Journal of daily reflections on the progress of my home-based agriculture experiments, mixed with observations about life, peace, justice, faith, family, community and friends.
There is a time to plant seeds to grow food and with the mild winter and sunny days the time comes early this year. The planting for now will be inside the insulted but mostly unheated sun room. Cold weather greens, like lettuce and kale, will be planted first and hopefully will be ready to eat by spring. Then in a month or so comes the time to plant seeds to grow for planting outside.
Outside it is time to add to composite pile, to place boards around the raised garden in the backyard, clean the gardens, and prepare the worm box, purchased seeds and other items necessary for spring planting.
Talking about garden in February seems strange but gardeners, as farmers, need to take what nature gives to them.
I was talking with a friend today who was having trouble with accepting the cards that life had given him. In his regrets I saw myself, often wanting something else for myself and thus not appreciating fully what I have. As we talked we both agreed that taking what life offers you and making the best of it was the only way to fully live.
We both suffer from what I call the “Long Loneliness” as Dorothy Day called it. But even the feeling of being lonely and not fitting in can be a blessing. It can become like the dark soil a seed is planted in. With the nourishment of water and light the seed in good soil will grow. Our loneliness and shadow of death can be like the soil in which we plant our seeds of life. If we seek water and light we can grow breaking through the darkness in grow into the light.
Once more, if we can see and hear, Nature teaches us about living life.
See the full list of articles in the Diary of a Worm.
Quotes
Nonviolent Jesus
“Everyone in the world knows that Jesus and His teachings were nonviolent except Christians.” M. Gandhi
Everyday Chores
“Paper work, cleaning the house, dealing with the innumerable visitors who come all through the day, answering the phone, keeping patience and acting intelligently, which is to find some meaning in all that happens — these things, too, are the works of peace, and often seem like a very little way.”
— Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage, December 1965
Pacifism
“Technically I am not a pure pacifist in theory, though today in practice I don’t see how anyone can be anything else since limited wars (however ‘just’) present an almost certain danger of nuclear war on an all-out scale. It is absolutely clear to me that we are faced with the obligation, both as human beings and as Christians, of striving in every way possible to abolish war”. (Thomas Merton in a letter to Jim Forest, Nov. 29, 1961.
Happiness
“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.” — Thomas Merton
Fear Each Other
“We often hate each other because we fear each other; we fear each other because we don’t know each other; we don’t know each other because we can not communicate; we can not communicate because we are separated.”
“you may murder a murderer but you can’t murder murder”
“I am concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice. I’m concerned about brotherhood. I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about these, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. August 16, 1967 Southern Christian Leadership Conference Presidential Address “Where Do We Go From Here?” in Testament of Hope: the Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., p. 249
Priority of Conscience
“And it is my conscience that compels me to say publicly that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is agrave injustice against women, against our Church and against our God who calls both men and women to the priesthood.” Fr. Roy Bourgeois in his letter to Maryknoll why he could not recant his belief and public statements that support the ordination of women.
“Over the pope … there still stands one’s own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else, if necessary, even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority.” Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI,in his 1968 commentary on the Second Vatican Council’s document, Gaudium et Spes.
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Nonviolence or Militarism
Breaking the Silence
War Spending Records of Congresspersons Gwen Moore and James Sensenbrenner Jr.
By Bill Quigley, Associate Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans.
Center for Constitutional Rights
Our nation, so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious population, should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied men and women, a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1937
Millions of people in the US work and are still poor. Here are eight points that show why the US needs to dedicate itself to making work pay.
One. How many people work and are still poor?
In 2011, the US Department of Labor reported at least 10 million people worked and were still below the unrealistic official US poverty line, an increase of 1.5 million more than the last time they checked. The US poverty line is $18,530 for a mom and two kids. Since 2007 the numbers of working poor have been increasing. About 7 percent of all workers and 4 percent of all full-time workers earn wages that leave them below the poverty line.
“It is a schizophrenia that runs deep in the soul to try to teach how to love God and to kill in the same place.” ---Rev. Daniel Berrigan, S.J.
“It is not what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.” -—Moliere
“Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, “You owe me.” Look what happens with a love like that - it lights the whole sky.” ---Hafiz
Jokes and Editorial Cartoons
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