Archive - Dec 2009 - Oct 2019 http://colleagueslist.blogspot/.ca http://colleagueslistii.blogspot.com/
GLOBAL AND ECUMENICAL IN SCOPE CANADIAN IN PERSPECTIVE
Wayne A. Holst, Editor
My E-Mail Address: waholst@telus.net
This email is sent only to a voluntary subscriber list.
If you no longer wish to receive these weekly columns,
write to me personally - waholst@telus.net
*****
Dear Friends:
Welcome to the last issue of my current volume of Colleagues
List blog (Vol XV, ends June, 2020).
I have used Yahoogroups for the past 13 years and have
created 552 issues, or an average of 42.5 issues per year.
Prior to that I created this column as an email list for 3 years
with a total of 188 issues.
All told, since 2005, I have sent out 740 issues, averaging
46.2 issues per year.
Thanks for joining me on his journey, however long it
has been for you. I hope we can continue together.
--
I am pleased to include in this issue, a science-based
response to the book notice I wrote on June 7th -
"Creation - for Progressive Christians" Thanks to Colin
Ottrim of Calgary (a fellow-member of St. David's United
who has spent his career in the energy industry) for
writing a challenge to the assumption that the melting
of ice is creating the higher water levels already drowning
islands of the South Pacific. I will forward this to Donald
Schmidt, author of the book as we need to continue the
dialogue between science and theology.
As such, there is no Special Item in this issue, but the
Colleague Contributions section will hopefully provide
you with lots of good stuff to think about.
Wayne
NOTE A REMINDER - If a link, below seems to be dead,
cut and paste it into the address bar at the top of your
web page and it should work.
*****
COLLEAGUE CONTRIBUTIONS
Colin Outtrim,
Calgary, AB
DISCUSSION ON SEA LEVELS AND LAND MASSES
RISING AND FALLING
Global Warming or Other Factors at Work?
On the matter of sea level and land mass changes
sent to the CL editor, June 7th. 2020.
For background, see the Colleagues List intro to:
"Creation for Progressive Christians," June 7th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/yc9fbe6t
Colin writes:
I want to challenge author Donald Schmidt on the
matter of sea levels rising or falling or changing at
different times and his use of Tuvalu as an example
of the rising of sea levels.
First - Tuvalu as a geographic fact (from Wikipedia)
Tuvalu (click the link) is part of Polonesia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvalu
I want to challenge author Donald Schmidt on the
matter of sea levels rising or falling or changing at
different times and his use of Tuvalu as an example
of the rising of sea levels.
First - Tuvalu as a geographic fact (from Wikipedia)
Tuvalu (click the link) is part of Polonesia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvalu
Tuvalu consists of three reef islands and six atolls.
The reef are islands that have a different structure
to the atolls, and are described as reef platforms
as they are smaller tabular reef platforms that do
not have a salt-water lagoon, although they have
a completely closed rim of dry land, with the remnants
of a lagoon that has no connection to the open sea or
that may be drying up.
Second - Regarding reefs, they are a function of biomass
growing/dying/build-up of carbonate debris. Coral reefs
grow only when the basement of the region drops at nearly
the same rate that the biomass can grow new coral.
When the sea drops or the reefal basin rises the reef dies
and ceases to stay in balance with the sea level change
or the basement movement. When the sea level changes
at nearly the same rate as the changes in the basement,
then everything is stable and a shallow water region may
have islands protruding above sea level, but usually only
a meter or so. When sea level rises or the basement drops
the coral is very healthy and able to grow easily in balance
with the change in basement. In fact 1000’s of feet of coral
reef can grow vertically over a few million years as the
basement drops slowly below the reef.
There are many occurrences of this around the world.
But the instant the basin rises or sea level drops the reef dies.
Tuvalu is thus likely a dying reef and is thus eroding away
the portion above sea level as the basin has slowed or
stopped dropping.
All around the world there are examples of relative receding
(lowering) of sea level caused more by the movement upward
of land. The BC coastline has risen 80 meters upward in just
the last 5000 years. The coastline of the eastern USA has
risen and fallen many times since the growth of the
Appalachian mountains some 480 million years ago
and currently are about 150 meters above where it was
100,000 years ago.
Drumheller, Alberta was a coastline just 80 million years ago.
It has risen about 670 meters relative to sea level.
The land surface is going up and down all over the world.
But the geode (globe) is smoother than a chickens egg –
just scaled up.
An island sinking below sea level happens often and
The reef are islands that have a different structure
to the atolls, and are described as reef platforms
as they are smaller tabular reef platforms that do
not have a salt-water lagoon, although they have
a completely closed rim of dry land, with the remnants
of a lagoon that has no connection to the open sea or
that may be drying up.
Second - Regarding reefs, they are a function of biomass
growing/dying/build-up of carbonate debris. Coral reefs
grow only when the basement of the region drops at nearly
the same rate that the biomass can grow new coral.
When the sea drops or the reefal basin rises the reef dies
and ceases to stay in balance with the sea level change
or the basement movement. When the sea level changes
at nearly the same rate as the changes in the basement,
then everything is stable and a shallow water region may
have islands protruding above sea level, but usually only
a meter or so. When sea level rises or the basement drops
the coral is very healthy and able to grow easily in balance
with the change in basement. In fact 1000’s of feet of coral
reef can grow vertically over a few million years as the
basement drops slowly below the reef.
There are many occurrences of this around the world.
But the instant the basin rises or sea level drops the reef dies.
Tuvalu is thus likely a dying reef and is thus eroding away
the portion above sea level as the basin has slowed or
stopped dropping.
All around the world there are examples of relative receding
(lowering) of sea level caused more by the movement upward
of land. The BC coastline has risen 80 meters upward in just
the last 5000 years. The coastline of the eastern USA has
risen and fallen many times since the growth of the
Appalachian mountains some 480 million years ago
and currently are about 150 meters above where it was
100,000 years ago.
Drumheller, Alberta was a coastline just 80 million years ago.
It has risen about 670 meters relative to sea level.
The land surface is going up and down all over the world.
But the geode (globe) is smoother than a chickens egg –
just scaled up.
An island sinking below sea level happens often and
mankind just adjusts for the movement. The port cities
of the Mediterranean have, in recorded time, been drowned
and have risen in various places.
-
Other Examples of Land Mass Rising and Falling:
Pavlopetri, off the coast of Greece, was discovered in 1967,
-
Other Examples of Land Mass Rising and Falling:
Pavlopetri, off the coast of Greece, was discovered in 1967,
but it was a port city of the Mediterranean in 1000 BC.
Today it is about 4 meters below sea level. While Ephesus
also on the Mediterranean is no longer a sea port but it was
a sea port as recently as Roman times. By the fourth century
AD the port area was not navigable.
One argument is that the shallow sea coast at Ephesus has
One argument is that the shallow sea coast at Ephesus has
been silted in during that time, but there is also evidence
that the land mass has risen a few meters in 2000 years.
Sorry to be so emphatic about sea-level RISING, because
Sorry to be so emphatic about sea-level RISING, because
it is a relative thing that mankind adjusts to. Sea level may
be rising at Tuvalu island and other places, but it is falling
(relative to the surrounding land) in many other places at
the same time.
Thanks for inviting me to this discussion.
Colin
*****
COLLEAGUE CONTRIBUTIONS (Continued)
Jim Taylor,
Okanagan, BC
Personal Web Log
June 22nd, 2020
"Empty Pedestals Await New Icons"
https://tinyurl.com/y98akbhl
--
John Stackhouse Jr.
Moncton, NB
Context,
June 25th, 2020
"Should the Statues Come Down?"
https://tinyurl.com/ybjgjqqb
--
Ron Rolheiser,
San Antonio, TX
Personal Web Site,
June 22nd, 2020
"Our Deep Failure in Charity"
https://tinyurl.com/yaqku9ej
*****
NET NOTES
HOW JESUS BECAME WHITE
Why It's Time to Cancel That
Religion News Service,
June 24th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/ybkdu2wk
--
BLIND TO EQUALITY YET?
We Seem Awash in Racism
by Sr. Joan Chittister
National Catholic Reporter.
June 19th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/y8wtfjh8
--
ATHEISTS/HUMANISTS
FACE DISCRIMINATION
Survey Taken in Eight
Countries Around the World
The Guardian,UK
June 25th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/y799vdn4
--
WILL THE HAGIA SOPHIA
BECOME A MOSQUE AGAIN?
Turkey Wants This to Happen
Daily Sabah,
June 11th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/ya3fxy2y
--
SAUDI ARABIA TO HOLD VERY
LIMITED HAJJ DUE TO VIRUS
Annual Gathering Greatly Reduced
Religion News Service,
June 24th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/ybz7e6rd
--
INSIDE THE UNITED CHURCH-LED
FIGHT AGAINST CONVERSION THERAPY
Local Congregations Taking Up the Fight
Broadview,
June 10th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/y6uljbbu
--
WHERE ARE CANADA'S INTERNATIONAL
STUDENTS ARRIVING FROM?
Virus Affecting Numbers - Still They Come
Canadian Immigration Newsletter
June 20th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/y7zknfhs
--
ETON APOLOGIZES FOR TREATMENT
OF FIRST BLACK STUDENT IN 1969
Current Administration is "Appalled"
BBC News
June 23rd, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/yd9l5286
--
BLAME, BULLYING AND DISRESPECT -
CHINESE CANADIANS FIND PREJUDICE
Significant Evidence of Racism Experienced
The Angus Reid Institute
June 22nd, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/ybko9h69
--
WHO IS JUNIPERO SERRO AND WHY
ARE CALIFORNIAN PROTESTERS
TOPPLING STATUES OF THIS SAINT?
Some Reassess His Legacy
Religion News Service,
June 20th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/yav28vth
--
WHY ARE SO MANY WHITE CHRISTIANS
STANDING UP FOR RACIAL JUSTICE?
Maybe Because Church Pews are Unavailable
The Christian Century,
June 15th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/y9x9juq3
******
WISDOM OF THE WEEK
Provided by Sojourners and the Bruderhof online:
If I wait for someone else to validate my existence,
it will mean that I’m shortchanging myself.
- Zanele Muholi
--
God’s presence can be felt and heard in the call to
stand up for justice and mercy among the marginalized
in this and every society.
- J. Jioni Palmer
--
We are a spiritually impoverished generation; we search
in all the places the Spirit ever flowed in the hope of finding
water. And that is a valid impulse. For if the Spirit is living
and never dies, it must still be present wherever it once
was active.…It is like a small but carefully tended spark,
ready to flare, glow, and burst into flame the moment it
feels the first enkindling breath.
- Edith Stein
--
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared
with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for
immediate action, rapidly performed and in sight of all.
People will give their lives if only the ordeal does not
last long but is soon over, with all looking on and
applauding as if on the stage. But active love is
labor and fortitude.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
--
No one person or group could have made the first church.
No heights of oratory, no flaming enthusiasm, could have
awakened for Christ the thousands who were moved at the
time, or produced the united life of the early church. …
The Spirit did not descend upon the speakers in such a way
that they preached a sermon or gave a speech to an
unenlightened crowd. Instead, fiery tongues of the Spirit ate
their way into the hearts of the hearers and inflamed the crowd
in one common experience of the same spirit and the same Christ.
- Eberhard Arnold
*****
MOMENT IN TIME
The Korean War Began
June 25th, 1950
Globe and Mail,
June 25th, 2020
The Americans were caught by surprise. On June 25,
1950,about 75,000 soldiers of North Korea’s People’s
Army, supported by the Soviets and the Chinese, poured
across the 38th parallel,the arbitrary border between
communist North Korea and United Nations – and
United States-backed South Korea, and kept going.
Within three days, Seoul was captured and the North
Koreans kept going, boxing the Americans, who entered
the war in July, and their allies into the peninsula’s
southeast corner, after which they fought vicious back-
and-forth battles that marked the Cold War’s first
military campaign. It could have expanded into a
Third World War if general Douglas MacArthur, U.S.
commander in Asia, had got his way – he wanted to
attack China. U.S. president Harry Truman ended that
idea in 1951 by firing him. On July 27, 1953, an armistice
was signed that drew a modified boundary along the
38th parallel.
The casualties on both sides were massive for a war
fought on a relatively small bit of real estate. About
three million died, most of them civilians, a higher toll
than the Vietnam War in the next decade,another land
war that denied the Americans outright victory. Canada -
played its part in Korea, losing more than 500 soldiers.
- Eric Reguly
*****
CLOSING THOUGHT - Dom Helder Camara
When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream;
when we are dreaming with others it is the beginning
of a new reality.
(end)
*****
Thanks for inviting me to this discussion.
Colin
*****
COLLEAGUE CONTRIBUTIONS (Continued)
Jim Taylor,
Okanagan, BC
Personal Web Log
June 22nd, 2020
"Empty Pedestals Await New Icons"
https://tinyurl.com/y98akbhl
--
John Stackhouse Jr.
Moncton, NB
Context,
June 25th, 2020
"Should the Statues Come Down?"
https://tinyurl.com/ybjgjqqb
Ron Rolheiser,
San Antonio, TX
Personal Web Site,
June 22nd, 2020
"Our Deep Failure in Charity"
https://tinyurl.com/yaqku9ej
*****
NET NOTES
HOW JESUS BECAME WHITE
Why It's Time to Cancel That
Religion News Service,
June 24th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/ybkdu2wk
--
BLIND TO EQUALITY YET?
We Seem Awash in Racism
by Sr. Joan Chittister
National Catholic Reporter.
June 19th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/y8wtfjh8
--
ATHEISTS/HUMANISTS
FACE DISCRIMINATION
Survey Taken in Eight
Countries Around the World
The Guardian,UK
June 25th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/y799vdn4
--
WILL THE HAGIA SOPHIA
BECOME A MOSQUE AGAIN?
Turkey Wants This to Happen
Daily Sabah,
June 11th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/ya3fxy2y
--
SAUDI ARABIA TO HOLD VERY
LIMITED HAJJ DUE TO VIRUS
Annual Gathering Greatly Reduced
Religion News Service,
June 24th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/ybz7e6rd
--
INSIDE THE UNITED CHURCH-LED
FIGHT AGAINST CONVERSION THERAPY
Local Congregations Taking Up the Fight
Broadview,
June 10th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/y6uljbbu
--
WHERE ARE CANADA'S INTERNATIONAL
STUDENTS ARRIVING FROM?
Virus Affecting Numbers - Still They Come
Canadian Immigration Newsletter
June 20th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/y7zknfhs
--
ETON APOLOGIZES FOR TREATMENT
OF FIRST BLACK STUDENT IN 1969
Current Administration is "Appalled"
BBC News
June 23rd, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/yd9l5286
--
BLAME, BULLYING AND DISRESPECT -
CHINESE CANADIANS FIND PREJUDICE
Significant Evidence of Racism Experienced
The Angus Reid Institute
June 22nd, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/ybko9h69
--
WHO IS JUNIPERO SERRO AND WHY
ARE CALIFORNIAN PROTESTERS
TOPPLING STATUES OF THIS SAINT?
Some Reassess His Legacy
Religion News Service,
June 20th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/yav28vth
--
WHY ARE SO MANY WHITE CHRISTIANS
STANDING UP FOR RACIAL JUSTICE?
Maybe Because Church Pews are Unavailable
The Christian Century,
June 15th, 2020
https://tinyurl.com/y9x9juq3
******
WISDOM OF THE WEEK
Provided by Sojourners and the Bruderhof online:
If I wait for someone else to validate my existence,
it will mean that I’m shortchanging myself.
- Zanele Muholi
--
God’s presence can be felt and heard in the call to
stand up for justice and mercy among the marginalized
in this and every society.
- J. Jioni Palmer
--
We are a spiritually impoverished generation; we search
in all the places the Spirit ever flowed in the hope of finding
water. And that is a valid impulse. For if the Spirit is living
and never dies, it must still be present wherever it once
was active.…It is like a small but carefully tended spark,
ready to flare, glow, and burst into flame the moment it
feels the first enkindling breath.
- Edith Stein
--
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared
with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for
immediate action, rapidly performed and in sight of all.
People will give their lives if only the ordeal does not
last long but is soon over, with all looking on and
applauding as if on the stage. But active love is
labor and fortitude.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
--
No one person or group could have made the first church.
No heights of oratory, no flaming enthusiasm, could have
awakened for Christ the thousands who were moved at the
time, or produced the united life of the early church. …
The Spirit did not descend upon the speakers in such a way
that they preached a sermon or gave a speech to an
unenlightened crowd. Instead, fiery tongues of the Spirit ate
their way into the hearts of the hearers and inflamed the crowd
in one common experience of the same spirit and the same Christ.
- Eberhard Arnold
*****
MOMENT IN TIME
The Korean War Began
June 25th, 1950
Globe and Mail,
June 25th, 2020
The Americans were caught by surprise. On June 25,
1950,about 75,000 soldiers of North Korea’s People’s
Army, supported by the Soviets and the Chinese, poured
across the 38th parallel,the arbitrary border between
communist North Korea and United Nations – and
United States-backed South Korea, and kept going.
Within three days, Seoul was captured and the North
Koreans kept going, boxing the Americans, who entered
the war in July, and their allies into the peninsula’s
southeast corner, after which they fought vicious back-
and-forth battles that marked the Cold War’s first
military campaign. It could have expanded into a
Third World War if general Douglas MacArthur, U.S.
commander in Asia, had got his way – he wanted to
attack China. U.S. president Harry Truman ended that
idea in 1951 by firing him. On July 27, 1953, an armistice
was signed that drew a modified boundary along the
38th parallel.
The casualties on both sides were massive for a war
fought on a relatively small bit of real estate. About
three million died, most of them civilians, a higher toll
than the Vietnam War in the next decade,another land
war that denied the Americans outright victory. Canada -
played its part in Korea, losing more than 500 soldiers.
- Eric Reguly
*****
CLOSING THOUGHT - Dom Helder Camara
When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream;
when we are dreaming with others it is the beginning
of a new reality.
(end)
*****
