Our task is enormous … To look at all that has gone before us, and to recognize that each one of us, however small, has a unique task in co-creation—a unique contribution to make in the world and to humanity. Edwina Gateley Diana Butler Bass begins this book with Genesis and the Creation story inContinue reading “Conclusion: “Revelation””
Author Archives: bpresnel
Chapter 7: “Commons”
Welcome to “the Commons Room of Grace Episcopal Church, belonging to none, welcoming all.” “Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breath the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” – John F. Kennedy Diana Butler Bass opens with the realizationContinue reading “Chapter 7: “Commons””
Chapter 6: “Neighborhood”
“I’ve always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you!” –Fred Rogers “Where is God?” and the Neighborhood: Neighborhood comes from the Old English “near dweller” common to families/clans/tribes. Today, the more modern understanding involves a place to abide where people have things in common. “All world religions make neighbors the central concern of spiritualityContinue reading “Chapter 6: “Neighborhood””
Chapter 4: “Grounded”
These hills are jist dirt waves, washing through eternity. My brethern, they hain’t a valley so low but what hit’ll rise agin. They hain’t a hill standing so proud but hit’ll sink to the low ground o’ sorrow. Oh, my proud children, where air we going on this mighty river of earth, aborning, begetting, andContinue reading “Chapter 4: “Grounded””
Chapter 3: Sky
“The chief thing that separates us from God is the thought that we are separated from God.” Thomas Keating (1923-2018) “Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases…The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth he has given to human beings.” Psalm 115:1-3, 16 How do we reconcile the ancient conceptContinue reading “Chapter 3: Sky”
Chapter 2–“Water”
“Water is something spiritual.” Chuang-tzu Intro: From her perspective at a bench along the Potomac, Diana observes that “creation still has power even at the river’s edge. Things look different from the ground.” The riparian zone, the place where water touches land, is very important as an ecosystem on the planet. It acts as aContinue reading “Chapter 2–“Water””
Chapter 1: Dirt
“We must abandon the external height images in which the theistic God has historically been perceived and replace them with internal depth image of a deity who is not apart from us, who is the very core and ground of all that is. “ Paul Tillich – Systematic Theology “God is our Ground of Being.”Continue reading “Chapter 1: Dirt”
Chapter 27, Chapter 28, and Afterword summaries
Chapter 27—“Stay Loyal to Reality” Brian McLaren opens this chapter with a 2004 anecdote from journalist Ron Suskind in which a White House aide (Karl Rove?) explained his belief that America is “an empire” now, and “when we act, we create our own reality.” And, we can change that reality before we’ve fully understood andContinue reading “Chapter 27, Chapter 28, and Afterword summaries”
Chapters 25 and 26 summaries
Chapter 25–Re-Consecrate Everything “There is no ‘away,’” this chapter begins. We don’t “throw away” our garbage and expect it to be gone any more than we “send away” our friends and family or “look away” from what disturbs us. In our trash culture, we have come to behave as though if we don’t like aContinue reading “Chapters 25 and 26 summaries”
Chapters 23 and 24 summaries
Chapter 23 Re-wild: The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and theContinue reading “Chapters 23 and 24 summaries”
Grace Episcopal Church 