The doctrine of creation, then, means that our created environment is touched by the hand of God, is a place where we can encounter God, and still in someone way bears the traces of the paradise of delight that God intended his creation to be. Human sin obscures our perception of this, and encourages an attitude to the created order that cease to take seriously the fact that it is created, seeing it rather as a resource to be exploited for our own purposes. As we do that, we begin to misconstrue the world around us, our own attitude becomes destructive, we cease to see the world as a gift, and instead begin to compete one with another in fashioning our own worlds which encroach on one another, so that it becomes a matter of contention whether this is mine or yours, as we forget the reality that it is God’s—and so both mine and yours, as a gift to share, or neither mine nor yours, as a possession to grasp and hold.
“
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Andrew Louth, “Between Creation and Transfiguration: The Environment in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition,” in Ecological Hermeneutics: Biblical, Historical and Theological Perspectives
Reverend Billy leads mass exorcism in Tate Modern Turbine Hall over ‘taint’ of BP sponsorship
Remember when we called the Arcimoto SRK “an electric car for the Facebook generation”? Apparently it’s also an electric car for the “Firefly” generation. Actor Nathan Fillion got all excited about the car at its launch, and his remarks get at the main reasons for wanting an electric car: Spaceship resemblance and revenge:
“Thank you for giving me a way to stick it to big oil and big auto companies. Because… I am a vengeful man. And they’ve been sticking it to me for a long time.
No matter how old I get, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of the fact that it looks a little like a spaceship. I’m kind of into spaceships, so thanks for that.”
Creation implies donation. In a world that is created, all is gift. This is a difficult truth for those of us who are modern and who have, therefore, been taught to believe that all good is an achievement of our sole fabrication. Knowledge is reduced to power, a possession, the accumulation of which enables us better to dominate the world.
Ultimately, the problem is with the people who designed and built these things, not with the people who have to suffer horribly and die when they explode. You see, you have to be a certain sort of person to say “Sure, using a precariously controlled subcritical nuclear pile to boil water to run steam turbines to generate electricity is a great idea!” That sort of person is called a sociopath. Having worked with quite a few of them, I know a thing or two about sociopaths. They are always around to make ridiculous things happen and take credit for them while they can, but when these ridiculous things go horribly wrong, as they inevitably do, they are nowhere to be found. They have this knack for promoting the knuckle-draggers just in time for them to take the fall for what appears to be their own mistakes.
Wendell Berry was recognized for his literary achievements on the floor of the House in Frankfort, Kentucky March 14th, 2011.
The Feds and Food=Fooderal Confusion [cartoon]
Cost of owning a car (per year)
President Barack Obama presents a 2010 National Humanities Medal to author and conservationist Wendell E. Berry, Wednesday, March 2, 2011, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
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