I live, Eustace said, in nature, where everything is connected, circular. The seasons are circular. The planet is circular, and so is its passage around the sun. The course of water over the earth is circular, coming down from the sky and circulating through the world to spread life and then evaporating up again. I live in a circular teepee and I build my fire in a circle, and when my loved ones visit me, we sit in a circle and talk. The life cycles of plants and animals are circular. I live outside where I can see this. The ancient people understood this. People say that I do not live in the real world, but it is modern Americans who live in a fake world, because they have stepped outside the natural circle of life.
Do people live in circles today? No. They live in boxes. They wake up every morning in the box of their bedroom because a box next to them started making noises to tell them it was time to get up. They eat their breakfast out of a box and then they throw that box away into another box. Then they leave the box where they live and get into a box with wheels and drive to work, which is just another big box broken up into lots of little cubicle boxes where a bunch of people spend their days sitting and staring at the computer boxes in front of them. When the day is over, everyone gets into the box with wheels again goes home to their house boxes and spends the evening staring at the television boxes for entertainment. They get their music from a box; they live their lives in a box! Does this sound like anybody you know?
Read more about Eustace Conway at his nature preserve Turtle Island.
- Taken from the book The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert, ppgs. 18-19.
June 30, 2006
Check back for audio posts from Annual Conference
Brenda and I are going to be leaving tomorrow morning with some friends for Des Moines, Iowa. The CoB Annual Conference will be taking place from July 1st to the 5th. I will plan to audioblog my thoughts and reflections from Des Moines starting tomorrow or Sunday. You can also check in on A.C. by checking its daily web coverage throughout the week here.
Savior with an attitude
I am thankful that my understanding of Jesus hasn't gone this direction. However, I have wondered from time to time just how much of 'our crap' Jesus actually gets tired of putting up with? WARNING this article from Fake News veteran The Onion, can be somewhat offensive, but I encourage you to read it with a bit of humor and even truth found in it. Ultimately, remember that Jesus is mercy and grace.
Beyond our reach
Continued from previous post
In the same chapter, author Bill McKibben expounds:
So what if you know what a widget is? Or that you can read an html? Can you identify five edible plants in your bioregion and their seasons of availability? Or can you name five resident and migratory birds in your area? Or what the soil, rocks and minerals around your home are?
I believe that McKibben has named it well. How many things that were common knowledge about the land to people 150 years ago do we still know today? Probably very little if any; I’m including myself as well. I am living a paradox here because I probably spend as much time on the computer every day as I do actually being outside in nature, even though most of my posts of late have been in regards to nature and the environment. A trend that I am slowly reversing. See, I grew up in the country and it was not until I was 19 and went to college that I actually lived in a town or city setting. Since then, (7 years later) I am living in an urban setting and to be quite frank, it is killing me! I can link so many things that have hindered me by being in the city: I was much more inactive than I used to be, easy accessibility to fast food chains that added pounds, and actually preferring to stay home or inside more often. I have wondered how much would be different if I still lived in the country.
Ok, so we have traded in what was once considered basic knowledge for our ancestors 5 generations ago, in order that we might obtain more knowledge and information. Information overload I call it. And all that it is really doing is keeping us more confined and isolated than ever before. But hey, I know what Technorati is! And yet here I am, instead of telling you about what I think as we walk through the woods, I am sitting at my computer blogging it. Dammit!
In the same chapter, author Bill McKibben expounds:
We believe that we live in the age of information, that there has been an information revolution. Yet vital knowledge that humans have always possessed
about who we are and where we live seems beyond our reach.
So what if you know what a widget is? Or that you can read an html? Can you identify five edible plants in your bioregion and their seasons of availability? Or can you name five resident and migratory birds in your area? Or what the soil, rocks and minerals around your home are?
I believe that McKibben has named it well. How many things that were common knowledge about the land to people 150 years ago do we still know today? Probably very little if any; I’m including myself as well. I am living a paradox here because I probably spend as much time on the computer every day as I do actually being outside in nature, even though most of my posts of late have been in regards to nature and the environment. A trend that I am slowly reversing. See, I grew up in the country and it was not until I was 19 and went to college that I actually lived in a town or city setting. Since then, (7 years later) I am living in an urban setting and to be quite frank, it is killing me! I can link so many things that have hindered me by being in the city: I was much more inactive than I used to be, easy accessibility to fast food chains that added pounds, and actually preferring to stay home or inside more often. I have wondered how much would be different if I still lived in the country.
Ok, so we have traded in what was once considered basic knowledge for our ancestors 5 generations ago, in order that we might obtain more knowledge and information. Information overload I call it. And all that it is really doing is keeping us more confined and isolated than ever before. But hey, I know what Technorati is! And yet here I am, instead of telling you about what I think as we walk through the woods, I am sitting at my computer blogging it. Dammit!