Patrick Gordon-Wendell Berry's view on organized Religion

Wendell Berry complains that the organized church typically makes peace with a destructive economy and divorces itself from economic issues because it is economically compelled to do so. The church is too closely tied with militarism and exploitative industry. If they began to actively try and conserve the environment, they would step on a lot of powerful people’s toes. He deepens the need for a commitment through the study of the Bible. He argues that if it is read deeply and sympathetically, gives powerful support for respecting the sanctity of creation. Through this interpretation, he states that God’s spirit is in our wilderness. Furthermore, he calls us to celebrate our relationship with the Earth as a sacrament. He states that “to approach the Earth as a sacrament is to embrace its materiality while reverencing its worth beyond the horizon of visible use”. He praises that, although some land might not bear fruit in the beginning, it all has an inherent worth that can eventually be brought forth; and even though we cannot totally live in harmony with all creation, if we kill respectfully and only for our direct benefit it too is a sacrament.

In “Making Nature Sacred” the author talks about a Quaker John Woolman. Woolman describes an experience he had in his childhood to explain human connection with the “brute creation.” He says that when he was a child he threw a rock at a robin and killed her. He then climbed up the tree and killed all of the babies in the robin’s nest. He felt it was the right thing to do. It was his ethical duty considering he killed their mother. He even quotes Prov. 12:10 as he decides what to do. “The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” Rather than having to suffer a cruel death with no mother to give them food and nuture, he thinks it's better to save them from that and just killing them. I don't know if I could have done that but he had said he felt it was his duty. My neighbor killed a bird when we were all younger and I remember him talking about how he didn't feel bad but felt cooler. It is so sad to see people's different morals through something as small as killing a bird.

The Grand Canyon - Laura Ramey

(Picture courtesy of Me) Another place that I got to go with my family over the summer was the Grand Canyon. It really is a site to see. You fell tiny compared to the massive valleys you can see there. The picture I took was during a rare storm. This was before it hit us standing on the rim, but it was raining so hard, you could see it coming down from about 40 miles away. Every day that we were there, the visibility was about 60-70 miles, it was amazing. Driving though the park, away from the rim, all you can see are scorched trees that are burned to a crisp, but somehow are still standing. Some of them would make amazing photography shots from the way they are bent and twisted from the heat. I can definitely see how the a visit to the Grand Canyon would be a spiritual thing. When you stand on the edge of this massive canyon (yes, you can stand on the very edge... You should have see what some of the "more adventurous" [crazy] people were doing) you can't help but think that there has to be something, some power, bigger than you.

Mesa Verde - Laura Ramey

Over the summer I was forunate enough to visit some extraordinary sites. As a family, we traveled to Colorado for our ti-annual Graves Family Reunion. We had a lot of fun and actually went to some amazing places. We went to Mesa Verde, which is this old Indian site where they used to build their homes into the side of the cliffs. (ignore the rest of my family in the picture...) They had special pits where they would hold spiritual ceremonies and other sorts of events. It was amazing to see how it worked. And, referring back to my earlier post, there were books for sale explaining the curses and spells they would cast and book of stories of people who claim to have seen ghosts of the aboriginies from the area.

Outside Reading: When We Were Saints - Laura Ramey

Over the summer I read this amazing novel by Han Nolan titled When We Were Saints. It was an inspiring story about a little boy and little girl who decide to live as Jesus did. They climb to the top of a large hill behind the boys family farm and pray for hours a day. They eat only things from the land: no meat or animal products. They give up all material possessions and the boy doesn't even visit his grandmother when she's in the hospital, begging for him to come. The young teenagers end up taking a road trip and even though the boy is only 13, take his deceased grandfathers truck and drive from the countryside of Virginia to New York City. They don't sleep for the entire ride, the boy just listens to the girl hum while praying. They get to the Cloisters, a religious museum, and start making their way though the exhibits. They live in the museum after hours and hardly eat the whole time. Though out the journey, Archie, the boy, realizes that he has gotten closer to God, but when Claire, the girl, shows signs of undergoing a stigmata, brandishing the crucifix wounds of Jesus, Archie realizes that he will never be as close to God as her and wants to go home to be with his grandmother. The story was amazing. The willpower that Claire had to go for so long with no food was amazing. She thought that as long as she had God on her mind and was constantly thanking him for everything in her life, she would be safe. You should definitely pick it up.

Chris McCandless - Laura Ramey

I didn't get to attend the talk with McCandless' parents because of a conflict with another class but I'd still like to through my thoughts on the book out there. I thought McCandless was a selfish guy. He didn't need to run off into the wild all by himself for years to try to "find himself". He didn't need to burn his money or wreck he car and he definitely didn't need to ignore his parents. I don’t think his adventure was spiritual at all. I think it was his immature way of getting away from his “problems” that never really existed. He was from Mclean, VA. Have you seen the houses there? Yes, I’ll give him that it was a few years ago, but it was still the nice part of Northern VA. I think he wanted something different, like 99% of the people I know from Northern VA and ran away from what he had. Sure, he wanted a life of his own, but he didn’t need to make the irrational decisions that he did.

Topic of Choice- Ryan Dunn

Earlier this summer, a few of my friends and I decided to check out an abandoned factory in Gloucester. We had heard some rumors about the place, and figured it was worth a night’s trek into the woods. Once we arrived at the gravel path leading to the site, I was a bit skeptical and suspicious of the structure I saw in the distance. Thankfully there were few clouds in the sky, so the moon was shining full force so that it was nearly as bright as day, except the atmosphere had a blue aura. Eventually we reached the structure, and entered into its foreboding shadows. On the outside, the buildings simply took on the shape of 6, sixty foot tall silos. Although on the inside, it looked more like some haunted house pulled out of a Hollywood slasher film. Rusty, decaying stairs wounded up towards the upper levels, where the floors were littered with random holes that plummeted all the way to the bottom floor. Finally, we reached the roof and were in awe of the sight before us. At that height, light from neighboring houses was no longer an issue and allowed us to view a plethora of stars in the night sky. In the distance, we could see a broad river, glittering brightly in the moonlight. It was definitely a sight worthy of the trip it took to experience it.