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Did you know that more water passes through the Bay of Fundy in ONE DAY than goes over Niagara Falls in a year? Niagara Falls powers much of the eastern seaboard & Ontario - can you imagine if the tides could be harnessed (with total respect to habitat)? Natural energy just waiting to be resourced.
Read the rest here - John GovernaleNicola Gladwell gave me a bobby pin.
During a long bus trip this April, I got out the handwritten draft of a short story and my AlphaSmart Dana word processor.
I balanced the Dana on my lap, then realized there was no comfortable--or even uncomfortable--way to prop up the sheets so I could type them. On the back of the seat in front of me was a tightly screwed-on strip of plastic that held the chair cover in place. I tried forcing the edge of a page under that, but had no luck.
Bother.
It was then that Nicola, seated across the aisle from me, came to the rescue. She removed a bobby pin from her hair and handed it over. I was at a loss what to do with it.
"What do you suggest?" I asked.
She took the flat prong and worked it under the strip of plastic, creating a clipboard. I slid a few pages into the bobby pin and they held.
Brilliant.
I have scads of little pieces of paper, index cards and emails I've sent to myself with books recommended or talked about by people I admire, I try to toss those little tidbits on my desk and then regularly do amazon searches and add them to my wish list so that at least somewhere I have a searchable record of those books. I began doing this when one of my favorite people in the world made his recommended reading list. I grabbed a few of those books and they changed my life forever. Nothing I had read up to that point had touched me as deeply as those books. I guess that's because the man who recommended them touched me more deeply than anyone else had before.
Pete Rollins is having a parable writing competition - very cool:To mark the US release of my latest book, Paraclete are running a writing competition. The idea is to get you, yes you, to write a parable dealing with pretty much anything. It should ideally be between 100 and 1000 words in length. Oh, and you can enter as many times as you like.
First prize is a beautiful limited edition print entitled ‘New Life‘ by the artist Jared Robinson (Jared is currently collaborating with me to create work inspired by my writings). You will also receive $100 worth of Paraclete books of your choice and the adoration of your friends and family.
Second and third prize will receive $50 worth of Paraclete books.
My desire in running this competition is to help people rediscover the importance and power of parable. So, if you attend a writing circle, church community, youth group etc. you might want to take some time to explore the theme of parables (suggested reading below) and then encourage everyone to write one.
So what are you waiting for? Send your entries to Carol Showalter, no later than 1st August, 2009. The entries will be judged by myself and the winners announced on 1st September, 2009 both here and at Paraclete Press.
Tips:
A parable can be loosely described as a short, fictional narrative that draws the reader into an insight concerning some aspect of faith and life. Parables often work best when they challenge commonly held attitudes and unmask the poverty of some widely held value. Parables are generally structured in a very simple and stark way, with a narrative that avoids any unnecessary detail that may detract from the central, evocative message.
Some books, apart from my own, that might help get you in the mood include,
Parables of Kierkegaard (Kierkegaard’s Writings)
One of the best things about living in our community is rubbing shoulders with the undergrads. One of my favorites is a young woman named Nicola. She just returned from the semester travel study in Asia that the 2nd years do here. It changes them all. They depart as North Americans and return and citizens of the world. The travel program at SSU is spectacular. As part of the process the students are asked to write blog posts - one before, one during and one after the trip. I have loved the chance to read their thoughts along the way.Mind-held Thai expressions tease my tongue. Each essay determinately engaging with the SE Asian sex trade…via SSU Travels the World
I have had a line ringing in my mind since our return, mingling with the leftovers of Asian dialects:
In the business of redemption.
What does it look like to be in the business of redemption?
I am reminded of: plant pots made from painted car tires in the Philippines; a Malay man’s obsession with mundane rocks allowing him to find a wealth of value in his collection of unique stones: singing boulders, growing gems, and petrified wood; in eating meat, Asians use the whole of the beast: even if this meant finding pig snout on my plate in the Philippines and chicken feet in a Malaysian curry; a dollar-store toy that we would scorn in the west has found new value in the hand of a Filipino girl, as does the scrap tin finding its place in the sea of huts within Manila or Bangkok.
In the business of redemption. what does it mean?
Perhaps it means finding value in imperfection- in another’s garbage, setting it free from judgement and compartmentalizing snobbery.
I loved Thailand; I could live in Chiang Mai. I would ride to work on an elephant and guide rafts on mountain rivers for a pitiful living, seeking wisdom from aged monks and taking a master’s in sustainable living or linguistics at CMU. However. I have a problem. I can’t get it through my head- you have to help me.
There are over 2 million prostitutes in Thailand; in Chiang Mai all of them are brought from destitute Burmese villages and trafficked through the village of Ma Sai on the border. I was in Ma Sai. I bought a pen. And a necklace. All Burmese teen girls traveling through Ma Sai leave without their virginity and thus their hope for a future and marriage, and almost half leave with an AIDS death sentence from their first few weeks in the industry.
What does redemption mean to a sex slave in Japan, in Bangkok, in Kuala Lumpur? If I see so much of what we call garbage being redeemed throughout Asia, isn’t there a way to redeem the consequences of societal chastity, idolatry, obligatory merit-making, hierarchical systems, and poverty?
In the business of Redemption.
Thai vocabulary, redemptive ideas, thoughts of the summer, and efforts to summarize my year at SSU swirl around my mind. I feel reminiscient of a Hogwarts student awaiting the next school year, or Arnold buckling his seatbelt in the Magic School Bus. I feel like all my life I have been taught to stand on a gymnasium line or sit quietly without being told why, and now my experience has set my mind free from dictated learning. Let me ask questions, don’t break life to me gently, let me dive in and let me experience both the joy and the pain of humanity. What will I learn next year?
I think redemption would be a good business to get into.
ht to Bob CarltonThe preacher said, “What good does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” Hearing this, every one of the pilgrims gathered in the room asked, “Is it me, Lord?” In America, in Europe, people are asking, “Is it us?”
Well, yes. It is us.
Carnival is over. Commerce has been overheating markets and climates ... the sooty skies of the industrial revolution have changed scale and location, but now melt ice caps and make the seas boil in the time of technological revolution. Capitalism is on trial; globalization is, once again, in the dock. We used to say that all we wanted for the rest of the world was what we had for ourselves. Then we found out that if every living soul on the planet had a fridge and a house and an S.U.V., we would choke on our own exhaust.
Lent is upon us whether we asked for it or not. And with it, we hope, comes a chance at redemption. But redemption is not just a spiritual term, it’s an economic concept. At the turn of the millennium, the debt cancellation campaign, inspired by the Jewish concept of Jubilee, aimed to give the poorest countries a fresh start. Thirty-four million more children in Africa are now in school in large part because their governments used money freed up by debt relief. This redemption was not an end to economic slavery, but it was a more hopeful beginning for many. And to the many, not the lucky few, is surely where any soul-searching must lead us.
You were not made redundant - the role was. And despite how you might feel right now, you are not the role. You are a person. And you are not redundant.
But then ridicule is nothing new in Susan Boyle's life. She is a veteran of abuse. She was starved of oxygen at birth and has learning difficulties as a result. At school she was slow and had frizzy hair. She was bullied, mostly verbally. She told one newspaper that her classmates' jibes left behind the kind of scars that don't heal....
She didn't have boyfriends, is a stranger to romance and has never been kissed. "Shame," she said. Singing was her life-raft.
She lived with her parents in a four-bedroom council house and, when her father died a decade ago, she cared for her mother and sang in the church choir.
It was an unglamorous existence. She wasn't the glamorous type - and being a carer isn't a glamorous life, as the hundreds of thousands who do that most valuable of jobs will testify. Even those who start out with a beauty routine and an interest in clothes find themselves reverting to the practicality of a tracksuit and trainers. Fitness plans get interrupted and then abandoned. Weight creeps on. Carers don't often get invited to sparkling dinner parties or glitzy receptions, so smart clothes rarely make it off the hanger.
Susan Boyle's mother encouraged her to sing. She wanted her to enter Britain's Got Talent. But the shy Susan hasn't been able to sing at all since her mother's death two years ago. She wasn't sure how her voice would emerge after so long a silence. Happily, it survived its rest.
Found this morning at Julie Unplugged and wanted to put a pin in them so I'm marking them here:
My long time blogger bud Jen Lemen has the biggest dreams of almost anyone I know - and one of those dreams is actually within her reach and you can help make it happen.
Happy 40th Birthday Very Hungry Caterpillar!
We are afraid of emptiness. Spinoza speaks about our "horror vacui," our horrendous fear of vacancy. We like to occupy-fill up-every empty time and space. We want to be occupied. And if we are not occupied we easily become preoccupied; that is, we fill the empty spaces before we have even reached them. We fill them with our worries, saying, "But what if ..."
It is very hard to allow emptiness to exist in our lives. Emptiness requires a willingness not to be in control, a willingness to let something new and unexpected happen. It requires trust, surrender, and openness to guidance. God wants to dwell in our emptiness. But as long as we are afraid of God and God's actions in our lives, it is unlikely that we will offer our emptiness to God. Let's pray that we can let go of our fear of God and embrace God as the source of all love.
Sam: Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It'll be spring soon and the orchards will be in blossom, and the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And the whistle in the summer barley in the Lower fields. And eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?
Frodo: No, Sam. I can't recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I'm naked in the dark. There's nothing--no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I can see him with my waking eyes.
Sam: Then let us be rid of it, once and for all. I can't carry the ring for you, but I can carry you! Comeon!
