Rev. Cameron, I am an 80 year old woman and each day as I watch the news of the fires, floods, droughts, etc. I worry more and more about the world that my grand and great grandchildren are facing. The prayer today touched me deeply and will be printed and taped on my bathroom mirror where there are many other prayers from you and other spiritual leaders. Bless you for your words and your faith.
Beautifully written but also sad if we don't heed the warnings and remember our earthly home and its magnificence. I kept thinking when will we ever learn!
By the way, I could praise your writing every day you write but decide not to flood your inbox. Instead I share your site with everyone I know!!
Good morning, Rev. Cameron, and once again, thank you. We do need that story, but who will tell it in such a way that the world -- particularly this country -- will listen? You are right: We become numb to statistics. But one day, maybe soon, there will be a statistic that crosses a statistical Rubicon, and that, as they say, will be that. But when people hear, "Well, if we don't do anything by 2050...", they think, "That's a long way off, and besides, it was nice a cool today." Yep, we need a story!
This was a topic that didn't come up in the conversation yesterday, but was very much a part of our vision setting up the house in France. We were very much engaged in developing permaculture, and multiple different habitats for ecosystems to develop in. We succeeded in setting up woodland, a rich meadow, a pond and wetland area, reed bed water filter, vegetables, fruit growing, a herbaceous garden, and hedges and shrubs for nesting birds etc. A rather barren farm field landscape was transformed into an enormously rich biodiversity within a few years. The Mother House also made sure that they worked together with Arocha to make best use of the grounds around the house in Northumberland as well. i just thought you might be interested.
Thanks Cameron!!! In today’s world, globally, we are not concerned about climate change and what it is doing to our planet let alone ourselves. America is the epitome of that. You are in a state of”me, my, mine” that has become all consuming. America has elected the perfect example of the rot which, daily keeps destroying your country and the world but, America and the world are standing by and doing nothing to stop this madness. Yes, the world is moving on and around America but, nobody is addressing the disease or its symptoms. We will spend another 10 years/a generation doing relatively nothing to help ourselves…
Yes, we need to create a new story, but simultaneously, we need to consciously un-create the old one. As I was studying Thomas Berry in my MA program, what struck me deepest was the lack of congruence between the story he was pointing to, and the story the Western church has created, whose threads we can pull right into the present. Our prayers, hymns and liturgical language tell the story of a God "out there", of different substance from the rest of creation, somehow placed in the sacred, spiritual realm while the rest of the Universe is placed in the profane, physical realm. (No thanks, Descartes) Our new story needs to join it all together. What if our new story dispensed with the notion that our earthly lives are a proving ground to prepare us for our true home in heaven? When Thomas was close to death in 2009, some of his friends asked him, "Where are you going?" I was told that Thomas replied, "I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying right here." Can we create a new story that says our true home is right here? Then we'd look for God right here, right now. We would have to re-write Martin Luther's lovely Christmas hymn, "From heaven above to earth I come" and stop responding several verses later with, "Welcome to earth, O noble guest!" And with apologies to all Lutherans, myself included, we'd have to stop singing, in "Beautiful Savior" that the earth and stars might be nice, but Jesus is better. Just two "for instances". (And yes, I rewrite hymns; my MA project was titled "Hymns for a New Story", and I continue to work, with Thomas Berry's ideas and books right along side of me. There is so much work to do.)
William Reese’s recent Substack post speaks to this as well. Do we have the ability to create the kinds of local, bioregional communities that are actually rooted in and one with the more-than-human Impossible House of Love?
This will not be easy.
Here is a link to Bill Reese’s post, which compliments what you have written in the past couple of days
Here in the State of gators, pythons, neighborhood black bears and unrestrained development it is clear that animals are reclaiming their habitats. They are hungry. We think of them as invasive but we are the invaders, eating up their habitats with our needs.
Here in this beautiful State surrounded on three sides by water we are ironically in a drought that even the 100 degree plus heat-fueled daily thunderstorms can't seem to quench. We keep building houses on barrier reefs and on top of water-recharge areas and then wonder why they flood.
But even the sand is thirsty here and the water percolates down into our upper aquifer which already is salt-intruded from the seas. Money for sustainable solutions- easier on our earth-- has been diverted to a demented dream about coal. Water wars are on the horizon.
Daytime life goes on as if the ground beneath us is holding. Nightime watches a high-rise condo collapse, pancaking itself and its sleepers.
The nightmare version of our story in this State has us building an ark with Jonah...... looking frantically for a dove or rainbow- any sign- to say we won't sink completely back to the ocean, despite the high tides covering Miami's downtown streets and the ever increasing sinkholes in our center.
Yesterday would have been a good time to create another version. People tried but we have forgotten their stories. We do, desperately, need a new one here in Florida.
Thank you, Cameron. Reading this thoughtful devotional makes me realize how selfish and self-centered we are. God told us to steward the earth and care for it. Forgive us Lord. Help us to do better.
I appreciate your prayer and these thoughts
“May we become good ancestors.
May those who come after us inherit evidence of our love.”
Rev. Cameron, I am an 80 year old woman and each day as I watch the news of the fires, floods, droughts, etc. I worry more and more about the world that my grand and great grandchildren are facing. The prayer today touched me deeply and will be printed and taped on my bathroom mirror where there are many other prayers from you and other spiritual leaders. Bless you for your words and your faith.
Beautifully written but also sad if we don't heed the warnings and remember our earthly home and its magnificence. I kept thinking when will we ever learn!
By the way, I could praise your writing every day you write but decide not to flood your inbox. Instead I share your site with everyone I know!!
Good morning, Rev. Cameron, and once again, thank you. We do need that story, but who will tell it in such a way that the world -- particularly this country -- will listen? You are right: We become numb to statistics. But one day, maybe soon, there will be a statistic that crosses a statistical Rubicon, and that, as they say, will be that. But when people hear, "Well, if we don't do anything by 2050...", they think, "That's a long way off, and besides, it was nice a cool today." Yep, we need a story!
This was a topic that didn't come up in the conversation yesterday, but was very much a part of our vision setting up the house in France. We were very much engaged in developing permaculture, and multiple different habitats for ecosystems to develop in. We succeeded in setting up woodland, a rich meadow, a pond and wetland area, reed bed water filter, vegetables, fruit growing, a herbaceous garden, and hedges and shrubs for nesting birds etc. A rather barren farm field landscape was transformed into an enormously rich biodiversity within a few years. The Mother House also made sure that they worked together with Arocha to make best use of the grounds around the house in Northumberland as well. i just thought you might be interested.
Thanks Cameron!!! In today’s world, globally, we are not concerned about climate change and what it is doing to our planet let alone ourselves. America is the epitome of that. You are in a state of”me, my, mine” that has become all consuming. America has elected the perfect example of the rot which, daily keeps destroying your country and the world but, America and the world are standing by and doing nothing to stop this madness. Yes, the world is moving on and around America but, nobody is addressing the disease or its symptoms. We will spend another 10 years/a generation doing relatively nothing to help ourselves…
Yes, we need to create a new story, but simultaneously, we need to consciously un-create the old one. As I was studying Thomas Berry in my MA program, what struck me deepest was the lack of congruence between the story he was pointing to, and the story the Western church has created, whose threads we can pull right into the present. Our prayers, hymns and liturgical language tell the story of a God "out there", of different substance from the rest of creation, somehow placed in the sacred, spiritual realm while the rest of the Universe is placed in the profane, physical realm. (No thanks, Descartes) Our new story needs to join it all together. What if our new story dispensed with the notion that our earthly lives are a proving ground to prepare us for our true home in heaven? When Thomas was close to death in 2009, some of his friends asked him, "Where are you going?" I was told that Thomas replied, "I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying right here." Can we create a new story that says our true home is right here? Then we'd look for God right here, right now. We would have to re-write Martin Luther's lovely Christmas hymn, "From heaven above to earth I come" and stop responding several verses later with, "Welcome to earth, O noble guest!" And with apologies to all Lutherans, myself included, we'd have to stop singing, in "Beautiful Savior" that the earth and stars might be nice, but Jesus is better. Just two "for instances". (And yes, I rewrite hymns; my MA project was titled "Hymns for a New Story", and I continue to work, with Thomas Berry's ideas and books right along side of me. There is so much work to do.)
William Reese’s recent Substack post speaks to this as well. Do we have the ability to create the kinds of local, bioregional communities that are actually rooted in and one with the more-than-human Impossible House of Love?
This will not be easy.
Here is a link to Bill Reese’s post, which compliments what you have written in the past couple of days
https://reeswilliame.substack.com/p/potpourrifacets-of-life-faith-and?r=g5k4i&utm_medium=ios
Here in the State of gators, pythons, neighborhood black bears and unrestrained development it is clear that animals are reclaiming their habitats. They are hungry. We think of them as invasive but we are the invaders, eating up their habitats with our needs.
Here in this beautiful State surrounded on three sides by water we are ironically in a drought that even the 100 degree plus heat-fueled daily thunderstorms can't seem to quench. We keep building houses on barrier reefs and on top of water-recharge areas and then wonder why they flood.
But even the sand is thirsty here and the water percolates down into our upper aquifer which already is salt-intruded from the seas. Money for sustainable solutions- easier on our earth-- has been diverted to a demented dream about coal. Water wars are on the horizon.
Daytime life goes on as if the ground beneath us is holding. Nightime watches a high-rise condo collapse, pancaking itself and its sleepers.
The nightmare version of our story in this State has us building an ark with Jonah...... looking frantically for a dove or rainbow- any sign- to say we won't sink completely back to the ocean, despite the high tides covering Miami's downtown streets and the ever increasing sinkholes in our center.
Yesterday would have been a good time to create another version. People tried but we have forgotten their stories. We do, desperately, need a new one here in Florida.
Way to go Cameron
Thank you, Cameron. Reading this thoughtful devotional makes me realize how selfish and self-centered we are. God told us to steward the earth and care for it. Forgive us Lord. Help us to do better.
I appreciate your prayer and these thoughts
“May we become good ancestors.
May those who come after us inherit evidence of our love.”
Amen