Spinach and such things.

by Sister Carolyn Law


Did you ever notice that even though cooked spinach is such a good food, it doesn't really taste so good until butter is added to it? Spinach with butter tastes very good. St. Bonaventure wrote in his work "The Journey oo the Human Person into God" that all of our senses are means to know God. We see God. We see God's beauty in nature. We hear God's beauty in the songs of birds and children. We feel God's love in the caress of a loved one. We taste God's loveliness in butter.

I am tempted to say that since butter tastes better than spinach, then butter must be more beautiful and closer to God. However, I know that the imperfection lies in my taste buds and not in the spinach. If my taste buds were more Godlike, the spinach would be equally tasty to me and equally reveal God's closeness.

Rocks are close to God too. Here is a way that not so ordinary rocks will help us out of a pickle, the global warming pickle. In the September/October issue of the Audubon magazine, the following notice is given:

Peridotite, a rock found at or just below the earth's surface, could fight global warming, according to scientists at Columbia University's Lamot-Doherty Earth Observatory. In Oman, they found that exposed peridotite reacts with carbon dioxide, absorbing up to 100,000 tons of greenhouse gas each year and transforming it into a solid mineral. By their estimates, simple, relatively inexpensive drilling and injections of pressurized CO2 could speed up the process; the exposed peridotite in Oman alone could sequester four billion tons of atmospheric carbon a year - one-seventh of the 30 billion tons the world emits annually. Every continent except perhaps Antarctica contains substantial amounts of the rock."

Rocks and hills and scientists bless our Godd!! Algae bless our God!!

Algae is being cultivated to produce biofuel. The potential is enormous. Recently there was an environmental event in Chicago and a car arrived from the Southwest, driven on the first produced biofuel gasoline from algae. There is enough potential that a small percentage of desert land could be used to produce all the gasoline that the USA needs. I am sure there are a few kinks to work out, but the knowledge base is there. Imagine our Sister Algae is helping to solve global warming and also bring an end to oil wars.

Speaking of oil wars, there is oil to the north of Afghanistan. You can view on-line a really good documentary called "Rethink Afghanistan". Its at www.rethinkafghanistan.com. Did you know that during the 1800's the Russians and the British were fighting eachother in Afghanistan? The two expanding empires bumped up against each other. Neither empire won. From 1979 to 1988, the Soviet Union tried to control Afghanistan. That is called the Soviet's Vietnam, only it was worse because they ended up bankrupt and that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Now, 20 years later, and who is fighting in Afghanistan? And are we heading toward bankruptcy?

Anyway, time to sign off. Peacemakers bless our God!


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