Greenblade - creation - faith - justice

Continued Thoughts From Israel

My trip is now in the wind down phase.  I leave in three days time and will be bringing home many wonderful experiences and gifts for my family.

This week I had the opportunity to swim in both the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea.  For those not familiar with the geography of the area, snow melt from the mountains feeds the Sea Of Galilee which then feeds the Jordan River which runs along the eastern border of Israel and Jordan. The Jordan River then spills into the Dead Sea which has no outlet and no life within its waters. 

One of the issues that Israel faces is an ongoing depletion of its water supply. Both seas have been receeding for years due to overuse and drought.  In fact the Sea of Galilee is now 13 feet below its historical level and the Dead Sea is even further behind.  This is a major problem for ... MORE

Greetings from Israel

It is hard to believe but the second leg of my sabbatical has begun.  I arrived in Israel on the 22nd and other than the normal bout of jet lag, all is going well.  This week my reflections centers on the concepts of power.  A few months back when a group from Greenblade gathered at Holy Cross Monastery we discussed how food has been used as a form of oppression.  Here in Israel, power and control are very much a part of the social scene.  The tension at the The Holy Sepulchre is a story of power and control between Christian religious.  How, at the site of ressurection and Christianity's most holy of sites can the religious communities justify their inabilty to work together? This is quite a paradox in my mind.

The the issues of power and oppression go more deeply here, especially as we begin to scratch the surface of Israeli/Palestinian relations.  Right now it ... MORE

More thoughts from the Garden

Since I began my sabbatical, my reflections keep bringing me back to the Garden of Eden. On Tuesday evening, I went to see Avatar with my family. The plot is simple – good over evil, profit versus stewardship of the land, false entitlement and disregard versus living in concert with others. For all intents and purposes, the movie is a futuristic retelling of Disney's Pocohantas awash in phenomenal special effects.

As I watched this movie however, I kept asking myself the proverbial “what if”. What if the writer of Genesis had substituted ‘caretaker’ or ‘stewardship’ for the word ‘dominion?’ My reference is to the end of the creation story, after humanity has been created and God gives them ‘dominion’ over the created order. For years I have tried to convince myself that the correct translation of the original Hebrew had to be something different, but my transliteration searches keep coming up as ‘dominion.’
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