Gratitude

Grateful am I for ...

Simple pleasures: morning coffee, feeding my goats, hugging my partner
Friendships: on-line and in person, amazingly in the middle of a worldwide pandemic to boot
Gravity: yep, keeps my feet on mother earth, maybe your's too?
Water, Air, Earth, Fire: and all the scientific discoveries which have led us further than the bounds of our own finite understanding of elemental causes.
Freedom: as limited as human freedom actually is, I can think of times in my life when I was less free than I am now. I can imagine things not being free. Freedom at an existential level can be overwhelming if Fromm and Sartre got anything correct in their theories of human freedom.

Maybe I should be more grateful for other things. I am. Just as I can also be grateful for the fact that I don't have to count all blessings to be blessed. It's okay to forget here and there, even important things, and I'm super grateful I don't have to demand perfection of myself any longer...even on the days that I think I can still pull off this impossible feat.

Comments

Katherine Stewart's "The Good News Club"

Put on your to-read list. I could not believe all the connections between organizations that I'm familiar with! For me, as interesting as the CEF's Good News Clubs are, most interesting are the connections of the heavy hitter "Christian Nationalists" behind the story of the Good News Clubs and especially the fall out of the US Supreme Court's ruling in Good News Clubs v. Milford Central School (2001). Page 251- 252, does not mention ACE, but it reads: "The campaign to remove children from public schools is quickly gathering steam. A substantial number of fundamentalist parents have already cast their votes silently, by bringing their children home. Between 1999 and 2007, homeschooling shot up by 74 percent, to over 1.5 million children, representing approximately 3 percent of all school-age children in the United States--a figure that is undoubtedly higher today. The largest part of that growth came from pare...

What is prayer? and... is God going green!

I know, I know, but hear me out. I have still, a book in my library (for occasional reference to remember what I came from). The title is telling: "The Complete works of E.M. Bounds on Prayer". How far I have come/fallen from grace depending on the view. The American, gay poet Walt Whiteman defines prayer and "god" for that matter somewhat better: “Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass; I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.” Then this morning, Katie's "God Poem" really resonates deeply with me. And Sylvia Plath does a smashing job of depicting life's fig tree. For context: see https://thursdaypoetry.com/ 2017/04/23/go...

All Saints Day 2024

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RDRxU-Ccl8s-sl0_KK7fn1ClrYlLP_YISlFKlAA0BVw/edit?usp=sharing It's longish, full of real-life questions. Maybe something to ponder.

Water...

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