The Truth about your T-Shirt

Folks, a friend recommended to me the article below on the cotton industry. I was not surprised but troubled. It has made me want to know more and more about products that are "fair-trade" (vs. merely "free-trade" and about organic products.

While some may bemoan big business and big money, the fact is this: what drives our economy is consumer demand. So the moral resposibility is ours to decide how we consume.

Here is an odd idea: maybe there is already enough stuff (clothes, household items, etc) out there that we could join the many (like Catherine and me) who prefer to buy used. It's spending you can feel good about!

Anyway, check out the article and remember, what we wear and what we eat and what we drive and how we live all have moral ramifications!

Fashion Victims: the Truth About Cotton

Reflections on Moreau lecture

Well, Brother John Tryon had an interesting talk, urging all of us not to make Moreau into an unrealistic icon of a super-human. Rather, he wants Moreau to be seen as very human, and his saintliness in precisely his bold humanity. Further thoughts...

MOVIE REVIEWS

Some of you have been watching particular movies for my classes. Share the movie you watched and what you thought here. Consider it like Ebert and Roper but deeper.

Thoughts on Immigration Forum

Well, the ND Forum just ended, and now is the chance for those in my classes to share their views. So, who was the best speaker and why? What was the most insightful comment or moment? Or maybe you just want to share your ideas on some of the issues raised. The floor is yours....

WHAT's YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT?

Many people, from all viewpoints, are talking today about carbon dioxide emissions. Where do they come from? From us, of course! So now there are ways to calculate how much YOU produce, and compare that to other Americans, and others in the world. It's called figuring out your "Carbon Footprint" and can be done at the site below. It is quick and easy, asking some basic questions which you can estimate.

Now, for those who are brave, after going to the calculator site, POST BELOW WHAT YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT is and then say if you want to work to lower it or not, and why or why not. I chose this site because it is from a very longstanding and respectable group, and gives commonsense tips about how to lower your score. Here it is:

CALCULATE YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT

Mother Teresa and St. John of the Cross

In my Theo 450 class, we discussed the newly released letters of Mother Teresa, which indicate she went through some very dark times in which she was face to face with loneliness and spiritual doubt. This is what St. John of the Cross, in the 1500's, called "The Dark Night of the Soul."

Well, St. John has much to teach us. Below is a reflection by a priest of our own day, Fr. Richard Rohr. He is a challenging voice in our culture, one which echoes the early desert monks and mystics like St. John of the Cross.

Read this reflection and see if it helps understand why Mother Teresa would have experienced the Dark Night of the Soul.


True spirituality is utterly countercultural because it's non-merchandisable, non-measurable, non-provable. It is precisely nothing. Who wants to be nothing in this world? This culture's goal is for us to be something, to be everything, "to win friends and influence people."

St. John of the Cross puts it this way: "In order to come to pleasure you have not, you must go by a way that you will enjoy not. To come to the knowledge that you have not, you must go by a way that you know not. To come to the possession that you have not, you must go by a way in which you possess not. To come to be what you are not, you must go by a way that you are not" (Ascent of Mount Carmel, I, 13, #10).

We fear nothingness, of course. That's why we fear death, too. I suspect that death is the shocking realization that everything I thought was me, everything I held onto so despera tely, was precisely nothing. The nothingness we fear so much is, in fact, the treasure that we long for. We long for the space where there is nothing to prove and nothing to protect; where I am who I am, and its enough. Spirituality teaches us how to get naked ahead of time, so God can make love to us as we really are.

--Fr. Richard Rohr, from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

If you are interested in receiving Rohr's short daily meditations, it is easy. Just click here and sign up!

Thought from Service Class

Basically, the points I made yesterday about "Modernity" are this:

Descartes comes long in the 1600's and says THE DEEPEST CORE OF "SELF," of "I" is my reason, my mind.

Then comes Nietzche in the 1700's saying God is dead and religion is foolish because THE DEEPEST CORE OF "I" is this need for self-assertion, what he called the "will to power."

Then Freud enters the picture, saying, "no no, its not our mind nor our will, but rather THE DEEPEST CORE OF "SELF" is the libido, sexual drive."

So then, where does that leave us? Well, it has left "Modernity" (1600's - present) being skeptical of the ancient claim of Christian theology, which says this in response:

"INDEED, THE MIND WANTING TO 'FIGURE LIFE OUT' IS DEEP WITHIN US; INDEED THE NEED FOR SELF-ASSERTION AND POWER SEEM SO MUCH PART OF "I"; AND NO DOUBT OUR SEXUAL APPETITE IS CENTRAL TO THE SELF; YET NO MATTER HOW DEEPLY IMBEDDED THESE DESCRIPTIONS OF "SELF" ARE, THE "I" GOES EVEN DEEPER. There is an "I" that seeks to love for the sake of loving, an "I" that is not controlled by thought (Descartes), power (Nietzche_ or even sex (Freud). This "I" can only be moved by God.

This claim was articulated most clearly by St. Augustine in the 400's: "God is more inner to me than I am to myself," and because of this "our hearts are restless until they rest in God."

How do we find this "I"? Well, the Christian tradition offers 2 practices, 2 "training programs".....

SILENCE AND SERVICE. Both of these, best done together, can get us (to put it crudely), "out of our head," "out of our egos" and "out of, well, you figure this one out."