Environment

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.

-William R. Inge, clergyman, scholar, and author (1860-1954)

Wonder

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea , at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.

- Saint Augustine

Perspective

Every now and again take a good look at something not made with hands - a mountain, a star, the turn of a stream. There will come to you wisdom and patience and solace and, above all, the assurance that you are not alone in the world.

- Sidney Lovett

Who is it all for?

The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts... Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation?

- John Muir, Naturalist and explorer (1838-1914)

Man Robs Same Store 15 Years Apart

In 1999, 25-year-old Christopher Miller was arrested after he forced employees into the back room of the Stride Rite shoe store on Hooper Avenue in Toms River, New Jersey. After a 15-year sentence, on Friday, March 21, 2014, Miller was released from South Woods State Prison in New Jersey. The very next day, Miller, now 40 years old, took a bus from Atlantic City to Toms River and went to the same shoe store.
Employees tell police that he entered the store and demanded cash, telling two workers to go to the back room. When the employees refused, Miller became agitated and took the cash register drawer, which had $389. He then took the workers' cell phones and fled on foot. Police say he was found a few blocks away, with the cash stashed in a gutter and the phones in a garbage can.
Toms River Police Chief Mitchell Little speculated, "Maybe [prison life is] the only life he knows, and the only thing he could think of was going back to the same store and doing the same crime again—getting caught and going back where he was taken care of and told what to do and getting meals and shelter and everything else."

Adapted from Brian Thompson, "Man Leaves Prison, Robs Same New Jersey Shoe Store 15 Years Later: Police," NBC News (3-26-14)

Kids Playing Mud Football Realise They're Playing in Sewage

In his book Glorious Mess, Mike Howerton tells the following story about a childhood experience playing "mud football." After a huge downpour, he and his neighbourhood buddies found a gully filled with two inches of standing water. Howerton describes what happened next:
We had a blast. Every tackle would send you sliding for yards and yards. The ball was like a greased pig, which meant tons of fumbles and gang tackles and laughter.
I remember tackling one of [my friends] and watching him skim across the surface of the water for something like four miles and thinking, "I might be in heaven." When he got up, I noticed something stuck on his shoulder. I peered closer, wondering, "What is that?" Now, there was a huge, concrete sewage runoff drain right next to the gully. And apparently during heavy rains, all sorts of things got backed up, and I don't know if the apartment complex immediately next to the school burst a pipe or what, but I do know we didn't really pay attention to the flotsam in the gully until I noticed that something on Craig's shoulder. I peered closer and suddenly realized it was a soaking piece of toilet paper. In that same instant I realized the smell surrounding me was a bit more pungent than a typical mud football game ought to smell. I yelled out, "We're playing in POOP WATER!" and we bolted for home as fast as we could.
Talk about an instant of mental transformation …. Sometimes in life we need our thinking transformed. Sometimes we think we're having fun until we realise we're rolling around in sewage.

Mike Howerton, Glorious Mess (Baker, 2012), pp. 101-102

Leaving Peace Ledge

A new home awaits us . . . by Gordon MacDonald
We are moving. Not very far, mind you. It's only a 14-mile move that will bring us closer to the city of Concord, New Hampshire, and into a more manageable living space. Reasons? The pursuit of a down-sized lifestyle, less home maintenance, and shorter driving distances to church, shopping, and (most of all) good friends.
The home we are leaving (we've called it Peace Ledge) has been ours for almost 35 years. Originally, it was built as a getaway place where my wife, Gail, and I might find quietness to pursue a more vigorous spiritual life and for me to do my weekly sermon study. All of my books have been written at Peace Ledge in a writing space that measures eight by eight feet. Ten years ago, when I resigned from institutional leadership, we enlarged this home and made it our permanent residence. Now it is about to pass into the hands of new owners.
In 1978 I took a three-month leave of absence from my church and participated in the building of the home at Peace Ledge. I was there when the foundation was poured (black fly season). I was there during the framing sequence of the construction. And I was there during the days when the finish carpenters and the tradesmen did the moulding, the wiring, and the plumbing. I sweated out the drilling of the well (300 feet down) and the building of the septic system (no small thing to do up in the woods).
I know every nook and cranny of this house we are leaving. I can guide you to every bent nail, every joint not perfectly mitred, every tiny stain in the plaster where a mid-winter ice-dam caused a temporary leak in the ceiling.
Peace Ledge has been the place where we have experienced our highest "highs" in life and our lowest "lows." Our family has gathered at the dining table in the great room for every Thanksgiving in the last 33 years. We have celebrated every Christmas there. When life fell apart for Gail and me 25 years ago, we ran to Peace Ledge and found it to be a place where we could hear God speak graciously into our lives and help us to put things back together again.
Over the years, many men and women whose names are equated with Christian leadership around the world have come to Peace Ledge to visit. Some of them arrived in total exhaustion, spiritually drained, in marital trouble. Others came while in the midst of great life-changing decisions or while struggling with faith-threatening thoughts. Many came just to relax, to try out one of my kayaks on a New England river, or merely to walk in the woods. (I have loved guiding some people to a place not far from Peace Ledge where the pathway divides. I've asked them to stop and listen. Then I step a few feet away and begin to quote Robert Frost: "Two roads diverged in a yellowed wood … and" … (then its familiar ending) "I took the road less-traveled by … and that has made all the difference."
Peace Ledge was once a farm where draft horses were bred and trained. The topsoil barely covered the rock ledge (6 inches down), and so its 18th and 19th century farmers could barely scratch out a living. Their only crop was pasture grass. What was once clear-cut land in the 19th century has all returned to timber (a 100-year growth). Stone walls lace the acreage, and you occasionally stumble across rusting farm implements that were abandoned more than a century ago.
One family—the Findleys—owned the farm for almost 100 years. Town records show that on several occasions they were delinquent in their taxes and the farm was put up for public auction. But for reasons unexplained, the Findleys always managed to hold on to the land. Old timers in our area refer to Peace Ledge as the Findley place (which makes me wonder if new old-timers will someday refer to Peace Ledge as the MacDonald place).
Here and there in the forest are small, annually maintained grave yards that mark the final resting place of early New England farming families. It is not uncommon to find the graves of a man and his two or three wives. Nearby: the graves of children. People were much more accustomed to death in those days.
Perhaps it is my imagination, but I have found Peace Ledge to be, well, a place of peace. It has always seemed to me that when I drove on to the property, I entered something like a spiritual enclosure—a place of tranquility and restoration. Perhaps I sound a bit over the top when I say that I have never left the house at Peace Ledge without thanking God one more time that he has allowed Gail and me to live there. Even in the midst of the worst New England blizzards when the power went out (we've had several this year), I have never lost my love for this place.
As the son of a pastor, I had no notion whatsoever of "home." I grew up in houses owned by churches and was constantly reminded that our "home" belonged to someone else. We were not free to paint our own choice of colours nor alter the property without approval from some Board of Trustees. Moving from place to place, congregation to congregation, left me with an unformed view of both "place" and "friendship."
Peace Ledge ended all that. It became home in every sense of the word. At Peace Ledge, I began to appreciate the words of another of Frost's poems (and I paraphrase): "Home is the place where they have to take you in …"
When it comes time in a few weeks for us to leave Peace Ledge, I imagine that Gail and I will walk through the empty house and try to remember one special thing that happened in each room. Perhaps, we'll recall tucking our two children into their beds at night, the games and puzzles that challenged us in the family room, the groups of younger men and women we've mentored in the great room, the things we learned in our personal study spaces, the many nights we drifted off to sleep entwined in each other's arms in the master bedroom.
There will be tears when we make that last room-by-room tour. And there will be prayers of gratitude.
Then I imagine that the tears will turn to anticipation as we drive to our new condo. Even now—weeks before the move—Gail is thinking about where she'll put various pieces of our furniture. She already knows where the family pictures will hang, what color the bathroom will be, what "discardables" will end up at the Salvation Army thrift store. And me? All I want to know is what my new study space will be like.
Perhaps this anticipated day of moving is not unlike getting ready for the ultimate day when we move to Heaven. I am listening to the new swirling debate on heaven and hell and take note that most of the voices are those of younger generation people. Wait until they reach my age and the stunning awareness that Heaven, and whatever hell is, are just over the horizon (and there's no detour). Eternity is not a doctrinal construct to me. It is an emerging reality. Like so many of my friends before me, I am headed into it in the not-too-distant future.
I take Jesus' comment, "I go to prepare a place for you," seriously. Of course I am tempted to want to ask, "Lord, how many square feet? Is there a basement? AC? Hard water or soft? How about taxes? Bookshelves?" I hope that when that ultimate "moving day" comes, it will parallel the more immediate one I'm anticipating right now. Packing up, shedding the unnecessary and unneedful, gathering grateful memories, and anticipating the new place down the road. As I said at the beginning, this move is about simplifying and being closer to our friends. That final move will be about eternal discovery and being with Jesus and his friends.

Two Homes Tested by Powerful Wind Gusts

On October 19, 2010, a test was conducted at the Institute for Business and Home Safety in Richburg, South Carolina. Researchers constructed two 1,300-square-foot houses inside a $40 million laboratory and then observed how a simulated hurricane would impact the homes.
The first home was built according to conventional standards. The second home included reinforcement straps that connected every level of the building, from the foundation all the way to the roof. Then the researchers turned on giant fans, creating gusts of wind up to 110 miles per hour (equal to a category 3 hurricane). In the first two experiments, which lasted under ten minutes, both homes survived the intense winds. But when they tried a third experiment, turning on the fans for more than ten minutes, the conventional home began to shake and then collapsed. In contrast, the home with the floors and roof reinforced to the foundation sustained only cosmetic damage.
Tim Reingold, an engineer working on the experiment, summarised the results with a pointed question: "The bottom line you have to ask yourself is, which house would you rather be living in?"

BBC NEWS, "US researchers create hurricane to test houses," (19 October 2010)

Spending Habits in the World of Virtual Games

Many use Facebook as a way to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances, but others use it to play games that involve virtual farms, virtual pets, and virtual mob wars. What's fascinating is that in some of these games, a person can buy virtual goods—fertilizer or additional pets or guns. But these items don't actually exist, of course. They are just little computer pictures from little pixilated stores. Nonetheless, if a person wants to have these virtual guns or virtual tools for their virtual farms or virtual pets, they actually pay real money! A player sends real, hard-earned money through a credit card account to a company like Playfish, whose website says, "You can now get Playfish Cash Cards in retail stores near you! Cash cards are exchanged for Playfish Cash that can be spent in all our supported games."
Newsweek magazine's Daniel Lyons wrote about this bizarre phenomenon in a column titled, "Money for Nothing." When researching virtual games, he discovered that the total U.S. market for virtual goods was worth just over $1 billion in 2009—twice what it was the year before. Kristian Segerstrale, a Finnish economist who has studied this phenomenon, says, “You can learn a lot about human behaviour and how people inter-operate in an economic environment. There are a lot of valuable lessons.” One of those lessons, of course, is that people will spend real money for something that isn't really there at all.

source: Daniel Lyons, "Money for Nothing," Newsweek magazine (3-29-10), p.22

Kids Playing Mud Football Realise They're Playing in Sewage

In his book Glorious Mess, Mike Howerton tells the following story about a childhood experience playing "mud football." After a huge downpour, he and his neighbourhood buddies found a gully filled with two inches of standing water. Howerton describes what happened next:

We had a blast. Every tackle would send you sliding for yards and yards. The ball was like a greased pig, which meant tons of fumbles and gang tackles and laughter.

I remember tackling one of [my friends] and watching him skim across the surface of the water for something like four miles and thinking, "I might be in heaven." When he got up, I noticed something stuck on his shoulder. I peered closer, wondering, "What is that?" Now, there was a huge, concrete sewage runoff drain right next to the gully. And apparently during heavy rains, all sorts of things got backed up, and I don't know if the apartment complex immediately next to the school burst a pipe or what, but I do know we didn't really pay attention to the flotsam in the gully until I noticed that something on Craig's shoulder. I peered closer and suddenly realised it was a soaking piece of toilet paper. In that same instant I realised the smell surrounding me was a bit more pungent than a typical mud football game ought to smell. I yelled out, "We're playing in POOP WATER!" and we bolted for home as fast as we could.

Talk about an instant of mental transformation …. Sometimes in life we need our thinking transformed. Sometimes we think we're having fun until we realise we're rolling around in sewage.

Mike Howerton, Glorious Mess (Baker, 2012), pp. 101-102

Heaven

There was a man who spent his life longing to go to heaven. He spent hours every day deep in meditation, contemplating heaven. When he died an angel took him on a conducted tour. The angel showed him majestic, snow-capped mountains. He gazed, transfixed at the sheer beauty of evening mists rising above tranquil lakes. He walked across lush, green water meadows covered with king-cups and stood on the banks of crystal clear streams. He skirted deep green woods, walked across miles of golden, sandy beaches, and listened to the gentle music of the waves. One beautiful sight after another was revealed to him. The man was so overcome by the loveliness of it all that he turned to the angel and whispered breathlessly,
“How wonderful! So this is heaven!”
“No, came the reply, this is the world in which you lived but never saw.”

source unknown

The Stanford Prison Experiment

Last month marked 42 years since of one of the darkest and most controversial experiments in the history of American research—the Stanford Prison Experiment. This article provides an excellent short summary and this article gives a more detailed analysis. The heart of the experiment was a simple idea: for $15 a day male college students and a team of researchers acted as either prison guards or inmates. The experiment quickly descended into chaos as "guards" and "inmates" went well beyond mere role-playing. Decent young men suddenly turned into abusive guards who humiliated and assaulted the inmates. The prisoners started to break down under the stress and degradation. The lead researcher, who played the warden, also lost himself in the experiment. A colleague had to intervene and finally stop the experiment which had gotten completely out of control. It's a sober lesson right out of Jeremiah 17:9—"The heart is desperately wicked."

Enemies

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Oprah's Magazine Reflects on Our Awesome World

A recent issue of the Oprah Magazine has an interesting article on awe. The article's introduction states: "Somewhere at the intersection of joy, fear, mystery, and insight lies awe, the ineffable response to the amazing world around us." The article goes on to give a more refined definition: "Overwhelming, surprising, humbling, even a little terrifying—awe is what we feel when faced with something sublime, exceptional, or altogether beyond comprehension."
University of California's Dacher Keltner, PhD, a psychology professor, does extensive research on the subject of awe. In his 2009 book Born to Be Good, he describes the feeling of awe as pushing people beyond selfishness and giving them a desire to do good. He believes that cultivating awe "is part of unlocking the truest sense of life's purpose." In his most well-known experiment, he had students complete a series of "I am" sentences. Half the students were facing a full-scale replica of a Tyrannosaurus Rex; the other half were facing a hallway. The first group was more likely to describe themselves in larger, grander terms ("I am part of the human species"). The group facing an empty hallway described themselves in smaller, narrower terms ("I am a soccer player")
The article even gives some tips for cultivating awe:
1. Try something new or something "you don't have a mental template for."
2. Go outside. The ultimate in awe is the beauty and wonder of nature.
3. Have an "ecstatic social experience" by going to a rock concert or political rally.
4. Look up at the night sky. Better yet, buy a telescope.
Although the article presents a mostly secular view of awe, it does tap into our human longing to find "joy, fear, mystery … [in] response to the amazing world around us." According to the Bible, there is one source for all the awe we experience—God. We were created to live in awe of God. The word awe or awesome is mentioned 53 times throughout the Bible. The God who is "awesome in glory" (Exodus 15:11) and "mighty and awesome" (Deuteronomy 10:17) performs "awesome deeds for mankind" (Psalm 66:5). No wonder the psalmist proclaimed, "The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders" (Psalm 65:8).

David Hochman, "The Wonder of It All", Oprah Magazine, (December 2010)

Last spring a duck entered our backyard journeying eastward, eleven little ducklings in file behind her. It was an outrageous appearing, really, since we live in the midst of the concrete city. The only waters east of us are the pools at the state hospital, four miles away, which distance is an odyssey! Between here and there are vast tracts of humanity, fences, houses, shopping malls - and immediately to our east, Bayard Park of tall trees and lawns.
Yet this duck moved her brood with a quick skill as if she knew exactly where she was going.
Buff brown generally, vague markings on her wings, a smooth pate with a cowlick at the back, she and her name were the same: blunt and unremarkable. The ducklings were puffballs with butch haircuts, obedient and happy. Big-footed, web-footed, monstrous-footed, floppy-footed, the children followed their mother as fast as drips down windowpanes, peeping, questioning, keeping together, trusting her judgement.
And she, both blunt and busy, led them into our yard, which is surrounded by a wooden palisade fence. Maybe she came this way for a rest.
But we have a dog. He rose to his feet at the astonishing sight. He raised his ears and woofed. The ducks back-pedalled to the wall of the house and turned eastward under the eaves' protection and waddled hard, her ducklings in a mad zip behind her. But the dog is leashed and could not reach the wall. This part of the passage, at least, was safe. The next was not.
Without pausing, the buff duck spread her wings, beat the air, and barely cleared the fence, landing in the middle of Bedford Avenue between our yard and the park. There she set up a loud quacking, like a reedy woodwind: Come! Come!
Eleven ducklings scurried to the fence, then raced along it till they found a crack: Plip! Plip! - they popped through as quick as they could, but their mother must have been driven into the park. By the time they gained the wider world she had disappeared. The babies bunched in confusion, peeping, peeping grievously. One bold soul ventured down Bedford to the alley behind our yard. The others returned through the fence.
Immediately the mother was back on Bedford, the one bold child behind her, scolding the rest like an angry clarinet: Now! Here! Come here now!
Well, in a grateful panic ten ducklings rushed the crack in the fence, thickening there, pushing, burning with urgency, trying hard to obey their mother-
Not fast enough.
A car roared south on Bedford. Another. The duck beat retreat to the farther curb. Joggers came jogging. A knot of teenagers noticed the pretty flow of ducklings from under our fence and ran toward it. The tiny flock exploded in several directions. The mothers cries grew hectic and terrified: Come! Come! - her beak locked open. She raced up and down the park's edge, and there was but one puffball following her.
The simple unity of twelve was torn apart. My city is deadly to certain kinds of families.
Five ducklings shot back and forth inside our yard now, but the hole through the fence led to roaring horrors and they couldn't persuade themselves to hazard it again - though they could hear their mother. That unremarkable duck (no - intrepid now and most remarkable) was hurling herself in three directions, trying to compose her family into unity again: eastward she flew into the park, south toward violent alleys, then back west to the impassive fence. Hear me now, hear me and come! Her children were scattered. She was but one.
I saw a teenager chase one duckling. He was laughing gaily in the game. He reached down and scooped up the tiny life in his great hand and peered at it and threw it up into the air. The baby fell crazily to the ground. The youth chased it again.
"Don’t!" I yelled.
"Why not?" the kid said, straightening himself. “What? Does this duckling belong to you?"
But where was the mother now? I didn't see her anywhere. And now it was bending into later afternoon.
I poured some water into a pan and placed it by the back wall of our house for those ducklings still dithering in our yard. They huddled away from the dog. But the dog had lost interest. They crept sometimes toward the hole in the fence. Now and again a duckling looked through. Their peeping, peeping was miserable. What do you do for innocents in the city - both the wild and the child? By nightfall they had all vanished.
No, not all. I can tell you of two.
The next day we heard a scratching in the vent pipe of our clothes drier. I went down in the basement and disconnected the shaft and found a shivering duckling who must have fallen down from the outside opening. Perhaps it had sought cover and didn't know the cave went down so deep. It had spent a long dark night alone in its prison.
And then at church on Sunday, a friend of mine said,
"Weirdest thing! I saw this duck crossing highway 41 -"
"What?" I cried. “A duck? Alone?"
"Well, no, not alone," said my friend. “I almost ran over her. I guess she didn't fly on account of baby ducks can't fly, and she was protecting it."
"Michelle," I said, “what do you mean it? How many ducklings did she have?"
"One. Just one."
Doesn't this remind you of our lives in regard to our faith? The unremarkable man without his degree in theology who leads the way. We begin by following him in that ragged zipper line, following directly in every footstep, doing the best we can, but then, the challenge becomes too scary, our trust fails, or we run into that mean giant who is prepared to throw us around with no regard for the fragility of our infant faith. And those in the end who began as one of eleven, or fifty, or even one hundred, find that their leader is guiding only one unlost child across that huge highway called life.
How many of those we made our commitments with or those we know of are still “hanging in there" with their faith? I know of quite a few that I knew of that now no longer seem to care. And what can we do about it? I think it is merely a case of hanging in there ourselves, believing what at times seems unbelievable, and trying to show those other lost ducklings the way back over the hill to that unremarkable man who died on the cross for us.

Extract taken from Little Lamb, who made thee?, Walter Wangerin, Jr.

Getting Up Again

CBS News anchor Dan Rather admits he was always fascinated by the sport of boxing, even though he was never good at it. “In boxing you're on your own; there's no place to hide," he says. “At the end of the match only one boxer has his hand up. That's it. He has no one to credit or to blame except himself." Rather, who boxed in high school, says his coach's greatest goal was to teach his boxers that they absolutely, positively, without question, had to be “get up" fighters. “If you're in a ring just once in your life - completely on your own - and you get knocked down but you get back up again, it's an never-to-be-forgotten experience. Your sense of achievement is distinct and unique. And sometimes the only thing making you get up is someone in your corner yelling."

Reader's Digest, Dec, 1990

Tipping the Scales

Edward Steichen, who eventually became one of the world's most renowned photographers, almost gave up on the day he shot his first pictures. At 16, young Steichen bought a camera and took 50 photos. Only one turned out - a portrait of his sister at the piano. Edward's father thought that was a poor showing. But his mother insisted that the photograph of his sister was so beautiful that it more than compensated for 49 failures. Her encouragement convinced the youngster to stick with his new hobby. He stayed with it for the rest of his life, but it had been a close call. What tipped the scales? The vision to spot excellence in the midst of a lot of failure.

source unknown

Quickly Versus Deeply

Larry McMurtry, known for his [book] Lonesome Dove, wrote another book about roads - the many roads he had driven on and the hundreds of miles he had explored across America. At last, returning in memory to the place where he grew up in east Texas, he recalls that his father had seldom gone much farther than the dusty roads near his dirt farm. Comparing his own travels to his father's localised life, McMurtry admits, "I have looked at many places quickly. My father looked at one place deeply."

source unknown

No "Simple" Faith

It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things aren't simple. They look simple, but they're not. The table I'm sitting at looks simple: but ask a scientist to tell you what it's really made of—all about the atoms and how the light waves rebound from them and hit my eye and what they do to the optic nerve and what it does to my brain—and, of course, you will find what we call "seeing a table" lands you in mysteries and complications which you can hardly get to the end of. …
Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we'd always expected, I'd feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it's not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let's leave behind all these boys' philosophies—these over-simple answers.

- C.S. Lewis in The Case for Christianity. Christianity Today, Vol. 34, no. 4.

God's Grandeur

Psalms presents a world that fits together as a whole, with everything upheld by a personal God watching over it.
This message, above all, leaped out at me during my frustrating attempts to read the Psalms in Colorado. I could not fit together all the contradictory messages I was reading, but the magnificent wilderness setting at least affirmed the message of God's grandeur, His worthiness. Wilderness brings us down a level, reminding us of something we'd prefer to forget: our creatureliness. It announces to our senses the splendour of an invisible, untamable God. How could I not offer praise to the One who dreamed up porcupines and elk, who splashed bright green aspen trees across hillsides of gray rock, who transforms the same landscape into a new work of art with every blizzard?

- Philip Yancey in "The Bible Jesus Read"