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Showing posts from July, 2009

homecoming

I've been back in the lovely, green, humid, southeastern US for almost 48 hours at this point. (Belize is also lovely, green and humid, but that's beside the point). Pictures have been more or less sorted through and posted on Facebook. I've seen a few photos and a video of the beautiful daughter of a friend who was born while I was out of the country. Have caught up with Nick Kristof's column....lots of writing about women's issues in Pakistan the past few weeks. He is my hero and inspiration as always. There is food in my kitchen now, and clothes have been washed, and bills paid. And I've re-entered the world of phone calls in the wee hours of the morning. I can't talk coherently about Belize yet. There are a total of 27 pages scrawled in my journal from that time...which isn't excessive, but does indicate that a great deal of observation and thinking happened. Some very exciting ideas for where to take this independent study project....but all depende

Stewardship?

Possibly the most infuriating thing about my time at [small liberal arts Christian college] was the flippancy towards the natural world we lived in. There were lectures in which I was told "the world was built for catastrophe and God's not going to let us destroy it", and my personal favorite was the chapel service in which Relatively Well Known Theologian claimed that people concerned about the environment were "Foolish, Faithless, and Fearful" because "Air pollution is actually a picture of the Resurrection. Living organisms died and became fossil fuels, which we burn and release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which encourages the growth of plants. It's life coming from death" That's a statement I cannot repeat without literally shaking in rage. I live in a state where it's unsafe to eat fish from many of our rivers and streams because of mercury deposits from coal plants. That doesn't sound like Resurrection, Redemption, or any o