You are the treasure of my soul.

Fell in love with this song on KCRW radio. Tinariwen - Tenere Taqqim Tossam

I love the Farm.

http://www.vcstar.com/news/2011/oct/16/temple-celebrates-sukkot-on-oxnard-farm/

Say NO to the Keystone XL pipeline

Last night at the Abundant Table worship service, we talked about sacred places. "What place is sacred to you?" was our art prompt, and we each drew pictures - an orchard, a special doorway, a carwash, a church, a farm. Each person had a different place, and together, these pictures of places that we all placed on our altar showed that every place on Earth is sacred space.

In light of this, I've been thinking of the Keystone XL pipeline, a 1,700-mile oil pipeline that TransCanada, a Canadian oil company plans to build from Alberta, Canada, to the oil refineries near the Gulf of Mexico. It would pump crude oil through beautiful American wilderness and farmland. Acres of Canadian boreal forests have already been destroyed by the oil extraction process.

This pipeline will destroy countless sacred places, and cause more destruction through global warming. See this link (http://www.tarsandsaction.org/) to sign a petition asking President Obama to reject the requested permit to proceed. He will make a decision in the next week or two. And, if you live out East, consider joining hundreds of people, including religious leaders and scientists, who are sitting in front of the White House in peaceful protest of violence against our country. Let's take a stand for God's good and sacred Creation.

For more information on the pipeline, see this New York Times Editorial.

Also, the following video was created by Josh Fox, the Oscar-nominated director of Gasland:

Sod Farm
This green landscape is a living carpet
and one day it will be gone,
rolled up from the ground still clinging
to rich clods, roots snapping off this Plain
to be released some "where"
far from our long, flat desert near the sea
far in some other desert, perhaps,
where they will swing clubs
and thwack at the implanted sod
grown here by the sea
with miles of sprinklers
and sprays that roll off like syrup
into the ditch where today, I saw:

An egret,
poised, waiting.
About to step,
pausing.
Not tense but patient.
And I want to memorize this
so that I can tell my children,
Once, I saw a white bird, tall, with the green grass miles behind
and beyond that, the sea, where the runoff still flows.
It stood, for a long time, but only on one leg.