Introduction to Sustainable Construction Course

Here is the link for registering for a new course my colleague Bill Moylan and I are developing for the Engineering Society of Detroit Institute http://ww2.esd.org/EDUCATION/SustainableConst.htm I think that this is critical not just for the construction and development industries but for all of us. We need to be building a sustainable civilization, nothing less will be able to survive. The course will be offered throughout the summer, the first session will be during the second week of June.

This is an exciting topic and the course will provide not only a broad background for understanding the sustainability movement but a seque into other training opportunities offered by our partners at the Detroit Chapters of the USGBC (US Green Building Council) and ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineers). We will also be offering CEUs from various professional groups and societies. I look forward to seeing you there!

Building a Civilization of Love in the Face of Evil

It is, for all of us, I think, very disheartening to see the news every day and to read about the violent and destructive actions of so many of our fellows all over the world. There is really only one answer to this momentum of evil, that force which seems to swirl uncontrollably and ever faster around the axis of the black hole of death. Its gravity is strong and, like a great whirlpool sucking everything around it down into nothingness, the only way to counteract its power is to form connections that are strong enough to resist its momentum.

In applied physics we call this a "moment connection," a junction of materials that is capable of withstanding forces or loads of this nature and transmitting their energy into a structure that absorbs, redirects and renders them harmless. The Korean martial art of Akido accomplishes much the same thing by redirecting an attacker's violent destructive energy.

Building a civilization of love with God's help is a vision and a way of living in which relationships are the "moment connections" which can absorb and redirect the violent, negative, energy that comes at us.

Apologies to Charles Darwin

While reading a friend's blog this week http://kenwilsononline.com/2009/02/12/apologies-to-the-memory-of-charles-darwin/#comments
I came across a piece by a contributor who summed up the problem of trying to reconcile evolutionary theory with a biblical worldview. In his mind, the problem was original sin and atonement. If the creation account in the bible is not true, he said, there is no way to explain the Christian belief in original sin. Without original sin there is no need for atonement. If there is no need for atonement there is no need for Christ and the whole belief system falls apart. To this way of thinking, one follows the other. This system has traditionally been described as "monogenesis" and it is a belief that has been subscribed to by most Christians.

But, what if we reexamine what we mean by evil? What if the notion of original sin is a way of trying to explain the part of life that we find nasty and unappealing? For one who believes that there is an evolutionary progression taking place in the universe and in our species, the idea of original sin is problematic because it assumes a level of consciousness, self-awareness, and of deliberate action.

The Evolution of Consciousness in the Cosmos

These photos of small portions of our cosmos come from the Hubble Space Telescope http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/hubble_space_telescope_advent

I can't even begin to wrap my mind around this, it's just too big, especially when you note that one galaxy alone is 50 million light years away in one direction only! The fact that we are conscious of this is equally amazing and leads me to believe that the evolution of the cosmos is somehow directed toward that end.

Happy Christmas 2008 to all of you from the Ypsilanti Thomasons and all of us at the Thomason Family Farm!

Segway Photo

In case you are wondering about the photo of me on the Segway
http://segway.ypsi.com/2007/07/peter-thomason-historic-southide.html
a neighbor of ours has several of them. I once heard a rumor that he was trying to get a Segway polo team together and wanted to have enough for all of the players. It was not too difficult to balance on it, about as challenging as a Bongo Board if you remember them, and much more fun!

We have an amazing neighborhood here, I tell people it is one of the best-kept secrets in the county. Not only are there wildly divergent demographics within a one or two block area and all kinds of architecture, but it also features the only known urban eco micro farm in the county, if not the state of Michigan see - http://thomasonfamilyfarm.blogspot.com

The Origins of Life on Earth

Like many of you, I suspect, I have a longstanding interest in the evolution of the cosmos and life on earth in particular and I have written about this in other posts. The little article in the following link is thought provoking.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/science/17LIFE.html?ref=us

Pentecost - Who is the Holy Spirit?

On this day when Jews celebrated the first fruits of the land in the Spring, just as we are already eating rhubarb, spinach, and lettuce from our farm, we also celebrate Pentecost but with a particularly spiritual focus. The first fruits of the harvest of the new order of Grace are the joy, peace, love and unity that are ours to enjoy and to share as we discover a whole new kind of being alive. I like to call this feast Theophany of the Holy Spirit because it truly is an appearing or a manifestation of the personal presence of God. It is partly on the basis of this event that we Christians came to believe that God is not one Person but several distinct Divine Persons.

In other posts I have written about my experience of who the Holy Spirit is to me. I recently ran across an interesting piece by a Baptist about his research and work with Biblical languages and his startling conclusions about who the Holy Spirit is revealed to be in Scripture. I think it is particularly interesting because of the conservative theological bent of Southern Baptists. It seems to echo some of the same things that Dr. Scott Hahn, a former Presbyterian minister and now Roman Catholic theologian has been saying.

Here are some thoughts from R.P. Nettelhorst of the Quartz Hill School of Theology associated with the American Southern Baptist Convention. He asks on his site http://www.theology.edu/journal/volume3/spirit.htm :

Is There a Question About the Gender of the Holy Spirit?

In my graduate Semitics program at UCLA, one of the languages I had to study was Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic written with rounded letters reminiscent of modern Arabic. Syriac was the language of people living in northern Mesopotamia, from at least 300 BC until the time Arabic became dominant in the region, around 1000 AD. Most of the Syriac documents available today were produced by a Monophysite branch of Christianity, today known as the Syrian Orthodox Church (monophysitism is the belief that Christ had but one nature). One striking puzzlement of the texts, at least to me, was the constant reference to the Holy Spirit as "she". I was aware, of course, that in Aramaic (and hence in the dialect known as Syriac) the natural gender of the word "spirit" was feminine; however, I was surprised to discover that this accident of grammar had resulted in a whole theology constructed around the femininity of the third person of the Godhead.

An example of Syriac theology is found in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas; it is usually assumed that this particular work was influenced by speculative gnostic Judaism because it contains the notion, that associated with God was a wisdom, or creative power - a spirit - which was feminine. In an invocation accompanying baptism, Thomas calls for the Holy Spirit:

Come, holy name of Christ that is above every name;
Come, power of the Most High and perfect compassion;
Come, thou highest gift;
Come, compassionate mother;
Come, fellowship of the male;
Come, thou (f.) that dost reveal the hidden mysteries;
Come, mother of seven houses, that thy rest may be in the eighth house.
(Acts of Thomas 2:27)

---

Come, silence that dost reveal the great deeds of the whole greatness;
Come thou that dost show forth the hidden things
And make the ineffable manifest;
Holy Dove that bearest the twin young;
Come, hidden Mother;
Come, thou that art manifest in thy deeds
and dost furnish joy and rest for all that are joined with thee;
Come and partake with us in this Eucharist
Which we celebrate in thy name,
and in the love-feast in which we are gathered together at thy call.
(Acts of Thomas 5:50)

---

After reading such materials I decided that Syrian Orthodox Christianity was somewhat heretical (though perhaps only through an accident of grammar), and so I wanted nothing to do with Syriac literature. I would find something else on which to do my dissertation.

Then came the Spring of 1986.

I was teaching advanced Hebrew, and I had decided to take the class through the book of Judges. As we read along, I noticed something odd about Judges 3:10:

The Spirit of Yahweh came upon Caleb's younger brother...

In English, this passage from Judges doesn't appear startling, but in Hebrew something strange leapt out at me: "came upon" was a third person FEMININE verb, indicating it's subject "Spirit" was being understood as a feminine noun. Hebrew is not like Aramaic in its use of the word "spirit". While the word is exclusively feminine in Aramaic, in Hebrew it is sometimes masculine. Therefore, the question that came to mind was why had the author of Judges chosen here to make the Spirit of Yahweh feminine, when he could just as easily have made it masculine? Oh well.

I just shrugged my shoulders and went on, not overly concerned. Occasionally, I thought, one finds something inexplicable in the Bible: no big deal. But then came Judges 6:34. Again, "Spirit of Yahweh" was feminine.

At this point I decided to consult the concordance. Much to my surprise, every occurrence of "Spirit of Yahweh" in Judges is feminine. As I pondered that, I recalled Genesis 1:2, the first occurrence of "Spirit of God" in the Bible, and realized to my shock that it too is feminine.

Back to the concordance. Out of 84 OT uses of the word "spirit", in contexts traditionally assumed to be references to the Holy Spirit, 75 times it is either explicitly feminine or indeterminable (due to lack of a verb or adjective). Only nine times can "spirit" be construed as masculine, and in those cases it is unclear that it is a reference to God's Holy Spirit anyway. (Please see Appendix 3 for a complete list and detailed discussion of the usages.)

The New Testament references to the Holy Spirit are not helpful for conclusively deciding on the gender of the Holy Spirit, since "spirit" in Greek is neuter, and so is referred to as "it" by the New Testament writers.

The conclusion of all this is that our traditional assumption of a masculine Spirit is questionable; in fact, the evidence seems overwhelming that the Spirit should be viewed as "She", which does seem to make sense, since the other two members of the Godhead are labeled "Father" and "Son".

What are the theological implications of a feminine Holy Spirit? There are four:

• A feminine Holy Spirit clarifies how women can also be said to be created in the "image of God". It has long been recognized that he Godhead must include some feminine aspects, since Genesis 1:26-27 explicitly states that both men and women were created in God's image.
• A feminine Holy Spirit explains the identity of the personified wisdom in Proverbs 8:12-31:

I, wisdom, dwell together with prudence;
I possess knowledge and discretion.
To fear Yahweh is to hate evil;
I hate pride and arrogance,
evil behavior and perverse speech.
Counsel and sound judgment are mine;
I have understanding and power.
By me kings reign
and rulers make laws that are just;
by me princes govern,
and all nobles who rule on earth.
I love those who love me,
and those who seek me find me.
With me are riches and honor,
enduring wealth and prosperity.
My fruit is better than fine gold;
what I yield surpasses choice silver.
I walk in the way of righteousness,
along the paths of justice,
bestowing wealth on those who love me
and making their treasuries full.
Yahweh possessed me at the beginning of his work,
before his deeds of old;
I was appointed from eternity,
from the beginning,
before the world began.
Where there were no oceans, I was given birth,
when there were no springs abounding with water;
before the hills, I was given birth,
before he made the earth or its fields
or any of the dust of the world.
I was there when he set the heavens in place,
when he marked out the horizon
on the face of the deep,
when he established the clouds above
and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,
when he gave the sea its boundary
so the waters would not overstep his command,
and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.
Then I was the craftsman at his side.
I was filled with delight day after day,
rejoicing in his whole world
and delighting in mankind....

Some commentators have tried to tie this personification of wisdom to the idea of Christ as divine "Word" [Gk. logos]. Unfortunately for this theory, the genders of the words in question get in the way. The gender of the word "wisdom" is feminine, and is therefore personified as a woman. This makes a direct identification of "wisdom" with "Christ" virtually impossible.

Other commentators have pictured "wisdom" as a created being, like an angel; better have been those who argue that the personification of wisdom in Proverbs 8 is simply a literary device, without objective reality.

However, if the Holy Spirit is feminine, then the identification is relatively easy: Genesis 1:2 pictures the Spirit of God hovering over the deep, active in creating the world, just as Proverbs describes. Both the Old and New Testament connect the idea of teaching and imparting wisdom with the function of the Holy Spirit (Ex. 31:3; 35:31; Acts 6:3; Ephesians 1:17; Luke 12:12; and John 14:25-26).

• The third benefit of recognizing the femininity of the Holy Spirit is that it explains the subservient role that the Spirit plays. The Bible seems to indicate that the Spirit does not speak for itself or about itself; rather the Spirit only speaks what it hears. The Spirit is said to have come into the world to glorify Christ (See John 16:13-14 and Acts 13:2). In contrast, it should be noted that the Scripture represents both the Father and Son speaking from and of themselves.
• Finally, a feminine Holy Spirit, with a Father and Son as the rest of the Trinity, may help explain why the family is the basic unit of human society.

News from the Thomason Family Farm

Please visit http://thomasonfamilyfarm.blogspot.com for the latest news about our urban micro eco-farm in downtown Ypsilanti, Michigan

Who Are We?

I have finally gotten around to taking a serious look at a book that has been on my shelves for almost thirty years. Man and Woman in Christ by Stephen B. Clark, a self-described philosopher and the founder of several ecumenical Christian groups, has been gathering dust there almost as long as The Prophet by Khalil Gibran which I read in toto just this last year. This is pretty typical for me because I tend to collect books that look interesting or that people give me and keep them until I feel the need to read them. There will probably be many left there unread by the time I occupy my coffin, the one that is currently being used as a tool storage cabinet in the barn with my goats. Sometimes I am prompted to read a book by a nagging question that I am trying to settle much like Neo in The Matrix series who, experiences what his mentor and friend Morpheus describes as "a splinter in your mind."

Ann Arbor City Chickens and the Michigan Right to Farm Act

Though there are undoubtedly some readers of the Ann Arbor News who will question the timeliness of running a front page article about the right to keep chickens in one’s yard while, at the same time, we are getting smacked with daily doses of economic woe from the gas pump and the home-mortgage debacle, I say it’s a good time http://www.mlive.com/news/annarbornews/index.ssf?/base/news-26/120576484810420.xml&coll=2. It’s really a very good time because the issue is not about the latest fad in urban chic but about returning to our independent American roots. Raising our own food to feed ourselves and to share with our neighbors is not only one of the oldest activities of civilized people but one of the surest bulwarks we have against hunger in times of economic and social instability. Anyone who knows the joy of having even a few shelves of canned or frozen fruits and vegetables they have grown, not to mention meats they have raised or hunted, can only feel badly for those who have come to rely completely on the industrial food chain for their daily bread.

Re-learning the values of home-economics, self-sufficiency, and energy-independence is not easy, I know because I’m still working on it. It has taken me many years to get to where I am today. My own family will tell you that it wasn’t that long ago that they were pulling old Burger King bags out from under the seat of my truck and shaking them at me in disbelief. I have, at times, been a reluctant radical. Though I enjoy the benefits of living in an urban area like, easy access to cooked or ready-to-cook food in dozens of grocery stores and restaurants, I have come to believe that our basic connection to the sources of that food is usually eclipsed by the commercial mechanisms that deliver it to us. As a result, in the process, I think we lose something of ourselves because to be human in the most fundamental way, a word which literally means "from the soil or the humus of the earth," also means that we are sustained and nourished by the soil and the plants and animals that share it with us. Rediscovering my own human roots in the soil have made me richer than I ever thought possible. Finding creative ways of doing this in the city has not only been fun but energizing for us and our neighbors.

Ann Arbor is moving in the right direction by considering a change in its animal control ordinance. However, as nice as it will be for residents to be able to keep three or four hens in their yards for fresh eggs, the ordinance change – and I think it will happen – should not be allowed to obscure another important fact. Michigan’s Right to Farm Act of 1981 already gives legal protection to a basic human right and activity, the right to raise one’s own food either for subsistence or for commercial purposes. Though it may be prudent for cities or towns to provide guidelines for food and animal raising activities within their boundaries it is important to recognize that, according to Michigan law, they do not have the authority to proscribe or prohibit them any more than they have the authority to deprive a person of other rights to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness without due process. It is also interesting to note that attempts by municipal associations in Michigan as recently as the late ‘90s to limit the protections of the Right to Farm Act fell flat and came to nothing.

Ypsilanti’s city council, when faced with a similar request two years ago, chose to rush the issue to a "NO" vote in the hopes that it would simply go away. However, global economic forces that drive up gas prices or the cost of owning a home or feeding one’s family are not deterred by city councils or mayors or presidents. When faced with the ever challenging question, "how can I afford to feed myself and my family?" it is encouraging that increasing numbers of Americans are resorting to what we have done for generations. We are rediscovering the values of ingenuity, innovation, and independence in order to take care of ourselves. The right to raise our own food is already ours. The Ypsilanti chicken population is growing. So is Ann Arbor’s.

Peter Thomason raises chickens, goats, and rabbits on his 1/10th acre Ypsilanti City urban micro eco-farm.

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“ Imagination is more important than knowledge." — Albert Einstein

My son-in-law GEOFF sent me some interesting news items this week that highlight the value of this quote by Albert Einstein on his birthday today. Two prestigious Templeton Prizes of 1.5 million dollars each were awarded to researchers for their work in exploring the convergence between physical and metaphysical explanations of the universe. Both of them have some interesting things to say that emphasize the importance of using our imagination to see that faith and science are not in opposition to each other but are looking at phenomena from different but equally important perspectives.

See for yourself. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/science/13prize.html?ex=1206072000&en=05f8fd66cce9b0b4&ei=5070&emc=eta1

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/science/10prize.html?_r=1&emc=eta1&oref=slogin

What do you think about this? Leave a comment by clicking on the small type below that says "comments."

Who is the Enemy?

Evil, as much as we can understand it, along with the fear of death, the fear of meaninglessness, and annihilation is, I believe, the enemy we humans have in common. With this comes the awareness, over time, that random evil things happen regardless of who we are, how well we live, or where we happen to be.

The horrible murder of Eve Carson, the beautiful student president of UNC last week is a blatant example of evil at work. Though we do not yet understand why she was killed where she was, it is a fairly safe bet to say that those who did this were evildoers serving only their own selfish interests, motives, and passions without any regard for the rights or needs of others or of the common good. People like this are not only blind to the suffering they cause but have no regard whatever for their own spiritual welfare. They are, in fact, the walking dead who spread death and destruction and no one in their right mind would mourn their passing except to grieve the waste of their potential to become good and to do good.

But where does this evil come from? Is it the work of a spiritual being in rebellion against God, a literal devil, evil personified, who orchestrates a cacophonous medley of disease, mischief, and death in a jealous rage as John Milton would have us to believe? If so, how then are we to explain the apparent evil present in the world before the appearance of man since we know from the fossil record that all kinds of natural disasters and the death of many species characterized life on earth during the eons of its evolution? Or are we to think of evil only as the deliberate selfish act of a human being who should know and do better?

I believe that if we are to reconcile our Christian thought with what we now believe to be true about the evolution of the cosmos in general and human beings in particular, we must be willing to consider the possibility that our understanding of evil, like our understanding of ourselves, is continuing to develop. Whereas we have personified evil in the past as a way of differentiating it from the good, or the potential for good, that we recognize in ourselves and in others, it is important to be brutally honest here.

Evil, apart from the suffering caused by accidents, disease, and natural disasters, is the work of evildoers, human agents, who act with a deliberate disregard for the good of others. Evil in this sense rises up in the heart of man when he does not intentionally choose good. As in physics where we observe that nature abhors a vacuum, so also in the human heart the absence of good will creates space for malevolent thought and action. Choosing to do good and to become good is the requisite action for not being an evildoer and becoming evil. There really is no middle ground.

The choice before us is not abstract but real. What am I going to do today? What kind of person will I choose, with God’s help, to be today? What will I do when faced with a difficult situation? Do I want to be part of the good, as well as I am able to understand this, or to become evil?

What do you think?

The Value of Money

On March 10, 1862, the first paper money was issued in the U.S. Denominations were $5, $10 and $20.

Quote of the day: "The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money." — unknown

A successful businessman found out he was going to die and informed his wife that he intended to take all of his money with him in his coffin.

She said to him, "No way! I am not going to let you do that. Don’t you know that you can’t take it with you?"

But he insisted that he was going to regardless of what she said since it was his wealth and he did not want to share it with anyone.

The man died and was buried. Family and friends gathered around the widow after the service and asked if, in fact, she had carried out his wishes.

"Yes I did." She answered in tears. "That was the biggest check I’ve ever written."

Me - the Pearl of Great Price?

Several years ago, I had a startling realization that changed the way I thought about myself and, consequently, others. It began, I think, when my long-time friend and brother-in-Christ Father Phil Thibodeau suggested that I begin to pray this prayer on a regular basis. It goes:

"God, help me to see, to know, and to love myself and others as you see, know, and, love us."

Around the same time I began to make the Serenity Prayer a regular part of my personal litany throughout the day. It goes:

"God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference."

The realization that came to me was really a very personal answer to the first prayer but, at the same time, I discovered, through the second prayer, a new ability to live out, or to incorporate it into my daily life.

What I realized or began to see differently is best summarized by a kind of re-telling of Christ's parable of the Pearl of Great Price in this way: I am the Pearl of great value that God, personified as a merchant, was seeking in the world. God-in-Christ "sold" or gave up everything of his own in order to get me. He became "poor" so that I could become "rich." What he did not only saved me from spiritual death, what I call the "first" resurrection, but from my final natural end, physical death, through an eventual "second" physical resurrection. Reconsidering the parable in this way is very much in line with the other parables of the lost coin, the shepherd and the sheep, the Good Samaritan, etc., because it makes me/us, God's beloved, central to the story as the object of God's love and personal attention.

This has been enormously helpful to me and underscores how it is that our faith is different from other religious systems. We Christians believe that each person - with their unique body, soul, and spirit - is, in the eyes of God, of great value. We are not just part of a chosen people (Judaism), or a temporary host for a transmigratory soul (Hinduism), or something that will be assumed into an impersonal universal consciousness (Buddhism), or just a creature-servant of whom moral obedience is required - or else (Islam). Christians have believed from the beginning that the Christian Revelation of God is unique because it is the ultimate affirmation of the value of the individual who realizes their value and the value of others most fully in reciprocal loving relationships. Indeed, we believe the rather preposterous notion that we, as individuals and as a community, have been offered the opportunity to become sharers in the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) a process known as theosis, glorification, or divinization.

Why? Because God wants us to be part of the immortal, eternal Divine Family. That is what I believe.

What do you think?