In Fracking Democracy: A two-day spectacle carved into two-minute chunks found in the January/February 2011 issue of Orion magazine, Sandra Steingraber describes how high-volume slick water horizontal hydrofacturing blows up shale bedrock to get at a carbon-rich fossil fuel trapped inside. She compares fracking to mountaintop removal of Appalachian mountaintop. Fracking "blows it up."

"In the case of fracking, the quarry is methane bubbles trapped inside impermeable layers of shale thousands of feet below the earth's surface. To liberate the gas, millions of gallons of fresh water (high volume) are mixed with sand and chemicals -- some of which are carcinogens -- and this slippery mixture (slick water) is forced, under immense pressure, into mile-long tunnels drilled sideways (horizontal) through bedrock. With the assistance of explosives, this poisonous solution shatters the shale (hydro-fracturing) and releases a vaporous froth of petroleum, euphemistically known as natural gas, which floats up the borehole -- along with brine, radioactive materials, and heavy metals."

Sandra Steingraber tells us about the water that remains in the shale, removed from the water cycle. We will miss this water, consciously or unconsciously. We will miss the water. And we will miss the clean water we once had, and the clean air. We will miss those narrow roads through our state forests. We will miss more than we know.

As I ponder the strangeness of fracking once again, I look out the windows to the scene above. I am grateful that there is no fracking near me in Mechanicsburg, PA even as I am saddened that for many on the globe the environment they call home has been invaded by this extremely aggressive industry which takes from us all. Think: privatize profits, socialize costs.

Yesterday, in Orion magazine, I read the Lisa Couturier's article on the transport of horses across the boarder of the United States, into Canada, or Mexico to be killed for meat to export.

She went to an auction in New Holland, PA, not too far from my home, in what is commonly called "Amish Country." Couturier describes the horses. "Given the noisy crowd, and the loud stern voice of the auctioneer calling out in rapid-fire succession the back-and-forth bidding for the animals, I did not expect the saddle horses to try so hard to do well. Horses are flight animals; they flee at the unfamiliar; fear is their dominant emotion. But they are social creatures, too. They aim to please because they've learned to trust, which meant that even the strong and healthy horses, of which there were many, obediently did as they were told amid the chaos of the auction: go forward; go back; turn left, now right; stop, immediately; go fast, go slow; stand still."

Carefully Couturier tells us what she observes for the next few hours. It is really, really, sad. The horses are treated poorly and many of the healthiest ones are purchased by "killer buyers." These men are the ones whose business it is to make their living on horse flesh. 

When I think of the suffering of the horses, I pray that their pain be taken into the suffering Lord Jesus on the cross. And I pray that the Risen Lord, who is whole, and good, and come to us, be made visible now. 

It is hard to trust in the unfolding of time. By that I mean that chronos time is somehow held within kairos time. But I do believe that being willing to be conscious of tremendous suffering, not all of it, not all the time, is some kind of prayer.