Hurricane Sandy

Our prayers go out to you who are preparing for any tropical storm, remembering especially those on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and Canada as Hurricane Sandy merges with other seasonal storms fronts.

Is the Grass Really Greener Back There, From Which We Came?

While visiting parishioners in central Idaho one day, I drove around a corner and there were five cows munching grass through a fence. All five of them had their heads stuck through the fence and were enjoying the grass on the other side. It must have been greener. But one cow was actually outside the pasture. Her head still stuck between the rails, chomping grass from the pasture.

How many of us make decisions and change of live patterns only to later reflect back ... if only ...?

This fall / autumn, the leaves have been fantastic! So here is a fall / autumn poem from Robert Frost for you. The paths we take make all the difference, although at the time, they may look quite the same.

Blessed Be

Joel

1. The Road Not Taken  

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.	20

Robert Frost (1874–1963). 
Frost, Robert. Mountain Interval. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920; Bartleby.com, 1999. www.bartleby.com/119/. [Date of Printout]. The Road Not Taken

The Universe is God's - Madeleine L'Engle

The Universe is God's

A while ago when I was at Berea College in Kentucky I was asked the usual earnest questions about creationism vs. evolution.
   I laughed and said that I really couldn't get very excited about it. The only question worth asking is whether or not the universe is God's. If the answer is YES! then why get so excited about how? The important thing is that we are God's, created in love. And what about those seven days? In whose time are they? Eastern Standard Time? My daughter in San Francisco lives in a time zone three hours earlier than mine. In Australia, what time is it? Did God create in human time? Solar time? Galactic time? What about God's time? What matter if the first day took a few billennia in our time, and the second day a few billennia more?
   I told the student at Berea that some form of evolution seems consistent with our present knowledge, and that I didn't think that God put the fossil skeletons of fish in the mountains of Nepal to test our faith, as some creationists teach. But if I should find out tomorrow that God's method of creation was something quite different from either creationism or evolution, that would in no way shake my faith, because that is not where my faith is centered.

****
Madeleine L'Engle. Glimpses of Grace: Daily Thoughts and Reflections. HarperSanFrancisco: 1996. 282-3.

Fishing Prayer - Ghana

Upon seeing the commercial boats plying the waters, and the recreational fisher folk playing the shores, here is a prayer for your fishermen.

Blessed Be

Joel

Lord I sing your praise
the whole day through, until the night.
Dad’s nets are filled; I have helped him.
We have drawn them in, stamping the rhythm with
our feet,
the muscles tense.
We have sung your praise.

On the beach there were our mammies,
who brought the blessings out of the nets,
out of the nets and into their basins.
They rushed to the market, returned and bought again.
Lord, what a blessing is the sea, with fish in plenty.
Lord, that is the story of your grace:
nets tear, and we succumb because we can not hold
them.

Lord, with your praise we drop off to sleep.
Carry us through the night.
Make us fresh for the morning.
Hallelujah for the day!
And blessing for the night!
Amen
Ghana traditional prayer

**********
I found this prayer a while back, and in looking for a reference, I now can't find one. Apparently it comes from a book of African Prayers by Desmond Tutu, but looks like it also maybe found in the Oxford Book of Prayer. I'm not sure of it's original source.

Timeless Energy

This past week we celebrated the life of my wife's 94 year old grandmother. As I got to thinking about her life, about all the things she has seen through her years, and all the changes that have happened on a technological level: be they the automobile or medicine; advances in science or communication. In many ways, when she was born she had more in common with the 18th century than the end of the 20th and start of the 21st. Wow.

And yet, some of this technology is still available, as it was 94 years ago. The energy propelled people around the world is still here. Yes, I'm talking about the wind and currents and sailing.

If you click on the map above, it will give you a near current (updated hourly) image of the wind blowing across the United States, curtsy of the  National Digital Forecast Database.

Or what about those currents that effect the climates of the earth and have helped (and hindered) exploration all these years? These images below come from NASA's Visualization Explorer for the iPad Story - "Perpetual Ocean". Quite fascinating imagery!

The Gulf Stream

Clicking on the link above will allow you to see the full twenty minute video, but here's a 3 minute teaser below.

Blessed Be,

Joel


............................
Thanks to The Horse's Mouth for blow and Those Big Wheels Keep Spinning. Videos of Ocean Currents: "Perpetual Ocean."