Late yesterday afternoon big oil defender Joe Manchin conceded he did not have the votes to include support for the Mountain Valley Pipeline to the budget resolution to keep the government going after September 30, the end of the federal fiscal year.
The MVP which would have cut through the heart of West Virginia, the Appalachian Trail into Virginia and North Carolina has been decried by environmentalists, Native Americans, and even had parts rejected by a Federal Court. It would have destroyed the incredible beauty of the Trail, the woods and forests, and some endangered species, notably birds
There are more than 20 bird species and hundreds of wildflowers that exist in the region threatened by the pipeline. Once gone, they will never return as the proposed pipeline cut a swath through old growth forests, our protection against even more serious global warming. Protecting all this means protecting ourselves now and for the future.
Prayer for the Day
Root of all love, may we be like the tree that grows from your good earth,
With the solid trunk of faith and the branches of care;
Looking for ways to share your life-giving love in the world,
We can find them in the faces about us that we see every day.
Hold us in a broad community of discipleship,
So the peace we share erupts as a spring in a rock,
In the name of him who is your root,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Here in this untouched wood/ a dirge a lamentation/
for earth to live again/ earth that is all at once a grave/
a resting place a bed of new beginning.
- Bell Hooks, poet, from Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place (1952-2021)
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
- Ulysses to Achilles in Troilus and Cressida, Act III, Scene 3, Shakespeare
Consider how the wild flowers grow. They neither toil nor spin.
Yet, I tell you, not even Solomon in all splendor,
was clothed as one of these.
Jesus, from The Gospel According to Luke 12:27