Jonathan Williams

A couple people have commented on the photograph of Wendell below. It was taken by Jonathan Williams in Port Royal, Kentucky back in 1970. Here you will find more of his photography of some real great people. Like this guy and him too, oh... and this long time friend of the late Jack Kerouac.

Treehugger.com has issued the 100 Mile Thanksgiving Challenge

The farm I work at is offering a way to make it happen.

...our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God's gifts into his face, as of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them. To Dante, "despising Nature and her gifts" was a violence against God.(n3) We have no entitlement from the Bible to exterminate or permanently destroy or hold in contempt anything on the earth or in the heavens above it or in the waters beneath it.

Wendell Berry

O Lord,

You came and set foot on desert ground

parched:cracked:broken

You revealed to us your love, yet it was an alien love

a love we didn't recognize

or understand

Yet everywhere you set foot became glad

blossomed:bloomed

You walked strait into our brokeness

with our feeble hands

weak knees
caloused eyes
deaf ears

and gave strength and understanding as a GIFT

You showed us The Way

and offered to carry us to the land of the REDEEMED

In you we find our JOY

And now, O Lord,

may we who know joy

set foot once again on desert ground

parched:cracked:broken

Make your dwelling in the {joy of the redeemed}

so that we may also know what it means to

::EMBRACE::

the feeble handed

::WALK::

with those whose knees are week

::SEE::

those who have been opressed

Teach us to love those with no eyes to see it

ears to hear it

mind to comprehend it

Only then, O Lord, will gladness and Joy overtake us

and sorrow and sighing will flee away

I'm selling my Chevy Prism

Manual Transmission that gets close to 40 MILES PER GALLON hwy
it's like a PRIUS... but cheaper... (and not quite the same gas mileage)

any takers?

Kelly posted this:

Does God Allow His Children to Be Poor?

God allows both Christians and non-Christians to experience every form of suffering known to the human race, just as He allows His blessings to fall on both. Poverty, like other forms of suffering, is relative, as Lars and I were reminded while we were in India. Our country's definition of the "poverty level" would mean unimaginable affluence to the girls we saw working next to our hotel. For nine hours a day they carried wet concrete in wooden basins on their heads, pouring it into the forms for the foundation of a large building. They were paid thirty cents a day.

Poverty has not been my experience, but God has allowed in the lives of each of us some sort of loss, the withdrawal of something we valued, in order that we may learn to offer ourselves a little more willingly, to allow the touch of death on one more thing we have clutched so tightly, and thus know fullness and freedom and joy that much sooner. We're not naturally inclined to love God and seek His Kingdom. Trouble may help to incline us- that is, it may tip us over, put some pressure on us, lean us in the right direction.

-Elisabeth Elliot

here's a thought I've been thinking for a couple weeks now:

It seems like the most subversive/countercultural thing to do in our American society is to "embrace" loss. Yet it seems to be what the Kingdom of God is all about. It is in the embrace of a life of downward mobility where one might find persecution in a land of religious freedom. We are taught to fear loss. A life that welcomes displacement is seen as unhealthy, irrisponsible, and even dangerous. Yet I think the call of the Gospel is one of voluntary displacement. How can I claim then to "follow" Christ and still cling to the illusions of security that my society is offering me? Could these be our idols? What are they? If I choose not to bow to them and live a life that challenges them, will I be persecuted?

These are the thoughts/questions that I have been living with for the past few weeks. I will continue to live with them... +++ may the mystery of Christ continue to challenge and transform +++