Greenblade - creation - faith - justice

It's Been Three Years

Do you remember three years ago today? Katrina made landfall on August 29th. The weather was much as it is now; the students were back. Far away, a city, an entire coast, was drowning. Since that time other communities have been hard hit by natural disaster, but it was not the natural disaster that changed us. It was indifference, abandonment, and callous stupidity. Over these three years we have channelled our shock and passion into an awareness of the fragility of our lives as a community on the earth. Knowing that we can do little in the Gulf Coast, we have tried to do what we can where we are. (If you would like to review our journey at ECC, the blog is still available. Read from the bottom up.)

 

Three years later Greenblade is still at work. Following the interests and callings of the people who make it up, Greenblade now links and supports ... MORE

Thunderstorms

It has been quite the summer for storms. It seems every day a storm comes through, often moving quickly on its way to the coast. Quite often we get two or more storms in one day. I love it. My dog does not. She looks up into the sky toward the direction of the thunder and in her face I see the primal awe of the enormity of the earth. Then she finds a safe corner to be in to wait it out while I sit on the covered porch.

The clouds come in almost always from the west and move right across the back garden. Wind whips the trees into a frenzy, exploding the calm greens into a kaleidoscope of silvers from the underside of the leaves. Lightening cuts the sky and it is almost impossible not to count - one-hippopotamus, two-hippopotamus - to see how far away the center of the storm is. Then it ... MORE

Approaching Lughnasa

Given a choice, I’ll take “Celtic spirituality” – fragmentary, reconstructed, elusive, untamed – over institutionalized, authoritarian, “default” spirituality any day. I am reminded of conversations with people who prefer a form of worship “that most people expect” over “local practice,” which I see as the kind of worship that embodies the history and collective prayers of a community, that is indeed unexpected because gathered over time. To me, the possibility of surprise, of the breaking through of the Holy Spirit, is why I am there. I like the little pieces that don’t fit, the arrival of people I didn’t anticipate, the ability to read the “signs and portents.” I’m never more conscious of this than at the turning of the seasons and, in some ways most easily at Lughnasa. Lughnasa, also known as Lammas, is the harvest festival and it comes at the time of the actual harvest, when the vines die back and all the energy of the plant goes ... MORE