The audiobook that's sustaining me right now

 I just started this, audiobook voiced by the writer, Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, whose thinking I've been following for many years.  He's a calm,balanced, understanding personality, who is very much in the modern mode of including everyone.  Including referring to God as he or she.  And not pursuing an agenda, just examining our times and thinking and suggesting ways to get through our lives. Not trying to convert or proselytize.

So I'm listening to his thoughts on the commodification of life, everything in life, work, things, even other people, can they be "useful contacts" and the church, too.  He doesn't condemn, but examines the ideas, as if he were holding up an object and looking at it from every angle.

The commodification of religion reminds me of an old English Catholic joke.  When traveling in England, it was sometimes a puzzle to know if you'd found a Catholic, Roman rite, that is, church when you wanted to hear Mass, or if you've found a High Anglican church.  

Everything looks so similar, including the sacristy lamp showing the presence of the eucharist, all that.  So the advice is: go to a service, and if almost the first thing you hear is:  "The second collection is in aid of, etc."  you're in a Catholic church!

Said with great gentleness, because yes, fund raising is a perennial feature of a religion which is not state sanctioned.

Anyway, moving along here, it's Lent, and I just happened to have come across this audiobook, but it seems so timely, that I'm listening to it while I chop wood, carry water, spin, ply and all that.  I can't just listen without nodding off to sleep, hence the activity while I'm at it.

I have never understood about Lenten deprivation, giving up things you love, any more than I understand New Year's Resolutions, trying to improve our poor selves.  No disrespect to anyone for whom this is a valuable exercise, just it's not for me.  I'd rather do something positive, than avoid something.  So I'm trying to do better all around, is about the best way to say it, rather than inflict all the details on you, dear blogistas. And studying this audiobook is part of it.

And yesterday a wonderful sign of spring: at the feeder on the street, a goldfinch feeding. We have a couple of pairs routinely flitting all over the street, sometimes even accompanying me on walks, so seeing one was nice. But what was exciting was that it was a male, about halfway into his brilliant yellow mating plumage.  So the season is definitely on. It may be perishing cold out there, in the single digits, to be exact, but spring is supposedly on the way.

I'm so concerned about the people in Texas whose government has let them down so totally.  Here it's cold, but I have a warm house and I can cook.  I hope fervently that the people without power, particularly the relatives of people reading in here, are restored soon and safely. 

The notion of cutting the state off from the national grid, which is why nobody can get help to them, was partly short sighted, partly a literal power, and wealth, grab, by a group of fossil fuel magnates.  It's not the green energy that failed, it's the planning, the failure to pay the extra for coldproofed windmills, for protected gas lines and natural gas sources, a false economy for the people, but a great windfall, pun intended, for the fuel owners.

Okay, that's my saying done.  I'm off to spin a bit more, arm permitting, in the hope of finishing the small weaving I'm working on.  When it's done, I'll talk about it over in Art, The Beautiful Metaphor, but it's not done yet, so if you're already up to date in that blog, you're still up to date!