THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY

 THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY.

For now, we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 

That’s the King James version of the conclusion of that famous poem, that Ode to Love, Paul wrote, as recorded in 1 Corinthians 13.

Translating is much more an art rather than a science. Here are some other examples of this very famous text:

For now, we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

That’s the New Living Translation, known as the NIV.

Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

That’s how the translators put it in the English Standard Version.


For now, we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

That’s how the American Standard Version runs.

Differences.

All versions differ. Why? Because translating is an art, not a science.

I translated 4 books from Dutch to English, all published by or through Eerdmans in Grand Rapids, Mich. USA. My theory of translating is: an effort to render a foreign text in a new language more beautiful than the original. And I believe that I have somewhat been successful in this effort.

I realize this sounds rather boastful, that’s why the Dutch have a saying: the phrase “Eigen roem stinkt” translates as: “Your own fame stinks”. It means that boasting about your own achievements or taking too much pride in yourself can be off-putting or unpleasant to others. 

But how about if somebody else praises you? I translated Dr. J. H. Bavinck’s book with the Dutch title, “DE MENSCH EN ZIJN WERELD, which the publisher entitled, “Between the Beginning and the End”, subtitled, A Radical Kingdom Vision.

Of the four reviewers, Dr. John Bolt of Calvin Seminary regarded the script as ‘elegant’, while Dr. Charles Van Engen of Fuller Theological Seminary was more explicit, writing, Bert Hielema’s translation is outstanding, readable, fluid, clear, forceful, and compelling.

In his 150 pages book, Dr. Bavinck, a professor of missions at the Amsterdam Free University devoted an entire chapter to the concept of God’s Kingdom, a topic he thought – and I concur – is sorely misinterpreted or misunderstood in contemporary Christianity: totally seen ‘through a glass darkly’.

Why?

Whenever the secular press refers to the outcome of the Christian Life, it sees Heaven as the goal of human existence, a concept totally influenced by Pagan Greek Philosophy. Most of Christianity has promoted and maintained this religious error, to the point where Trump, with the almost unanimous endorsement of The American Religion, has scrapped all environmental protection rules, in full accord with this pagan notion. Not only is much of the Church’s teaching totally wrong or misdirected, its vision has become more than blurred: It has become an obstacle to Salvation. “The Radical Kingdom Vision”, as espoused by Bavinck made him write:

It is God’s intention to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one overarching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation: all salvation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in Him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only wise will of him who lives and rules for ever.”

In plain language this means that: My salvation and the salvation of creation go hand in hand. That is the “Radical Kingdom Vision” Dr. Bavinck opens up for us. No wonder Jesus lamented, “Many are called, and few are chosen”. (Matthew 22: 14).

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, is there truth in this at all?” 

We should be careful in what we believe for sure. Much of what I was told to be the ‘gospel’ truth – heaven, hell, evolution, doctrines, ‘Sunday best’, the place of women – has darkened in obscurity. Is same sex next?

Today, the mirror has become almost totally black, as Gnosticism rules the church, a heresy the Apostle John repeatedly warned against. Its central point is that spirit is entirely good and matter is entirely evil, making the human body/creation, bad, while only heaven/spirit is good. That today is the church’s ruling faith, in total contrast with John 3: 16, where Jesus categorically states that God’s total love is centered on his creation, hence Dr. Bavinck’s definition of redemption: the salvation of the person and salvation of creation go hand in hand. Indeed: a radical concept.

Did you ever hear that in church?

Posted in Co-owning the Earth | Leave a comment

WHEN BAD NEWS IS GOOD NEWS

WHEN BAD NEWS IS GOOD NEWS.

’We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’ Matthew 11: 17.

Gladness and sadness typified the life of Jesus. His opponents called him a winebibber and a glutton. They saw him smack his lips when the wine was to his liking, when the food was just cooked to perfection, when jokes were told, and his laughter filled the room.

Jesus’ words were implemented in his life. His sense of humor, his feelings of compassion was almost an embarrassment to his disciples, but not to the women always in his company who saw in him the real human he was. So, it was no wonder that, in John 10: 10, Jesus urged us to live life to the full: dance when the occasion called for joy and exuberance, and mourn when circumstances required genuine sorrow, when matters go bad, when things go down, when life falls apart and sickness and death overwhelm people’s emotions.

Jesus’ life is a good example for us: When Jesus wandered in the outdoors, he marveled at beauty of creation, and exclaimed: “Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.” Luke 12: 27. Yet, when his friend Lazarus, Mary and Martha’s brother, died, Jesus wept, even though he knew that in the next instance He would call him back to LIFE.  I think, ‘Jesus wept’ because he was confronted with ‘death’, the end of things, something abnormal in His state of being in the Kingdom.

When my mother read this Lazarus story to me as a 4-5 years old, in my innocence and frankness – brainwashed with heaven – I asked my mother, “If life in heaven is so wonderful, why would Jesus deprive him of that pleasure?” I then was thoroughly indoctrinated about the beauty of heaven, with songs such as “In the Hemel is het schoon” (In Heaven everything is just perfect), and “Sluit u aan wie mee wil naar de hemel gaan” (Get in line and follow the ‘to heaven’ sign).

My mother had no answer there, but when she was on her death-bed, she asked me “What will happen when I die?” She wasn’t so sure anymore. What was my answer? Then, at her very end of life, it was no time to explain to her about the New Heavens and the New Earth, so I simply said, “You will be with Jesus.”

CHANGE ABOUNDS

We live in times of immense change, opportunity and finality, a time where we are tested as never before in history, as ‘endings’ are everywhere, endings that call for new beginnings, endings that should make us reflect on what comes next in human history. There is, in the ‘world out there’, increasing agreement that matters cannot go on for much longer anymore, that THE END is near. Yet, just as in Noah’s days, when he and his family were building the ARK, Noah’s actions were ridiculed and declared pure lunacy, so too today, we ignore Climate Change, are blind to the rapid extinction of species, bypass the godlessness of people in power – think Trump and Putin and Netanyahu – are willing participants in our insatiable thirst for earth-destroying fuels. We rather not look at John 3: 16: “God so loved the world he entrusted to us for whose restoration he sacrificed his beloved Son”. It is well worth mentioning that in Matthew 24: 36, the ‘sinners’ were taken away by the Flood, while the believers remained on earth: please note this, you Rapture adherents!

Love LIFE.

If we really loved LIFE – as Jesus did – we should go in mourning and dressed in ashes, and sing death dirges, because, through our way of life we have sealed the doom of God’s beloved world. Jesus once cleaned out the temple, trying to eradicate ‘Commercialism’ there, without success. Our feeble actions to stem the planet’s perdition, now too have become impossible, as, from the beginning, at the very root of society, we went wrong, and ignored the basic ‘holiness’ of creation: God’s gift to us.

Now, for a short time still, the TRINITY OF EVIL, consisting of Putin, Netanyahu and Trump, is calling the shots. All in God’s plan to speed up his reign of everlasting PEACE, the Shalom that has been prepared for us from the beginning.

This bad news really is the good news. Even though the LIE is fast, in race with TRUTH it comes in last. Remember 2 Peter 3: 10:

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare, heralding the onset of the RENEWED COSMOS.

Posted in Co-owning the Earth | Leave a comment

THE OLD WORLD IS DYING

“THE OLD WORLD IS DYING.” 

“The old world is dying,” Antonio Gramsci wrote, “and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”

He wrote these words after World War I, which ended in 1918, now more than 100 years ago. Then too William Butler Yeats said something similar:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand

Question to myself.

I agree that the old world has died: what sort of new world is expected? Do I have the answer? Stay tuned.

In a sense prophets have no time-line. I suspect that, in his wisdom, (with him a day is as 1,000 years, and 1,000 years as one single day) God wanted humanity to advance even more technologically and religiously. I suspect that God wanted us to bring the entire world to the edge of total annihilation, which Climate Change is perfectly equipped to do. Throw in AI = Artificial Intelligence, nuclear rearmament, and lack of ‘religious vision’, and the possibility of human destructiveness is complete.

 Prophets speak for all ages. Take Isaiah, who envisioned a scenario (Chapter 24) perfectly applicable to 2025:

See, the Lord is going to lay waste the earth

and devastate it;

he will ruin its face

and scatter its inhabitants—

2it will be the same

for priest as for people,

for the master as for his servant,

for the mistress as for her servant,

for seller as for buyer,

for borrower as for lender,

for debtor as for creditor.

3The earth will be completely laid waste

and totally plundered.

The Lord has spoken this word.

4The earth dries up and withers,

the world languishes and withers,

the heavens languish with the earth.

5The earth is defiled by its people;

they have disobeyed the laws,

violated the statutes

and broken the everlasting covenant.

debtor as for creditor.

languish with the earth.

and broken the everlasting covenant.

6Therefore a curse consumes the earth;

its people must bear their guilt.

Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up,

and very few are left.

Remember that God’s Creation represents God.

That brings me to “Teleios”

In the ‘sermon on the mount’ Jesus said, “Be perfect as I am perfect”, recorded in Matthew 5: 48. However, I believe that the translation of the Greek word, ‘teleios= perfect’, is open to question. Here is the reason why this is the case: granted the Greek word “teleios”, generally means perfect, complete, or mature, but it can also imply reaching a goal or end, implying wholeness and fulfillment. I am convinced that Jesus had the latter interpretation in mind. Because, as he repeatedly said that in his life he embodied the Kingdom, the New Creation.

“Teleios” has its root in the Greek word ‘telos’ which means END or FAR. We find it back in our language in such words as ‘telephone’, ‘telegram’, ‘television’, all indicating communication from far away.

Jesus’ mission was to prepare us for the New Creation, which he, in totality represented: The Kingdom to come. When Jesus advises us to be ‘teleios’ then he does not ask us to be ‘perfect’ but to ‘live’ in the spirit of the New Creation, where, indeed, ‘perfection’ is the goal.

Yes: “The old world is dying.”

“The old world is dying,” Antonio Gramsci wrote, “and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”

Well, two monsters met this week: one who sacrifices thousands of young Russian men for pure vainglory, and one who openly defies God in canceling all measures to combat Climate Change, a man who wants to shape the world in his own image, which the Bible calls “The Sin Against the Holy Spirit”, portraying the Antichrist, a sure sign of death, which both men embody. Also, expect ‘natural monsters’ such as storms, heat, volcanoes, hurricanes.

I would love to think people on Earth will join forces to decrease conflict. I would love to think we can give peace a chance. Alas, several thousand years on a planet characterized by conflict allow for little hope in a positive direction. Can we give peace a chance? History suggests otherwise.

The only peace now possible will be brought about by The Prince of Peace, the Great Healer, who alone has the power to do so. “The old world is dying,” Antonio Gramsci wrote, “and the new world struggles to be born.”

Now is the time for that NEW World to come.

Posted in Co-owning the Earth | Leave a comment

WOE, WOE.

WOE, WOE.

‘Woe! Woe to you, great city,

you mighty city of Babylon!

In one hour, your doom has come!’ Revelation 18: 10.

“Woe”, is an old-fashioned word for ‘great stress’. Let me rephrase this Bible text: “Our commerce-dominated world, our AI obsessed society is utterly doomed. We now live on the edge of the ultimate volcano: any minute the most lethal of all outbursts, its monstrous Magma, will totally engulf us, incinerating all that lives to total oblivion.”

What’s happening?

Psalm 50 has an answer:

He summons the heavens above,
    and the earth, that he may judge his people.

The Lord built a ‘revenge feature’ into his creation: Harm the heavens, exploit the earth, and creation exacts vengeance. That’s what we experience today.

You don’t believe me, of course.

Here’s another line: ”You must be ready, because the  Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him”. That is Jesus’ timely reminder in Matthew 24, depicting the earth’s conditions in 2025.Both the apostles Peter and Paul affirm this when they write that the Parousia, the return of the Lord, will come ‘like a thief in the night’.

Just a few examples, something we city-slickers don’t notice:  Already an insect apocalypse is under way. Considering the importance of insects to our daily lives, the ongoing insect apocalypse is very important. Insects pollinate our food, control pests, decompose dead plants into soil, and serve as a food source. They contribute to the cycling of nutrients and are vital for maintaining soil health. Beyond land, they also maintain the cleanliness of aquatic ecosystems.

Another warning: “Already chemical pollution is beyond remedy: it too is a threat to the thriving of humans and nature.”

And then, of course, there is Climate Change: it is advancing and accelerating much faster than earlier predicted.

Don’t kid yourself: Collapse is coming.

Two books confirm this.

In addition to the biblical warnings, there are lots of alarm bells ringing. In 2005, an almost 600 pages book: COLLAPSE, was published, written by Dr. Jared Diamond, professor of geography in Los Angeles. Its subtitle: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

Being a Collapsetarian by faith – deeply influenced by the last Bible book, Revelation – I bought the book two decades ago. Paid $47.00 (Can.), and here is what I read: “Dr. Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of catastrophe, spelling out what happens when we squander our resources, when we ignore the signals our environment gives us, and cut down too many trees”.

Interesting times.

We live in a time of cosmological chaos. We see hierarchies humbled; we see social norms discarded, we see morality demolished, we see new philosophies emerging, and we see God ignored.

Then there is this new book, discussed in the Guardian: Goliath’s Curse by Luke Kemp. Here’s the opening line:

“We can’t put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilisation], we can understand the trajectories we face today – and self-termination is most likely,” writes Dr Luke Kemp at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.

Kemp’s new book covers the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 5,000 years and took seven years to write. The lessons he has drawn are often striking: people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites, while past collapses often improved the lives of ordinary citizens.

He notes that today’s global civilisation is deeply interconnected and unequal and could lead to the worst societal collapse ever. The threat is from leaders who are “walking versions of a dark triad” – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots.

“It is the few people high in the dark triad who fall into races for resources, arms and status”, he says. “Then as elites extract more wealth from the people and the land, they make societies more fragile, leading to infighting, corruption, immiseration of the masses, less healthy people, overexpansion, environmental degradation and poor decision making by a small oligarchy. The hollowed-out shell of a society is eventually cracked asunder by shocks such as disease, war or climate change.”

Three reasons.

Dr. Kemp cites three reasons why the collapse of the global Goliath would be far worse than previous events. First is that collapses are accompanied by surges in violence as elites try to reassert their dominance. “In the past, those battles were waged with swords or muskets. Today we have nuclear weapons.”

Second, people in the past were not heavily reliant on empires or states for services and, unlike today, could easily go back to farming or hunting and gathering. “Today, most of us are specialised, and we’re dependent upon global infrastructure. If that falls away, we too will fall,” he says.

“Last but not least is that, unfortunately, all the threats we face today are far worse than in the past,” he says. Past climatic changes that precipitated collapses, for example, usually involved a temperature change of 1C at a regional level. Today, we face 3C globally. There are also about 10,000 nuclear weapons, technologies such as artificial intelligence and killer robots and engineered pandemics, all sources of catastrophic global risk.

 “The three most powerful men in the world are a walking version of the dark triad: Trump is a textbook narcissist, Putin is a cold psychopath, and Xi Jinping came to rule [China] by being a master Machiavellian manipulator.”

The global Goliath is the endgame for humanity, Kemp says, like the final moves in a chess match that determine the result. He sees two outcomes: self-destruction or a fundamental transformation of society.

My final comments.

Finally, we have a sober assessment: the forces at work are irreversible. I agree with his synopsis, with one single tiny change:

Self-destruction AND a fundamental transformation of society, to which I add: brought about by Jesus’ crucifixion – John 3: 16.

Posted in Co-owning the Earth | Leave a comment

IT IS VERY GOOD.

IT IS VERY GOOD.

When God started creating, actually, when God started speaking, (Psalm 33: 9 simply states: “God spoke and it came to be), when God started doing the human impossible, started acting beyond our ken, started stopping, yet never stopped stopping, he, HE, who lives in inapproachable light, who nobody can see or has seen, he, HE, surveyed the potential of what was to become, and which, in reality already was, HE simply said: “It is very good.”

In that ‘very good’ creation, he placed ‘Adam and Eve’. And placed us, you and me.

That same creation is God’s Kingdom.

And we, you and I, we live in that divine Kingdom,

  which has a cosmic character, because it embraces           the entire world, from the ocean’s depths to the highest planets.

Not only we humans are part of that Kingdom: it also includes the array of all animals and all the planet’s plants. Even the angels are part of this wider world: they too have a place in the harmonious totality of God’s Kingdom.

Perfection is the word

Perfection is the word: perfection is the Divine -WORD, where all parts are attuned to each other, where there nowhere is a false note, nowhere a dis­so­nant disturbing the unity: everything fits harmoniously into the greater scheme of its totality;

each particular specimen perfectly parks its place in the various circles or spheres found in creation.

The celestial bodies too have their orderly trajectories and do so according to God’s royal will, obeying his voice, and so, in their courses they sound a melodious note in the great concert in which all creatures participate. The mountains rise up high above the water?satu­rated earth, their summits piercing the clouds; they stand there in proud loftiness but even these mountains are nothing but servants of Him who has planted and secured them by his power.

All this is so totally harmonious because every instance in that great edifice of creation is, in its deepest sense, focused on the one common goal: devout obedience to the will of the Almighty, in which men and women, angels and animals, plants and stars, sun and moon, are united.

God’s world: our world.

That same world in which we live is a well?ordered world. We read in Scripture that God was very pleased when he saw what he had made, “and behold, it was very good.” (Gen. 1:31.)

An ever-changing Kingdom.

The nature of the Kingdom of God was not intended to be static but dynamic. It was not destined to continue for ever and ever in the same shape and form. On the contrary, from its very inception the Kingdom contained an incentive to develop, perfecting and unfolding all its potentials and powers contained in it. This means that from its very beginning the concept of history was entailed in the idea of the Kingdom.

Kingdom is history.

When we say Kingdom, we say history. The total reality of the Kingdom could only become manifest in history. From the very first day of creation the Kingdom had the full range of powerful options. It contained possibilities that would require a slow process to come to full fruition. The entire process, however, was subject to God’s will.

A radical change.

All this implies as well that whoever mentions history, mentions humanity. We, the human race, were predestined to fulfill a distinctive calling in that history. We, as humanity, were from the very first assigned an exceptional place in the greater context of the Kingdom. We were at one and the same time subjects but to some extent also co?rulers, viceroys over certain regions. Not everything was subjected to us: we were not given authority over the course of the stars and the planets or the tides of the never resting seas. But assigned to us were the earth and its plants and animals, to rule over them and to utilize them for God’s service, to fathom and under­stand creation’s hidden powers, and so bring to full deploy­ment the innate possibilities of creation. That is the meaning of the cultural calling allotted to us immediately after creation. (Gen. 1: 28–29.)

Two Humans.

Imagine these two humans, feeble man and woman, creatures among creatures, two tiny bits of the universe endowed with self?knowl­edge, two tiny bits of a world that has become self-conscious: there they were, not even controlling their own heart?beat. There they stood, fragile, weak: members of that overwhelming massive context of the Kingdom. But also, there they stood as rulers, as prince and princess among all creatures.

And they failed.

 The sin against the Kingdom

They – we – we have made ourselves God’s equals; we have pro­claimed ourselves Gods, and, by that act, have abandoned our fellowship with him.

We have withdrawn from his influence and have turned our backs on God. That is why we were banned from paradise, because where God dwells there is no place for a second god, and neither is there room for those who regard themselves as gods.

Now we face judgement, we face Climate Change, wars, earthquakes, typhoons, hurricanes, heat, drought, floods, because we believed we could do better than God.

Pray, Pray, Pray for Parousia. Pray, Pray, Pray for the Healer to come.

Posted in Co-owning the Earth | Leave a comment

ON (MY) AGING

ON (MY) AGING

Some personal observations.                                                                        

There is that parable of the farmer who planted grain. Some of which fell on rocky ground, some on soil with little depth, and some on a fertile patch, with predictable results. Matthew 13 relates it in detail.

It seems to me that this story – and Jesus was a great story teller – portrays my aging.  All of my life I have been bombarded with influences, some good, some mediocre, and some outright bad. The thing about aging is that there comes a harvest time when the balance sheet is shown, comparing it to Matthew 6: 33: But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

The Bible tells us God’s truth, telling us forthright that sin always has consequences, such as sins against the body, resulting in sickness, and sins against creation, resulting in Climate Change. Me, I see my body as God’s personal gift to me, indicating that neglecting or abusing it, is a sin against God’s grace. That also implies that whatever I consume, must be clean and body-friendly, that whatever I do, must take my body into consideration, that whatever I think and intellectually absorb, must be body and spirit enhancing.

That’s why I try to enrich my thinking continually, and engage my brains to enhance my intellectual capacity, and explore the outer limits of my infinity, because I only use a small portion of my potential. That’s why I constantly try to enrich my thoughts and read and expand my fields of inquiry and broaden my outlook.

I am fully aware that I will only know in part, and will always have a tiny understanding of what goes on in the world. That’s why I am constantly open to new avenues of thinking, always try to see through the fogs and mists that influence me through often wrongly focused ideas.

What’s my LIFE all about?

I see life as an entity where every minute I am influenced by others, by family traditions, by the media, by the toys we have, such as automobiles and mechanical gadgets, and thus I must constantly make choices, wondering how I can pursue the aims of the Kingdom, and choose directives that intimately involve God’s good creation, totally aware of my ignorance. Yes, God loves his creation so much that he offered his only Son to buy it back, reason why my living should reflect that Love, including love for creation, because it too is divine, as are my fellow creatures.

Approaching the end,

I now live in a retirement home, amidst older folk, a grand opportunity to foster new connections, and be exposed to new situations, so I set out to learn about ‘aged living’, as I myself belong to that category.

Here’s what I learned so far.

I discovered that I need at least eight to nine hours sleep each night. I also read that my diet should contains less meat and more plants, as both contribute to overall longevity.

I repeatedly learn that I must have a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity every week, or at least 20-25 minutes each day.

Well in my 97th year, I believe that my long life has resulted from:

  •  Continuous openness to new ideas and new concepts, and weighing them in the framework of the New Creation, our life in the World to come: “Seek first the Kingdom”, is Jesus’ direct command to me. That means always seeking the welfare of creation.
  • Put time into new and existing relationships. In 1975, I sold my business, our house, moved from city to country: started a new life, new career, with the approval of my life-long marriage partner, a woman I had known from childhood, and meet new people and discover new aspects in humanity.
  • This move forced us as a family, to adjust to changing and challenging new situations, prevented us from living a routine existence, and exposed us to down-to-earth, literally, life, while experiencing God’s grace in an immense manner.
  • Now, a widower for almost 5 years, I am learning to share my life with others, having moved again in a new environment, learning again to adapt to new surroundings, new people, while renewing old friendships, and sharing my experiences with others, in reciprocal ways, fully realizing that we only have an obscured view of the new and perfect life to come.
  • I repeat: My body is holy. It is God’s personal gift to me, and therefore I must look after it, and, with that sanctified goal in mind, do everything possible to preserve it, improve it, and treat it with the utmost care involving constant prayer, remembering that I am a threefold unity: Body, Spirit and Soul.

To thrive in old age means to live a fulfilling, purposeful and satisfying life despite the challenges that accompany ageing. I try to follow Jesus direct prescription: “I have come to bring LIFE, and that to the full”. (John 10: 10).

Posted in Co-owning the Earth | Leave a comment