There is an interesting article on the NCR site concerning two topics which interest me, but are seemingly unrelated. Among future food supply in the Arctic, pope's message preserved as 'seed of hope' | Earthbeat | National Catholic Reporter (ncronline.org)
ROME — When Pope Francis stood in St. Peter's Square on March 27, 2020, to plead with God for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic, the image of the weary pontiff standing alone under a stormy night sky to offer a message of hope immediately became one of the most iconic scenes of his papacy.
On the one year anniversary of that extraordinary "urbi et orbi" (to the city and the world) blessing, the pope's message was reproduced alongside an interview with Francis reflecting on the occasion, in a book titled Why Are You Afraid? Have You No Faith? by Argentine Msgr. Lucio Ruiz, secretary for the Vatican's Dicastery for Communication.
The coffee table style-book has since been published in seven languages and has become a fixture of the gifts given by Francis to world leaders.
Ruiz says the message of the book, like the pope's mediation in March 2020, is direct: the world cannot emerge out of the pandemic that way it was before — and despite bleak circumstances, both then and now — Christ always gives hope.
Now, in the same spirit of Christ commissioning his disciples to go to the ends of the earth to share that good news, Ruiz has traveled to a remote area of the Arctic to bring the pope's message, but in a different medium.
Some 2,400 miles north of Rome is the city of Svalbard — situated between mainland Norway and the North Pole — which is home to the Global Seed Vault.
Built into the side of a mountain, the vault provides long term storage of seeds from around the world. Aware of the global threats posed by climate change, the vault was established by the Norwegian government in one of the coldest places on earth to ensure the world's future food supply.
In an interview with NCR, Ruiz said that friends suggested that the vault might be a perfect symbolic location to also deposit a copy of his book to transform the pope's message into a permanent "seed of hope."
After discussions with the vault's managers and United Nations officials, it was determined the book was too large and too heavy to be stored in its usual format.
The solution: a miniature 11.5 x 8.5cm handmade edition of the book wROME — When Pope Francis stood in St. Peter's Square on March 27, 2020, to plead with God for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic, the image of the weary pontiff standing alone under a stormy night sky to offer a message of hope immediately became one of the most iconic scenes of his papacy.
The coffee table style-book has since been published in seven languages and has become a fixture of the gifts given by Francis to world leaders.
Ruiz says the message of the book, like the pope's mediation in March 2020, is direct: the world cannot emerge out of the pandemic that way it was before — and despite bleak circumstances, both then and now — Christ always gives hope.
Now, in the same spirit of Christ commissioning his disciples to go to the ends of the earth to share that good news, Ruiz has traveled to a remote area of the Arctic to bring the pope's message, but in a different medium.
Some 2,400 miles north of Rome is the city of Svalbard — situated between mainland Norway and the North Pole — which is home to the Global Seed Vault.
In an interview with NCR, Ruiz said that friends suggested that the vault might be a perfect symbolic location to also deposit a copy of his book to transform the pope's message into a permanent "seed of hope."
After discussions with the vault's managers and United Nas created in a custom-built three-ply package to be deposited alongside the other seeds from around the world in the 18-degree Celsius vault.
Ruiz describes the pope's COVID-19 "urbi et orbi" as a "sui generis moment" for both the church and the world.
"People were at home, inside, full of fear," he recalled. "And the pope went alone, in the middle of an empty St. Peter's Square — in the rain — to pray."
Every person that receives a copy of the book, said Ruiz, begins to recount their own experience of what they were enduring at that moment in the pandemic.
...."When you open the book, the tenderness of God flows out of it," he said.
In the same way the vault is built to provide for and safeguard future sustenance for humanity, Ruiz says he hopes the symbolic gesture of placing the book there will help preserve the pope's message that even though humanity is vulnerable, the "Lord, will not leave us at the mercy of the storm."
I watched the pope's message at the beginning of the pandemic, and found the image of him speaking and praying alone in the rain profoundly moving.
And I have long been interested in the subject of seed banks; not as some kind of doomsday prepper project, but an effort to preserve the genetic diversity of our food supply. The Svalbard Global Seed Bank is perhaps the best known, but there are many seed banks throughout the world. Including one connected with Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Co. We lived in Fort Collins during the 1980s. I would have loved to work at the seed bank, but did not have the necessary credentials.
Rare wild ancestor plant seeds are stored and offer crucial genetic clues to researchers. Some specific plants, like corn, have their entire evolution preserved in Fort Collins.
Michigan State University (aka Moo U) has several types of seed banks, as well as a "seed library." I think I might avail myself next year if I have not become too decrepit to putter around in the dirt. (Fwiw, my herb garden has become quite lush since I have started watering it with grey water from the dishes! I scoop the dish water with an old jar into the big watering can.)
ReplyDeleteLink to seed library: https://libguides.lib.msu.edu/SeedLibrary
DeleteJean that's fascinating about the seed library. That would be a nice opportunity to try some heirloom varieties.
DeleteInteresting that your herb garden likes the dish water. My mom had an herb garden. Her favorites were the borage plants. They had a nice cucumber scent. She floated some of the blue flowers in the punch for my sister's wedding reception. It was a pretty effect.
Was reading a while back about a Judean date palm which was grown from a seed found at Masada. The variety had been extinct for a thousand years.
I usually have nasturtiums. They are pretty in a salad. Very peppery. I will have to look for some borage. Right now I have tarragon, chives, sage, lavender, basil, yarrow, sparsely and catnip.
DeleteIt has been bone dry around here. We are down two inches of rain from normal levels at this time of year. So the dish water helps. I keep a small bucket in the shower as well to collect water.
I didn't know about the seed library until I read your post and thought about checking the MSU site. So thanks.
DeleteBetty composted the non-animal scraps from our kitchen. This spring she mixed together soil (ours is very sandy) peat moss and the compost for each hole in which we plant peppers and tomatoes.
DeleteThe pepper and tomato plants are huge with deep green leaves. Also, a huge number of pepper blossoms and tomato blossoms. It will be interesting to see what the size and quality of the peppers and tomatoes will be. I remember reading one can overfertilize tomatoes and get great bushes but not so great fruit. However, they were probably not talking about compost.
Composting has given me a new attitude toward weeds. I now see them as green and brown material for the compost bin.
Unfortunately, so far, we are emerging from the pandemic as we were before, only more so :-(
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning of the pandemic I thought that it might do people some good to step back for awhile and tend to their own business. And that might have been the case if it hadn't been for the Houdini shape-shifting characteristics of the virus. I think we thought that we'd be lucky and it would only last a few weeks. Even though epidemologists said it might be two years or more. But it turned into isolation, especially for elderly and people with health issues. Children didn't do too well in general with remote school. And our politics just got more polarised.
DeleteOn the plus side (at least I hope it will turn out to be a plus - I think it will), many people did, as you say, step back for a while and reflect on what they had been doing in their lives. From a work perspective, the result has been the Great Resignation, with many, many people saying, "There must be a better way to spend my days at work than ____________________"
DeleteAlso - in my and my wife's case, and I think for many other couples, it's been a positive thing to be spending much more time together at home than we had before.\
In addition, the enforced shutdown meant that Americans didn't overspend and run up consumer debt as much as we had been accustomed to. Unfortunately, I fear people have reverted to old ways.
I'm told that, during the shutdown, the air quality improved in some places that usually have bad pollution. Again, I fear those gains were fleeting, but at the very least, it may have given people a brief glimpse of what may be possible.
Another thing that changed was that a lot of people were working from home during the pandemic, and discovered that they liked it. I think you shared that you and your wife were already working from home even prior to the pandemic. It may be a permanent change for some people and some jobs.
DeletePersonally I would have trouble establishing a work/home boundary. As it is, when I walk out the door at work, I leave the job there, and don't think about work very much when I'm home.
My friend M says that now that she will be forced to go into work two days a week, it will be harder because she can work much more efficiently from home. She also will have the getting ready for work time.
DeleteI suppose remote work will be a mixed bag, good for some, not so much for others.
DeleteHad a visit with a teacher friend, also retired, and we both agreed we could not teach remotely. Our classroom personae, ability to "read" responses from the students, and control of the physical classroom are obsolete skills that don't translate online.
We've both been through a variety of online lit courses to see what different formats are like from the student's perspective. We offered suggestions, but ...
It will be an interesting issue for education departments to address in training new teachers. Pretty sure online is the wave of the future because the cost savings are so seductive.
To Jim's general point about taking stock, I think all of us have done some of that, though chronic cancer and limited energy already forced me to shift priorities.
DeleteIt was interesting to see who, in the circle of family and friends, made the effort to keep in touch. And who I found I wanted to keep in touch with.
Because the chemo makes me somewhat immune compromised, covid has become a handy excuse for declining invitations from people I am not really interested in or events I don't want to attend.
Stanley, I also found that I could get much more done working from home instead of in an office. After working for 25 years as a freelanceer I had to take a full time job with a company. My husband was being forced by his small company’s insurer to drop the family policy that covered me because he was Medicare eligible. He is 7 years older than I am, so I had a few years to go. I couldn’t even buy private insurance because i had had a small skin cancer removed. That made me a person with a history of cancer - an untouchable. So I accepted a job with a former client, but he told me that I would have to be in the office every day. I was shocked at how much time was wasted. The open cubicles invite interruptions. People walking by and stopping to say hi. The project employees were mostly men. I couldn’t even close a door to shut out all the post- game chats in the hallway next to my cubby. After a while I adjusted my planned daily goals to it, and realized I would have to plan it for an additional 20-25% hours to complete my work each day.
DeleteJean, I understand a bit. I found that being a close relative of murder victims made me someone to avoid. It was very disappointing to realize that a few people i considered reasonably close friends just disappeared into the ether. The murder trial begins on July 11. It’s been 4 1/2 years. Sadly the sensational aspects of the murder will bring out the press again and all the ugliness of the white supremacists and neo-sympathizers of the perpetrator as well. Please pray for my sister, her husband, my nephew, his family and the children. The son who had just turned 10 the week his parents were killed is now 14. His uncle and aunt who were named guardians have not welcomed him and he was enrolled in a boarding school in 7 th grade. He will probably have to testify. The older two children from my niece’s earlier marriage have also had many, many problems since. So prayers for all. The trial will rip off the band aids and be extremely painful. They will base the defense on his history of emotional illnesses. The young man,with the white/ supremacist neo-Nazi groups who deliberately ran over and killed the young woman in Charlottesville tried the emotional illness defense but he was found guilty. The young man who murdered my niece and her husband is an even greater danger to the public I believe. He went to their home armed and prepared to kill.
DeleteJean, that is interesting stuff about the limits of online learning. My daughter teaches young children. She tried to teach remotely for several months. She said it doesn't work very well at all, for the reasons you cite. In addition, the young children don't have long attention spans; after 25-30 minutes in front of a Zoom screen, their attention flags.
DeleteI understand there are studies showing that students who went through remote learning during the pandemic fell behind the expected baseline acquisition of knowledge. But I believe these young children had fallen even farther behind on some of the so-called "soft skills" that come from the classroom - socialization, independence, discipline, et al. This past year, she taught 1st grade, so she had children who had lost their Kindergarten and, prior to that, their three-days-per-week year of pre-school. These kids were simply not prepared for a full year of all-day school.
Re: the lure of cost savings through online learning: as you know, there is a lot of inequality from one school district to the next. What seems likely to me is, the Have districts will stick with in-classroom all the time, because they can afford it. The Have-Nots might try online learning a few days a week to shave costs.
Anne - thanks for letting us know this is coming soon. How awful to have this all brought back up. So sorry to hear about the effects on the kids, but I am sure it was devastating for all of you. I'll pray for everyone you mentioned - plus you.
DeleteNothing like that ever happened to anyone in my family. Suicide, yes, but not murder. This was even worse, a married couple leaving children. That ripples through the human connections in space and time. My neighbor's mother was killed in a carjacking. She, her husband and children went through years of therapy together. They seem better than normal now.
DeleteAnne, I am so sorry that justice cannot work quicker. This sounds like an ongoing nightmare. Of course it is.
DeleteJim, one of the things to factor into the whole tech debate is that "have" districts like to provide lots of tech to their students to look slick and modern before they have thought thru what a bunch of teenage boys will do with it.
The Boy and his friends were issued tablets in 10th grade equipped with cameras. Unflattering pictures of the teachers began to circulate. The bending over photo was popular. I collected a gallery of these and sent them to the teachers on the QT. Protocols were updated.
Anne, I am so sorry that your family went through that tragedy and is still going through it. Especially I am sorry for the children, particularly that fourteen year old boy. He is the same age as one of my granddaughters. I will keep all of you in my prayers, for peace and healing, and for justice to be done.
DeleteBetty who spent 30 years as a medical technician had read several books about pandemics; she had also been through the large changes in medical procedures after HIV. So, we were prepared for at least two years, and maybe some major changes in the way we live our lives.
ReplyDeleteI immediately thought of a two-year pandemic as a second novitiate. As Jesuit Novices we were isolated from most of the world for two years, the media world as well as non-novices. Since there were about eighty of us novices, we still had a lot of people whom we could talk to, although talking was very much restricted.
My main pandemic project has been to create the Virtual Divine Office blog. It is a breviary of posts which covers each day with posts of Morning Praise and Evening Song. These consist of YouTube links to Liturgy of the Hours service materials from Anglican, Byzantine, and Roman Catholic traditions, as well as psalms from mostly Evangelical traditions. Many Evangelical singers have attempted to cover the whole 150 psalms; they do it in a wide variety of musical styles. Many have beautiful accompanying videos.
While I have been accustomed to using a large collection of liturgical music (Latin, Eastern, Anglican and Contemporary traditions) to support my personal celebration of the Hours, this was different because I began experiencing a variety of liturgical traditions on a daily basis in the company of Betty. She was already familiar with the Divine Office through the monthly booklet called Magnificat, an abbreviated popularized version of the Hours. As a cantor she understands the mechanics of music better than I.
We found that Saint Meinrad did daily Vespers in English using their own psalm tones that capture the uplifting quality of the Grail translation somewhat like the Gelineau psalms. We have both come to love them. When I pick up the Grail Psalter, I can imagine any of the psalms being sung to one of these psalm tones. I would really like to be able to do that aloud a capella, perhaps with a pitch pipe to start.
Betty and I also came to enjoy Canterbury Cathedral. They did choral Evensong daily even before the pandemic. They kept that up most of the time during the pandemic. (Like the monks, it is easier to sing during the pandemic if you do so in a large vacant church isolated from the rest of the world).
Even more interesting from Canterbury was Morning Prayer from the Dean’s Garden. It began as a fifteen-minute program with the Dean alone speaking to a camera, using mostly the text of Morning Prayer. It expanded over time into a thirty minute or hour-long program that related current events, history, literature, the arts and environment to the texts of the day. Viewers became familiar with the many plants and trees of the garden as well as the cats, pigs, chickens, and other critters that inhabit it. The Dean usually says Morning Prayer at a small tea table in the garden with one the cats on the table or in a chair.
Except for a few very rare guests no one else is seen or heard. But there is a second person the cameraman, Fletcher, who never appeared or talked but was regularly referred to by the Dean as “my partner behind the camera, Fletcher.” Over time it becomes apparent they have shared much of their lives. Fletched did not need to speak or be on camera but in fact through his superb videography and editing was just as much the creator of Morning Prayer as the Dean.
The Dean ended his term on his 75th birthday, May 16th. However, the programs have been archived on a separate site which is called the “Garden Congregation” The Dean did indeed attract a loyal following, his most recent programs had 15,000 to 20,000 views. The final one came in at 45,000 views.
The past two years have found Betty and I worshiping around the world and learning much about other people and places.
My task now is to make some of this material accessible to others; my personal website is far too complex, and I want to keep it as my personal experimental blog that does many new and creative things with the Hours.
ReplyDeleteI have begun a new blog naming it “Saint Gabriel Hours” after my own parish in hopes they will find it interesting and useful. It will deal only with the Roman Rite Liturgy of the Hours, omitting Anglican, Monastic, and Eastern liturgical services.
However, I hope to introduce people to the many YouTube versions of the psalms even when they do not use our official text.
I hope in the coming month that you will help me construct the new site by vetting some of my draft pages and posts.
One post for that blog is already on the drawing board. It will introduce everyone to Sing the Hours and its young author Paul Rose. Paul’s daily celebration of Morning and Evening Prayer has been part of our lives for over a year now.
I laud your efforts to be useful and creative, Jack. I have no info that anyone wants to hear me run my mouth about, but I am available to chat with other cancer patients worldwide. Got a note from a lady in Devon a couple of days ago to compare notes on our oral chemo, and she sent me a photo of her dairy pasture on the downs. And I have gone back to brushing up my Old English skills and reading about the Beowulf manuscript by the new crop of paleographers.
DeleteBeautiful, peaceful photos of the downs in Devonshire are healing. Encourage her to send more!
DeleteI didn't get to the west of England or to Wales, and I am sorry now. But I did love the poppy fields in Cambridgeshire and the gloom, fog, and hills of Scotland.
DeleteWe have friends who live in Devon. My husband and our friends of now more than 40 years worked together on US-Uk Navy joint talks. My husband was civilian. But his British counterpart was UK Navy. They forged a close friendship during multiple meetings that occurred over a 5 year period, alternating between the US and UK. I went with my husband when I could. We were invited by his British counterpart to their home near Bath several times. Many years later they moved to Devon, where they lived in a small village within the boundaries of Dartmoor. They had beautiful, so peaceful, views of the cow pastures of the neighboring farm. We last visited them 7 years ago. They moved into the village a few years ago, when in their late 80s. Valerie, a living saint, died suddenly last summer of a massive stroke. He is now 94 and still going strong. We may go to Europe this fall or winter and will go to Devon to visit him. It’s a short hop from France. During the years my husband worked on the Navy project we were able to visit a good bit of England, including the Lake District (easy to see why it inspired poets - breathtaking), Yorkshire, Wales, Cambridgeshire, Cornwall and most other counties. Also Edinburgh. One of my husband’s solo trips was to Glasgow. We never made it to Hadrian’s Wall though. We added a week of vacation time to each business trip and visited a different part of the country each time. When our son spent two years there we were able to visit even more areas. We were really fortunate to have had these opportunities.
Delete