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.