http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q

What happens to the love stuff and the justice stuff and the human rights stuff when we realize that we are PUNY and insignificant?

Read this quote and try to get something out of it, then watch the Youtube.  Food for thought…

Quote by  Reinhold Niebuhr

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.

The true situation is that anything short of love cannot be perfect justice. In fact, every definition of justice actually presupposes sin as a given reality. It is only because life is in conflict with life, because of sinful self-interest, that we are required carefully to define schemes of justice which prevent one life from taking advantage of another. Yet no scheme of justice can do full justice to all the variable factors which the freedom of man introduces into human history.

THE YOU TUBE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q

Rachel Carroll from The Montana Human Rights Network put the evening together. The MHRN is doing great things in our state. Check them out here: http://www.mhrn.org/

Rachel Carroll (more about her here) focused the conversation, advising us to contact our representatives in DC advocating for the Native people of our country by pressuring Obama to sign on to the

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

(click above for the wikipedia article)

The Rev. Luis Cristobal Alejo Fernandez, Pastor Presidente of the Bolivian Evangelical Lutheran Church will be in Montana for a brief visit this month. He will be in Great Falls on June 4, and will meet with interested people at 7:00 PM at Our Savior’s Lutheran church at 1326 1st Ave N.

Pastor Presidente will discuss the United Nations Conference on Indigenous Peoples, and the international issues of indigenous people’s rights and challenges. All are welcome and translation will be provided.

The Lutheran Church in Bolivia has a special companion relationship with the Lutheran Church in Montana. Groups from Montana have visited the churches in Bolivia and have helped to support schools, churches and a retreat center. The Pastor Presidente is visiting the United States at the invitation of the United Nations, which is hosting a conference on indigenous peoples. Pastor Alejo Fernandez is Amyara, an indigenous group in Bolivia. The Lutheran Church in Bolivia is primarily Aymara.

Bishop Jessica Crist of the Montana Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America said of Pastor Presidente and the event, “ We are honored that the Pastor Presidente has come to Montana. We have a great deal to learn from him about the faith, and about indigenous peoples worldwide, and especially in Bolivia.”

The Montana Human Rights Network’s organizer Rachel Carroll said of the event, “Guaranteeing the rights of Indigenous People here in Montana and around the world is paramount to guaranteeing the rights of all people. Our justice is connected. We are so pleased to be able to host this event with the Montana Lutheran Church and to have such an honored guest here to share his experiences with us.”

The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by the UN General Assembly on Thursday September 13, 2007 by a majority of 144 states in favor, 4 votes against (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States), and 11 abstentions.

The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is meeting in at UN Headquarters in New York from May 18-29 to discuss ways to further implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which gained momentum last month when Australia officially endorsed the Declaration after previously having voted against it. The Forum will also discuss the relationship between indigenous peoples and industrial corporations, and the need to promote corporate social responsibility.

Montana’s 2009 Legislature considered a bill by Representative Shannon Augure (D-Browning) addressing the UN Declaration. House Joint Resolution 23 resolved that the Montana Senate and House of Representatives expressed their support for the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. HJ 23 also urged the U.S. to sign the UN Declaration. The bill passed the House of Representatives, but was tabled by the Senate State Administration Committee. .

The Montana Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and the Montana Human Rights Network are co-hosting the public event.

Jordyn also has very nice toe nails.

Two thoughts I’d like to share from the Sun Magazine. First, I will paste the beginning paragraph – it speaks for itself…

Christian conservatives’ support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is well publicized, but there is also a long tradition in the U.S. of Christians using nonviolent direct action to oppose militarism.

I must raise my hand, confess, and continue to shake the anger I and many other Christian-type minded folk had when the Christian faith/language was abused by the conservative political right wing, pushing us, with drum cadence ringing in our ears, onward to war…  Articles like these help me to release a little of that anger and know that we can take back the message of justice, freedom, and redemption that Jesus embraced.

“Everyone presumes pacifism means passivity, that the only response to violence is to either retaliate or do nothing. . . . Nonviolence is not just a tactic or a strategy; it’s a way of life that requires us to love our enemies. It demands creativity, initiative, and engagement with the culture. There’s nothing passive about it.”

More here>>>>>> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/402/what_jesus_would_do

Second thought from the Sun::::::  This may be a bit long, but it touches on many themes that roam around our contemporay situations.    How to allow god/sacred/spirit exist in the modern scientific/psychology/secular world.   How do we honor the truth of both of these categories? It also brings up Native practices and spiritualities and how our contemporary society is alienated from each other and the earth that is our home.  Our Christian tradition has often been an ingredient in this alienation rather than a prophetic voice.  We must be the later, reading the scriptures as redemptive – redeeming this earth that we are interconnected with.

This article helps.

It is called, “The Good Red Road.  Leslie Gray on Rediscovering America’s Oldest Psychology.”  By, Barbara Platek.  I will quote from the middle of the interview.

http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/400/the_good_red_road

Platek: is the interviewer.    Grey:  is being interviewed

Platek: How much more effective do youthink psychotherapy might be if it acknowledged the human need for the sacred?

Grey: The word psychotherapy is from the Greek, meaning “soul healing.”  Certainly western psyschology has lost touch with this original meaning, much to its detriment.  For me, incorporating the sacred into my work is a question of responding to what clients are asking for, rather than dismissing their concerns.  But it isn’t necessary to include the sacred or the transpersonal in every psychotherapy session.  If someone comes to therapy to overcome a fear of flying for example, there are some cognitive-behavioral approaches that work wonders.  The important thing is for therapists to listen and to assess the client’s needs.

I read a wonderful vignette in an ecopychology newsletter: A patient comes to a therapist and says that she has been having nightmares about the rivers being polluted and the air being fouled.  The therapist interprets the dream as being about the patient’s fear of aspects of her inner life.  But our environment really is being polluted and destroyed, and many people are concerned or even frightened about it.  Psychotherapy needs to genuinely respect the socioevnironmental context in addition to the intrapsychic experience.  There is a famous story about psychologist Freida Fromm-Reichmann:  She had a patient whom she successfully treated, but a few weeks later that person was taken to Auschwitz.  The question is: Would it have been better to focus the work on getting the patient to safety?

We therapists need to understand when a client has needs that may not fit with our clinical orientation – whether it’s a need for the sacred, or for contact with the environment, or whatever – and we cshould give a referral if appropriate.

Platek: you suggest that many of our problems result from profound feelings of alienation: we have forgotten where we came from.

Gray: Yes, we have become so alienated that we are destroying our own life-support systems.  You can’t name another animal that does that.  Nonhuman animals know that if they eat a certain insect for food, then they shouldn’t destroy the flower that feeds that insect.  The shamanic paradigm is one of interconnectedness.  The Chukchi people in Russia say, “Everything that is, is alive.”  In contrast, we have created artificial environments that enable us to forget that we ingabit a living planet. If we ask chldren where chicken comes from, many of them will answer, “The supermarket.”  We have forgotten that we are a part of the earth.  As a result, we don’t take care of the planet or feel that it is here to take care of us.  

I was part of an ecopsychology symposium in 1993 in whch we met a famous gardener who grew food as organically as possible and who drew upon indigenous methods to tend the soil.  This man was deeply connected to the earth.  I asked him: “If you could tell people one thing that might improve their relationship with the earth, what would it be?”  He told me that twenty-five years ago he would have urged people to move back to the land and plant a big garden, but now he would simply say, “Just grow something edible, even in a pot on your windowsill.  Grow something, and see how the earth nurtures you.”

We need a psychology that behaves as if the earth matters, and as if nature and the environment are crucial components of health.  Recent research shows that someone in a hospital room with a view of trees will recover more quickly than someone who has no such view.

Shamanism is the native psycholohy of this North American continetn.  Western psychology is a transplat from Europe and has never been integrated with this land and its traditions.  If we could include Native American psychology in Euro-American psychology, i think we could have a holistic system.  The method of healing that originated here addressed the whole person and acknowledges the interconnectedness of all life. Interest in nondualistic Asian philosophies is probably an attempt to address this lack of unity in the West.  Native American societies have a lived sense of the unity of all living things, as expressed in the Native American phrase “all my relations,” which has been called a prayer and a cosmology in one breath.  If we could incorporate that into conventional American psychology, we might create a genuinely “ecotherapeutic’ model that would view human beings as part of a natural world.

In January of this year I went to Nicaragua with a small ELCA delegation “to gain an in-depth understanding of how the issues of extreme poverty, hunger and climate change are interrelated”. Actually, that’s quite a lot to accomplish in the ten days that we were there. However, it is readily apparent that climatic changes are having major impacts in Nicaragua. Hurricanes are more frequent and more severe. Seasonal rainfall patterns have been altered, directly affecting growing seasons and flooding and indirectly affecting incidents of disease and clean water supplies. The poor are disproportionably affected because they have less capability to adapt to the changes.

So what did the Nicaraguans that we met want us to do? Mostly, they just asked that we tell their story back in the United States. The story is complex. National and international politics, local economies, globalization and land distribution and more are all confounded with the effects of climate change. So I’ll provide a framework to understand what is happening — there will be time for questions. And I’ll tell their story.

I’m Mark Goetz. Some may remember me. My professional training is in animal agriculture and rangeland ecology. For seven of my years in exile from Montana, I was the superintendent of the Beef Cattle and Sheep Nutrition Unit of South Dakota State University where I conducted both feedlot and grazing animal trials. In the mid 1980′s, a development project with the old ALC, took me (and my wife and our 2 small boys) to the Central African Republic for several years where I worked with the Fulani tribe of nomadic cattle herders.
More about the delegation here:

http://www.elca.org/Our-Faith-In-Action/Justice/Advocacy/Issues/Environment-and-Energy/Nicaragua-Trip.aspx

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/8405

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009905300305

a nice bucket a cherry toms from 2008 harvest

1. April 15th we put in potatoes, onions, peas, lettuce, peas, spinach, beats, nasturiums, radishes.

2. May 15th we planted the tomatoes the High School kids started in February.  We also planted Winter Squash, cucumbers, cilantro, bush beans, zuchini.

Here is some art by Sophie Lockerby who is a senior at Great Falls High.  She’s not only an artist, but also a soccer player who will be playing at the air force academy next year.   She designed these for us to promote the beauty of plants, life, and invite the surrounding community to share in our Community Gardening efforts.  Aweseome job!  Thanks so much Sophie.

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Speaking of Art…

Below is a quote from the book Church of the Dog by Kaya McLaren.  It synthesizes earth, love, art, openness, closed-ness, new life, death….new life.  It also explores gender issues in an agricultural setting.  Traditional man/woman roles.  The book gives us the possibility to hope beyond the boxes that gender has, and is able, to produce.

“For me, gardening is a form of prayer. Most people have an awareness of life and death, but few have an an awareness of life, death, and life again. Gardeners do though.

Bulbs come up every spring. Then in winter, it looks like there’s nothing there, no hope for life ever again. Then, Hallelujah! Next spring they’re back even fuller. Perennials – same thing.

Annuals have a slightly different lesson. Annuals really do die, but they broadcast seeds before they go. Where there was only one calendula the year before, there will be ten this year, and one day, they will fill every empty space in your garden. Annuals are a lesson in the difference one living thing, plant or person, can make, and how their presence resonates long after they’re gone. There again, the effects are not immediate. There is always the winter. And when you consider the garden as a whole, well, winter is a time to reflect, a time to dream. It gives you time to ask the big questions…

Gardening is an affirmation of divine timing. Some years, in early spring, my enthusiasm takes an ugly turn, and I seemingly believe I can make spring happen earlier than it normally would, if I just work hard enough, if I till enough, compost enough, harden off seedlings earlier than I normally would. In the end, I wind up with twelve flats of dead seedlings. Then I direct seed a couple months later, and with much less effort, everything grows into the full glory it was destined to encompass. To everything there is a season. Amen.”

Nancy Wilson Speaks about the "Meals on Wheels" organization after we planted the garden

More photos and information to come.  This picture finds us sitting on the grass after a long morning of planting Potatoes, onions, peas, lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, and nasturtiums.  The kids also learned about and created raised beds.  It was a great day.  Those who attended were Highschool students from CMR, a posse of college kids from UGF, young adults, parents, and some church folk came out.

(more here: http://baileyinmontana.blogspot.com/)

Jamye Hill and Nathaniel Beargeon shovel manure onto our garden beds a few weeks before we planted.

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20090209/LIFESTYLE/902090306/1024/rss04