Joyful Compassionate Abundance
I like food, plant food, that is — I like to plant, grow and eat it. I like to serve it to others and recycle it to contribute to next year’s harvest. I like working and being outdoors, walking and hiking. I like to study Hebrew Bible, Tanakh, especially the first five books, the Torah. Most of all, I like to think about all these things and what they have to say about the meaning of life. I started my blog when I decided to explore veganism, and it has led not just to recipes and farming but to taking a look at the Hebrew Bible from a different perspective. It also gave me a chance to study the biblical perspective on modern themes like ethics, ecology, evolution, animal rights, and the human place in creation. I explore and refresh my own spirituality through these projects.
Last year was the “Year of the Pulse.” Fancy word for beans. Despite the low-carb craze, beans are still an incredibly potent health food. They were good before the carb thing, during it and yes, are still good. As one writer said,
Tuesday evening the wind picked up in the wetlands where I live. As it grew dark, I heard it whistling around our home, shaking the windows. The back door was frozen shut. A lot of things come to mind on nights like
February 1, 2017, I began a Torah study project. These words described my intention: “Today I begin a new project of looking at the weekly Torah portions, searching for insights on food, ‘animal rights,’ agriculture and ecology.” The name of the section I
I read an article today in The Conversation that started me thinking. It talked about a demonstrable psychological link between those who believe in “creationism” and those who believe in conspiracy theories. The article reports that “The new study takes the role
Yuval Noah Harari says there is no objective evidence to support any moral system much less one system over another. He also says the unique feature of human beings, Sapiens, is our ability to create fictions and persuade others to believe them.
Makes 2 Quarts Ingredients Tahina, 3 cups Lemons, juice of 3-4 (1/2 cup) Garlic, 4 cloves Sea salt, 1 TB Cumin, 1 TB Szeged hot paprika, up to 1/4 tsp (opt.) Water, 5 cups (bring to 8 c. mark in blender or
These are books and articles I read (in addition to the Bible) or plan to read — that stimulate my thinking on my topic of interest, the human-animal relationship in the Bible. I’ll add to it as I come to things that
This portion, Re’eh, includes what I believe is a pivotal statement with regard to animal sacrifice and the relationship between humans and other animals. It is a significant next step in the biblical Story of the Animals: Deut. 12:15-16 15 רַק֩ בְּכָל־אַוַּ֨ת
My grandson loaned me his copy of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson. I’m struggling to understand it — not because the words don’t make any sense or because of complicated calculations but because of the vastness of
Five years ago when I started my blog, I wrote: “As we journey through our lives, we both eat and nourish, destroy and enrich. The great gift we have as human beings is that we can make conscious decisions about the balance