Via Flickr-click for source image

["Old Literature" is an occasional series of posts on works from the past (and in some cases, the not-so-long-ago-past) that still speak today.  Here are some of the earlier posts.]

Wendell Berry maybe best known for his essays on agrarian (hence environmental and ecological) topics; his greatest work, to my mind, is in his novels, all of which take place in and around and concern the “membership” of Port William, a small river town in Kentucky.  My wife Susanna and I recently finished reading (aloud, of course!) Hannah Coulter, and we are now halfway through Jayber Crow.  Yes, I know we’re working backwards – that’s how life is sometimes.  Anyway – last night’s selection caught my attention and seems worth sharing.  Enjoy the selections – but better, get out and read the book!

Jayber, whose religion is real and deep and passionate and mostly of the unorganized variety, is the town’s barber – and gravedigger – and permanent bachelor – and, in this chapter, has just become the Port William’s church janitor.  Jayber’s  observations on the nature of the preaching (and preachers) in this rural church are important, and reflect Berry’s perception of a fundamental flaw in the Christian faith as practiced at that time and in that place: Read more »

Lowell Bliss is the director of Eden Vigil and an occasional guest contributor to this blog. He and his wife Robynn publish the Environmental Missions Prayer Digest.

This photo of people immersed in the Flint Hills is linked to flinthilstallgrass.org

An Ed Brown comment and a Tom Rowley blog posting ruined for me what could have been a perfectly good civic meeting. Tom, if you recall from this site, was telling the story of “a recent discussion with colleagues about using Internet videos to teach and encourage environmental stewardship.” Tom said Ed made the conversation-stopper: “Isn’t there a fundamental disconnect here?” Ed asked. “We are working to heal creation, to put people back in touch with the glories of God’s world and everything that goes along with that: I don’t think it’s going to happen by trying to get people to watch more pixels!”

On Monday night, I joined a small group of other citizens of Manhattan, Kansas to hear a presentation about the new Flint Hills Discovery Center, under construction and scheduled for opening in Spring 2012. This multi-million dollar facility, according to the flyer, “explores the geology, biology and cultural history of the Flint Hills of Kansas—the last remaining tallgrass prairie in North America and one of the most unique and important ecological regions of our nation.”

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Oil Spills are bad enough – but how do you pray about a Tsunami?

It hasn’t been a year since the Gulf oil spill, which we rightly saw as the worst environmental disaster in memory.  At that time I wrote a piece trying to come to terms with that situation: “How Do You Pray about an Oil Spill?” And now I sit pondering a disaster that could turn out to be exponentially greater than the BP/Halliburton fiasco.  I am doing so at my dining room table, in a part of the world that is seismically if not politically stable, many miles from the nearest nuclear facility.  I am looking out at a landscape where the first birds of spring have arrived and are singing up a storm: Robins, redwing blackbirds, a cedar waxwing and (I think) a pine warbler (see pic below and tell me if I’m right, birders!)  just this morning.  The contrast between my window and the stories on my computer screen could not be more different, and I am forced to ask the same question I asked last summer: How do I pray about what is now happening in Japan? Read more »

Lowell Bliss is the director of Eden Vigil and Care of Creation’s partner in environmental missions.  He’s appeared already in these pages as a guest blogger and has now agreed to be a regular contributor. Having spent fourteen years in India and Pakistan, Lowell, his wife Robynn, and three kids now reside in Manhattan, KS.

I know that YouTube is primarily used to apprise ourselves of this week’s media spectacle, but it’s also a wonderful tool for nostalgia.  Every once in a while, sitting at the computer, I announce to my family, “Classic Rock Night!”  The kids groan and the speakers play Creedence Clearwater Revival.   One day I went to YouTube in order to relive my childhood environmentalism.    When the world celebrated its first Earth Day in 1970, I was still in second grade.  YouTube allowed me to revisit the Ad Council PSA familiar to my generation of Saturday morning cartoon watchers.  I typed in “Crying Indian,” the name under which the ad is apparently archived in our collective memory, and watched the old chief paddle his canoe past a riverfront factory.  He beaches it on a littered shore and climbs an embankment alongside an eight-lane highway.   The narrator’s voice is deep and accusatory, “Some people have a deep abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country. “  We then see a bag of fast-food garbage flung out from a car window.  It splatters the Indian’s moccasins.  “And some people don’t.”    The camera then pans closely to his face and we see the famous tear.  “People start pollution; people can stop it.”

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Last Sunday’s New York Times yielded a couple of articles interesting in themselves – but more so for how they connect with each other and with a couple of books I’ve been reading recently in ways that you might not expect. Neither seems on its face to have much to do with the subject of this blog – caring for God’s creation – but I think you’ll agree with me in the end that the subject these two articles raise is inseparable from that topic.

Without really intending to, I found myself recently reading two books that touch on the subject of happiness.  I picked up The Geography of Bliss by Erik Weiner in a guest house lounge on a recent trip and found it fascinating.  It’s a travel book with a difference – Weiner had done some research on the relatively new field of ‘Happiness Studies’ (did you know there is even a journal with that title?) and decided to find the happiest (and otherwise) countries in the world.  He takes us from Bhutan (“happiness is a policy”) to Moldova (“happiness is someplace else”) to Iceland (“happiness is failure”).  This book is a fun read – but what strikes me, as the author intends, is that there is almost no connection between material prosperity and happiness.  Poor people are not overwhelmingly less happy, and rich people are most definitely not consistently more happy than the rest of us.  It is hard to escape the conclusion that the richest country Weiner visits, the Arabian Gulf state of Qatar, is one of the more miserable on his list. Read more »

“Old Literature” is an occasional series pointing to works of the past, sometimes well known, sometimes not, that have embedded in them a clear creation care message.  [Check out previous posts in the series here.] C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books are perfect subjects for this series, and have long been on my mental list.  Before I got to him, though, Dean Ohlman at Wonder of Creation blog did the job for me, with a little Isaac Watts and John Newton thrown in for good measure.  Here is his meditation on Narnia – reposted by permission: