And in the Big News today from a Faith Perspective, hug a tree. The Big Book of Magic Stuff says hug a tree and not to go around eating its fruit, or being fruitful and multiplying. Nature is just so wonderful, apart from the Invisible Magic Friend’s holy virus.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DDMSqJ-r9GOxH-y8rUvRM_o5LQQanW-d/view?usp=sharing
Platitude of the Day 
“Trees are alive and communicate with each other and have feelings. They love to be hugged and definitely consent to it.
The profoundly wise, insightful and dignified Prince Charles says so, but most importantly, so does the bible”.
LikeLike
Hug a tree. But if you’re hugging a fig tree when Jesus walks by, just watch out. The Visible bit of the IMF has form where fig trees are concerned.
LikeLike
Martin Wroe needs to be careful; he might just get people thinking. Not “trees are like us, so they must have feelings and moods”, but “we are like trees, so our feelings, moods, thoughts and actions are engendered by electrical and chemical processes, and automatic reactions, that are largely outside our conscious control”. Once people start thinking along those lines, they’re well on the way towards naturalism (http://www.naturalism.org), and away from notions of the supernatural, starting with the completely made-up concepts of spirits, gods and magic.
LikeLike
He’s got it the wrong way round ,hasn’t he? He’s forgotten how much longer trees have been around than Homo Sapiens. So he’s seeing any possible expression of some small degree of sentience by trees to be an offshoot of the soul he thinks Sapiens have been endowed with by his god. Because, to his Christian solipsism, every discovery must have the creation of humans as its focal point.
Take one step back, and you see natural selection at work, whether it be trees or assistant vicars.
LikeLike
Thanks for the link! Incidentally, I’m none too impressed with those who about “getting close to nature”; wasn’t there someone in the Pratchett/Gaiman novel ‘Good Omens’ who joined a hippy commune in order to do just that and then, after some weeks of living in a tent in a damp Welsh valley, discovered the wisdom of her forebears in that nature wasn’t somethting to get close to but to get as far as possible away from?
LikeLike
Sorry, that sentence no verb. Should have said “those who write about …”
LikeLike
If trees wanted an IMF, do you think they’d invent one that insisted an ordinary, strong, upright tree is, despite all appearances, damaged, bent and in need of support?
I reckon trees are smarter than that.
I wish we were.
LikeLike
I was reminded of a Something Understood from a few weeks,ago. Tully was in a relatively sensible conversation with Jane Campion. Out of the blue Tully asked,” Do chimpanzees have a sense of god?” No, really.
LikeLike
Jane Goodall.
LikeLike
Well, yesterday Mona, a Muslim, had a good go at tackling the Catholic elephant-in-the-room, which no RC contributor has been prepared to address. Nor has any Anglican offered a ‘thought’ on the report into Child Sexual Abuse in the C of E. So today we have an Anglican, who looks into…. tree hugging? Why do they even bother?
I don’t think Jesus was given to tree-hugging; if he was it escaped the notice of the gospel writers. However, he is reported as having spotted a fig tree that would bear no fruit. Instead of talking to it, or giving it an empathetic cuddle, he cursed it. The tree afterwards withered and died. What would the Prince of Wales have to say about that, I wonder?
Nice to know that science finally caught up with Prince Charles’ thinking, btw.
LikeLike
Also, at the time of the fig tree incident, figs weren’t even in season:
https://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/mk/11.html#13
There used to be a site called godhatesfigs.com (a parody of godhatesfags.com, i.e. the Westboro Baptist Church) based on this passage.
LikeLike
Seeing nature less as a reserve and more as a relative means that Martin is aligning himself with everyone espousing a green, vegetarian or vegan philosophy. I wouldn’t say that he is therefore offering a thought uniquely from a religious perspective.
What he should have said is that god made man in his image, after his likeness: and he should have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps or moves upon the earth. That would have been a religious perspective as that is what it says in the Genesis creation myth.
I sometimes feel sorry for the TFTDers as they can’t win if they read this blog. Is there a blog somewhere that tells them how well they did? Oracle of the Day?
I didn’t think so.
LikeLike
For what it’s worth: “Tom Briggs: “I have never felt it useful for actors to read their own reviews. I did it as a young actor, as most do. I was looking for affirmation but when I didn’t receive it, it was foolishly heartbreaking. Of course any review is only one person’s opinion. Whether that opinion should carry more weight than that of your director or producer or writer or mother is questionable. But the bottom line is that actors don’t have the power to change anything.
As, variously, a writer, director and producer, I always read the reviews of my productions because I might learn something useful…”
LikeLike