continued from my examiner column . . .
[Pensacola Beach at Sunset photo by agnosticpreacherskid]
The Columbus Dispatch had an article from McClatchy News writer Erika Bolstad ‘Oil from well still black gold’ on Friday, June 4th.
The author contends that ‘the oil giant will salvage much of the oil that’s spewing from the crumpled pipes on the Gulf floor. . . (which) could generate more than $1.4 million in revenue for BP each day. . . . Based on government estimates of the flow rate, the mangled well could produce oil valued at as much as $85 million over the next 60 days . . . ‘
The author contends that ‘the oil giant will salvage much of the oil that’s spewing from the crumpled pipes on the Gulf floor. . . (which) could generate more than $1.4 million in revenue for BP each day. . . . Based on government estimates of the flow rate, the mangled well could produce oil valued at as much as $85 million over the next 60 days . . . ‘
To say, as liturgical Christians do, ‘Lord have mercy’ isn’t good enough. We need to have mercy ourselves, and launch a full-out effort at energy independence from oil which works safely and sustainably with creation rather than exploiting it mercilessly. This Corpus Christi feast day June 3rd/6th honoring the body of Christ symbolically, needs to expand St. Juliana’s vision exponentially. Albert Schweitzer said in the last century, ‘What has been passing for Christianity during these nineteen centuries is merely a beginning, full of weaknesses and mistakes, not a full grown Christianity springing from the spirit of Jesus.’
The real communion transformation is happening with water, oil and compassion, taking place as hundreds of volunteers wash the oil off the feathers of doomed birds. If, as Jesus himself is purported to have said, ‘…6Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.' 7 NIV (Lk 12:6). And, in the Hebrew Bible, (Psa 84:3 NIV) ‘Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young-- a place near your altar, O LORD Almighty, my King and my God.’ (Altar as in/of the World- see latest book by Barbara Brown Taylor)
Fox, who was director of the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality and then founder of the University in Creation Spirituality (through 2007) is the author of over 28 books, including Original Blessing, and One River, Many Wells. For his theology of Creation Spirituality- that we are born originally blessed (rather than fallen creatures) the Vatican censured and ‘silenced’ him; he was dismissed as a Dominican order priest.
Fox says, ‘True religion is not about institutions, be they mosques, temples, or objects of any kind. It is about relationship. It is about intersubjectivity and not objects and the objectifying of objects that we so often fall into. Creation brings us all together.’ He continues in One River, Many Wells, ‘From Hinduism we hear: Many are the paths of humans, but they all in the end come to Me. Nikhilananda, a scholar on Hinduism, believes that the great religions of the world are not competitive but complementary. One religion is not the enemy of the other, but all religions are faced by common enemies: skepticism, atheism, and perhaps worst of all, severe indifference. . . . In the Bhagavad Gita, God says: I am the thread that runs through the pearls, as in a necklace. Nihilananda adds to this line: Each religion is one of the pearls.’ [Florida Keys Bahia Honda dolphins at play-photo by Mwanner 2008]
‘Hindu mystic Rajjab writes: The worship of the different religions, which are like so many small streams, move together to meet God, who is like the ocean.’
I weep for the Gulf, the waters everywhere . . . that bear and support the Life.
copyright 2010, Patricia A. Rodemann
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