Calamity!!

They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity..."  Isaiah 65:23

My eldest son's Geography teacher showed them a video about the famine in Africa a couple of days ago.  The video included the above picture of a starving child crawling the last kilometer to the refugee camp, followed by a vulture.  Apparently rules of journalism prohibited the photographer from helping the child.  He left the scene immediately after taking the photo and, later, unable to bear the hate mail and the depression that resulted from this incident, he committed suicide.  We don't know what happened to the child.

I have been in a state of intermittent grief over the situation in the Horn of Africa since it began.  Devin's story and this image have picked that scab and I find my heart crying out - "This cannot be!  This cannot stand!!"  And it should cry out, I should grieve.  This calamity is not part of God's intention for  creation.  And, yet, I feel nearly powerless.  I can send money.  I must send money.  But there must be more.  The Horn of Africa needs a million mothers of privilege crying out in grief - for those children are our children.  Our children are dying in Africa - while our children in the US are eating themselves to death.  And meanwhile, the 1% pay 15% income tax on a million dollars a year.  This cannot stand!

I do want to commend my son's teacher.  The day after she showed this video, she showed a video about the childhood obesity epidemic in the US and invited them to make the connections.  My son's teacher is a prophet.  God bless her.

So, God is obviously calling me to do something - calling all of us to do something.  In chapel on Wednesday, Dr. Tran invited us to name, silently or aloud (all of us chose 'silently'), what we are called to wage against.  "Pillaging" was the word that came into my head.  We have been pillaging the planet, pillaging other cultures, stealing and destroying the lives and futures of the world's children - of OUR children.  This cannot stand!  It must not!  God help us all to do something about it.

Last Day of Class

Today was the last day of class.  Its been an interesting and educational journey.  There have been many times that I felt hopeless about what we've done to the planet and the direction its headed.  But, hearing individual classmates' plans for action as well as lesson plans for each of our Bible Studies, I'm filled with hope.  We are the seeds that can spread the movement.  And each small action leads to another.  All of us have been convicted, have shared ideas of what we are already doing and what we plan on doing, and have encouraged each other along the way.  As each of us reduces our impact and inspires others to do the same, the scales tip a little more in favor of the planet.

We cannot underestimate God's power of momentum in this endeavor.  I feel that God clearly wills good for all Creation - including us - and God has been moving among us and is breathing the spirit of New Creation into each of us.  The task may seem overwhelming - but like we - or our parents - promised at our baptism:  We will with God's help.

I'm going to continue this blog as an accounting of my journey - on both "Green" issues and my passion for social justice.  My hope is that writing down my frustrations, outright failures, and successes will keep me motivated to push forward toward's God's intentions for my life.  Even if I'm the only one to read it - its always nice to look back and see how far you've come.  Peace to you and Grace.

Family Meeting Part II

Here are some things that we decided:

List of Commitments/Experiments

Personal:

• Walk or Ride bike on any errand two miles or less from home
• get back to riding my bike on even longer trips (to school, etc.)
• reduce my use of packaging
• Pay attention to my general consumption (food, clothing, personal care products, etc.)
• Turn off lights/computer/tv when I leave a room
• Grab a sweater and/or blanket if I get chilly rather than turn up the heat
• do a better job of using food we have in the fridge and pantry and being creative with leftovers
• remember my reusable bags when I go shopping
• utilize used goods whenever possible

Family

• turn off lights during dinner and eat by candlelight
• have a eco-Sabbath beginning for one hour on Sunday afternoons
• set thermostat to 65 in the winter (still negotiating for summer)
• set ourselves up for composting
• go back to using cloth napkins and help Tom with laundry
• Devin has pledged to limit computer and game time to one hour per day on the weekdays and 1.5 hours per day on weekends
  He has also promised to help watch Noah so that I can do more errands by bike or on foot.
• All pledge to turn off lights when leaving a room

It should be interesting to see how we do.  Tessa especially looked like she was going to get hit by a brick.  But she seemed to be on board with the changes we've agreed to.  There is still a lot more that we can do.  But this is a good start.  Wish us luck.  

Family Meeting Part I

So, after watching "No Impact Man" and mulling over everything we've been talking about in and out of class, I decided I wanted to talk, as a family, about what we can do both individually and as a household to reduce our impact.  I was hoping to do this last night but Tessa, our teenager, had another commitment (which is more the rule than the exception these days).  I really want this to be a family wide talk so we're waiting until tomorrow night.  I'm not sure what kind of reaction we'll get.  I've talked a bit about it to my eldest son, Devin, who's twelve.  He sounds up for it but intention and practice are a challenge at his (and my!) age.

I've got some ideas about what I want to do.  As Andrea Cohen-Kiener says, you can't decide for someone else what they should do, you can only make your own commitments.  I'm going to commit to walking or biking for any trip within a two mile radius (barring absolutely awful weather - snow/ice or driving rain - or absolutely having to take the little one). This winter, if I feel chilly, I'm going to put on an extra layer and grab a blanket instead of turning up the heat.  And, I'm going to make a concerted effort to turn off lights/tv/computer when I leave the room - something I haven't been good about doing at all.   I'd also like to compost - though that requires some equipment.  I'm not sure I can build the compost barrel myself (though I could try).  I'm hoping to get at least one rain barrel built by summer as well.  And I'm going to reduce my own trash and processed food consumption.  As a family, I'm really hoping I can get everyone on board for a weekly "eco-Sabbath" - where we turn off everything electric (except the heat in the winter) and devote the time period we decide to talking, being outside, enjoying the quiet.  It would be cool to work up to an entire day though an evening or afternoon would be a great start.

It should be an interesting discussion.  Stay tuned to find out how it goes . . .

Saturation

This gets exhausting after awhile.  You reach a point of saturation.  And this stuff is really important to me.  I've never been to Yosemite but I know the feeling of smallness and exhilaration that McKibben talks about, that matchless combination of feelings that comes from being in raw nature.  I cherish wilderness.  I've seen a bear in the wild and camped in the winter.  But there comes a point where you just can't take any more dire predictions and prophetic urging.  For me, today, I think it happened when McKibben was describing a totally human manipulated earth.  It was such a depressing and hopeless image for me - and not that far away from where we are now.  When you pass that tipping point, you begin to lose the energy for action, you feel like you can't read another article on Mother Earth News about composting toilets or solar water heaters.  You begin to feel trapped, helpless, hopeless.  Maybe we all need to walk through that place - come to a full acceptance of how far this has gone and exactly where its headed - before we can truly make a commitment to change.  To do more than recycle and buy organic every once in awhile.  I don't know.  I suspect we have to walk through that more than once.  Maybe many times.  Maybe that still won't be enough.   With the little energy I have left . . . I pray that it will.  

Transformation

I like what Arthur-Jones does in his book, tracing the theological, social, governmental, and environmental transformation through the books of the Psalms.  We start with a humanity separated from Creation, a completely transcendent God that endorses monarchy, and a people subjected to both.  We move into a God that is Creator of all that is and deeply concerned about all aspects of Creation, humanity as an integral part of that Creation, and a seeming egalitarian society with God as the only "King" providing provision, blessing and fertility to all.  In this final version, everything rejoices, dances and sings to this liberating, Craftsman God where before, all trembled in fear (except the King who reaped the rewards of God's favor).

This articulates a convergence of several ideas that I've been knocking around this weekend.  Between reading the books assigned for next week (just McKibben's to go), I attended a church service commemorating Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday and challenging all in attendance to listen for their particular call to make the world better; watched the premier of Bill Moyer's new show on PBS which highlighted the politically engineered great imbalance between the "Have it Alls" and the rest of us; watched Michael Moore's "Capitalism:  A Love Story"; and read an National Geographic article on cities as a solution to environmental crises (see sidebar).  So there's all this bouncing around in my head - the failure of our economy, the degradation of the environment, the growing population, and how it all fits together.

And it really struck me how, in a social, economic, governmental and environmental system in which all were 'in it together' as God's Creation, in a place where God provided the things necessary for life - and not just sustenance, Arthur-Jones points out, but bread and wine, "good food and good times"(141) - in this subversively egalitarian environment (where even the trees and the water have a voice) the primary posture is joy and praise.  "Let everything that breathes Praise the Lord!" (Ps. 150:6) is the last word of this writing.  What does that say to us today, in our "Winner Take All" economy, government, ecology?

Fertility

Walker-Jones talks a lot about fertility in his book.  Its a curious proof of our anthropocetrism that our society focuses on increasing fertility of humans (at least those with means) while it destroys the fertility of the planet.  The disturbing result is the ever increasing human population coinciding with the ever diminishing acreage of arable land.  We are quickly moving toward a planet where there is not enough land to feed the population.  How can we be so short sighted?  This radical disconnection from our life-source is a sin beyond comprehension.  Even in - perhaps especially in - circles of faith, who purport to believe in God as creator, redeemer, and source of all that is.  You would think the connection between God as provider and land as the channel for that provision would not be so hard to make.  And yet, we idolize the work of our own hands as being able to improve on the work of God's hands.

Much of me wants to argue with the idea that Earth is a 'work' of God's hands rather than being an indivisible part of God.  Not as something to worship, but to honor, to see as intrinsic to our own being - as part of all that is holy.  Separating the Earth as a 'work' misses something.  Certainly, we are also a 'work' of God's.  Creature rather than Creator.  But we also are reminded that God lives in us.  That we are the Body of Christ.  We participate in God, are part of God.  I think we need to see Earth as part of that interconnected relationship.  I spoke earlier about the idea of the Cosmos (including space, Earth, Humanity, All Living Things) as the Body of God, all part of God's action and ongoing Creativity.  God is still separate - bigger, intentional, over arching and all inclusive - but also infused into everything.  God breathes in us, in animals, in plants, in the very dirt we walk on.

It seems that separating us from God, God from Earth, us from everything but our own tiny cosmos of one, has gotten us into this mess.  We desperately need to find another way - the path of Wisdom that Psalm 1 promotes.

Trying to Practice Enough

There was leftover trout in the fridge.  Its local trout from our CSA - farmed, caught and cleaned by a local trout farmer.  Still good.  Still fresh.

The kids didn't want to eat it (they didn't want to eat it the first time it appeared on our table a few days ago).  My husband didn't want to eat it.  Frankly, I didn't want to eat it either.

But the class, the readings, the Earth herself, is having its effect on me.  I had the idea of making a sandwich, like my mother used to make with canned salmon.  Making a salad - similar to a tuna salad - with trout, mayonnaise, pickles, some Jalepeno Brew (another local product, mustard with a kick) - spreading it on bread with cheese, tomato for me because no one else likes them(one of the farmers in our CSA has a hothouse and we have local, organic, heirloom tomatoes!!), popping it in the oven and letting the cheese brown.  An open faced trout melt.

I got some bread from 'bread day' at Eden - a lovely multigrain baguette.  Threw together some potato soup to go along with it (not local, but stuff we had in the pantry and the fridge).  It was really really good.  And quick.  Devin, who only managed a single bite of the trout the first time, had three pieces.  Tom also enjoyed it.  I feel a bit smug.

But there are still leftovers in my fridge, threatening to go bad.  The manna past its due date.  One victory is followed by a dozen failures.  But consciousness begins to change.  And the Earth's voice begins to sing.  And maybe, just maybe, it really is possible that things could change.  Maybe not in time to save the polar bears.  But just maybe . . . in time to save a few things.  Maybe humanity.  Maybe we can save enough.  Or what could someday, after grief and repentance and true humility, become enough.  Not what we had.  But enough.

Material Spirituality v. Materialism

Soil for legs

Axe for hands

Flower for eyes

Bird for ears

Mushroom for nose

Smile for mouth

Songs for lungs

Sweat for skin

Wind for mind

Just enough.

                      Nanao Sakaki

                                                             Earth Prayers From Around the World

I wonder what the connection is with "material spirituality", acknowledging the presence of God in materiality - or at the least, the fact that all material things are gifts from God. - verses trying to fill the empty spaces in our lives with 'stuff' - 'stuff' that has been religiously devalued as 'material' instead of 'spiritual' so that it has no hopes of filling what is achingly empty.  What if instead of trying to disavow ourselves completely of 'materialistic' tendencies and the value of materiality, we saw all matter as holy and wholly of God?  Would we be satisfied with 'enough' - the powerful and marginalized word of a Godly economy?  Maybe this pseudo-Puritanical judgement against all things material - as if we can cleanse ourselves of our context of consumption - is moving in the wrong direction.  There seems to be a fine line here.  If material is good, spiritual, of God, then accumulating material should be a good thing.  But the story of the manna witnesses differently.  The manna is, without doubt, from God.  And there is 'enough' for all - but no more.  Any attempts at hording this material end badly.  We cannot horde the holy, we cannot build dams to contain the precious and keep it from the rest of the world - not if we want the story to end well.  We have to learn the economy of 'enough' while honoring the inherent goodness and God-giftedness of the things that make life possible - and even delightful.  Sadly, in our culture, we don't even know what 'enough' looks like.  How can we learn?  

Weeding in January

Reading Ellen Davis' book has me wanting to get my hands in the dirt, reconnect with Earth.  It makes me want to do everything differently, get back to my Mother.  It reminds me of my childhood in the mountains of Colorado, where the land was home, playground, comforter, teacher.  I remember coming through St. Louis to visit my grandparents in Belleville when I was about 12 or 13.  I remember seeing all the concrete, the cars, the tall buildings.  So foreign to what I knew back home.  And I was thinking "none of this is real.  Its all made up reality."  It isn't really real.  The structures we've built, the society we've constructed.  Its all made up stuff. Unfortunately, our 'alternative reality' - a reality that hordes the resources offered for free and appropriates the bounty of Earth for the privileged few, robbing from the 'least of these' - is destroying what is real.  Its becoming the only reality, at the expense of the God created, God infused, God intended reality.  And, because its fake, it cannot sustain life.  But its sticky.  It traps us like flies in a web and we can't see our way out of it.  

I love what the Introduction to Arthur Walker-Jones' The Green Psalter suggests - that Earth is the Body of God.  If we think of Earth as not just planet, but all living organisms - including us - the entire ecosystem, I think that might be spot on.  All of us connected in the Body of God.  But that might be too small.  Even the Cosmos is part of God - God' encompasses, embodies, breathes through all that we know.  And probably more than what we know.  And yet, our reverence for the Body has evaporated - if it was ever intact in the first place.  Certainly there have been and are a few who live out that reverence.  The pagans.  The Native Americans.  The agrarian prophets.  But most of us think only of ourselves and those closest to us - a tiny fraction of the entire Body - as if that were all that was important.  

To get out of that mindset seems next to impossible.  So, I follow my instinct on reading Davis and I get out in my tiny raised bed vegetable garden.  I gave it a rest from tomatoes last season and grew herbs and greens.  Like most seasons, though, the garden got away from me by mid summer.  The chard did amazingly well, though periodic lack of water made the leaves a bit too bitter.  I resolved to finally get out there and clear it out, though.  Get it ready for winter.  It seemed strange to be weeding in January - the ground should be frozen by now and its barely even cool.  But it was satisfying, as it always is.  As I dug and hoed and pulled, I thought about a Wendell Berry quote in Davis' book, asking "what the land requires of us."  What do you require, I wonder and I tend my neglected little patch of earth.  The abundance of weeds suggests to me "if you don't grow something, I will."  The land has a will to flourish.  It only requires either mindful cooperation or total freedom.  Anything else will be disastrous for all of us.

Privilege for a Few Consequences for Many

Its 66 degrees outside today.  In January.  Of course, St. Louis is notorious for unpredictable weather.  But, its January 5th and we really haven't seen winter yet.  We've had  a couple of wintery days.  A dusting of snow.  But winter has not settled in here.  And, while I love rolling my windows down in the car and opening them in my house...it frightens me too.  And I think about the fact that, while I'm basking in the freakish warmth of January 5, 2012, the polar ice caps are melting a little bit more.  Polar bears are getting a little bit closer to extinction.  And the water may rise just a tiny bit more on the shores of Bangladesh.  My privilege may very well be another's pain.  But that seems to be the condition for those of us in the US and other westernized, industrialized, wealthy countries.  And, even for the justice minded, its damned hard to relinquish.

We were talking in class about how little fresh water there is in the world.  About how we need to preserve it.  And my mind drifted to my love of scalding hot baths.  How much comfort they bring when I'm cold to the bone, or sore from too much Just Dance 3 on the Wii, or just stressed out or sick or unbearably tired.  I rationalize that we have a lot of water here in our region.  That forgoing those luxurious baths would not give water to a thirsty child in Kenya. But the fact remains that while I soak in scented bubbly water up to my shoulders, there are people dying for lack of the very stuff I'll send down the drain without a thought.  What do I do with that?

My husband and I make an effort to buy local, to get Fair Trade, to spend justly when we can (see, even there we have a choice!  To spend our money justly or just to spend it).  But we are still so very privileged.  We live in such total luxury when compared with the rest of the world.  Or when compared to how we probably all need to live if this planet is to have any shot at sustaining life as we know it.  I wonder what our lifestyles need to look like if we are going to keep the rarity of a 66 degree day in January.  Will we be able to live them?  Will we have the strength to turn away from our many comforts so that our children's children may have hope of any comfort at all?

Bugs and Weeds (and Guns and Aquinas). Not Necessarily in that Order.

This is my second blog on environmental concerns in as many months.  And both for Eden Seminary.  The first one focused (or attempted to focus) on the creation doctrine of Thomas Aquinas and its use as ally or adversary in the growing need for action to address climate change particularly in impoverished countries, which experience the side effects of climate change more acutely.  I used the country of Bangladesh as my case in point.  I link it, above, because I was able to find some really interesting articles that help to back the position of environmental action.  As well as a great song by John Denver ; )

This article was on NPR on Dec. 29th and was very encouraging.  It talks about the military testing green technology in Afghanistan.  Caring for the planet was among their lowest priorities for doing what they're doing but, if the technology works, it would be a great proving ground for the rest of society.  I don't think green technology is the only answer - I think we need to dial our lifestyles and expectations way back - but it is certainly part of the solution.  And to have the conversation is a start.

I'm enjoying The Creation by E. O. Wilson.  Its especially fascinating to think about the diversity of the insect world and the importance behind that.  I loved his 'disaster prognosis' theorizing what would happen if all insect life were to be extinct (34-35) - that ended with humanity barely surviving and longing for 'bugs and weeds' - the derogatory phrased the Wilson assigns to many who disparage the environmental movement, saying we care more about 'bugs and weeds' than human beings.  His allegory makes the point beautifully that human beings cannot exist without what we would like to deem as disposable elements of creation.

I've been thinking a lot also about Hosea again - and of that book's condemnation of human's readiness to objectify each other, creation and even God.  I think the intertwined nature of all those things will be important to address as we think about lesson plans, sermons, and daily life the church.  It isn't an either or proposition. Its all or nothing.