“At the end of forty days Noah opened the hatch he had made in the ark, and he sent out a raven, to see if the waters had lessened on the earth…
Then he sent out a dove, to see if the waters had lessened on the earth.…

So, we continue with the very first book in the bible, Genesis (Gn 6:5-8; 7:1-5, 10), today hearing the story of Noah and the ark.  We have moved from the awe-inspiring and wonderful account of the creation of the earth and all life on earth, the extreme goodness associated with all this, to the “disobedience” of Adam and Eve who ate the forbidden fruit, and then hear of the first murder occurring between their two sons Cain and Abel, ending up today with what could be interpreted as the dire consequences of so much “not getting it!” …

 How do you win favor with someone? This may be a sub-conscious, unconscious, and even sometimes a very conscious question.  From a negative standpoint, a conscious version of this question could involve manipulation.  As humans, we are prone to competition, which is not a “bad” thing. …

When I was a child, I recall having this wonderful and mysterious experience with trees.  For some odd reason, I suppose, I imagined that I could put my entire (at that time) quite small hand around the trunk of a very large tree. …

The Jesuit Paleontologist (and indeed mystic) Teilhard de Chardin conceived of all creation in the universe as “glowing” with God – the presence of God was everywhere and in everything.  He was not saying that God WAS everything as in pantheism, but that God’s radiance shone through everything, as an incandescent flame beneath the “skin” of all life, like glowing metal heated to extreme temperatures. …