Farmers Market

Farmers Market
Originally uploaded by paynehollow.

Tower of Babel

being an excerpt from part of a powerful sermon delivered by Brother Rick:

What towers of Babel are we building? Think about all our efforts to build security, to avoid limits, to deny our finitude, to mask our bodily frailty. Think of all that disconnects us with our rootedness in the soil; all the endeavors that are likely to lead to frustration because they neglect the very nature of our human condition.

So, as with all sub-versions of the dominant story, this one leaves us with questions and choices:

*Empire or community?

*Self-protective security or sharing?

*Will we participate unreflectively in the technological wonder-world that globalization is bringing us, or live with a sense of limits; rediscovering our connection to the earth?

*How can we move toward more simple and elemental existence?

If we’re serious as a community about pondering these questions, we may help one another to turn off the TV, or to leave the cell phones behind, or to say no to the latest gadget, while finding ways to get back in touch with our earth-centeredness. Perhaps we’ll be less enamored with each new technological advance; certainly more suspicious of the unintended consequences; perhaps even subversive of the dominant system that vacuums all of us into its all-pervasive emptiness.

And where it’s possible, instead of another call on the cell phone, or another email in front of the glow of the computer screen, we might find our way to one another’s homes to talk about the earthy juicy flavor of the tomatoes we’ve harvested from the planters on our balconies or the patches in our yards. Let’s sit at dusk and watch the entertaining splendor of fireflies. Let’s be at each other’s sides at those times when our mortal fragility is most threatening.

We’re earth creatures. And the more we recognize our essential connection with the ground, and our essential connectedness to one another, the less power the empire has over us.

So grow something, harvest it, and eat it, together.

It is both god-like and subversive to work your fingers into the dirt from which you came.

Amen.
======
by Rick, our Doctor of Dirt

Kentucky Champion Hammered Dulcimerist

Kentucky Champion Hammered Dulcimerist
Originally uploaded by paynehollow.

Our very own Kate is now Kentucky's State Hammered Dulcimer Champion. The contest is held annually at the Kentucky Music Weekend, which many of us frequent and frequently enjoy.

Kate - without practicing and on a whim! - entered the contest and won!

We are all very proud of her. Here's hoping she can take this and run with it, becoming the US Champion Player and then parlaying that power into a successful run for the Whitehouse!

She'd be the nation's first hammered dulcimer player to become president. And it'd be about time.

[Hammered dulcimer info, for the curious:

http://www.rtpnet.org/~hdweb/

They sound like heaven's harps, only prettier and more folksy...]