Anticipating Shepherd of the Hill Dialogues’ “Voices of the Slaves” program celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, we offer Sojourner Truth’s speech here on Views from the Edge. The Tuesday Dialogue on Oct. 15 (7:00 P.M.) will feature dramatic readings like this one and the music that originated in the cotton fields.
Sojourner Truth
This NPR piece Attenborough’s muddled thinking can’t stop human evolution came to our attention this morning by way of David Earle from New Zealand.
David’s blog is In the Company of Hysterical Women.
His comment on yesterday’s Views from the Edge post The American Religion reads, in part:
Fortunately Sir David is totally wrong on all counts. It is only a small fraction of humanity that benefit for these improvements and even then, it has little to no measurable impact apparently on generic change across population. …
But he is tapping into a wider sentiment that some day we might be so in control of our own destiny that we are no longer subject to this nasty, animal based thing called evolution.
Isn’t that when we force our way back to the garden and eat from the second tree?
Editor’s note: David is referring to the Genesis story (Gen. 2 and 3) where what David calls “the “first tree” is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (the tree of control/mastery by which they will “be like God”). “The second tree” is the tree of life (by which the characters in the story would become eternal.)
The Garden story is not history; it’s anthropology and theology. It never happened; it’s always happening.
Your thoughts on the matter are welcome. Leave a comment to promote the discussion.
A Sermon at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, Minnesota.
EXCERPTS
“I have always been bemused by time and place. I am a toddler on a train listening in the night to the eerie sound of the train whistle and the constant click-clacking of the wheels. Where were we? Where are we going – and why, just my mother and I?”
“We are all in transit. But from where to where and from when to when have become less and less my questions.”
After posting a heavy piece on the President’s speech on Syria, 15-week-old Barclay took me aside and suggested I lighten up. “Dad, you have to stop being so serious. Besides, Dad,” he said, “I like President Obama. I thought you did, too. You need to chill out. You need to watch Mom’s video from last night and show it to the world. You humans are just too mean. All this Syria stuff is just a big soccer game.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll put your video up on the blog to bring some laughter and lighten up the superior species. Good dog!”
Gravel and motorcycles don’t mix.
Even though the 73 year old Dean
(Emeritus) was only going 5 mph
on the last gravel mile to his
daughter’s lake house, when he looked
at the passing motorboat,
the big quiet bike slowly slid sideways
and down on his left leg.
A passing lake visitor helped lift
the bike off his bruised, he thought,
limb, and he limped the half-mile
to his daughter’s place carrying
his helmet–the same red as his bike.
After resting, she drove him back
to the unharmed motorcycle,
which he rode the 30 miles home.
He drove his pick-up truck to the
Walk-in Clinic to check the leg
that kept hurting as he walked.
After the X-Rays showed two
breaks, waiting for surgery,
his daughter said, “I’ll bet you
are smiling because your bike
wasn’t even scratched!”
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, September 10, 2013
Lost in Chicago
Parking now is privatized,
on-street prices very high,
all hotels have also raised
valet costs in the same way:
everybody wants to make
as much money as they can
before bankruptcy will take
everybody down just like
Detroit.
Mile Magnificent is still
mostly white except for men
parking cars or begging on
sidewalk sides. Inside, women
wear their diamonds on pale hands–
colored hands wear vinyl, fill
buckets, pails, trash bags, and cans:
garbage left behind by all
the rich.
Foreigners drive taxis, make
more here than at home. Send back
salaries and tips to help
families survive. I stop,
lost on lower Wacker Drive,
lower Michigan, no help
here from GPS, “Now drive
east 500 feet and stop.”
(I’d be in the lake…)
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, September 9, 2013
P.S. On Tuesday, October 1 Steve will bring his poetry to Tuesday Dialogues at Shepherd of the Hill Church in Chaska. Free and open to the public.
Verse – Ten and Twelve
The high-caffeine pop was a mistake…
but when the older asked for it,
the younger had to have it, too.
The ping-pong chatter natter
never stopped. Good-natured,
but louder and shriller (I turned down,
then took out my hearing aids…)
Day 5 of our week caring for
the grand-kids. Their parents
love going to Burning Man–
what’s temporary noise
in the service of Art?
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, September 2, 2013
Of course a tower is built by starting from
the bottom. Strong workers and machines make
a joint to earth with wet, grey gravel–form
with time a foundation almost like rock.
Orange steel is welded, riveted, and made
to stand naked pointing skyward. Then blocks
and bricks are hoisted slowly up the side
providing covering flesh the tower lacks.
…
Small children make towers in trees, and these,
though only made of rotting boards, still stand
as proudly strong in little children’s eyes
as those from which much older men descend.
But both kind of towers still seem to say
with their builders: we look down on the sky.
[from The Anglican Theological Review, early 1970s]
Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL
The same day America honored the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington most remembered for Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech, America’s first black President appeared on the Newshour to discuss military strikes in Syria.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was as deeply committed to peace and to NON-VIOLENT, non-military solutions to global problems as he was to ending racism. As his analysis of the national, international, and human condition continued to develop, he became an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, capitalism, and imperialism. He grasped as well as any public figure of his time the institutional power of an unelected, undemocratic web of the economic-military-corporate power at work behind the scenes of American public life.
I was proud of President Obama’s speech from the same spot where where Dr. King had stood 50 years before at the March on Washington. I can’t put that together with his entertainment of military action in Syria. For whatever reason, the media did not seem to notice the incongruity.
Last night’s PBS Newhour featured a conversation about the advisability of “punishing” Syria. University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer’s statements, in my opinion, hit the nail on the head. “Stay out militarily.” Click HERE to listen to the conversation.
The military-industrial-technological-corporate complex feeds of mistakes like Iraq and Afghanistan. Martin Luther King, Jr. never lunched on their food. Nor should we.
Views from the Edge 