It implies that nature changes and lives and dies. It means that nature is more like an organism than a thing.

Following Pope Francis, many of us have come to argue that all of nature is alive and in a kind of ecological harmony/disharmony with itself.

It is unfair to think of nature as all peace when it also involves disruption. Many of us don't go all the way to the Gaia hypothesis, which imagines that the Earth itself is living and breathing, but we get pretty close.

With St. Paul, we imagine that the body is a holy temple — both a thing and a not-thing, both a subject and an object, both matter and spirit.

We also call church buildings "temples" or "sanctuaries."

Congregations of all kinds around the country have gone into a new and rapidly accelerating phase.

Our declining memberships have met their match in increasing costs for our buildings. More often, they are just too big for us, resembling nothing more than a tiny turtle in a big shell.

The increased pace in the closing of church buildings has become extraordinary in many towns and cities across the country.

The temples finally have met their match in the buildings. Membership decline has met its match in empty shells for the spirit and the people. Matter and spirit are richly related.

In his 1998 book The Second Coming of the Church, faith researcher George Barna wrote, "Escaping death after entering the decline phase is very difficult — and the longer it stays mired in decline, the less likely renewal becomes.

"The only suitable course of action is for the church to embark on an intentional campaign designed to introduce radical reinvigoration (new vision from God, or the integration of a new core congregation)." Continue reading

• Donna Schaper is senior minister of Judson Memorial Church in New York City.

Catholics in New Zealand have given more than $840,000 to the upkeep of sacred sites in the Holy Land over the past six years, but contributions to the annual collection are falling.

In 2012 the collection raised $222,500 but last year the amount fell to $122,500, says the Commissary of the Holy Land for New Zealand, Father Anthony Malone, OFM.

The practice originated in 1887 when Pope Leo XIII directed that a Good Friday collection be taken up in every parish church throughout the world for the support of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land.

The Franciscans have been entrusted with the maintenance of sacred sites in the Holy Land since 1217.

In 1995 the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference asked that the money raised in the Good Friday collection in this country be allocated to specific projects.

When Father Malone attended a meeting of Holy Land commissaries from English-speaking countries that year he asked that a specific shrine and a particular charitable work be earmarked to receive future funds from the New Zealand Good Friday collection.

The shrine chosen was the Wedding Church at Cana in Galilee, which commemorates Jesus' first public miracle — the changing of water into wine at a wedding feast.

Have a look at what Cana looks like today

The charitable work chosen was the provision of 20 university scholarships each year for Palestinian students from impoverished families.

This is in line with the Franciscan Custody's practice of using the Good Friday collection to help local Christians — described as the "living stones" of the Holy Land — to remain in the land where Jesus walked.

Source

Supplied. Pat McCarthy

Image: seetheholyland.net