Watch mountain shadows run
Allelujia! Amen!
Clouds gilded by the sun
Allelujia! Amen!
Hear tumbling water sing
Birds calling on the wing
Do the right thing, do the right thing, do it all the time, do it all the time. Make yourself right, never mind them. Don’t you know you’re not the only one suffering. I hear a higher calling, better here than there I guess so long.
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To hold a bloom of California buckwheat in the palm of your hand is to admire an infinity of heavens. Each little round flower is a mass of tinier flowers, their delicate pink stamens pointing out in every direction of the universe. The tough stems of the plant, with their little spiky leaves, stay green even now during one of the worst droughts in memory. Hiking on the flanks of Boney Mountain in the Santa Monica range a week ago, in an area ravaged by wildfire, I stopped to gaze at a buckwheat bush and congratulate it on its survival.
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This incredible short film shares an Indigenous Native American Prophecy that links all of life and the future of our planet.
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Varun Soni argues that Khan and Marley, among other artists at present and in the recent past, situate themselves in long lineages of religious prophecy while expressing prophetic traditions in distinct ways that reflect cultural globalization and technological advances. Music is a more powerful medium for prophecy than ever before, now that it has the potential for instantaneous global reach. Varun names this phenomenon “pop-propheticism”, characterized by canonical recitation (referencing ancient lines of prophetic utterance), mystical intoxication with the Divine (whether through spiritual practices or by ingesting mind-altering substances), musical fusion (stretching traditional musical boundaries to reach new audiences), media proliferation (taking advantage of new and emerging communication channels), economic commodification (making the most of the global musical marketplace), and political appropriation (putting music consciously in the service of social change).
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I thought I’d pretty well covered the territory in a “musing” I wrote a few years ago called “The Varieties of God”, a listing of the many alternatives along the spectrum between traditional theism and atheism. But Ryan Bell has added a new one: provisional atheism. Godlessness for the time being. He’s gone public with this status, and I intend to follow his “Year Without God” blog to see how it goes for him.
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The form of the blessing differ, but the essential message is the same: we give thanks to the Love that is God for the good that comes through our taxes. They are a special form of our “offerings” in worship. Many blessings flow from them, and divine guidance is needed for us to have the wisdom to see to it they are spent for the best purposes.
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Being a child of God – for Jesus and for the rest of us – is a poetic way of describing our direct, personal engagement with Ultimate Reality. It is an artful expression of ourselves as physically integrated with the divine essence of the cosmos. Being the son or daughter of God does not mean that any of us can leap off the cross in a single bound.
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In the afternoon we went to Tucson’s US Federal Court to witness Operation Streamline. About 70 migrant in chains, wearing the same sweaty clothes in which they were caught crossing, sat in the upper level of the courtroom, waiting to be tried for the crime of illegal entry into the United States. This proceeding happens in several border cities as a way to criminalize them in an attempt to deter them from entering the US immediately after being deported. “Culpable… culpable… culpable…” they said, pleading guilty, and then walking out in chains to be jailed and then deported. Students from around the country, also doing spring break border justice programs, were in the courtroom with us – many of them in tears as they witnessed the silent parade of misery before them.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you God
For the gift, the gift of life.
Thank you, thank you, thank you God
For the peace beyond all strife.
At times we’re like old-fashioned cameras
Seeing life as black or white.
At times we’re like deleted scanners
Printing only dull or bright.
If I think that I am wiser
But you feel that you are right
We don’t need a fight to settle
What is black and what is white
I can’t face forgiving you,
You have caused me too much pain.
You have made me cry too much,
We can’t be good friends again.
I just want to be alone
Letting my dark anger reign.
When I’m feeling hurt and angry
I will let my feelings out
Yelling all my pain out loudly
When no others are about.
When your heart is feeling blue,
Feeling blue, feeling blue,
Count your blessings and give thanks,
Give thanks to God.
If my eyes are full of tears,
If my heart is numb with pain,
Give me hope that does not die;
Bring me back to life again.
Our spirits are like the trees of the forest,
Or trees as they stand guarding a park.
Our spirits can reach as high as tall timber.
Praise God for Spirit’s sacred life.
