Midwives Deliver Babies in Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch

I recently purchased a small Oxford notebook. I think its pages may someday soon end up swirling about in the Texas-sized Pacific Ocean garbage patch of plastic bits and other slow-to-biodegrade refuse. The paper of this notebook is unlike any I’ve experienced. As you write with a ballpoint pen the paper gives and flexes, very much like it is slightly but uniformly damp. Instead of tearing crisply like ordinary paper these pages stretch first and then more break than rip. It appears that the paper has a polymer component – maybe recycled plastic mixed with paper pulp. The soft paper in my notebook may not actually contain any plastic at all but it got me thinking about how things are changing – and how they’re not changing. Many of the things in our lives represent a shift from God-furnished resources to man-made materials. Plant based clear plastic-like water bottles and eco-friendly “green” cars are (presently, at least) more consumer directed marketing strategy and less real-solution. We humans have path-of-least-resistance inertia and a move from center track is only made when a pothole of substantial size is encountered, or in time of personal or national disaster, or in time of last resort. The movement of social, environmental, and economic change needs to be an urgent, proactive, preemptive, community-centered, across all boundaries action. Instead, the current movement (the current movement of change can only be referred to loosely as such because it’s hardly a movement in terms of what’s actually needed) is big-business profits driven with most people having no real agreement on how to best enact enduring global change that will save our planet from our own indulgences. Current transformative activity amounts to little more than a blurry vibration of minimal consequence on a global level. It’s time to stop with the baby-steps and plate-shift jerk forward… or just face the music and recede painfully and destructively into what will amount to a future archaeological discovery for the not so distant ancestors of the resilient few who might survive our collective irresponsibility.

Mike 7-19-2011

Note about this writing: You may find this to be a strange piece of blathering babble, and I suppose that it kind of is just that. It is so weird how my brain works. If someone told me that they would pay me to write something I seriously doubt I could complete anything at all. On the other hand, I can be spontaneously inspired to document an idea, an image, or a ‘something’ with words or photographs – and then stay hyper-focused on it until completion.

Inevitable Togetherness

Rain, I quiver as you gather,
and when we’re together,
I thank God for connecting us.
Rain, inundate as you may –
I am inspired by your power,
by your solidarity.
You arrive separated, seemingly, from each other,
but even as you fall over square mile vastness,
you still find one another through effortless attraction.

You simply follow God’s paths – to reunite in fellowship.
It is  impossible for you to isolate from one another –
For even when you fall far away from each other, 
God’s great plan rekindles your togetherness in short order.
Regrouping, congregating, pooling, flowing, seeping,
and then cycling back to His atmospheres – to become close once again.
The inevitable togetherness, just as God intended, is beautiful.
Lord – I am so very blessed by your teaching.
Amen
Mike G

Hello world!

This is my first post! Well, what to say, what to say? Yesterday was a snow day for Kate as a storm blew through the night before, leaving about 10″ inches of very heavy snow. Got my workout shoveling and blowing the driveway.  I’m up in the middle of the night again, avoiding attempting to go back to sleep because the attempts are usually fraught with an unsettling uncomfortableness that usually builds to an unsightly anxiety. No thanks… I’ll just awaken myself into a sleepiness out here in the big chair by the computer. Hmmm, lets roam the web a bit…