Avdat

Field trip

Last Wednesday a group of us set out for the island of Staffa, home of puffins and the muse for Mendelssohn's Hebridean Overture.  Our boat made straight for the island, and as I was in the stern, I didn't get a good look at it until we were almost upon it, and the boat turned to make its approach to the landing:

My first impression was that a multi-mouthed sea monster has reared up from the waves to swallow us.  This was reinforced when we got a chance to explore Fingal's Cave.  The sound of the seawater filling and then receding from the cave, plus the splendid isolation of the island is what Mendelssohn tried to capture in his Overture.  Looking up, the algae covered roof of the cave looked liked the monster's poorly capped molars:

The rock formations on Staffa are extraordinary.  Some of us commented that they looked like someone had poured concrete into hexagonally-shaped cylinders and stacked them on top of each other.  A strange image came to mind--God has created this island as an eight-year-old kid at the beach might make a sand castle by filling his bucket with wet sand and dumping the formed contents upside-down:

Wikipedia states, "It consists of a basement of tuff, underneath colonnades of a black fine-grained Tertiary basalt, overlying which is a third layer of basaltic lava lacking a crystalline structure. By contrast, slow cooling of the second layer of basalt resulted in an extraordinary pattern of predominantly hexagonal columns which form the faces and walls of the principal caves.^[1]The lava contracted towards each of a series of equally spaced centres as it cooled and solidified into prismatic columns. The columns typically have three to eight sides, six being most common. The columns are also divided horizontally by cross joints.^[7] Similar formations are found at the Giant's Causeway In Ireland, on the island of Ulvaand Ardmeanach on the Isle of Mull.^[6] "

While I was taking in the view below, the person next to me commented that she just didn't understand how people could witness such beauty and not believe in God:

I replied that that the difference between believers and non-believers might be that while the latter would certainly feel awe in the face of such beauty, the former would feel awe and gratitude.  I can't help but think that it must be something of an impoverished existence to be stunned by the sight of the seas pounding on the rocks and yet have no one to thank or glorify for it.

On my last overseas trip, to Israel, we had the chance to view another jaw-dropping geologic formation, the Machtesh Ramon in the Negev Desert.  At the visitor center on the lip of the crater we watched a movie about the formation of this vast hole in the ground.  It stated that if you compressed the history of the universe into a year, then human beings and our hominid ancestors have only been around since December 30.

If there is no God, then that's a lot of beautiful sunsets, lovely flowers and awesome geology that no one has taken aesthetic delight in until just now.  That doesn't seem right to me.  If there isn't a God who's been saying, "Good, good, very good" for all this time, well then, there ought to be.

That's not a very good argument for the existence of God. Heck, it's not an argument at all.  It's more a sentiment.  But it's what I came away from Staffa with.  That, plus a close encounter with a puffin:

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!

It's another insanely beautiful day in Salisbury, North Carolina, and a dramatic departure from years past.  I can't tell you how many springs we've had that jumped straight from dogwoods blooming into summertime.  But this year the Good Lord has blessed us with a month called May!  Upper fifties by night.  Upper seventies by day.  Generous rain every three to four days.  The landscape is green, green, green, and the irises and roses are just as enjoyable as last month's azaleas.

I'm up for it

Tomorrow is National Bike to Work day.  HT.

I'd do this every day, but in mainline congregations of older members there's an expectation that the minister make pastoral calls in pressed slacks and clean shirts, preferably free from sweat rings extending down the sides of one's trunk.  And, unlike some of my relatives who work for corporations, or megachurches, there's no shower facilities here at good ol' John Calvin Presbyterian Church.

But since all that's on my schedule tomorrow is sermon writing plus a little disc golf with a teenager, it fits my lifestyle for this particular day.

I think it's worth wondering about how certain cultural expectations are at variance with good common sense.  I hear that everyone but lawyers have abandoned suits in south Florida, but honesty, they could be done away with in most places in the United States, at least in the summer.  Even far northern cities like New York and Philly are south of those latitudes from whence came the bulk of immigrants accustomed to wearing wool even in July.  And not only are they far to the south of Great Britain, Ireland, Germany and eastern Europe, but they're hot and miserable in summertime.

I know.  Part of what makes fashion fashionable is willingness to submit to a certain amount of physical or financial discomfort.  But heat and humidity and the prospect of even more on the horizon, thanks to global warming, do make me wonder when convention has taken leave of its senses...

Friday "How does your garden grow?" blogging

There's not a lot to show of the verdant gardens of Che Lindsay.  But I was inspired to go out and snap some photos of what is growing this time of year.  And speaking of snapping pics, these sugar snap peas should grow up to yield plump, sweet pods!

The kingdom may be already and not yet, but not the asparagus!  After three years of patience, mulching and watering and modest harvesting, we've been chopping at it with reckless abandon:

The drought really took a toll on the Piedmont flora.  You can see that this dogwood in our front yard is not nearly as spectacular as dogwoods usually are in these parts this time of year:

But these unknown bulbs are lending some spring cheer underneath our still dormant grape vine:

And the azaleas are lovely:

That shade of pink is not what I would have planted against a red, brick house, but thankfully there's some white in there as well, and the green acuba in the back to offer contrast rather than clash.

And while I am aware of the existence of a whole other hemisphere who greets the resurrection in the fall of the year, spring nonetheless renews my faith as no other season can:

Tis the spring of souls today

Christ hath burst his prison

And from three days sleep in death

As a Sun is risen

Now rejoice Jerusalem!

And with true affection

Welcome in unwearied strains

Jesus' resurrection.

Ethanol will save us all

All of the sudden the media have noticed how expensive food is.  There are reports about food riots in developing countries.  The cost of rice is up 70%.  Wheat has doubled.  In China, pork, a staple, is outrageously expensive because the corn that's grown to feed swine is being funneled into ethanol production.  Biofuels are competing and winning against poor people's hungry stomachs.  Click here for details.

Who knew that ethanol would cure global warming by starving people to death?  I mean, dead people don't drive, do they?  They don't turn on incandescent light bulbs.  More genius!

A friend of mine from my former call once wrote me a passionate email about how ethanol is an affront to the farmer's sacred obligation to feed people.  Food, not fuel! 

Now there's always been a class of farmers that haven't made a great contribution to ending world hunger.  Tobacco farmers.  Cotton farmers.  But it is a good point, and the world would be a far better place if more of us thought about our work in terms of vocation rather than making a buck, or exploiting new markets and technologies for their own sake.

Sleeping with the Sharks

My son's Cub Scout Pack slept with the sharks at Ripley's Aquarium in Myrtle Beach this weekend.  A moving sidewalk carries tourists through a glass tunnel underneath the big tank.  After hours, and a conservation talk by the staff, they turned off the sidewalk and we bedded down there for the night.

My back hated it, of course, but that meant I spent a lot of time awake and looking up at a big sawfish parked over my head.  And in the morning when I popped up out of my sleeping bag, the first thing I saw was a school of fish.  At eye level.  It was a truly wondrous moment.

I could blog at length about how the educational dimension of a for-profit aquarium like Ripley's is rather thin compared to state sponsored aquariums like the one at Fort Fisher, or about how Myrtle Beach is a soulless, tacky, gridlocked, Yankee-infested boil on the sandy soil of the southeastern U.S., how, if it weren't for the shoreline itself, I'd rather be in Fayetteville than Myrtle Beach, but,

waking up inside an aquarium was pretty cool.

Holiday

McCain wants to suspend gas taxes during the summer driving season.  What a great idea!  An incentive to put more cars on the road for more miles, burning more fossil fuels, and less money to repair our crumbling transportation infrastructure.

Oh, now I get it!  More cars on buckling bridges means more dead people, and in the long run, fewer cars, and fewer CO2 emissions.  Genius!

Appalling

These guys say that, for less than the cost of the war in Iraq, we could convert the U.S. electrical grid to mostly solar power by 2050.  Sounds like a bargain to me!  Now, where's the political leadership to make it happen?

Not in the present administration, whose thinking is stuck firmly in the Industrial Middle Age.

And so we continue scandalizing our grandchildren.

Proud tree hugger

I wrote up an article about the recent Rowan Democrats' meeting, and the Post ran it today.  Click here to read it. 

Stopping global warming

I know the Democrats have to hype the energy bill just to argue that they haven't been totally rolled by the White House, but it's hard for me to get very enthusiastic about it.  Conservation, of course, is good.  Raising fuel economy standards will no doubt encourage that.  So will eliminating incandescent light bulbs. 

But what if people spend the energy savings on more stuff?  Stuff manufactured and shipped by fossil fuels?  Or what if a gas-sipping car simply makes commuting longer distances, from exurbs carved out of farmland and forest, more economical?

The only way to stop global warming in its tracks is developing alternative energy sources.  And so the oil company tax, which would have funded that very thing, was the key to the whole bill.  And it had to be stripped in order to get it past the White House.  Sigh.

The other thing is the culture.  It's insane the way we go into debt for more and more junk, junk which does not make us happy, junk that winds up in yard sales or in the landfill.  It's creepy the way that shopping has become something of a pastime/competitive sport.  This is a horrible use of both time and natural resources. 

I'm not sure the government can do much about this.  It's up to churches to demonstrate to people that, beyond the basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, health care and education, a well-lived life does not consist of the accumulation of more and pricier and better things.  It's about healthy relationships, joy in experiencing God's good creation, serving others, a good meal prepared at home and shared with family or friends, reading a book (checked out from a library!), learning to play a musical instrument, telling jokes, laughing, taking a walk, worship.

You know.  All the usual stuff that money can't buy.  (And don't give that crap about, "For everything else there's Visa")!