Do you recall the recession, when banks got a big bailout and a dubious public was told that otherwise the whole thing would collapse? Do you rememberthe contradictory messages: so many people in debt up to their eyeballs being told they needed to spend the country’s way out of recession? Does it hurt your stomach […]
Hooray for government action! Most everyone else in the circles I inhabit is very excited about the EPA’s clean power plan that was released yesterday. And like everyone in our local circles, I live on the border between two states with powerful officials that oppose this very sensible and forward-looking plan. So I wrote my […]
Before I began this blog in 2013, I asked myself frequently if it would become one of the thousands of heartlessly orphaned sites that let others know just how committed their writers are. I couldn’t answer, of course, having no glimpse into the future. This long hiatus might have been excusable if no one […]
The Green Boat: Reviving Ourselves in Our Capsized Culture, by Mary Pipher (New York: Riverhead Books, 2013) Years ago when my daughter and every daughter I knew were enduring middle school, several of us mothers read Mary Pipher’s remarkable book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, and then passed it to our girls. […]
During the UN’s COP 20 meeting in Lima about climate change last December, our Presbyterian group took part in a people’s march in Lima’s streets, joining the rallying cry, “Cambiemos el sistema, no el clima”: “Let’s change the system, not the climate!” And when we came back, participants from Peru, Bolivia, and the U.S. together […]
Back in Lima the next day, we attended the Interfaith Commission Conference on Climate Change, featuring American economistJeffrey Sachs. Sachs talked about the history of industrialization that arose with the power of fossil fuels beginning 250 years ago with the steam engine, which changed the world in every way. Intensive industrialization arose. The population exploded. […]
We drove another 75 miles that night to Huancayo, the capital of Junin province, a city of around 350,000 ten times La Oroya’s size, and just a little lower in altitude. We stayed on the main street—my window faced the huge dome of Huancayo Cathedral, and the music and car horns continued well into the […]
We rose early for the chartered bus from Lima to Huancayo in the Andes. When it was delayed, we passed the time getting to know our traveling companions. Lima, a city of nearly ten million, shows all the economic contrasts of many fast-growing world cities. A few days later we would visit a shiny new […]
A second patiently awaited supplement to Inhabiting Eden is now available to order. Now joining the book itself and the Reading and Writing Workbook is a Leaders’ Guide for discussing the book in Bible study groups, adult Vacation Bible School, retreats, and book clubs. The guide begins with an introduction to Inhabiting Eden and to […]
On our first morning in Lima, Ruth Farrell took us on an epic walk to the Pacific coast, which was almost as far down as it was to our west. She needn’t have told us that she lost her way as we returned—we wouldn’t have known, and we were happy to roam in the warm […]