Why Religion Matters

Here is a very interesting article that I came across today. The author takes on the role of Religion in a modern civilization. Here is an extract:

Why Religion Matters

"...I’m drawn to what I call “the vast middle” between the poles of competing religious certainties that have hijacked our cultural discourse. In the vast middle, faith is as much about questions as it is about answers. It is possible to be a believer and a listener at the same time, to be both fervent and searching, to honor the truth of one’s own convictions and the mystery of the convictions of others. The context of most religious virtue is relationship—practical love in families and communities, and care for the suffering and the stranger beyond the bounds of one’s own identity. These qualities of religion should enlarge, not narrow, our public conversation about all of the important issues before us. They should reframe it."

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Another article on climate change from Thomas Friedman

It appears that Thomas Friedman is becoming a climate evangelist -- and so am I. The good news is that one of us has a better way of saying it -- and a much larger audience :-)

So here is small segment of a great Op-Ed from the NYTimes:

Learning to Speak Climate

"...There has been a 30 percent increase in the melting of the Greenland ice sheet between 1979 and 2007, and in 2007, the melt was 10 percent bigger than in any previous year, said Konrad Steffen, director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, which monitors the ice. Greenland is now losing 200 cubic kilometers of ice per year — from melt and ice sliding into the ocean from outlet glaciers along its edges — which far exceeds the volume of all the ice in the European Alps, he added. “Everything is happening faster than anticipated...”

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