How beautiful the world can be...

Blackberries

Protruding from the wiry, spindly brush
with skin pulled tight like the head of a drum
encasing sweet, warm droplets of sun-ripe
ruddy juice--delicate and plump, teasing,
drawing a covetous gaze as velvet
tempts you to graze it with your hand or cheek.
Dark with soft, placating sheen collecting
all energy and light like small black holes
of deep summer, they ensnare and transfix
and you salivate and long for a taste
and the event horizon is traversed.
What could approach perfection so nearly
as a warm burst of tartness on your tongue
that stains your mouth, seeps into the creases
of your hands like hairline cracks in your skin
and just beneath, a reservoir of blood?
Oh, I remember blackberry-picking
and how the sting of nettles scrawling bloody
scratches on your arms was worth the reward--
pain for sweetness on your tongue, an exchange
some will never choose to make. But I hope
in my life to always pick blackberries.

Rest

Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.




~Sigmund Freud

Just beachy

Tybee Island is not my favorite of beaches, but this weekend it sufficed to make a relaxing, exhilarating time. May I suggest the sunrise?

Part 3: My land, not your land

The Black Hills of western South Dakota have always been a sacred place to the Lakota people. Their Lakota name, Paha Sapa, means "the heart of everything that is." In 1868, the U.S. signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie which guaranteed that the Black Hills would remain Sioux land. However, less than a decade passed before rumors of gold in the Black Hills led our country to revoke that promise. In 1877, after several land disputes had led to battles between the U.S. government and the Sioux nation, Congress signed a bill that forced the Lakota to sell the Black Hills, their sacred lands, and return to their reservations.

One of those mountains, known to the Lakota as "The Six Grandfathers," was renamed in 1885 after a New York lawyer, Charles E. Rushmore, during a gold expedition. According to Wikipedia, Rushmore saw this mountain and asked its name; his companion said "Never had any but it has now--we'll call the damn thing Rushmore." In 1927, to increase tourism in the Black Hills, the carving of the Four Faces began.


Our trip took us unexpectedly to Mount Rushmore, which is a celebrated monument of our nation's government that should never have been carved. Our government broke its promise to these people by taking this land from them, land that they knew as sacred. Then we defiled that land by carving faces that represent our government which had so wronged the Lakota people. As I stood and looked at this monument, faces carved in stone of people that our country reveres so highly, I could not justify it in any way. Is it offensive to God? I am in no position to judge, but my gut tells me yes--it does not revere Him in any way, and the story behind it is a tale of gross injustice committed against a people that He loves. And from a purely aesthetical standpoint, who are we to think that we can add value to the natural world by carving up these beautiful hills? Sad, on so many levels. And I am thankful that I was able to see it, if only to rouse this sense of injustice inside of me.

Part 2: Brothers and sisters

A theme that arose from our mission trip was that of unity. In many ways, the Lakota are disunified--those who live in poverty, sadly, do what they can to keep others from overcoming. They would rather see everyone remain stuck in the same miry condition than to allow talented and ingenuitive individuals rise up to something better. If a few could overcome the poverty and the addiction, then it could really be a springboard for change within the whole tribe--and there are many talented artists, storytellers, and entrepreneurial minds among the Lakota. But the masses put great effort into keeping these individuals out of work, and they scorn one another for their successes... and it makes me sad not only for those who are being oppressed, but for their oppressors as well, who are indirectly perpetuating their own oppression.

These are the words that we shared with the Lakota community in Whiteclay. I may have been the messenger, but the message was the Lord's.

All of us on this earth are God's people... and though we are many and varied, God designed us all, and desires for us to live in peace and to be unified through Him. Psalm 133 declares, "How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!" We are the brothers and sisters, and it is God's Spirit that can bring us--each family, the whole of the Lakota people, and every tribe and nation of the world--together in Him.

The tradition of the Three Sisters--corn, beans, and squash, grown together in a single plot of land--began out of the understanding the Indians had of a need for unity between the crops. Corn stalks grow strong and tall, providing a support for the beans, which need something sturdy to climb. The beans, in return, support the corn stalks, and they add their nitrogen to the soil so that future generations of corn might have the nutrients they need to prosper. Spiny squash vines run along the ground, defending the entire garden from predators. Their shallow roots keep the soil moist so that nothing dries out.

The Three Sisters portray a beautiful picture of the unity that God intended for all His creation--most importantly for us, His people.

But what if the corn, towering over the squash and beans, blocked them from receiving the sunlight? What if the beans climbed the corn stalks to pull the corn down? What if the squash vines tangled and choked the corn and the beans? If the crops lived in competition and strife, they would destroy each other. And they would ultimately destroy themselves too, since none of the Three Sisters can prosper without the help of the others. If each tried to pull its sisters down, then none would thrive.

So it is with God's people. We are all brothers and sisters through Him, and He says that it is good and pleasant for us to live in unity. Envy, strife, anger, jealousy, are seeds that our enemy sows to try and bring division among us in our homes and our communities, to choke out our love and concern for each other.

But our Lord Jesus commanded us to love one another, just as He loves us. He demonstrated that love in His life on earth, and in His sacrifice on the cross for each of us. When we love each other as Jesus taught, then we do not pull each other down--instead, we lift each other up and help each other grow.

This is unity that God declares good and pleasant--and our unity as brothers and sisters in God our Father brings greater abundance of life to all of us.

While we were there, God used us to turn this:


Into this:


What began as a solidly packed hill of dry, flaked earth, permeated with weeds and lifeless, rotting tangles of grass roots will become a Three Sisters garden, at the southern border of Whiteclay. As we dug weeds which were anchored deep into the fallow ground, as we tilled the soil and broke up the rocky hunks and made it arable again, as we planted and watered the corn seeds which will shoot up within days, we prayed that God would do this very same work in the hearts of His beloved, the Lakota. There is much dry, packed soil to till, and I believe that we were used to begin that process. Only God knows when the harvest will be ready... but I have faith that there will be a harvest, that beauty will come once again to Whiteclay--in the physical land that has been reclaimed for God, and in the people who are now so content with their filthy rags because they cannot imagine anything better. When this garden begins to flourish, when God transforms the southern gate to the reservation into a place of great physical beauty, may the Lakota begin to see their Creator's beauty and harmony reflected in the land itself. May they begin to conceive of God's plans to prosper them, to give them a hope and a future... and may they unify themselves as a people, under God their Father, to let go of the old and take hold of the new! The missionaries who live with these people are Bruce and Marsha Bonfleur, and their name is French for "good flower." Thank You, God, for sending Good Flowers to such a desolate land and a hopeless people, to bring them hope for new life!

Part 1: Lord, can You heal this land?

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
2 Chronicles 7:14

The picture above is a photo of the Badlands, a region of South Dakota which French settlers said were bad lands to travel across, and whose Lakota name mako sika literally means "bad lands." There are remnants of life holding on to this landscape--here or there you will see a puff of rugged flowers fixed to a slope or a dwarf tree shooting up out of the rocky ground, and there are dry stream beds that run along the valley floors which indicate that in days gone by, the Badlands were indeed alive. In their barrenness there is beauty... but this dry, dusty chasm is not what they were meant to be.

I just returned from a mission trip to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Our purpose in this trip was not to Americanize the Lakota people or to bring them a "white man's religion." Our ancestors in this country did enough of that, and committed many horrors against the indigenous people of this land in the name of God. In many ways these people are forgotten, and the wounds that we left them with have never healed. As one Lakota man whom we met told us, his people are not angry with ours, and they don't want vengeance. They simply want us to listen to them and remember them, and love them. And that was the purpose of our mission.

There are so many things I could say about what I saw and learned in South Dakota... I will have to cover them in a series of posts. For now, I will say that I learned so much about God's heart of reconciliation. Not only does He want to reconcile His people and His creation to Himself, but He wants to reconcile them to each other as well. There is power in asking brothers and sisters for forgiveness for the sins of our ancestors, and we did this. We asked the Lakota to forgive us, and we gave ear to their stories and learned how deeply connected they remain to their history--a history we as Americans are not generally taught in the light of truth.

We worshiped and prayed at the hill of Wounded Knee--where the American government committed a massacre against men, women, and children of the Lakota tribe on December 29, 1890. More than 300 Lakota, unarmed, were killed that day, including many innocents. The U.S. government subsequently issued 20 Medals of Honor to American soldiers in connection with the event... and the Lakota, even today, still remember this tragic event and mourn, and ache to understand why it had to happen.



This memorial marks the mass grave into which the bodies of the Lakota were thrown, days after their death, having been left to freeze in the blizzard. The inscriptions honoring the brave and innocent Lakota victims made my heart ache.

Horn Cloud: The peace maker died here innocent.

Big Foot was a great chief of the Sioux Indians. He often said "I will stand in peace till my last day comes."

Many innocent women and children who knew no wrong died here.


As we prayed at Wounded Knee, and we watched the sun set over the hill, I knew that God's purpose is to bring healing to this people and to their land, which has been bitterly contested for hundreds of years and has been host to tragedies and abominations beyond number. As the Lakota have remembered and ached over their past, they have lost hope for their future... and much of the life that God has intended for them has dried up. But as God breathed life into the valley of dry bones, I believe He will breathe life into these people again, and I believe that He will literally heal their land as He heals their spirits... and that the "bad lands" will be called "good lands" as streams flow and birds sing and flowers grow once again.

As I continue to remember and pray for the Lakota people, I pray that reconciliation will come--that the relationship between whites and Indians can be healed, and that we may finally treat each other with love and respect, as brothers and sisters. Then will God be able to move in a powerful way to bring the healing that should have happened long ago. Black Elk, a Lakota Medicine Man who survived the Wounded Knee massacre as a youth, reflected on the incident as he approached the end of his life, nearly sixty years after that day.

I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream . . . . the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.


Sunset at the hill of Wounded Knee.

La terre rit en fleurs

[Earth laughs in flowers.]

~Emerson

The blustery day

Days like today are days that make me feel the most alive--the sky is thick and dark and the wind is unhindered. The windows are open and I am curled up on my futon wrapped in my fleece jacket with a book and a glass of red wine, pausing from my reading every few moments to listen to the wind play the trees like pan pipes. There is no rain, only the expectation of rain--but when will it come? And when it does come, will it be announced by great peals of thunder, or will it steal in gradually, patient and taut with all the energy of a sweet symphony?

Spring and summer in Georgia are hot and mellow, a fever that dulls first the mind and then, eventually, the heart and soul. All is heavy, and the air just becomes thicker and denser, until you feel you are swimming in a yellow delirium as thick as molasses.

Then one day, you awake to the whisper of the air to the trees, the grasses, the clouds and birds and all the world. And you go out, and it whispers to you too, and cuts sharply into your mind as acid through oil. Suddenly the world is alive with energy and purpose, and it intends to whirl you along. You stand, spread-eagle, and your hair flies away and your eyes well up from the air-blasts, and all around you and within you is electrified--the earth, the sky, the water, and all life driven by the same energy, all connected by the bonds of shared excitement.

When I go out tomorrow, the earth will be strewn with life--petals and blossoms that gave themselves up to the fury of the storm. All will be calm, all will be quiet like glass, like the grave. The air will be a little thinner and the earth a little lighter, and my mind a little freer, a little more awake and aware. Every breath, every nerve, every pump of my heart are an exhilarating gift that I cannot, in that moment, take for granted--a life so simple, yet too extraordinary to comprehend.

Wild at heart?

"Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest."

(Thoreau)

I remember a time in eighth grade when I was on a field trip to Cumberland Island, and one of the counselors at the nature center there took us on a walk through a salt marsh. It was a hot, stinking, South Georgia kind of day. At one point my classmates and I were all sitting along the edge of the boardwalk, and our guide was standing ankle-deep in the thick, pungent-smelling mud. She picked up a handful of mud and began to explain to us how clean and pure it was, and how indigenous people would use it on their faces to cleanse their pores, just like a modern Swiss facial.

Then, holding out her hand toward our big group of prissy fourteen-year-old girls, she asked us if anyone wanted a salt-marsh facial. Every one of us shrunk back, shrieking. I thought she was joking, but she persisted in her offer, just waiting for one of us to seize the moment. After a deliberating moment I, without a doubt the shyest and most reserved one of the class, volunteered.

The mud squished softly through my fingers as she put a dollop into my palm. The crude odor, far from a luxurious spa scent, wafted into my nostrils as I raised my hand to my face. I hesitantly painted the first streak across my cheekbone; the mud was so cold and wet on my skin that my arms and legs prickled, but it was soft and relaxing. After that first stroke, I wildly smeared the entire fistful over every patch of skin, even down my neck halfway to my collar. I remember the exhilaration I felt, as if layers of worry and artificiality were being unraveled around me. I knew that everyone else was laughing at me because my behavior was so unprecedented, but I laughed because I felt life pulsing up and down my body, and because I was breathing in the smells of the real world, right under my nose, and a part of me for the first time in ages.

The healing power of violets

I love wildflowers. I love them for their special, unique beauty that a neatly trimmed flower-bed can never duplicate. I love the way that each flower has its own season in which to bloom and flourish, whether it is the summer sunflower or the winter gentian. I love the way they sing, raw and unrefined, like the folklorists of the earth.

The season of violets is just coming to a close--they first began appearing in February and lasted through the chilly season, and now are yielding to the spring bloomers--dandelions, wisteria, and others. But violets have a special meaning to me...

Here, I will share with you an excerpt from a narrative I wrote about a time in my life when I was truly depressed, and how God used the world around me to lift me out of the pit I was in. I hope you enjoy it.

* * * * * * *


True friends walk with you through the low places in your life. Friends I didn’t know I had were the friends who saw me through depression, encouraged me to continue holding onto what I had, faithfully believing that everything would take a turn for me if I allowed it to happen. And so I held on and on, and learned to lean on them for strength.

Sharon knew I loved wildflowers. Their beauty sometimes gave me peace, their fragility sometimes made me feel not so alone. I was at her house one Saturday afternoon early that spring; I sat on the swing in her backyard, staring at the ground beneath me where various feet skidding against the ground to halt the swing had worn a bare spot in the earth. The dirt was black and spongy.


“Laura, look! Wild violets!” I looked up and saw Sharon kneeling in the grass across the yard. I dropped from the swing and walked over. She knelt before a deep green patch that had looked like grass from farther away, but as I knelt down beside her I saw the deep violet-blue flowers whose tiny heads emerged from the greenery. I smiled as I studied their form—they were like newborns, with soft and pliable faces. The markings on the petals looked like eyes squeezed shut, too sensitive to the sunlight; they turned away to face the soft green below them.

I stretched out my body and lay flat on my stomach, my face next to the violet patch. Resting my cheek on the ground beside them I could feel the feathery leaves tickle my skin. I saw the flowers eye-to-eye now, the firstborn of spring, and for several minutes I lay there with them.

Sharon stood up to leave me alone with the flowers. As she did, I propped up on my elbows and turned to her, smiling. “I’ve never seen violets before…” Then I got to my feet and walked away with her, leaving the young flowers to nap placidly in the gentle afternoon light.

From "Time to Weep, Time to Heal"
March 2006

Dilemma

This morning's Accounting Policy class session was one of the most difficult hour-and-a-half lectures that I have ever had to endure. To give you an idea of what happened, I must first explain that my professor is on the corporate board of Kimberly-Clark Corporation, a company whose products I refuse to purchase because of its disregard for conservation ethics: More than 80% of the pulp that Kimberly-Clark uses to produce its Kleenex brand tissues is virgin pulp, straight from Canada's ancient Boreal forest. The company is actively engaged in the destruction of one of the last remaining intact biomes in the world, a rich ecosystem which is home to myriad diverse species and is a carbon storehouse whose survival is essential to the fight against global warming. In short, I find that Kimberly-Clark has no environmental ethic whatsoever.

This morning in class we had a guest speaker--the Chief Financial Officer of Kimberly-Clark was there to share with us some of the business practices of the corporation and give us some insight into what makes the company so profitable. I found his talk to be utterly disappointing. He made no mention of Kimberly-Clark's environmental position, even though we are standing in a day and age in which we must take action to curb global warming and otherwise protect our planet which we have ravaged and raped to near-barenness in many locations. Furthermore, he shared with us that Kimberly-Clark is looking at outsourcing much of their human labor to India, where labor is cheap and few investments must be made in the workers to keep them happy since they need the jobs so badly that they will work under nearly any conditions. I was enraged on the inside as I listened to this presentation.

What did I do? Well... I refused the giveaways that our speaker offered. I could not explain why. If my professor were not so linked with Kimberly-Clark, I would have considered confronting the CFO about the company's policies regarding the environment. As it was, however, I felt like I could say nothing without putting my grade in jeopardy. Am I a coward? What would you have done?

If you click on the banner above, you can read about the destruction that Kimberly-Clark is wreaking upon the Boreal forest, and you can send an e-mail to the CEO of Kimberly-Clark, Thomas Falk, as well as to the company's VP of environment, Ken Strassner. You can urge the company to make changes in the way it obtains its pulp for the production of its popular paper products, and you can explain that you will not purchase any Kimberly-Clark products as long as they refuse to change. Please, take this step. We are losing a treasure than can never be replaced, and it disappears a little more each day. It makes a difference. Let them know that we as consumers will not settle for complacency when it comes to our planet.

Blood Mountain

I was ever so thankful this weekend for a chance to get away--from Athens and my computer and life as I know it right now. My backpacking class drew to a close with a class trip to Blood Mountain, Georgia's fifth highest peak, in Blairsville. I am sure I have said this before, but when I am hiking, I feel closer to God than in any other moments of my life, because I feel like I can really worship Him in a pristine corner of His creation, somewhere special and holy and undefiled by human touch. Even among people who do not believe in the God I love, there is a sense of awesome wonder when one is out in nature... looking out at a distant mountain peak, or down into a hazy valley, or through the ground cover of dead leaves at the first wildflowers of spring that are beginning to push their small, shy heads up out of the rich earth. In this place, it is hard to deny the existence of some power that is greater than yourself.










Let everything that has breath praise the Lord...

Save a tree or two

I received the following e-mail from the Natural Resources Defense Council regarding the preservation of Canada's boreal forest. I've blogged a couple of times now in reference to this ancient wilderness (look here and here). Why, as a native of the southeastern United States, am I so passionate about this particular part of the world?

The boreal forest of Canada is one of the largest remaining intact natural regions in the world. It is home to a variety of wildlife including caribou, bears, wolves, and lynx. It is the summer range for about 1/3 of North American songbirds and 3/4 of North American waterfowl. Its ecology is complex and varied, with forests, mountains, lakes, wetlands, and rivers. Such a place needs to be protected, lest it be lost. There are programs and initiatives in place to protect and preserve large portions of the region, and still others aimed at developing eco-friendly practices within its neighboring communities. The boreal forest is a valuable North American biome, and the more people who become aware and empassioned about its need for preservation, the more positive progression we will see in the efforts to save this forest.

Anyway, on to the e-mail. If you click the link, you can sign your name to a letter to the Manitoba government, urging them to take action. It only takes five seconds, and I have to believe that it makes a difference.

*********

The Manitoba government still has not honored its pledge to
permanently protect the Poplar-Nanowin Rivers traditional lands
in our Heart of the Boreal Forest BioGem.

Your urgent action is needed to ensure that Manitoba makes good
on its repeated promises. Mounting proposals for clearcut
logging, roadbuilding and industrial hydropower development loom
over this irreplaceable habitat for threatened woodland caribou,
moose and millions of songbirds.

Please go to http://www.savebiogems.org/boreal/takeaction
and urge Manitoba's premier to grant permanent protection to
these First Nation lands.

For thousands of years, the Poplar River First Nation has relied
on the trees, plants and wildlife of this expanse of rugged
granite cliffs, dense evergreen woods and tranquil marshlands
for food, medicine and the survival of its beliefs and
traditions. In 2004, the Canadian government recognized the
outstanding cultural and natural values of this wildland by
including it as part of a potential U.N. World Heritage Site.

Under pressure from BioGems Defenders like you, the Manitoba
government renewed interim protection of the Poplar-Nanowin
Rivers Park Reserve to allow for the completion of a land
management plan. Yet more than a year has passed now since the
plan was finalized -- and the Manitoba government has failed to
legislate permanent protection.

Please go to http://www.savebiogems.org/boreal/takeaction
and tell Manitoba's premier to take this long overdue next step
toward creating a World Heritage Site in this region.

Thank you for all of your efforts to protect the wildest reaches
of Canada's vast boreal forest.

Sincerely,

Frances Beinecke
President
Natural Resources Defense Council

Every species has its niche

Truly the quince flower has found a special niche, to reach the peak of its blooming season right in the harshest stretch of winter, whilst nearly all other flora lies dormant in anticipation of spring.

Death Knell of the Ancients

Another tree falls, and the taiga mourns with groaning—not the sound of groaning, but the deep and silent rumble of the soul whose tremors make tremble even the deepest parts of the earth. For the thud of one more tree against the pock-marked ground is the fearsome, chaotic clanging of one more thick, cold iron bell, another alarum ringing out the imminent fate of all life that once found its haven here.

For these trees have never seen war, never been brushed by plague or pandemic. Peaceful existence, nurturing coexistence has reigned here for centuries as the trees, fir and spruce, elm and oak alike, have offered their raised limbs to the native grouse for nesting, and to the visiting thrushes who stay only until the first gray of winter touches the sky and sends these fair-weather birds to a more tropical locale for the cooler season. These trees have been proud to wear, year after year, the pure and powdery snow from which raptors flee and grizzlies hide themselves, fat with nourishment to last them for months as they sleep in their deep dens until ground thaw.

These old-growth trees have seen light and shadow, each wonderful and terrible in its very special way. Nothing is as jarring as a full neon sun throwing itself against a tinny, white wilderness; nothing is as spectacular as colored hues that glow and dance across the backdrop of space every vernal and autumnal equinox. The forest has seen it all. It has also seen the nightfall, accompanied by the paralyzing beating of owls’ wings and the death squeals of the small rodents, fallen prey to the hunters of the night. The trees have played the part of protector against harsh daylight, weaving their stretching limbs together as a barrier so that the mosses and lichen could thrive gratefully along the shaded ground beneath.

The forest remembers stories of the first appearance of man, coming in on foot from the west, building their settlements nearby, hunting the animals, treading lightly on the land. Even the last of the trees who had known these respectful men, had lived in harmony with them, have long since fallen and returned to the earth, adding their matter back to the soil to the propagation of forest life. But the legacy of these gentle hunters remains, giving strength to the trees and the delicate fibers of life in this harsh, beautiful wilderness.

Nothing like that legacy are these newly arrived men, who come in droves with their clamorous machines to cripple the forest, their hearses to drag the victims away to the nearby paper mill. They upset the balance and the peace of the long-time dwellers here, giving it no thought as they ravage and scar the land. Another tree falls, its once proud limbs crunching against the snow-packed ground. An alarm sounds to the raptors that had nested in those branches, to the fox and the squirrel whose once secret dwellings are now hopelessly destroyed. And a chill pulses through the forest—a chill that the cold, damp summers and thoroughly severe winters have, in thousands of years, never managed to elicit from the proud and brawny trees. For the trees know they can survive the wind and snow and the days upon days of darkness, a barren climate which has caused virtually all other life to shrink away. But against the calloused greed within the hearts of short-sighted man even the stout-willed trees cannot fight. And in each buzz of a saw, each turning of an engine, each loud and brazen guffaw of a hardened, senseless clearcutter preparing to wrap up another day of hard work, the forest can hear the heralding of its own bleak doom. And so it remains, in jarring silence.

Victory for the forest?

The environmental group ForestEthics (forestethics.org) has been engaged in active protest against the clearcutting of Canada's boreal forest (one of the last remaining forest wildernesses on the planet, it turns out)--and met with recent success against Victoria's Secret, according to yesterday's article. The article explains that after weeks of peaceful but very prominent protesting against Victoria's Secret--which sends out about 365 million catalogs each year, printed on 90% virgin paper coming from the ancient and endangered boreal forest of Canada--the company has agreed to stop buying from the pulp mill that logs in this Canadian wilderness.

Did you get that? They have agreed to stop buying. To stop supporting the destruction of this invaluable terrestrial biome which is the unique habitat of many plant and animal species. A major multinational corporation, swayed by the insistent and unrelenting voices of a meager handful who care enough about preserving the Earth's remaining natural environments. I don't know about you, but for me, this is an encouraging thought.

Granted, I have no idea why it is even legal to clearcut such an old-growth forest inn the first place. It is possible to produce paper in a more environmentally sound manner--by logging forests that are young and managed, forests that are re-planted and allowed to grow until they are cut again for more timber. Better yet, recycled paper--isn't there enough paper thrown away each year in America to meet the catalog-printing needs of a company like Victoria's Secret? Why attack one of the last surviving wilderness areas on the planet, just so that we can enjoy the "glossy paper"?

Nevertheless, it happens, and not just because of one company. Will other clients snap up the boreal timber that Victoria's Secret will forgo? Probably so. But I believe that we can speak loud enough to make a difference. We just have to decide what is more important to us:

This?


Or this?

Morning light

My bedroom window faces northeast, and if you look out you see a bald spot in the horizon (owing to the parking lot to our apartment complex and, further along that vector which starts at my window, the campus of the University of Georgia) which cradles the morning's first sun. When that sun makes its daily appearance there, pushing its way even through my mini-blinds, even through my heavy eyelids, I am hopelessly aroused from my night's sleep, regardless of whether I tumbled into bed eight hours earlier or three.

I don't entirely mind. I see beauty during that first hour of sunlight that many people only read about or view in photographs. I can hear daylight take its first breaths; I can observe the sky blooming with light that only becomes harsher, hotter, heavier as the day ages.

A part of me loves my mornings, though there is another sluggish side that revels in letting my eyelids droop shut for another hour that, in that snoozing reverie, feels like only a few blissful minutes. I am reading a book (an early Christmas gift from my dear and doting Bob) called In the Morning: Reflections From First Light by Philip Lee Williams, and it contains some of the most beautiful language about morning that I have ever had the occasion to read. I recommend it to anyone who wants a deep and many-faceted account of morning--what it means aesthetically, biologically, spiritually... simply. It is novel and lovely, prose wrought with the poetic. It has caused me to think much on morning's place in my ever-evolving life.

How I have always longed to be a morning person... But when you are in high school and college, your social world is constructed around night--theatre and midnight movies, 24-hour coffee shops and bars that close up shop at 2 AM, nightclubs and formal dances, rock concerts and winds symphonies. You stay up later and later out of necessity, until you find yourself on your nights off, sitting at the computer in the middle of the night, idly surfing the web and waiting until "bedtime." That is how, as young people, we are obliged to fashion our lives.

But for me, those who keep going until those early-late hours are missing something quite enchanting contained only in the quietude of morning. Early mornings were the preferred time for Jesus to commune with God the Father, when he "withdrew to lonely places and prayed." It is difficult to find lonely places in the bare and brazen light of day, and it is difficult to pray in the night watches when our biology tells us to be on guard against the dangers of the darkness. But in the morning there is peace and there is solitude. It is a time of day I often missed until I moved here to my beloved east-facing window, which never fails to alert me at the first shard of sunlight that a new day has arisen. I hope only that as I get older and more seasoned, I become more able to leave aside the folly of night life and rise to greet the new day with a growing eagerness.

Amazing sky...

The sky really takes my breath away... especially on days like this.

Images of autumn