Shop joyfully," which was on the first ad I saw today for Christmas. So I thought I'd better get my message out early too.

Christmas shopping: consumables, consumables, consumables; least packaging possible; If it's an object, make sure it's got a long life. Or else make your gift a gift: a chicken, a goat, a heifer, clean water, something like that.

Whatever path you take make sure it doesn't leave you exhausted, broke and cynical, but rather fulfilled, generous and a bit more in love with the world.

Thought for the day

With recent public awareness and increasing acceptance of gay and LBGT lifestyles, we have come to realize that human sexuality is not what we control it to be or what we imagine it to be or what we want it to be. It is complex and varied...as human are. But this is just one facet of human life. We are also coming to recognize that human love, human grieving, human culture building are all complex and varied.

This awareness is significant and inexorable despite the efforts of many to hold to rigid beliefs with a death grip.

Thought for the day

Those who attempt to take away the dignity of others have just lost theirs.

I have a question

What images do you keep in your mental art rolodex?

Our children

This morning's Enquirer front page showed an 8 year old who is being trained to give an injection which could save a drug addict's life. Let's see...we use children as sex slaves, contract them for marriage to older men, have them work in factories, bomb them, recruit them as child soldiers, abuse them, incarcerate them, let them starve to death, use them as human shields, dispose of them if they are the wrong gender. What is wrong with us?

Thought for the day

Reality may not always be your friend, but it will always be your companion.

The web

Throughout man's history, there has always been an attempt to see the world in one comprehensive metaphor: the human is microcosm, the machine, the Gaia Principle, the harmonious balance of Yin Yang. Modern science has come to the realization that the study of the object must give way to the study of relationships between objects. Hence the productive metaphor of the web or the network.

These webs are abstract and can't always been seen, but they attend to the relationships among things and people and processes. They allow us to "see" what previously we could not: the connections between the bee, the flower, the weather, the toxins, the gardener, the predator.

When I imagine God, I imagine a presence seeking human awareness. The timeless phrase, "Love thy neighbor," is the trigger. When every human person comes to see every human person as a neighbor to be loved, that web of relationships is God. Of course, in this world that seems like a complete impossibility. Still we can pockets of God all around us, even if temporary when we are met with great tragedies and catastrophic events.