Souvenirs of Eden

Yesterday I went for my morning run with eyes wide open – and I found myself running amid bursts of glory.

Rimming the bank of our storm-water pond, the first splash of splendor was a stand of sumac, radiant with burnt-coral bronze leaves in the morning sun, seed-pods nutmeg-brown and bursting with plans for next year’s harvest.

The Caller's Spring

Samson was legendary, renown for exploits of incredible strength – killing a lion with his bare hands, slaughtering a thousand assailants with a donkey jawbone, ripping apart the city gates of his foes, and cracking apart the pillars of a pagan temple destroying his captors at their own victory party.

But the other day I discovered a different kind of Samson tale that had escaped my notice – even in my three years of researching biblical water stories.

Wonders of Water at the Olympic Games

The past twelve days it has been exciting to watch the best swimmers in the world compete in the London Olympics, setting at least nine new world records. And the most decorated Olympian in history made his emphatic mark in the pool.

These athletes make it all look so easy, but, in fact, they have to exert tremendous energy propelling their bodies through water that is 784 times more dense than air. The same is true for the synchro-swimmers, sailors, rowers, kayakers and those tigers of the pool, the water-polo players.

The Discipline of Spiritual Thirst

This is the final discipline on my list of 'Ten Disciplines for living downstream from Eden' - a proposal for a personal and global water ethic - or what I call a 'Manifesto for Action' at the end of my book.

Eight hundred million people in our world suffer with severe water scarcity; their need is physical and very real. Often, the water they do collect serves them badly and makes them chronically sick. Click here for a short but powerful 3-minute video from Charity: Water that tells this story.

Physical thirst is a painful but eloquent mirror to us of the spiritual thirst deep in human souls and human communities – a thirst and a soul-sickness found not only in drought-stricken deserts and ghettos, but in affluent suburbs and tropical resorts as well.

The Discipline of Repentance and Renewal

Here is #9 of my "Ten Disciplines for Living Downstream from Eden" –

The Discipline of Repentance and Renewal

A young man from Pakistan sat down beside me on a plane last night. Intelligent and interested in talking, he had serious questions about the Christian faith. He is very convinced and serious about his own faith which requires him today to fast from sunrise to sunset.

We discussed the month-long ritual of Ramadan which begins today. My friend explained that for him it is a kind of personal jihad against pride and selfishness, a public recognition that we are all sinners and a spiritual discipline designed to help him become a better person.

Children and Water

This week my oldest grand-daughter turned nine. She was very excited about the bike she got from her parents, the notebook she got from her brother and the seashell souvenir I send her every year to mark her birthday.

I love exploring with her the tidal pools on the rocky shoreline near her home on the Atlantic coast. As an artist she loves the colors; as a story-teller she can imagine the drama of the snails and mollusks and other creatures competing or cooperating in their tiny biomes only inches across.

The Discipline of Compassion

Before I get to today’s theme … here is this week’s exciting news. After three long years in the writing, revising, editing and publication stages, the soft-cover proof copy of Downstream from Eden finally arrived at my door.

With some visiting friends and family, Tiffany and I celebrated with champagne and a prayer of thanksgiving. After a quick inspection I gave the green light to the publishers, and in a few short days both hard-cover and paperback editions will be available from this site. Watch for exact details.

For those who can’t wait, the e-book version is already available on Kindle, fractionally priced at $3.99 which is less than a penny a page, or even better at $3.49 from Kobo Books.

Now, for today’s theme from my list of disciplines for living in the most fully human way in our less-than perfect world --

“The Discipline of Compassion”

There’s a lot of pain in our world – and tears give that pain a poignant human face. Tears are perhaps the most exquisite form of water in the world – tears of suffering or loneliness, tears of grief or lament, tears of sympathy or of regret. And the frequency of tears in the Bible is a clarion call to compassion.