random grossness

February 27

Just for fun: Some FDA guidelines for maximum allowable contaminants in human food, sent from Rachel Laudan to the Association for the Study of Food and Society listserv.


Brussels sprouts: 10 aphids per ounce
Shelled peanuts: 1 insect per 5 pounds
Gold raisins: 4 fly eggs per ounce
Tomato juice: 3 fly eggs per ounce
Popcorn: 2 rodent hairs per ounce
Peanut butter: 9 insect fragments per ounce
Canned mushrooms: 5 maggots per ounce
Whole peppercorns: 1% mammalian excretia

Contemplative Prayer

It feels at times that we are constantly bombarded by noise, both externally and internally. It is hard to hear the Presence of God because of the percussive cacophony. How can anyone be expected to find restoration for the soul when there is so much dissonance? Contemplative prayer is an opportunity to just be.

In contemplative prayer "we move from communicating with God through speech to communing with God through the gaze of love. Words fall away, and the most palaple reality is being present to the lover of our souls. When we let go of all effort to speak or even to listen, simply becoming quiet before God, the Spirit is free to work its healing mysteries in us: releasing us from bondage, energizing new patterns of life, restoring our soul's beauty. Here we allow ourselves to be loved by God into wholeness.

Such communion with God is an end in itself, not a means to another end, however good."
Marjorie J. Thompson from Soul Feast.