April 2021 - Dialogue - lists.wedgeblade.net

4/29/2021, Brian D. McLaren:: Science, Reductionism, and Faith; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 29 Apr '21

29 Apr '21

| | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Science, Reductionism, and Faith | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Brian D. McLaren April 29, 2021 I was teaching a class recently and a student asked me a question about the boundary between the natural and supernatural. As I answered, I told the student, “I’m sorry. I understand your question, but I have to tell you that I’m incapable of answering it. That’s because I no longer see the world in those two categories of natural and supernatural.” Like many, I grew up in a two-tier universe. The lower natural tier was physical, temporal, and ever-changing. The higher supernatural tier was spiritual, eternal, and changeless. God, the Holy Spirit, and human souls or spirits were in the higher tier. Human bodies, all nonhuman creatures, and all matter and energy were in the lower tier. Without the higher tier, the lower tier was seen to be meaningless and of little real value. Meaning and value, we could say, resided in the upper tier. This dualism applied to the physical body as well. The body was a physical machine; the soul or spirit was like a ghost that occupied it. At birth (or conception, or some other precise moment), the soul or spirit entered the body-machine and made it alive. At death, the supernatural element left it, and it was just lower-tier stuff again. For centuries, this dualistic universe made sense to Christians like me. Politicians and businessmen worked in the lower tier. Priests and ministers worked in the upper tier. Scientists studied the mechanisms of the natural world; saints, theologians, and mystics explored the supernatural. Many of our vexing moral issues were framed by this supernatural/natural dualism. Arguments about abortion, for example, often draw from assumptions about the precise moment when the supernatural spirit invades the fertilized egg. End-of-life arguments are similarly rooted in this dichotomy for many, as are many arguments about sexual orientation and identity. I remember being in a graduate school classroom back in the 1970’s and for the first time feeling this two-tiered universe threatened. “If scientists explain consciousness and show that what we call person or mind or soul is a just a matter of chemistry and physics, the jig is up for Christianity,” I thought. We’re still a long way from understanding consciousness. But with advances in brain science, it’s becoming clear that the old ghost-in-the-machine model is increasingly hard to maintain. Does that mean the jig is up for Christianity? Perhaps, if Christianity remains committed to that dualistic model. But I’m convinced that Christianity does not need to be stuck in the old two-tier universe. In fact, like a chick breaking out of an egg, Christianity is breaking out of its old assumptions. The fact is, the ancient Hebrews didn’t see the world this way, which explains why we don’t see it in the Hebrew Scriptures. At the time of Jesus, the Jewish people were divided. More “liberal” groups (the Hellenists, along with the Pharisees) were embracing assumptions from Greek philosophy and culture, and so they were re-articulating their theology in this two-tier framework. The more conservative Sadducees stayed with the older view. By and large, Christians embraced the two-tiered universe of the Hellenists, and it became a pre-critical assumption of what we know as orthodoxy today. The natural-supernatural distinction became even more important after the Enlightenment, when rational and empirical thinkers like David Hume proposed that the only reality was physical. Science was coming to explain everything by physical and natural mechanisms, reducing the upper tier of supernatural to a mythological category, a realm of superstition, an embarrassment. That proposal made God an obsolete item in an obsolete category. Christians responded to this challenge in three ways. First, some doubled-down on the natural-supernatural distinction. Miracles were real. God was real. They couldn’t be explained by natural means because they were in a separate category. That was the tradition in which I was raised. Second, some gave up Christianity entirely and became atheistic naturalists: the universe is physics, plus nothing, leaving religion to be an obsolete field for the unlearned or dishonest, on the level of alchemy at best. A third group largely capitulated to the collapse of the supernatural into the natural, but this traditional liberal approach said that God still existed. However, God created physical laws and mechanisms which ran creation. God was the designer and the moral authority, the divine watchmaker and moral judge. Emphasis for liberals shifted from defending miracles to defending ethics and aesthetics. I am not comfortable with any of these alternatives, because I think the dualistic framing they begin with is itself flawed. I find myself more in sync with two important theological movements, whose work I see as being deeply complementary. First, the non-reductive physicalists start with the physical universe, but they don’t stop there. They acknowledge the potential for emergent realities, realities like life itself, that emerge from lifeless physical processes but cannot be reduced to those processes. They are, in a sense, more than the sum of their parts. This “something more” is what Christians and others tried to capture metaphorically with words like spirit, which is itself a metaphor for a physical reality: breath. The physical, in other words, is fundamental, but reality cannot be flattened or reduced to physics and chemistry. Life, meaning, beauty, goodness, consciousness are emergent realities that arise from the physical world and can neither be separated from it nor can they be reduced to it. An analogy can be made to a book. An old-fashioned book is physical. It is paper, ink, covers, and glue, nothing more. But then again, it is would be improper to say that a book is nothing more than these things. The book exists as a physical expression of meaning, of communication. It contains meaning that cannot be reduced to physics and chemistry. Its whole purpose is to communicate meaning. Yet even in spite of this “something more-ness,” it can never be separated from physics and chemistry, because the living person who encoded the meaning in the book emerged in a brain and body whose life arises from physics and chemistry and depends on them. The same is true of the readers who engage with that encoded meaning. This non-reductive physicalism is a natural conversation partner with various process theologies. Process theologies look at the physics and chemistry of bodies and things, and they add the rather obvious but oft-forgotten dimension of time. When time enters the equation, what we thought of as things start to look more like processes. Pick up a rock. It is a thing in a certain moment. But a million years ago, it might have been part of a layer of rock deep within a mountain. A million years before that, it may have been magma flowing out of a volcano. Several billion years earlier, it may have been dust loosely dispersed around the sun, about to congeal into the earth. Before that, atoms in that dust may have been part of five now-extinct stars that exploded in supernovae. And so on, going back to the singularity of the big bang, and so on, going forward to an unimagined future — the rock in your hand is an event, a process within other processes. The same goes for me now, and you. Every atom in the body that is producing these words you are now reading was not associated with me before I was born, and the same is true for you. Some of the atoms that constitute us now once were, no doubt, floating in the sea. Others were in soil. Others were in any number of animals and plants. These physical atoms have been borrowed by the emergent phenomena known as you and me, and as our bodies, make you and me possible. We, in turn, are using symbols that have evolved among other human beings over millennia and we are engaged in a meaningful act of communication with one another. Although we’re using keyboards and screens rather than paper and pen, they too are physical objects which are being used for purposes that can’t be reduced to flattened physics and chemistry. Meaning, in other words, is an emergent phenomenon in this universe, and it must be accounted for. And the very idea of God, in this understanding of the universe, must also be grappled with in new ways. Is God the larger presence or field in which this whole event of the universe is taking place? Is God the creative force and meaning expressing itself through the universe, as I am now expressing myself through symbols and words? Faith in this sense, including Christian faith, need not be outdated superstitions, relics of ignorance. It can be part of the vitally important and ongoing human endeavor to de-flatten the universe, to take seriously the dimension of meaning, and to both find and make meaning in this amazing event in which we find ourselves, namely, our very lives in this very universe. ~ Brian D. McLaren Read online here About the Author Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, activist, and public theologian. A former college English teacher and pastor, he is a passionate advocate for “a new kind of Christianity” – just, generous, and working with people of all faiths for the common good. He is an Auburn Senior Fellow and a leader in the Convergence Network, through which he is developing an innovative training/mentoring program for pastors, church planters, and lay leaders called Convergence Leadership Project. He works closely with the Center for Progressive Renewal/Convergence, the Wild Goose Festival and the Fair Food Program‘s Faith Working Group. He is the author of an illustrated children’s book (for all ages) called Cory and the Seventh Story. Other recent books include: The Great Spiritual Migration, We Make the Road by Walking, and Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? (Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World). Brian is a popular conference speaker and a frequent guest lecturer for denominational and ecumenical leadership gatherings – across the US and Canada, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. He has written for or contributed interviews to many periodicals, including Leadership, Sojourners, Tikkun, Worship Leader, and Conversations and is a frequent guest on television, radio, and news media programs, he has appeared on All Things Considered, Larry King Live, Nightline, On Being, and Religion and Ethics Newsweekly. His work has also been covered in Time, New York Times, Christianity Today, Christian Century, the Washington Post, Huffington Post, CNN.com, and many other print and online media. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Gordon I am a "seeker." I know what that means, but when people ask, "What is a seeker?" I can never find an accurate or concise way to explain it. A: By Toni Anne Reynolds Dear Gordon There is so much to seek in this life we live. I wonder what gets lost when you attempt to make the response concise. As a seeker, there is so much that makes you one, and so much that you are asked to see. Your question reminds me of a quote that cannot accurately be attributed to any one figure, but is often credited to Gautama Buddha. The quote is something like “I am the finger pointing to the moon. Don’t look at me, look at the moon.” I wonder what good is accuracy when we have to rely on the thin medium of language to express such mystery? I think “what a seeker” is, is just as vast as the “thing” they are seeking. There’s a reason that the greatest mystics of the ages were artists, too. And, I don’t know that any of them told others that they were “seekers”, I think they just did what they did and shared what they saw as they did it. Because, what they sought, and no doubt found, was also not concisely conveyed. So, they relied on beauty to attempt the brevity. Music, paintings, even poems - though they are made of words - were ways to transcend the confines of grammar and logic in order to point to the boundlessness of That-Which-Is-Sought-After (think Hildegard von Bingen, Credo Mutwa, Rainer Maria Rilke, etc.). Typically, I hear folks identify themselves as a seeker in order to convey their desire to draw closer to the Great Mystery and all of the way it shows up in our day to day lives; a title fit for folk who live beyond religious boundaries, dogmas, historical moments. Maybe it would be of better service to you if you invited the other person to ask you a different question. There’s no reason we have to accept these invitations from others. We can gently offer them to open a different door in our hearts. For example, maybe something like “what happens when you find what you seek?” or even, “have you found what you’ve been seeking?” They assume you haven’t found what it is you seek, so you’re still a seeker. But, is that totally true? I mean, maybe you haven’t found the entirety of what it is that you seek, but I have some confidence that you’ve at least found traces of it. If not, you’d be using your time and attention to do any other number of things. What are the whispers that keep you going? Are those things instead worth sharing when someone asks you the question “what is a seeker?” Because ultimately your path as a seeker is centered on what you seek, not you, the one who is seeking. To be a seeker, in my opinion, is to be the finger that points to the moon. The focus is on the moon. I wonder what creative means you can tap into in order to give something of an answer to a version of that question “what is a seeker?” How can you tell people, even if it’s not with words, that “what a seeker is” is far less important than what the seeker is pursuing? ~ Toni Anne Reynolds Read and share online here About the Author Minister Toni Anne Reynolds is committed to singing flesh onto the bones of the Christian tradition by incorporating recently found texts of the ancient world into liturgy, sermons, and poetry. Toni’s Christianity forms a holy trinity with the psychological medicine of Tibetan Buddhism and the eternal Life found in Yoruba traditions. Balanced in an eclectic faith and focused in theology, Toni’s ministry offers a unique perspective on life, theology, and spirituality. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As a non-profit ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressing Spirit rely heavily on the good will of our donors to help us continue to bring individuals and churches the messages of progressive Christians, Sermons, Weekly Newsletters, along with the many other resources we provide. For years, the majority of our fundraising came at the end of the year. Looking at various ways to create a more reasonable amount of cash flow we decided rather than having a BIG ask at the end of each year, our more frequent asks give folks a chance to contribute when their funds are more flexible. We think that's a win for everyone. We also want to highlight the opportunity to become a sustaining supporter. If you are looking for the best way to help us continue to provide progressive Christian resources, become a sustaining supporter by choosing Recurring Donation. Help keep ProgressiveChristianity.org online and going strong - click here to donate today! * Another way to support us is to leave a bequest in your Will and/or Trust designating us a beneficiary. | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited Anti-Muslim America! The Meaning of our Current Political Anger Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong September 30, 2010 Early in my career, I had a colleague, now deceased, named The Rev. Joseph Kellerman, known to his friends as “Jody.” This man served then as the rector of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Comforter, a suburban middle-class congregation on Park Road in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was also a well-trained specialist in the counseling and treatment of alcoholism. What was remarkable to me about Jody, however, was his understanding of human nature, which was best displayed in his ability to move his congregation effectively without alienating those rooted in yesterday’s value systems. One way he did this was to provoke a major debate each fall in his congregation about the choice of curriculum materials to be used in the Church School. Jody favored an avant garde, experience-oriented curriculum known as the Seabury Series. Vocal members of his congregation leaned toward a more content-centered, Bible-based curriculum that would introduce the children to the “historic faith.” Every fall this fight would be waged with the same results. Jody Kellerman always lost and the traditional members of his church always won. From the outside this annual rite looked very much like an ecclesiastical game, prompting me to ask him on one occasion why he insisted on fighting this battle every fall. In his answer he said, “Jack, a congregation can usually manage only one serious debate a year. So I focus the debate on a subject, the outcome of which I can tolerate either way. I fight, they win and then it’s over. They then don’t get upset about any other issue or anything else that I do.” That was a new insight for me. People are not emotionally capable, nor do they have sufficient internal energy to do battle on several fronts at the same time or to have more than one enemy at a time. When I was an active bishop I took a leaf from Jody’s book. At the annual convention of the Diocese of Newark, to which about 800 people were in attendance, I made sure we had one major debate on the agenda, on a subject about which people had strong feelings. We advertised these issues widely prior to the convention and sometimes even got major media coverage because the media always seems to think a conflict within the church is newsworthy. Among the topics debated were: “Is physician-assisted suicide a moral option for Christians?”; “Why can women not serve as priests and bishops?” (They can now, but not in the seventies when I became bishop); “How can the Bible be called ‘The Word of God’ when it affirms slavery, justifies war discriminates against women and calls for the execution of homosexual people?”; “Is corporal punishment of children ever appropriate parental behavior?”; “Should the church offer a liturgical service to mark a divorce and the end of a marriage or make the sacrament of marriage available to its gay and lesbian members?” What people never seemed to recognize was that the Diocese had no real power and that the purpose of these debates was not to settle this issue by majority vote. What mattered was the quality of the debate, for a moving debate is the process in which the consciousness of the people was raised. When these delegates returned to their local congregations they would in turn make the debate occur again in 130 different settings. It also meant that once great amounts of emotional energy got expended in this debate almost anything else that came before this gathered assembly would pass with little or no controversy. Jody Kellerman was correct; people do not have the ability to fight more than one major battle or have more than one enemy at a time. I have thought about this principle a great deal as I have observed our nation’s political behavior in recent months. There is a sub-stratum of anger in our society today and a desire to blame someone for the perceived malaise as this nation climbs slowly out of the jaws of a very deep recession. Irresponsible political operatives, ever seeking that wedge issue which will propel them into power, have mined this anger in search of their own success. The symptoms of the problems facing this country are easy to attack. The national, state and local debt is high, brought on by two as yet unpaid for wars, the necessity of rescuing major banks, insurance companies and automobile makers from financial ruin, which would have plunged the entire world into a great depression. In addition to these traumas jobs are fragile, spendable income is down and the house valuations, in which the biggest percentage of most Americans' wealth is located, are today at rock bottom levels. With anxiety so high and tempers so short our politics, reflecting the national mood, have become frightening and insecurity is rampant. The national tendency is to look for victims to blame. George Bush, the target in the last election, worked for a while, but he has faded from sight. President Barack Obama is a new, convenient and available target. As the first African-American president, he is a visible receptacle into whom we can pour our still repressed racism, hiding it under the camouflage of worrying about such things as “the expansion of government” or the national debt, topics which worried us not at all in the earlier and greedier years of this century as we lowered taxes, extended drug benefits and fought wars with no consideration of what these actions did to the nation’s economy. Today, however, anyone who is in power is destined to be the recipient of this anger, making it difficult for members of either party to run for office as incumbents. There is a great need to project that anger outward. Adolf Hitler once rose to power during the great depression by funneling German anger into a white hot hatred of the Jews. Arab states like Saudi Arabia maintain political power in the family of the House of Saud by focusing their schools, and thus the lives of their children, on fundamentalistic Islamic fury against “the godless infidels of the west.” Previous Republican administrations maintained power by hyping the color-coded alerts against “the terrorists” and when the terrorists began to fade, they began to attack “activist judges” and gay and lesbian people who were beginning to demand equality and justice. If it is true, however that one can only fight one major battle or have only one enemy at a time, these scattershot negativities were not emotionally satisfying so this nation’s anger began to look for a popular enemy who could be identified as the cause of our fear and distress, around which all could rally. That is exactly what I see happening in the United States at this moment. Look with me at the evidence! Homosexuality and homosexual persons no longer have much appeal as a target for our anger. Our consciousness and sensitivity on this subject has grown, making attacks on the homosexual quest for equality seem like little more than primitive ignorance, making this battle look antiquated. In recent weeks the California vote in favor of Proposition 8 was struck down by the courts. The long and detailed opinion of Judge Vaughn Walker actually ridiculed the arguments of opponents as little more than undocumentable fear and irrationality. The court, for example, discovered no evidence that opening marriage to gay couples would weaken marriage, destroy family life or that children raised by gay couples would be somehow impaired. The fascinating thing was that there was little public reaction to this opinion. Conservative political voices were almost mute, rising only to the level of whimpering. Clearly the nation has moved on. Yes, that opinion will be appealed until it reaches the Supreme Court where it could even be reversed, given the conservative makeup of that court, but it almost doesn’t matter. All that reversal could do is to postpone the inevitable. That battle is over. Marriage will ultimately be declared to be a constitutional right, guaranteed to all citizens regardless of sexual orientation. Lost causes do not drain hostility! The next revelatory moment came with the surprising announcement that Ken Mehlman, who ran the Bush campaign for the White House in 2004, was a gay man. Please remember that the 2004 Bush campaign, with Mehlman’s support, put gay marriage on the ballot in closely contested Ohio to maximize the evangelical vote and thus win a second term for Bush. Now this man has indicated that he is working for gay rights and equality in marriage for homosexual people! Once again, it was a one-day story, hardly commented on even by the 24-hour news channels that maximize ratings by hyping every story to “end of the world” proportions. Negative energy is still rampant in our country, but homosexual people are no longer its target. Where has it gone? Look at the passion aroused by the plans to build a Muslim community center two blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center. This project has been called by one politician “a dagger aimed at the heart of every American mother.” Newt Gingrich began to campaign against “Sharia Law,” as if anyone was trying to impose it on this country. Then there was the story of the deluded preacher with a 50-member church in Florida, who was going to commemorate 9/11 by burning the Quran in a public ceremony. We no longer have the time to hate homosexuals because we are busy hating Muslims and Islam. Some even try to tie them to President Obama by hinting that he is himself a Muslim and an illegal alien. It is a scary time in American history and I hope our sanity and equilibrium will return before we vote some of this crowd of crazy politicians into office. So long as we can hate an external enemy we do not have to face such things as our own corporate greed, our insensitivity to the poor and our suppressed racism. We can have only one major battle or enemy at a time. So it is now “hate Muslims” time in America. Someday maturity and wisdom will be restored to our national discourse. We wait for that day! ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Practicing Spirituality at Home with Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat This popular e-course in our “Practicing Spirituality” series consists of 40 daily emails. It offers practices, rituals, reminders, and prayers to help you bring more focus and intentionality to the ordinary things you do at home. We will share some of the attitudes and actions recommended by 40 of our favorite writers on this subject, including Sue Bender, Edward Hays, Alan Morinis, Pema Chodron, Brenda Peterson, Gary Thorp, Deng Ming-Dao, Donald Altman, Melannie Svoboda, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Brian Doyle, Anthony Lawlor, Drew Leder, Henri Nouwen, and many others. Online May 2nd - June 10th. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] India plus emergency option.
by Ellie Stock 28 Apr '21

28 Apr '21

Dittos--prayers for India and so many nations that are now strugging without vaccines. Hope the US will share vaccines and also encourage the waiving of patents so they can be more easily, equitably, and less expensively shared with other countries that are in dire need of yhe vaccines. Ellieelliestock(a)aol.com On Wednesday, April 28, 2021, 05:21:29 AM CDT, James Wiegel via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: I guess I started this little thread with the picture of India and the numbers . . . Wanting to say I am in prayer for that great country and its people (those I have known and those I have not)— and for all of us as we continue to journey through this pandemic — I, too, am anxious and uncertain and surrounded by anxiety and uncertainty here in Tolleson, Arizona, both face to face and in cyberspace. Have we heard from colleagues there? Would that we had the care in all aspects that dear Tim demonstrates on these lists! Jim Wiegel “We are all time travelers journeying into the future. But let us make that future a place we want to visit. “ Stephen Hawking On Apr 27, 2021, at 8:52 PM, Sharon Fisher via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: Thanks, Tim! On Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 1:29 PM Mary Kurian D'Souza via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: Thank you Tim.I support your posture. On Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 2:07 AM Timothy Wegner via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: David, please don't spread vaccination misinformation on the list. It's actually NOT that hard to know what to believe if you make some effort. A simple google search suffices. I'm glad you got your vaccination. There actually is some peer reviewed science about Vitamin D helping providing some help to the immune system, but it's not a miracle cure or preventative. As far as your dubious Dr. Cole, here's what Factcheck.org says: https://www.factcheck.org/2021/04/scicheck-idaho-doctor-makes-baseless-clai… As list moderator, I hereby declare debates about vaccine efficacy off topic. Please no more, and feel free to email me privately. The problem is misinformation requires ten times the effort to refute as it takes to spread. We don't need that here. That said, I don't really want to ban helpful information on staying safe and getting vaccinated, though I expect our aging list members are pretty well along with being vaccinated. (signed) Tim, who moderates this list ever so rarely, but whose buttons were pushed by the ant-vax video David posted. On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 11:11 PM David Yost via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: Dr. Cole is a Mayo Clinic trained Board Certified Pathologist. https://www.bitchute.com/video/hfzL5gUeQvxr/ I would encourage you to watch this as Dr. Cole says "the shot" is not really a vaccination, but that is what they want us to to think it is. Vitamin D may provide even better protection against a number of Viruses and any variant strains. Then there is Ivermectin - I am going to see how to get a prescription for that as well. I went ahead and got my "First Shot" (Moderna) on 4-20-21. So far so good, I am also taking Vitamin D3. Hard to know what to believe.-- On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 1:03 PM W. J. via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: More than you ever wanted to know about ivermectin.MarshallIvermectin and Covid-19: how a cheap antiparasitic became political | | | | | | | | | | | Ivermectin and Covid-19: how a cheap antiparasitic became political The common antiparasitic ivermectin is being touted as a miracle Covid-19 cure worldwide, despite health authori... | | | On Sunday, April 25, 2021, 11:07:13 AM PDT, Jack Gilles via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: Sarah, I can give you feedback. I have a dear friend who lives in Mumbai,in one of the further suburbs. She was trying to go get her second shot tomorrow and has had to cancel. She says the whole thing is a Living Hell. Those numbers are the number of cases, not deaths. But the death rate is climbing. A city the size of New Delhi is down to 6 beds available for Covid patients. There are no jobs for a huge migrant population that work in the service industry. Having lived there for 22 years I can attest to how many and how well it functioned. Then Covid came and because they don’t have savings they are heading home. But trains now have limits to how many can travel due to Covid (with masks). You can see video of hundreds of cars sidelined because they cannot be used. Many people from other States in the country are reversing the journey and walking across the country. The Prime Minister is in deep trouble because his measures are not working. I live in Mexico now and India was the main source for much of its vaccines. India has stopped all exports. I am 81 and still can’t get a shot here in Nayarit. The good news is that we are quite separated from other houses, but the local village is not. It will just be a matter of time before the virus will strike here. Right now they are not vaccinating the whole population, only if you are over 60 years of age. There is lots more, but I hope that gives you a clearer picture. Peace, Jack On Apr 25, 2021, at 12:52 PM, Sarah H. Buss via Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: Is this map # of deaths, cases or what? My homework and meditation recommendations: send all available one dose Johnson & Johnson to India (and perhaps to US southern border). Additionally , Massive emergency and more easily implemented treatment might be ivermectin. A recent video of global panel of doctors suggests that ivermectin might be a safe and effective treatment for Covid. I am unable to type conversations on the subject but would welcome feedback.Sarah Sent from my iPhone On Apr 25, 2021, at 12:06 PM, James Wiegel via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: <1619370349826blob.jpg> Jim Wiegel Theunknown is what is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybodyscurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, allthat. Unknown is what is. Accept that it's unknown, and it's plainsailing. John Lennon 401 North Beverly Way,Tolleson, Arizona 85353 623-363-3277 jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com <1619370349826blob.jpg>_______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net _______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net -- Grace & Peace David Yost 720-365-6698 "What life means to us is determined not so much by what life brings to us as by the attitude we bring to life; not so much by what happens to us as our reaction to what happens". Lewis Dunning_______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net -- saf1220(a)gmail.com c: 503.807.7385_______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net

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India
by James Wiegel 25 Apr '21

25 Apr '21

Jim Wiegel Theunknown is what is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybodyscurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, allthat. Unknown is what is. Accept that it's unknown, and it's plainsailing. John Lennon 401 North Beverly Way,Tolleson, Arizona 85353 623-363-3277 jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com

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4/22/2021, Progressing Spirit: Toni Anne Reynolds: Habits Can Help or Hurt…; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 23 Apr '21

23 Apr '21

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screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv0606125086 #yiv0606125086templateBody .yiv0606125086mcnTextContent, #yiv0606125086 #yiv0606125086templateBody .yiv0606125086mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv0606125086 #yiv0606125086templateFooter .yiv0606125086mcnTextContent, #yiv0606125086 #yiv0606125086templateFooter .yiv0606125086mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Habits Can Help or Hurt… | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Toni Anne Reynolds About a year ago my partner and I relocated. The tale of doing so in the midst of a global pandemic makes great content for an SNL episode. Some of the scenes were tragic, some definitely hilarious, and others would include some profundity. One of the striking moments in the move happened as we traveled the road that leads to our new home. Surrounded by water, we saw all sorts of water fowl, most of which cannot be found on the mighty river Hudson where we had recently departed. Just off of this road we spotted two nesting Ospreys. Right off of the dock of a lonely bed and breakfast, we watched these two birds tend to their giant nest. As days went to weeks, extra heads popped up just over the edge of the nest. The locals say that this couple of hawks have been returning to this dock for at least the last three years to hatch more chicks. Despite the roar of pick-up trucks, hurricane winds, and dozens of fishing boats, these precious birds are left alone to do what they do. The environment in which they build their yearly home seems to support them well. The nature that dwells around our new home is just as beautiful to us. However, there are some challenges. Living below sea level, surrounded by water, means there are water moccasins, snapping turtles, and even occasional alligators. We’ve yet to come face to face with the most intense creatures in nature’s roster, but there have been less dramatic encounters with some other-than-human neighbors that are worthy of note. It took us about two weeks to realize it, but a wasp had been nesting in the gap between our back door and the screen door. Sneaking in through the smallest crack in the screen door, this wasp had managed to build a nest about the size of a golf ball. I was immediately conflicted. Though I do not like flying or crawling things in my living space, I am the kind who will find a cup and a piece of paper to capture the critter and escort it outside of our home. In this case, I didn’t know what to do. “We can manage without using the back door”, I thought. “A wasp nest can get to be the size of a basketball, or even bigger in some cases,” said Google. So, there it was decided. The nest had to go. These two examples get me thinking about a number of things. As I watch the United States begin to “reopen” after an already clumsy response to COVID 19, I’m mostly thinking about the decision-making process behind our regular habits. We have experienced a great disruption to our habits as the pandemic required a variety of shifts. Whether we liked the changes or not, they forced us to make new habits. Some of those habits have led to incredible bursts of innovation, and others have created a new kind of strain and suffering. Though it’s been only one year of our lives, we are likely to be responding to this past year of intense change for the foreseeable future. This means we get to be strategic about how we build habits as yet another shift is beginning to take place. While I am not personally optimistic about the idea of opening things up with the speed I see in my local community, it is happening. Without much help I find myself questioning if I will be more like the Osprey or the wasp. These ospreys have return to this particular dock because it works for them, even through difficulty. For a few years they have successfully reared the next generations of osprey. It makes sense for them to return to the dock again this spring for another round of generating. Despite the disturbances of two hurricanes, they found a way to push through and be well in doing so. The wasp, though it may not be the same wasp as last year, has returned to the space between our back doors. It is still not a good place to build a giant complex for baby wasps. If no one lived in the building it would be a different story. My grandmother, who has lived in the house for the last 30 years, said she’s been removing wasps from that door way for “a long time now”. She has three kinds of wasp killer under her sink, which seems excessive to me but they seem to persist. I wonder how many times it, or other wasps, will return to this 2-inch gap only to be forcibly relocated. It seems that there’s a wasp realtor spreading the word about this location without sharing the fact that it is a very temporary rental location. I know it’s not quite fair to compare the habits of two very different creatures. But I needed some way to illustrate the way our choices can affect our livelihood. I also needed some way to situate that illustration inside the very real context of our shared pandemic environment. We may very well be on the upswing. I hear lots of reports and celebrities talk about the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, but the habits we employ will make the way there. We can be osprey, returning to sites, employing practices that can withstand adversity. We can also be wasps, returning to gaps that are too small for us, in environments that do not serve our best interests. While most of life holds moments that we do not control, the habits we live by are most definitely within our reach. Despite the very wild hurricane year we have endured, we are still here to see another day. The choices we make, the relationships we nurture, the environments we spend our time nesting in, will make all the difference in our outcome. Knowing that the hammer of the pandemic landed harder on some communities than it did others means that each of us will have to navigate this transition with a personal type of discernment. The harder it was to survive the past year, the more support you may need as this so called “light at the end of the tunnel” approaches. Find the organizations, online communities, hotlines, resources that are available to help you out of the tunnel. If you feel like you fared it pretty well, consider how you can solidify the stuff that’s going well for you at the moment. The more stable you are through the upcoming/currently happening shift, the easier it will be to serve your community in meaningful ways. ~ Toni Anne Reynolds Read online here About the Author Minister Toni Anne Reynolds is committed to singing flesh onto the bones of the Christian tradition by incorporating recently found texts of the ancient world into liturgy, sermons, and poetry. Toni’s Christianity forms a holy trinity with the psychological medicine of Tibetan Buddhism and the eternal Life found in Yoruba traditions. Balanced in an eclectic faith and focused in theology, Toni’s ministry offers a unique perspective on life, theology, and spirituality. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Alex God, as viewed in the Old Testament is a God who demands that we please him. He was a God of Punishment, and reward. Those who pleased him were rewarded and those who offended him were punished. Because they lived in a pre-Newtonian age God also controlled the weather and disease. Jesus came to teach us that this isn’t so. God loves us unconditionally. We do not have to please him in order to be accepted. God’s world is one of natural consequences. But the Church continued to operate in OT ways, salvation had to be earned and we were all sinners. Parents also use punishment and reward even though studies establish that punishment does not work, NEVER. When will the Church follow and show the teachings of Jesus and teach parents to discipline by using consequences within the limits of safety? A: By Rev. Fran Pratt Dear Alex,It sounds like you have some pretty definite ideas about parenting, which I appreciate and mostly agree with. I am trying to raise my own children to understand the natural consequences of their actions, and to move away from the “good behavior = acceptance” parenting paradigm. I’m trying to raise them gently, intuitively, and to validate their authenticity and inner voices. I even agree with you that there is a theological basis for making some parenting decisions, and that bad theology translates to bad (harmful) parenting practices. I myself was raised in the authoritarian way typical of Evangelical patriarchal churchy people in the 80’s and 90’s. I sustained much harm and have had many, many broken paradigms and patterns to break free of, despite the fact that I was well-cared-for by loving parents who did their best. But your question of WHEN your ideas as presented might be adopted by the larger Church, or even the smaller stream of Progressive Christian Churches … I could not possibly conjecture. I’ll tell you this: I’m hopeful. In my generation and pastoral work I see and interact with LOTS of thoughtful, kind, attentive, intuitive, gentle and intentional parents. I have so many friends whom I look up to as parenting models and whom I call when I’m in a parenting quandary. If you knew my friends you’d be hopeful too. I’d venture to guess that my own generation is parenting more diligently and more thoughtfully than any generation before - they/we have learned psychology, read studies and data, hire therapists, do our inner work, own our mistakes, apologize to our kids when we get it wrong. We expect ourselves and our kids to be imperfect and go with that perfectly imperfect flow. I’d encourage you to a) be encouraged and b) be non-judgmental. You may consider yourself an expert and your ideas about parenting may be the best ideas. But that doesn’t mean everyone else is going to be ready at the same time to adopt them, nor that that is their particular path, nor have you met every kid or parented through every tricky situation. You’ll probably have to be patient with people. Parenting is hard and Covid Parenting is even harder. These major paradigm shifts take time but they ARE happening. ~ Rev. Fran Pratt Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Fran Pratt is a pastor, writer, musician, and mystic. Making meaningful and beautiful liturgy to be spoken, practiced, and sung, is at the heart of her creative drive. Fran authored a book of congregational litanies, and regularly creates and shares modern liturgy on her website and Patreon. Her prayers are prayed in churches of various sizes and traditions across the globe. She writes, speaks, and consults on melding ancient and new liturgical streams in faith and worship. Fran is Pastor of Worship and Liturgy at Peace of Christ Church in Round Rock, Texas. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As a non-profit ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressing Spirit rely heavily on the good will of our donors to help us continue to bring individuals and churches the messages of progressive Christians, Weekly Newsletters, along with the many other resources we provide. For years, the majority of our fundraising came at the end of the year. Looking at various ways to create a more reasonable amount of cash flow we decided rather than having a BIG ask at the end of each year, our more frequent asks give folks a chance to contribute when their funds are more flexible. We think that's a win for everyone. We also want to highlight the opportunity to become a sustaining supporter. If you are looking for the best way to help us continue to provide progressive Christian resources, become a sustaining supporter by choosing Recurring Donation. Help keep ProgressiveChristianity.org online and going strong - click here to donate today! * Another way to support us is to leave a bequest in your Will and/or Trust designating us a beneficiary. | | | | | | | | | | | This Week's Featured Author Brian McLaren A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith A New Kind of Christianity is Brian D. McLaren’s much anticipated follow-up to his breakthrough work of the emergent-church movement, A New Kind of Christian. In this controversial and thought-provoking book, McLaren explores the questions that will determine the shape of Christianity for the next 500 years. Read More ... | | | | | | | | | Thank you for enjoying our free Q&A each week. We would like to introduce you to our subscription newsletter with thousands of subscribers around the globe. Learn more about our history here.Progressing Spirit challenges the authors whom you have enjoyed reading in the free Q&A, who are some of the world’s top thinkers, to offer their best insights about what’s happening on the leading edge in an exclusive column sent weekly. Whether it’s about what will happen with the currently declining Church, what new models of intentional spiritual community may look like, or how we take part in the quest for equality and inclusivity, these conversations and many more are deeply explored by best selling authors, social leaders, and cutting edge innovators. To sign up is only $3 per month or $30 per year - this helps offset the payment to these wonderful authors. In addition to the exclusive column, you will receive a weekly Q&A based on questions from our readers, plus a Bishop Spong revisited column, as well as access to the full Archive of Bishop John Shelby Spong and our other authors! | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited China Revisited, Part III Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong September 23, 2010There are no Gideon Bibles in the hotel rooms of modern China. There are not even books expressing the beauty of Buddhism, Taoism or the writings of Confucius. There is not even the last will and testament of Conrad Hilton! The emphasis of this nation is almost totally on material well being. I experienced religion in China as almost non-existent at best, still viewed with hostility at worst. In our time in this ancient land, I saw only two pagodas and both were places for tourists to visit and not places in which people might worship. I saw no Buddhist temples and no statues of Buddha to which human yearnings might be expressed. The only Buddhas I saw were in the tourist shops and they were icons of the fat Buddha, the laughing Buddha. One Chinese guide referred to obese American tourists as having “Buddha bellies” and told us that the purpose of the statues of the fat Buddha was that by rubbing the Buddha’s belly one could have good luck. That was as close to a religious motif as I experienced. In Thailand several years ago, Buddhist monks in their distinctive orange garb were a familiar public sight and occupied an honored position in the culture’s fabric. During the latter stages of the Vietnam War, the public immolation of Buddhist monks was a powerful, intense and effective protest against that war and became a world wide story. In all of the lectures and briefings heard while in China, religion was mentioned only once and that was pejoratively. The Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation, we were told, has served only the purpose of keeping people content with their then dismal status, since Buddhism promised that by being content with their lot now, they would gain for themselves a more favorable status in the next incarnation. Religion, they said, had been nothing more than a tool of the wealthy with which to control and to pacify the masses. It was an opiate for the people, which they were eager to erase from their memories. >From time to time an allusion to religion would come up tangentially. In a presentation on China’s “one child per family” policy, the government, we were told, made birth control devices, principally the contraceptive pill and condoms, universally and freely available without any protest from any religious source. In the discussion about determining the health and sex of the unborn, we were told that abortion for either a defective fetus or an unwanted gender was both government-sponsored and freely available. Once again, there was no debate, we were told, from any religious source. We also learned from background reading that during the implementation and enforcement of this one child per family policy, forced sterilization of women was widespread. When second pregnancies occurred, forced abortions were ruthlessly carried out even in the third trimester or at near term. The state’s right to control the population of the people was not treated differently from its controlling the use of the land or engineering the growth of cattle or sheep. The goals might well be laudatory but the tactics used were frequently a violation of the most basic of human freedoms. I met one person who admitted to being a Buddhist only to amend that statement quickly by saying “I was raised as a Buddhist.” When asked what she meant, she replied, “Buddhism is an internal thing. It is no longer an external religion. No one attends a Buddhist temple or participates in Buddhist worship.” The closest thing to a cultural religious celebration, she said, was the observance of the Chinese New Year. It appeared that religion had become so benign that no government energy was needed to oppose its influence. I found China to be the most secular, post-religious culture I have ever encountered. On an earlier trip to China in 1988, I had actually felt encouraged by what I saw of the Chinese Christian movement. It was small and statistically irrelevant as a force in China’s burgeoning population, but it seemed to me to possess integrity since it had shed its ties to western powers, abandoned western denominational structures and was well on its way to becoming indigenously Chinese. In that year I preached in a packed Chinese Christian church in Shanghai and visited a theological seminary where candidates for ordination were being trained. During its enforced exile, Chinese Christianity had become primarily a lay-led, largely non-institutional movement. On this trip, however, I saw no evidence of its presence. I am aware of the Vatican’s continuing struggle over who has the right to name China’s Catholic leaders, but while that might be a big issue in Rome it is not significant in China. The government officially is not anti-religious, but it is anti-any outside authority being imposed on anything Chinese. Two things came to my mind as I tried to understand China’s emerging future. One was a reference in Colleen McCullough’s Australian novel, The Thorn Birds, in which she described the attitude of outback sheep herders toward their flocks. Australian outback ranches would contain literally thousands of acres and tens of thousands of sheep. The flocks were indeed so numerous that one individual sheep seemed to be of little value. The process of castrating the lambs to ensure their use for eating needed to be done quickly and efficiently so these herders would accomplish this task simply by biting off the animal’s testicles and spitting them out. She compared this to the way pet dogs were treated in New York City where, in their scarcity, they were dressed for the weather, fed a healthy diet and cared for by a host of veterinarians. Her point was that great numbers of animals create an attitude in which no individual animal was valued while scarcity causes pets to be treated with almost excessive pampering and caring. Perhaps the same thing is true in regard to human beings. In the west, that has only recently begun to be aware of overpopulation, the individual and individual rights have generally been respected. In a massive population like China’s current 1.3 billion people individual rights can no longer be protected if they are in conflict with the needs of the whole society. Maybe it is inevitable that with overpopulation, individual rights will always be sacrificed for the well being of the whole. If that is so, the human rights violations visible in China today are simply the prelude to what the whole world faces if human population continues to expand uncontrollably, as it has done in the last century. It is a scary, even a sobering thought, but I suspect a real one. The other image that came to my mind was the famous kitchen debate that took place in 1959 in Moscow between Vice President Richard Nixon of the United States and Communist Party General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union. The debate was about which system, capitalism or communism, could produce the higher standard of living for its people. It was conducted at a World’s Fair that had all the most modern kitchen, labor-saving devices on display. It was also basically a materialistic debate. The goal was for each leader to tout the material splendor that provided “the good life” for the majority of its citizens. America’s ingenuity was at that time clearly superior to that of the leading nation in the communist world. Certainly, at that time, the average American standard of living clearly topped that of the Soviet Union. Even then, however, the material wealth in the west was unevenly distributed. In the richest land in the world, people at the edges were still homeless and still hungry and literally millions had no health care. In the Soviet Union, the wealth at the top was clearly capped, but the poverty at the bottom was also being addressed. What worried me in that debate, however, was that free enterprise capitalism was being advocated only for its ability to create material wealth. China has today combined communist control with market capitalism to create the most dramatic rise in the standard of living of a major nation that I have ever witnessed. They might even demonstrate in time that total state control of market forces for the benefit of the people might well win the contest for material plenty. What I saw in China would never convince me, however, that the sacrifice of human freedom for material plenty represented a superior system. It is the deepest principles of my religion that for me stand as the front line of defense against the violation of human dignity. Is self-conscious human life holy? I think it is. Is self-conscious human life made more deeply and fully human by the experience of being loved and infinitely valued? I think it is. Is the call of self-conscious human life to be all that each of us can be an ultimate value around which society must be organized? I think it is. I do not know how else the dignity of human life will ever be preserved if producing material plenty for all is the only and ultimate value affirmed by any government or any economic system. Human value rests, I believe, on a definition of human life as of infinite worth. I do not believe that value is one that can be sacrificed in the achievement of economic plenty. It is also not achievable unless the political and economic system contains a dedication to the idea of the sacredness of life. Free enterprise capitalism has its faults. It is propelled far too often by greed and ignores the plight of the poor. It shares its wealth with the masses too unfairly, but it nonetheless does not allow the individual to be totally dehumanized by the state and treated only as a cog in a great economic wheel. It still salutes individual rights grounded in a religious definition of what it means to be human. I will fight to maintain that value even as I fight to make the economic system of the west more fair and more compassionate. If we compete with the communist world only on the basis of which system can create the most wealth, China may very well win that contest in the future. Indeed today China finances America’s way of life by being the primary holder of America’s debt. Yet the value, the sacredness of human life, is so central and so important to me that it should trump economic plenty every time. It is that which I believe that only a religious understanding of life can ultimately provide. This is why I am a Christian. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World As an indigenous person, Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from a unique perspective, one tied to the natural and spiritual world. Considering how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation, he raises important questions. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently? Online May 4th - 6:00pm - 7:00pm READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Copyright © 2021 ProgressiveChristianity.org, a 501(3)c. All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: 4810 Pt. Fosdick Dr. #80, Gig Harbor, WA 98335 253-507-8678 - contact(a)progressivechristianity.org You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. | | | |

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This from a ToP colleague
by James Wiegel 22 Apr '21

22 Apr '21

Happy Earth Day! Music created to go with Pope Francis’, “Laudato Si”. https://www.ncronline.org/news/earthbeat/now-playing-pope-francis-ecologica… Please feel free to pass this on to others. Kathy Sent from my iPad Jim Wiegel “We are all time travelers journeying into the future. But let us make that future a place we want to visit. “ Stephen Hawking

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Earth Day Vesper Service; songs; blog
by Ellie Stock 22 Apr '21

22 Apr '21

Dear ICA/OE Friends! Happy Earth Day/Week! Thanks for the Earth Day messages, poetry and Laudato Si music that have been posted this morning. Today I find myself both lamenting Earth's crisis and humanity's continuing complicity in its destruction and also celebrating Earth's beauty and its continually unfolding wonder--caught between bad Judeo/Christian Biblical interpretation/theology that spurred humanity to "dominate" the land and all that is in it through violence and extraction and also a vision that calls humanity to beat swords into plowshares and be midwives of a New Heaven and New Earth. So related to Earth Day, I thought I would share . . . Carleton and I coordinate the Earth Care Team at Second Presbyterian Church, where we attend. To celebrate Earth Day, in addition to our morning service, we will be hosting an evening outdoor in person campfire s'more Earth Day Vesper Service. -Attached: a draft of the service, using Native American and Celtic motifs. -Below: -info about the vesper service with links to two songs that will be used; -a link to a blog by Carleton written for our presbytery's e-news for Earth Day; -Lyrics to song: A NEW HEAVEN AND NEW EARTH APRIL 25 EARTH DAY CAMPFIRE/S'MORES IN-PERSON VESPER SERVICE All are invited to Second Presbyterian Church's EARTH DAY VESPER SERVICE, Sunday, April 25, 6:00 PM in the church parking lot, hosted by the Earth Care Team. We will be gathering around a "campfire", worshiping together, and then enjoying a time of fellowship and making s'mores. Food and utensils will be provided. Bring a chair, wear a mask, and practice social distancing. Parking may be on the street or on the left side of the church parking lot, as you enter the lot. Come celebrate the gift of God's Creation and our call to care for Earth and all that is in it. All are invited to wear GREEN! Vesper songs: Let the Earth Breathe: 2.15.21 Let the Earth Breathe.mp4 Now I Walk in Beauty: Now I Walk In Beauty Libana- Fire Within - YouTube Carleton's Earth Day blog. He coordinates the presbytery's Earth Care Team. Earth Day 2021 - Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy (glpby.org) ANEW HEAVEN AND NEW EARTH Whoknows why the star lights the planet Whycreation stretches in vastness Whyso small a creature as I am Meetsand feels the wonder at hand. Whoknows what the wind whispers softly Whatthe land recalls from life’s dawning Whatlife’s goodness bids us now to choose Whatnew thing we’re given to do Whoknows where the Earth greets the rainbow Wherethe river beckons to go Wherethe road will lead us to enter Anew way that seeks no return Whoknows how the eagle wing soars so Howthe mountain moves upon order Howthe serpent laughs with the white dove Bringingforth new beings filled with love Whoknows when the waves kiss the shore line Whensand castles shift to the sea Whennew footprints christen the strange birth Ofa new heaven and new earth. ejhs Have a great Earth Day/week! Ellie elliestock(a)aol.com

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Happy Earth Day!
by Robertson Work 22 Apr '21

22 Apr '21

Every day is Earth Day <http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fFY0n0NotpU/U1ZtehZ7lxI/AAAAAAAAATA/Zu8ao0Vduw4/s…>Every day is Earth day and always has been the only place we have ever known a day or night or anything else at all these years, four billion, two million, 200,000, 5,000, twenty fourteen hooray for our heavenly home, beautiful beyond beauty, alive beyond aliveness, abundant for all and yet, and yet we humans divide and hoard and pillage and rape and harm our mother, our own body; but now is waking up time making up time time to cherish and conserve for the next 1,000, million, billion years or so yes let's (page 8 in my book Earthling Love: Living Poems) ............................................. Author page for my books: https://www.amazon.com/Robertson-Work/e/B075612GBF Blogsite: https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/ Website: https://www.robertsonwork.com/

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4/15/2021, Progressing Spirit, Rev. Fran Pratt, Easter People; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 15 Apr '21

15 Apr '21

| | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Easter People | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Fran Pratt April 15, 2021 This past Lent I practiced lying fallow. I avoided news and social media. I wrote all my Lenten liturgies ahead of time. I gave myself permission to do the bare minimum of work (I’m a pastor and parent, so this part was flexible). I imagined myself as a field, unplanted in a year of Jubilee. I imagined myself as a seed, waiting for Spring, gathering resources for my eventual sprouting. I imagined myself as a caterpillar cocooned, transforming in silence and stillness. I rested in ways I don’t remember having done in my life before. And I’ve emerged from this period with a new knowing: I don’t want to go back to the way things were before. I want this unhurried ease and unworried calm as my home-base way of being. “Unhurried and unworried” is one of my mantras for 2021. This is my intention for my life. I acknowledge that is it a privilege to even consider wanting an unhurried and unworried life. I believe it’s a gift and privilege any time we are able to move away from productivity/grind culture. But also that we collectively have a responsibility to move away from it, which is another conversation. Anyway, I am in gratitude for the opportunity. As I’ve contemplated the rhythms of Lent moving into Easter, new layers of insight have come to me. Lent is an invitation into penitence; and my own definition of penitence has shifted. I’ve come to understand it, not as a practice of self-punishment, but as a practice of self-examination and shadow work. I define penitence as a posture of willingness to go into shadow and address what is there. In this way, Lent is a powerful guardrail against spiritual bypassing. Lent culminates in Good Friday and Holy Saturday, in which Christ resides entombed. During which his followers weep and mourn. Until. What looks like silence and stillness turns out to be a cocoon of transformation! What looks like death turns out to be life! So, because we know the whole story, we can hold this tension of observing what is, what broken systems and paradigms exist, what patterns of harm, what false beliefs, working to uncover and dismantle them; even as we do not give them our fullest attention. Even as our consciousness is drawn to the grander story of a good and loving Creator who is able to transmute every death and every agony into beauty, hope, joy. And so are we. I am willing to do this work, which often involves digging deep to unearth these old patterns and paradigms of thought and behavior that no longer serve me or the collective; which often involves authentic lament and grief. But I don’t want to live in Lent, or in shadow work, or in grief, in perpetuity. Lent is not my ultimate reality. The reason for this is: I am an Easter person. I integrate the lessons of Lent, and I willingly go into the practices of Lent; but in the end I choose to live inside the energy of Easter. I take Christ up on the invitation to live with him in this energy of resurrection, of new life, of abundance, of joy, of peace. I observe strong scriptural and historical precedent for this attitude (which is, again, another conversation). But I admit that I and the white evangelical faith tradition that raised me got this wrong again and again, in large part by its unwillingness to embrace a theology of liberation. Instead of preaching liberation and jubilee as so many faith communities of Color have rightly led the way in, white evangelicalism preached purity culture, exclusion, patriarchy, and white supremacy; and is now reaping the reward of irrelevance. Still, though, I feel the echoes of that Puritan pessimism in the more progressive circles I run in today. We don’t preach hellfire and damnation anymore, but we are often weary and jaded anyway. Constant “resisting,” constant attention to social media, social problems and very real injustice leaves us hopeless and embittered. Of course it does. But here’s the question that plagues me as I look around at the world. If we, followers of the one we call the Christ, truly believe that Christ completed the work of Easter, and we believe that work completed cycles of suffering, punishment, sacrifice, shame, and debt; then why do we still acquiesce to structures of suffering, punishment, sacrifice, shame, and debt? Why do we still choose to live inside those structures? Why do we not claim our God-given power to imagine and build a better, more joyful, more easeful, more equitable, more abundant way forward? Ok, I know why: because we (I, too often) more readily believe in the reality our senses perceive than we do the reality of Heaven on Earth. In that case, what are we fooling with Christianity for? If Heaven on Earth, the Kin(g)dom of God, the Community of Heaven is just a pipe-dream, then why pay attention to Jesus at all? If Jesus’ vision for the world is a pipe-dream, then I may as well become a secular humanist social justice warrior. Which is a fine thing to be - I love y’all - it just isn’t what I am. I am a follower of a spiritual teacher whose main claims to fame are non-violence, forgiveness, and RESURRECTION; and I believe hope, peace, and joy are our birthrights. Surely, SURELY there is a way to be both realistic and engaged with the world without spiritual bypassing (Lent), AND keep hold of joy, peace, and (dare I mention it) happiness (Easter). If we are Christ followers even in the broadest sense, then I think the invitation is for us to be Easter people. Here are some characteristics of Easter People as I imagine us: - We are dedicated to gratitude and harness its transformative power. - We spend time imagining the Heaven-on-Earth world and working to build that reality out. - We regularly rest from our labors and take intentional breaks for renewal. - We value creativity and seek to foster it everywhere. - We value the earth, resolutely practice earth-care, and seek to live lightly here. - We learn to live in the Now, in the present moment - learning from the past but not clinging to it. - We listen to our intuition, and to the Spirit within us. - We choose non-hierarchal organizational arrangements, knowing that the future is communal. - We make plenty of space for joy, pleasure, enjoyment, and heart-level good cheer. - We attend to the needs of the societally marginalized, not out of pity but out of excitement to learn what these voices have to teach and to witness their thriving. - We support one another’s individual soul and spiritual journeys, celebrating uniqueness and diversity of path and experience. - We learn to observe our egos, and to laugh at their antics. - We savor our sense of humor. - We give preference to the least-privileged out of our steadfast faith in abundance. - We value contemplation over knee-jerk reaction. - We live in a posture of trusting expectation that goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives. - We understand that each human is traveling their path to the best of their ability, therefore we have no need of cultish or controlling cultures. - We know that there’s “nothing to prove and nothing to defend.” - We value integrated, sustainable systems and know that exploitation and over-consumption are part of the old ways. - We consider imperfection a gift. - We regard privilege as an opportunity to share and raise others up. You could probably list some of your own. I put these imaginations out into the universe with great hope and love. I put my energy and intention behind them. And I strive (even imperfectly) to align my actions and use of resources with my words. In these ways, being an Easter Person means I speak of myself in terms of what I am for, rather than by what I might be working against. In fact, it’s not my intention to push or struggle against anything; rather, I intend to simply go the way my heart and the Spirit of God pull me - into Heaven-on-Earth reality. I’m done with practicing pessimistic religion even as I’m holding it accountable. I can look at the news or social media to find plenty of duality, struggle, anxiety, anger, and death-consciousness. I’m not looking for an escape hatch from these aspects of reality - I’m looking for a fulcrum of transformation. And I’ve discovered that fulcrum inside my own self, my own mind, by way of the Divinity that indwells me and by way of my capacity to use my free will to shift my focus. I’m captivated by the story of Christ because of its beauty, winsomeness, imagination, transformative power, and creative hum. I’m taking in Saint Paul’s words freshly: “...[Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8, NRSV). An old version of myself (or a younger version, as it were) often dismissed these words as spiritual bypassing, and often experienced and observed the harmful effects of that bypassing within my ancestral faith tradition. My younger self rightly perceived systemic harm going unaddressed and was (and is still) grieved by it, and believed that she had no choice but to live in that perpetually grieved and disempowered state. But the Now-me is able to approach these words - Easter words - from a more mystical perspective. I can see now how powerful and radical these words were and are, and what serious spiritual work they point to. And this is why I permit myself to daydream about Easter People - what are we? What are we working toward? What are we focusing on? What true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, and excellent aims are we working toward? What joy and laughter are we experiencing? Whose wise voices are we listening to? This Easter season how will we live? Will we look around at the Good Friday happenings all around us and choose those as our primary reality? Or will we look ahead into the Resurrection before us - whose shoots are springing up and may take a practiced eye to find - and live there, as Easter people? There is no right answer for you in your particular season of life, but I believe we each are given the choice. ~ Rev. Fran Pratt Read online here About the Author Rev. Fran Pratt is a pastor, writer, musician, and mystic. Making meaningful and beautiful liturgy to be spoken, practiced, and sung, is at the heart of her creative drive. Fran authored a book of congregational litanies, and regularly creates and shares modern liturgy on her website and Patreon. Her prayers are prayed in churches of various sizes and traditions across the globe. She writes, speaks, and consults on melding ancient and new liturgical streams in faith and worship. Fran is Pastor of Worship and Liturgy at Peace of Christ Church in Round Rock, Texas. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Ron I wonder if fiddling around on the periphery on the issues of gay and lesbian rights can ever yield what the Church lacks: a compelling vision which, if received and fulfilled, would improve humanity as a whole. Christianity has no unique truth and its claims, like those of all various religions, is that it must rest upon a "Thus saith the Lord.” A: By Rev. Irene Monroe Dear Ron, Churches must open their front doors to LGBTQ+ worshippers, or else these churches will continue to treat us as second class. Here are a few examples: Last week, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's orthodoxy office, issued a formal statement instructing its priests not to offer blessings for same-sex couples. The church's reason: God cannot bless sin. The Catholic Church still excludes the LGBTQ+ community from officially receiving any sacraments. With COVID-19 death rates hitting the LGBTQ+ community around the world especially hard, one would hope the church could put aside its homophobia. For decades there has been an ongoing struggle in the United Methodist Church (UMC) to adopt a policy of full inclusion of its LGBTQ parishioners and clergy and all the spiritual gifts we bring to the church. In the hopes of avoiding a schism, the Council of Bishops had recommended the One Church Plan that would grant individual ministers and regional church bodies the decision to ordain LGBTQs as clergy and to perform LGBTQ weddings. It was believed that such a decision on a church-by-church and regional basis would reflect the diversity as well as affirm the different churches and cultures throughout the global body of UMC. UMC's decision to oppose same-sex marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ clergy is both wrong-headed and wrong-hearted. However, as LGBTQ people, we must know that this religious intolerance and spiritual abuse are antithetical to the social gospel of Jesus Christ: that all people under God have the same sacred worth — even if the United Methodist Church doesn't practice it. Were it not for the pandemic, a church schism would have ensued. Pastor Franklin Graham's anti-LGBTQ nonprofit organization, Samaritan's Purse, operated a tent hospital in NYC's Central Park to help with the coronavirus pandemic. Graham said his organization wouldn't discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community in need. A gay man says they refused him. The Black church applauds its LGBTQ congregants in the choir pews yet excoriates us from the pulpits. It pimps our talent yet damns our souls with the theological qualifier of "love the sinner but hate the sin." Our connections and contributions to the larger black religious cosmos are desecrated every time homophobic pronouncements go unchecked in these holy places of worship. However, our pull to gospel music is seen as a calling, a distinctive gift to the church, and an expression of queer pain and hardship What all these churches miss is the universal message that "love is love." However, if these churches don't understand anything else about LGBTQ+ Christians, it needs to understand this: Gay people love Jesus just as much as straight people. Our love should be acknowledged, our unions blessed, and our gift welcomed. ~ Rev. Irene Monroe Read and share online here About the Author The Reverend Monroe does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on NPR's WGBH (89.7 FM). She is a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS. Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists. A Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist; her columns appear the Boston LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and the Boston Globe. Monroe states that her “columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As a religion columnist I try to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people." Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College’s research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As a non-profit ProgressiveChristianity.org relies heavily on the good will of donors. We want to continue to bring you the messages of progressive Christians via our Progressing Spirit Newsletter; however, the fact is, the cost of a subscription goes towards paying our authors. We therefore rely your generosity - specifically, if you are in a position to contribute to our efforts, we would be grateful for your donation. Help keep ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressing Spirit online and going strong - click here to donate today! *** Another way to support us is to leave a bequest in your Will and/or Trust designating ProgressiveChristianity.org as a beneficiary. | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited China Revisited, Part II Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong September 16, 2010 Visiting modern China during the summer of 2010 was a transforming, enlightening and even a fearful experience for me. I had not been to China in 22 years. Our journey began in Shanghai, China’s second largest city with 20 million citizens. Embracing the size of China’s cities was the first surprise. Chongqing, known as Chungking during World War II, is the world’s largest city with 30 million people and covers an area almost as large as Austria. The Chinese do not call a city of ten million a major city. They described a city of 600,000 people as a “small town,” despite the fact that it was the size of Cleveland, Ohio. The airport at Shanghai was clean, modern and efficient. As we walked through customs, each passenger was asked to vote on how politely the customs officials had treated him or her. The city itself was magnificent, modern and beautiful; lit up at night with lights shaped like flowers shining from every tree in the downtown area. Like every Chinese city we visited, there was massive building activity. The urban skylines were marked with numerous cranes as high rises seemed to grow like magic to house China’s burgeoning businesses in modern office complexes and its population in modern apartments and condominiums. I was seeing the effects of the economic miracle that is today modern China. This year is an off year for the Chinese economy. It is projected to grow by only 10.3% as opposed to 11.9% in 2009! Three years ago, China replaced Japan as the world’s second largest economy behind only the USA. Japan is now third with Germany fourth and the United Kingdom fifth. Other than China, the world’s other economies, including that of the United States, are today stagnant with hope for a 2% growth topping their expectations. While we were in China, the Chinese press announced that China had passed the United States as the nation with the highest annual consumption of energy. How did this transformation happen? How widespread was it? Were the people living in the Chinese countryside flourishing as well as the urban dwellers? What was or is the human cost to this economic miracle? Is China still a Communist country? These were my questions as our journey took us to cities like Jingzhou, Wuhan, Fengdu, Xian and Beijing. During this trip I watched a Chinese-produced documentary on the Communist revolution and its leader Mao Zedong that was, surprisingly to me, anything but flattering. While giving Mao credit for the Communist victory, it portrayed him as an uncultured peasant leader who never bathed or brushed his teeth and who had a voracious appetite for young women, many of whom he apparently infected with venereal diseases. Talking to many Chinese people revealed that this documentary was not unusual. Mao is still a revered figure as the father of the revolution, but Chinese people today almost universally recognize his limitations. The hero of the economic miracle that marks modern China is not Mao, but Deng Xiaoping, who was Mao’s bitter political enemy, purged twice, but returned three times by the party. Deng Xiaoping ultimately succeeded Mao in power and introduced what came to be called “market forces.” In a telling comment, one lecturer observed that, if it had not been for Deng Xiaoping succeeding Mao, “China today would look like North Korea.” Mao’s major economic initiative, called “the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961),” was a disastrous failure. Between my visit in 1988 and my return in 2010, however, a very great leap forward had occurred. China is not today the country I saw 22 years ago. In the last two decades, enormous wealth has been created and more than anywhere I have seen in the world that wealth is being invested in the well being of the masses of Chinese people. This is not to say that there is not still massive bureaucratic corruption and a rampant violation of human rights, but it is to assert that most Chinese peasants are better off today than they ever dreamed they would be. This country is still a dictatorship. Most of us in the West would not tolerate this government’s tactics, but the results are nonetheless impressive. The rise in China’s standard of living has been massive; the confidence expressed in the future on the part of the common people was high and I detected almost no organized negativity toward the government. Two things were apparently responsible for this, neither of which I believe America would tolerate, but both of which define the new China for me. First, by law, they have curbed their spiraling population growth. It has been the policy of this government for about 20 years to allow only one child to be born per family. This policy is enforced by huge fines, including loss of home and assets that could reduce a violating family to poverty, plus freely dispensed birth control and free access to abortion when birth control fails. The results are successful, and the growth of the Chinese population has stabilized at about 1.3 billion people. There are exceptions to the rule, but they are rare and generally rest on specific human situations. This policy now seems fully established and is generally not contested. The tactics used to achieve this population control may offend many in the Western world, but it is working and every developed nation will someday have to address its own overpopulation problem. Ultimately, genocide is the only alternative to population control. There are clearly some consequences to this policy and China is facing them today. The cultural desire for a boy in preference to a girl has caused many girl children to be put up for adoption, abandoned or “accidentally” killed. The male to female birth rate in China is now 120 boys to 100 girls, a statistic that promises much instability in the future when some 10 million males will not be able to find wives in China. On the positive side, however, the shortage of girls has begun to raise the value of females in Chinese society and the prejudice against girls is being publicly addressed. Second, the major principle on which the Chinese government operates is that individual desires and freedoms must always be secondary to the well being of the whole society. Only a dictatorship can follow this principle in a thorough way. If the people are served well enough, however, the individuals will find their basic needs met, and this mutes the negativity significantly. The Chinese government pursues this principle relentlessly. For example, the government built a massive and efficient public transportation system long before it allowed automobiles to become widely available. Then they subsidized the system to make it inexpensive to use. In Beijing, for example, one can go by train to any part of the vast metropolitan area of 18 million people for a fare of one to two US dollars. The government has also demolished whole cities. We met a 27-year-old man in Xian who told us that in his childhood just 15 years ago, the paths between the densely populated houses in his neighborhood could only accommodate two people walking abreast, making the possibility of escape from a fire almost nonexistent. There was one roofless public toilet for every 20 families, and only two public bath houses serving the whole community, he said. Today, all of this housing has been demolished and its inhabitants moved into high-rise apartments, all of which have indoor toilets, cooking facilities, air conditioning and running water. This transition was government-ordered and the desires of individuals were not considered. It caused great dislocation, particularly among the older people and home owners who in many cases lost their equity, but we met no one who wanted to go back to the past. The wealth of this nation is being used for the benefit of the people, even if it is based on the principle that “big brother knows best.” The result is that the standard of living for the average citizen is soaring. One almost sees a new nation emerging. Everything is gleaming, modern and functional. There is still in China a yearning for personal freedom, but this lack is more than countered, for the time being at least, by the new China that is emerging. Pragmatic communism has replaced ideological communism. In fact, one could seriously question whether communism is still alive in China. It looks to me much more like a state-run and state-controlled capitalist system. Democracy, as we know it, is simply not present in China, but the gap between the rich and the poor has been significantly diminished. Yes, there are people in China of enormous wealth, and there are also exploited workers, but, on the whole, the people appear to have bought into the idea that their individual well being depends on the well being of the whole people. The rich do not rail against the government for funds spent on the poor for housing, health care, transportation and dignity. It was also clear to me that the United States and the People’s Republic of China are the only dominant economic powers in the world today. How the economic competition develops between the two will, I believe, determine our long range peace. The Chinese people seemed happy, proud and largely content with their lives. Ninety percent of the Chinese population lives well today — or at least better than they did 20 years ago. China is today a material and technological success story like none the world has ever seen before in so short a time. China has proven that communism can bring about a major positive shift in the standard of living of the whole population. While I returned home admiring what I had seen of China’s material success, I was still troubled by the fact that I do not believe that any people can live “by bread alone,” no matter how impressive that material splendor is. The battle for economic success is won, but what has happened to the soul of the Chinese people? As Western society focuses more and more on materialistic success, I wonder what has happened to the soul of the people in the West. Perhaps we need to look at that question next as I conclude this series on China. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Meaning, Purpose & Hope in Chaotic Times On Saturday, April 17, Marianne Williamson will guide us through the transition that is currently underway as one world disintegrates and another emerges. In Meaning, Purpose & Hope in Chaotic Times, Marianne will lead us to a deeper, and much greater spiritual engagement as we tap into our own strength, insight, and energy force. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Copyright © 2021 ProgressiveChristianity.org, a 501(3)c. All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: 4810 Pt. Fosdick Dr. #80, Gig Harbor, WA 98335 253-507-8678 - contact(a)progressivechristianity.org You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. | | | |

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The fine arts of culturally-based development
by Robertson Work 10 Apr '21

10 Apr '21

Dear colleague, In working on a book of essays, I came across something I wrote in Caracas in 1989 that I thought might interest some of you. It is an excerpt from a brochure on ICA Venezuela (Instituto de Asuntos Culturales Venezuela). As you recall, we were in the process of taking the Order Ecumenical out of being, and many of the national ICAs were also going through transformation. Here it is: _________ ICA Venezuela practices the fine arts of culturally based transformation. Our vision is to be a catalytic force of individual and corporate transformation. Our mission is to release the human spirit within organizations, communities, networks, and individuals towards greater productivity and quality through action-research, leadership training, participatory planning, and catalytic implementation. We believe that human culture is the ground of development and that to develop any corporate structure or person their unique culture must be honored, understood, and transformed. We believe that people can become aware of the very dynamics of transformation and thereby co-create change towards greater productivity and quality. By becoming conscious of their values and assumptions, people can begin to manage change through their own myths, rites, and symbols. The fundamental assumption in this approach to managing change is that consciousness affects action - that consciously held perceptions result in concrete action and that to change a person’s perception is to begin to change the form and activity of the individual or the corporate structure. We believe that the macro context for social transformation is the Earth as an eco-system. The micro context is the individual human being as a mind-body-spirit system. Communities, organizations, and networks are the middle-level, structural contexts for transformation. _________ Please be healthy and happy, Rob ............................................. Author page for my books: https://www.amazon.com/Robertson-Work/e/B075612GBF Blogsite: https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/ Website: https://www.robertsonwork.com/

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Regenerative
by James Wiegel 10 Apr '21

10 Apr '21

Have any of you run into this fellow? https://designforsustainability.medium.com/sustainability-is-not-enough-we-… Jim Wiegel “A revolution is on the horizon: a wholesale transformation of the world economy and the way people live.” Fred Krupp

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