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The Dextera Dei, the Right Hand of God, is portrayed on the north face of Muiredach’s Cross, the largests of the stone “high crosses” at Monasterboice in Co. Louth, just north of Dublin. The Hand of God is shown resting on a round carved disk; underneath it two snakes intertwine three human heads.
The monastery was founded around 520 A.D. The cross was carved in the 10th century, and is dedicated to an abbot of Monasterboice, Muiredach mac Domhaill. His death is recorded in 923 A.D.
I was in the presence of the cross on a cold, bright spring morning. The ground was still wet with dew. I remained standing by the Right Hand of God long after the other members of my group moved away. I studied, and looked, and counted, but I couldn’t crack its mystery.
Since I returned home, I have not been able to find any discussion of the iconography of this part of the cross. Are the roots of the artwork in the ancient Irish symbols for the sun, victory and divinity? The Old Testament? The New Testament? All three? The images portrayed have their roots in both traditions: Life, Death, Kingship, Victory, Divinity. Snakes could symbolize the ancient native religion, Satan or fallen angels.
The location of the cross was in an ancient grove had its own meaning. That gently sloping knoll served as a sacred place to the local people well before the arrival of Christian missionaries and monks.
There are referrences to ”right hand of God” throughout the Bible. As the messiah, Jesus is supposed to be seated at the Right Hand of God.
But the cross of Muiredach pays as much attention to David as it does Jesus, so I think the origin for the symbols come from one of his stories or psalms.
In my first attempt as a Biblical art detective, I propose the inspiration for the carving comes from Psalm 109. It begins: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit thou at might right hand: Until I make thy enemies thy footstool.”
“After a few hours of sweating with dirt all over me and insects buzzing around the upper half of my body, I may begin to get a sense of being in tune with nature.”
“It’s at these moments where I take note of a worm that is maneuvering its way out of the dirt or a butterfly that lands silently on a bush next to me.”
“With subtlety and a total lack of self consciousness, I come out of myself, look around, marvel at the majesty of what I am experiencing and begin to take note that I have entered some type of altered state of consciousness.”
Read the whole article here.
Fran Sorin is recognized as one of America’s leading gardening experts. 
Sr. Janet Corcoran, vice president of mission service at Marian Medical Center in Santa Clara, CA, is just one of the Catholic voices spreading the gospel that bottled water, however convenient, is environmentally, economically and politically wrong. “It’s a matter of getting people to think more consciously about what they are doing,” she said. Her column, “Environmental Tips from a Green Franciscan Sister” is published in a hospital publication.
Concerns about bottled water are bubbling up in Catholic organizations, adding clout to a growing number of municipalities and secular organizations concerned about the issue–with women religious strongly in the lead.
Numerous women’s religious communities are banning bottled water at their motherhouses, retreat houses and conference centers, and some are substituting refillable water bottles for the throw-away kind at sponsored events.
Bottled water has become a lighting rod for several environmental-social justice issues surrounding water. 
There is a negative environmental impact of discarded plastic bottles. I see plenty of those on the beach–used and left by fishermen (both native born and Spanish-speaking immigrants) to wash out into the ocean. There is the oil used to make plastic bottles. And lastly, the prize of the ownership and access to good water, especially for developing countries. Like energy resources–oil, gas, coal–water is now being privatized by corporations.
The United Nations estimates that more than 1 billion people currently lack access to safe drinking water and that by 2025 two-thirds of the world’s population will not have access to drinking water.
Some Catholic groups have borrowed information and ideas from Think Outside the Bottle, a major non-religious player in the anti-bottled water movement.
The organization has launched a web-based campaign that provides information and support. In addition to inviting individuals to sign a pledge to boycott bottled water, the program urges people to send postcards to corporations challenging corporate control of water, to attend stockholders’ meetings and mount other forms of pressure on corporate executives.
I guess what this means for me is to stop buying Poland Spring at Staples or the supermarket, and fill the empties with tap water.
I love Poland Spring. It’s easy to tote to the gym or have in the car. Water in refillable plastic bottles tastes vile. This is going to be a tough one.
A new movie starring my favorite comic character, Hellboy, is currently playing in theaters across the U.S. Hellboy and the Golden Army, directed by Guillermo Del Toro, has the same kind of fantastic monsters as Pan’s Labyrinth. There is also the same clash of realities – Christian and pagan.
How can I not love Hellboy,? He’s such a contradiction – a demon who wears a wrist rosary. Kind, brave, implusive, born a demon but raised a man, he is loyal to his friends and his mission. He make messes and gets in fights, but picks himself up and keeps at it.
In Golden Army, Hellboy comes up against Prince Nuada, an elf prince who wants to destroy mankind for making such a mess of the earth and laying waste to the environment. One of the creatures Nuada summons as a tool of destruction is an Elemental. This green force of nature terrorizes and tries to destroy a neighborhood, but after a terrible inner struggle, Hellboy finally kills it. As it dies, its blood and body blanket the streets and buildings with beautiful flowers and vegetation. Instead of cowering, the people and their other-worldly protectors walk among the flowers, enchanted. 
Hellboy finally succeeds in overcoming Prince Nuada, but at the cost of realizing his own mission also relies on death and destruction. He walks away from it, deciding to live for the joy of living, not following orders to destroy things that are different. 
The film is an entertaining fable of good and evil. But it also can be seen as a darker allegory of the struggle between Christianity and paganism, a spirituality rooted in nature. Nature has some fearsome ways to retaliate, if humanity hurts it too much or tries to dominate at its expense.
Christianity has a lot to learn about life, nature and natural law from paganism. Chiefly, don’t try to kill things you don’t understand or are afraid of. Much to our surprise, there may be flowers in the blood and body.
Environmentalism is emerging as one key theme of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Australia for World Youth Day.
Even before he left Rome, the pope struck a “green” note. In a message to the people of Australia and the youth from around the world converging on Sydney, Benedict listed environmental concerns among the global phenomena faced by young people. 
“They see great damage, done to the natural environment through human greed,” the pope said in his message, released July 4. “They struggle to find ways to live in greater harmony with nature and with one another.”
The pope was asked by an Australian journalist about religious indifference in his country. Benedict replied that while religion does face something of a crisis in the Western world, various forces today illustrate the need for religious faith — among them, environmental challenges.
“In this historical moment, we begin to see that we do need God,” the pope said. “We can do so many things, but we cannot create our climate. We thought we could do it, but we cannot do it. We need the gift of the Earth, the gift of water, we need the Creator; the Creator re-appears in His creation. And so we also come to understand that we cannot really be happy, cannot be really promoting justice for all the world, without a criterion at work in our own ideas, without a God who is just, and gives us the light, and gives us life.”
Among other things, Benedict XVI sees the environmental movement as a promising route for the recovery of a strong sense of “natural law,” meaning the idea that moral limits to human behavior are inherent in nature. In fact, the pope believes ecology could hold the key to teaching young people about Christian morality.
If people are willing to accept that idea about the environment, Benedict may hope they will be more open to the claims of natural law in other areas of life, like sexuality and gender.
Psalm 103.
25 So this is the great sea, which stretcheth wide its arms: there are creeping things without number: creatures little and great. 26 There the ships shall go. This sea dragon which thou hast formed to play therein. 
I love the sea. I love dinosaurs. I love mystery monsters, especially sea monsters. I have all three with the Leviathan. What was it?
Biblical scholars and others have numerous theories about what it was, what it could have been, and what it represented.
I think it might have been an extra large Nile crocodile; but it could also have been an imaginative literary creation based on the discovery of the bones of an ancient marine reptiles. It possbily could have been a living creature of legend, much like the Loch Ness Monster.
Depending on the translation, it can be read as “whale” or “coiled.” If the Leviathan was more whale-like, then I would say it resembled a dunkleosteus or liopleurodon. If “coiled” then a mosasaur or sarcosuchus.
Walking along the beach at Orient, NY I came up this driftwood sculpture. I named it “Leviathan” for its open, roaring mouth and stare across the sea. 
Jason Burnett, 31, a Stamford-trained economist, was until June 9 a senior official with the Environmental Protection Agency. He resigned, and is spending some time working for the election of Barack Obama to the presidency.
Apparently, he wasn’t regarded highly by environmentalists on his appointment to the EPA, but he should be one of their biggest heros, now.
Burnett charges that Vice President Cheney’s office urged him to delete or water down testimony to Congress by top administration officials on the impacts of global warming.
Burnett also said the White House blocked an effort by EPA to issue an endangerment finding, a conclusion that climate change is a threat to the public. Under a Supreme Court ruling last year, the finding would have forced the administration to cut emissions.
In October 2007, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Julie Gerberding was scheduled to testify before the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee. Burnett said he was asked by Cheney’s office and the White House Council on Environmental Quality to “work with CDC to remove from the testimony any discussion of human health consequences of climate change.”
Burnett refused, saying the testimony was “fundamentally accurate.” It included examples of how climate change is likely to have “a significant impact” on public health.
But the Office of Management and Budget later deleted six of twelve pages of testimony, including sections suggesting climate change could lead to a rise in infectious diseases, air pollution, food and water scarcity and extreme weather events.
The issue of whether greenhouse gases endanger public health or welfare is significant because a finding by the EPA that they do would require the agency to regulate them under the terms of the federal Clean Air Act, spurring new rules across a range of industries.
Environmentalists, Congressional Democrats, and officials in more than a dozen states have sought to prod the EPA to reach a decision on the matter, following a Supreme Court ruling last year that greenhouse gases are pollutants and can be regulated under EPA’s existing authority. 
But the Bush administration has resisted, arguing that the economy-wide regulations of such emissions could cripple the U.S. economy.
Burnett said he was told to retract the document because a bill to raise fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, which was moving through Congress at the time, would make the endangerment finding moot. But he said the logic was flawed.
“The energy bill did not change the science, it did not change the law,” Burnett said, adding, “EPA still has a responsibility to respond to the Supreme Court.”
As a member of the Social Justice Committee of St. Andrew the Apostle Church in Brooklyn, NY I helped to start the “Coffee Project.” We sold Equal Exchange coffee after Masses once a month; and took special orders the rest of the time. Our parish secretary, a lovely lady, helped out to take care of people who were ill, out-of-town or couldn’t make it to Mass for some reason but still wanted their coffee. She would hold the bags in the office for people to come by and pick up. Sales did quite well–our Social Justice Committee funded other projects and initiatives out of our $1 a bag coffee profits.
We sold Equal Exchange coffee, tea, chocolate and hot chocolate. Everyone enjoyed the coffee, but the chocolate bars were the biggest hit. 
Our motto was: “Supporting fair wages and fair trade–one cup of coffee at a time.” Buying a bag of coffee after Mass made it easy and convenient to help support Catholic social justice initiatives several ways: small farmers were paid a fair price for their coffee beans and had access to credit; and the crops were planted and harvested in ecologically sound ways. Equal Exchange products are mostly organic and shade-grown, which further protects songbirds and wildlife.
Equal Exchange was great organization to work with, and I highly recommend them. We found them through Catholic Relief Services, who maintain a list of fair trade coffee partners on their website.
Catholics are prominently featured in a new Sierra Club book, Faith in Action: Communities of Faith Bring Hope for the Planet. The book highlights faith-led environmental action in each of the 50 states plus Puerto Rico and Washington, DC. 
Don Conklin and Ellen Buelow, members of Holy Rosary Parish in Albuquerque, NM, helped engineer a light-bulb swap–incandescent bulbs for energy-saving compact flurorescent bulbs. Before the program was over, 3,000 bulbs changed hands.
“We did this as a Lenten project,” said Conklin, a pastoral associate at the 2,700-household parish. “And it didn’t cost us a thing. It was sponsored by the Sierra Club and PNM,” the electric company serving the Albuquerque area.
The bulbs were distributed during an annual parish awareness weekend. “We’re planning our next awareness weekend and we’re coming up with the theme of helping families,” Buelow told Catholic News Service. “We’d like to get the concept of simple living in there. Economize and save the environment.”
The Faith in Action book also included these Catholic-led initiatives:
- In Colorado, Bishops Michael J. Sheridan of Colorado Springs and Arthur N. Tafoya of Pueblo called for a unified response after sewerage spills threatened Fountain Creek, which runs through their communities. The bishops’ statement had a “significant impact” said Ross Vincent, vice chair of the Sangre de Cristo group of Sierra’s Rocky Mountain chapter. “People who wanted to believe things were OK with Fountain Creek began to pay attention and realize something needed to be done. The bishops’ statement came at a critical time and it was deeply appreciated.”
- In New Orleans, members of Mary, Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church and their pastor, Father Vien The Nguyen, were able to halt post-Hurricane Katrina operations at a landfill that was not only close to their neighborhood, but was adajacent to a protected wildlife sanctuary. More than 200,000 cubic yards of waste from Katrina had been dumped in the landfill, which still leaks toxins into a canal used by the Vietnamese community for irrigation and fishing.
- The Michigan Catholic Rural Life Coalition used the National Catholic Rural Life Conference’s “Eating Is A Moral Act” program to demonstrate the many ethical implications of consumers’ food purchases. The coalition also educates the public about the need to promote stewardship of the land and promotes a sustainable food system that nourishes people, local communities and the earth.
- In response to the U.S. Catholic bishops’ call for action on global warming, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis co-sponsored, “Global Warming: A Catholic Perspective.” One thousand people from 95 parishes attended the event to address the effects of global warming on the environment and the world’s poor communities.
Several parishes have now established their own “global warming action teams.” One of them, St. Joan of Arc in Minneapolis, launched a Green Power Campaign to encourage parishioners to purchase wind-generated energy.
-In Caguas, Puerto Rico, Father Pedro Ortiz and the Catholic parish of Nuesta Senora de la Providencia formed the Alianza Comunitaria y Ambiental en Accion Solidaria (Community and Environmental Alliance in Solidarity) in April 2007. The parish sets aside portions of its liturgical calendar for reflection on relevant social issues. Now, 100 community organizations, nonprofits, churches and universities from across the island with common concern for the environment have joined the alliance.
A native of Wales, Carantoc is said to have become a monk at an early age. For a time, he lived in Ireland, preaching the faith there.
In his missionary labors, he was accompanied by a white dove that the people took to be an angel in visible form. This gentle creature remained with Carantoc after he returned to his native Wales. When Carantoc attempted to settle in a cave, the dove indicated by fluttering back and forth that it wanted to lead him elsewhere.
Carantoc followed the bird through the forest to a place of level ground, where the dove settled down. The monk chose this spot to build a church, a place later known as Llangrannog.
He subsequently established a monastery at a place called Cernach, governing it as abbot. Carantoc also traveled to Brittany. 
A legend connects Carantoc with King Arthur, claiming that the abbot subdued a large serpent by throwing his stole around its neck. He then led the vanquished beast to the court of King Arthur, where it freed it after commanding it to never harm people and livestock again.
