For a deeper dive – over 500 posts on life, mind, body & spirit
This week the prairie is turning bright yellow. Wild daisies are in bloom and another small, yellow flower whose name I don’t know ; ) Come walk with me overlooking the Minnesota River Valley near our house . . .
You may also like Prairie Walk, Duluth Day and Cabin Fever.
Here’s a repeat of a previous post – because a number of people have asked about it.
With all the fall vegies arriving at the Farmers’ Market, why not try pickling without canning? Use your refrigerator instead.
Here’s a no-canning pickled beets recipe I have used for years:
1. Cook 2 lbs. beets (yellow or red) in boiling water until just tender. Rinse in cold water. Peel and slice. Place beets in a glass jar with lid or glass container with a cover.
2. In another bowl or 2+cup measuring cup, combine 1 c. sugar, 1/4 c. vinegar, 1/2 c. lemon juice and 1/4 c. water. Stir until sugard is dissolved. Pour liquid over beets.
3. Cover and refrigerate several days before serving. Makes 1 quart.
Like pickles – this will keep in the refrigerator for awhile, because of the acidity. If you want (optional) you can add clove, dill, peppercorns or other spices as you like.
Try this with other vegies too – mix carrots, green beans & cauliflower. Or try kohlrabi, cucumbers of course, zucchini, peppers, turnips and daikon look. They’re colorful in a clear canning jar and will allow you to enjoy flavorful fall vegetables for a long time.
Here’s another easy recipe using the lemon peels remaining from the lemon juice needed for the beet recipe above:
Recently, I made limoncello using this easy and excellent recipe from A Beach Cottage.
Make a double batch of pickled beets and limoncello then share with neighbors or friends.
For other ways to use empty canning jars, you may also like Walking Chicken BBQ, Picnic in a Jar and for fresh vegetables on a platter try Another Fabulous Friday.
This post is about what it means to live ethically. For example, what constitutes stealing? In the Ten Commandments, as in one of the yamas of yoga –asteya, there is the admonition “You shall not steal.” Is this only referring to taking something outright? That is a literal and shallow interpretation. As North Americans we may prefer the shallow interpretation because it suits our lifestyle. But we can go deeper. Stealing means having more than one’s fair share, when others have nothing.
Who decides what is my “fair share” or what is too much for me to have? Those living on less than $2 a day – two thirds of the human family – get to decide.
The gifts of our planet are for the use of the entire human family (and other species too). Morally and ethically, having more than we need when others have nothing is stealing. If society values human life, then based on that value, we provide social safety nets that meet basic human needs when necessary. We should speak about our refusal to meet other human beings’ basic needs truthfully.
The truth is that much of what I have has been stolen, then, from others who need it. This bothers me very much. I hope it bothers you too.
Again, language shapes how we understand. For example, we say “under privileged” but then we refuse (or are loath) to say “over privileged” because that would imply having what we did not earn or receive fairly.
And of course we like to refer to our stolen goods as “blessings” although they aren’t. Some of us are simple benefiting from an economy (set up by human beings – not by God) that privileges us over others.
We need to speak about reality as it really is so we can understand and think clearly. Then we can make choices that will bring true integrity and inner peace.
You may also like Truth or Consequences, Power of Reframing and Are We So Different?
My students were discussing reincarnation. This topic came up in yoga study as well.
Much has been written on reincarnation. I put together some considerations below. You may find them useful. Caveat: What I write is from a theological stance (as I am a theologian) so the starting point is different for me (as a believer) than for non-believers.
Also, as an educator I believe that religious traditions have much to teach us. We can appropriate many things, even though we may not choose to use everything. However, the things we choose to appropriate or believe must further justice in the world, not diminish it. Otherwise that belief is, by definition, immoral.
So with these parameters in mind, here we go.
On Reincarnation: From time to time I am asked about my belief in reincarnation or whether or not we experience more than one life. Some religious and philosophical traditions believe in reincarnation – Hindu, Yoga and some Buddhist traditions for example. We can’t completely eliminate reincarnation as a possibility since we can’t really know for sure.
In the Judeo-Christian scriptures God is relational with the world and with God’s people. As theologian John Haught might say, it is a story that is unfinished. It isn’t perfect but with promise in order to draw us into a future. God is the lure. God promises creation a banquet of relationality moving from chaos to complexity & coherence. In this story time is linear – meaning it doesn’t repeat. Our experience of time is the basis for God’s story, this drama. Time has a beginning and a goal, purpose or end.
Logic & Reason. In the Catholic tradition science and religion are not opposed to one another. They ask different questions. Science asks, “How did the world and what we observe in it come to be?” Theology asks, “Why is anything here at all?” Because they ask different questions science and theology can actually support each other. This is why so many Catholics are also scientists, researchers, doctors, astronomers etc. This is why Catholics build universities and hospitals. We believe that because God created the world and called it “good” we are free to respectfully investigate and explore the world. So what does this mean for belief in reincarnation?
Science tells us that space and time are actually one continuum. We experience them separately – but they are one, nevertheless. Knowing this, it would be difficult to accommodate for a belief in reincarnation. Reincarnation says that I, as a person, could exist in multiple lifetimes. Stated another way, I could exist simultaneously in more than one place/time on the space/time continuum. In order for that to happen I would have to be not one consciousness, but many. I’m not sure that could logically happen and still claim that I am a unique person, a unique entity or consciousness with free will.
If we choose to believe that we are not unique persons with our own consciousness and free will, then religious traditions that believe in reincarnation would have to radically overhaul their understanding of personhood, self-understanding and choice in order to be consistent and not contradict their own teachings on the development of the personhood of each individual. If my consciousness isn’t unique to this time/space continuum and simultaneously exists elsewhere, then I’m not solely responsible for my decisions and choices in this local/time.
With this understanding of consciousness or personhood it would be impossible to uphold the rule of law, for example, as it exists around the world today.
Certainly, life experience has something to bring to this issue. The actual experience of reincarnation says that a child suffering horribly from disease or hunger today is simply experiencing the consequences from bad choices in another lifetime. Really? That a young child suffers without having any knowledge of these other decisions, means that the suffering happens without understanding, without hope for growth, without purpose. This won’t move us toward universal compassion but rather to abandonning it. To believe this is to believe that ultimate reality or God is cruel and capricious. This would be a horrible God or reality not worthy of union. This is untenable as an understanding of God or reality.
Conversely, I believe that reality (God) is good and loving at its core. My experience is that reality is intelligent, relational, generative and therefore it must be fundamentally loving – to us and to the entire universe. To believe otherwise one must ask, why continue living?
Further, my own life experience tells me that even I, as a human parent, would not punish my child for something they did long ago and had no memory of. But reincarnation says that God would do exactly this. Am I, a mere human, more compassionate or loving than God?
To attribute suffering to actions from previous lifetimes prevents us from going deeper to learn the true causes of suffering. This is the immoral or unethical result of believing in reincarnation. Suffering from disease, poverty and hunger are not the result of karma. We find new cures for diseases all the time – think of the March of Dimes and their progress curing birth defects.
Poverty and hunger are the result of our inability to distribute food properly to the human family. There is enough for all. Unfortunately we have created an economic system that favors some over others. But if we go deeper, educate ourselves and make changes we can make sure that basic needs (water, clean air, food, education, basic health care) are available to all. This is our task. This is what it means to become truly human. Belief in reincarnation too easily takes us away from this task.
So, to conclude, I can’t totally eliminate reincarnation as a possibility since we can’t really know for sure. But using heart (compassion) and head (reason), I draw different conclusions about the degree of its possibility and probability. Belief in reincarnation requires overcoming the objections described above in order to be an ethical or moral possibility that I could truly embrace.
As always, questions and comments welcome.
You may also like Lunar Eclipse, Only 3.9 Billion Years Left and The Fourth Dimension.
For those who are back in school and reading lots and lots, or those who don’t like reading entire books, or find CliffsNotes too much 😉 you might enjoy a break at this website DH forwarded to me featuring mini book summaries of the classics – the emphasis here is on the mini!
The main site is http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/
The Classics: http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/classics.shtml
For example:
The Confessions of St. Augustine
By St. Augustine
Ultra-Condensed by Annie Berke
St. Augustine: I was a bad boy. Damn, was I a bad boy. Not anymore, though.
THE END
Or:
Hamlet
By William Shakespeare
Ultra-Condensed by Adrien Arnold
Hamlet: Whine whine whine…To be or not to be…I’m dead.
THE END
Or:
The Collected Work of Edgar Allan Poe
Ultra-Condensed by Samuel Stoddard and David J. Parker
Some Guy: Oh no. I’m buried alive!
Narrator: I died.
Raven: Nevermore.
THE END
Enjoy!
You may also like Six Word Novel, Antique Bookstores in Paris and Dancing Isuzus in Paris.