Category: Environment

The Past and the Future Along a Texas Highway

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I have a new post up at the Deep Green Conversation blog – Seeing the Past and the Future Along a Texas Highway. It’s inspired by this West Texas sight –

Over the holidays we loaded the kids in the car and made our way from Texas to a family gathering in New Mexico. It’s been decades since I last made that drive, so I wasn’t expecting the site that greeted us in West Texas. Expecting miles and miles of rugged and mindnumbingly boring terrain, we encountered instead the juxtaposition of the past and the future.

Across the expanses of cotton fields, there rose, side by side, oil wells and wind turbines. Little did I know that Texas is the country’s leading producer of wind energy and that I was driving through the second largest wind farm in the country. What I saw simply were hundreds of turbines spinning steadily while towering over still oil pumpjacks  In short, a spectacular sight to give one pause.

Texas was once synonymous with oil.  My own grandfather made and lost his fortune as a supplier to oil companies. But that world is changing. Another family member who has oil wells on his property (a result of the “drill here, drill now, pay less” push), is seeing them run dry. The oil is running out. Some are drilling deeper at enormous expense, only to deplete the oil in a few months. The oil tycoons realize this—the petroleum-dependent way of life that made them rich is ending. The average person might not see it yet, but those with a serious stake in it sure do.

So while the environmentalists and hippies have pleaded for clean energy for years, it is finally being actualize as the rich and powerful big oil people seek out alternatives. These wind farms in Texas are mostly the creation of businessmen who know that the world’s brief dalliance with oil is almost over.  Clean, sustainable alternatives are where they are placing their bets. Hence the scene in West Texas—still oil jacks, representing relics of the past, being dwarfed by the sleek gleaming wind turbines ushering in the future.

Of course I considered this and rejoiced in a future of clean energy as I drove past in my gas-guzzling car.  The irony there is almost too palpable. I’m grateful though that some people, whatever their reason, are pushing forward in developing clean technologies and making them accessible. Those of us who admire that possibility, but who have yet to escape conventional options, need the help of others to create the infrastructure for clean energy. I can’t exactly stick a turbine in my backyard, and don’t have the cash at the moment to install solar panels or buy an eco-car. But I can support projects that are paving the way to making such options available to all.

Needless to say, finding a hopeful vision of the future made the drive through West Texas much more intriguing than I expected it to be.

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Movie Review – Fuel

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A few weeks ago at the Austin Farmer’s Market I saw a flier for the documentary Fuel – a film about (you guessed it) alternative fuel sources. It seemed like the sort of film I would like so I decided to catch it during its limited engagement here in Austin. My first attempt didn’t go so well. I pulled up to the theater and saw that it was surrounded by news crews. At first I thought they were doing coverage of the film. Yeah right. Apparently the theater had been robbed by a gunman earlier in the day and was shut down. I had to wonder what sort of idiot would rob the independent arts theater, but needless to say I didn’t see the movie that night. My second attempt proved more fruitful.

Fuel is the outcome of activist and writer Josh Tickell’s quest to stand up to our country’s addiction to oil and propose alternative solutions. It recently won Best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival and is in many ways unlike any other documentary I’ve seen recently. Most documentaries that speak to fuel usage and the global crises it causes are fairly doom and gloom oriented. They paint a hopeless scenario, are pretty heavy-handed with the guilt, and speak vaguely to the need for change. Fuel though is different. While it unequivocally points out the problems with petrochemical corporations and our political dalliance with oil, it does so from a very personal perspective. Tickell tells his own story – from his mother’s heath struggles common to those living near the Louisiana refineries to his experiments with veggiemobiles. His candid approach is a constant reminder that the fuel crisis is not just an abstract phenomenon, but a very personal issue.

But what really sets this film apart is its hopeful outlook for the future. There are alternatives out there – solutions are available, we just need to jump on board. Tickell spends a good portion of the movie describing the early biodiesel/ethanol movement. I appreciated that he dealt head on with the worldwide economic and pollution issues involved in some of the production of those fuels. But he then moves on to describe better biodiesel options (like algae based fuel grown from wastewater) and the potential behind other alternative energy sources like solar and wind energy. These aren’t vague options he suggests either, but he outlines plans for exactly how these technologies can work, help create jobs, and benefit the economy. Everything from multistory greenhouse gardens that can feed entire cities to Sweden’s plan to be petroleum free by 2020 are presented in this hopeful view of the future. I liked this tangible and practical vision and left the theater wanted to invest or something in algae fuels and windmill technology.

Unfortunately as positive and practical as the film was, to make a real impact it needs to be reaching the masses. But I have a feeling that the few people seeing the film are already on board and fairly informed about these issues. Case in point – out of the six of us in the theater watching the film, I saw that two of those couples drove a Prius and a Smart Car (can I just say I was glad I was in my compact car and not the family SUV…). They are already there, I’m trying to get there – but real change will take a major movement. It will take the US government doing what many European governments have done and subsidize the eco-friendly options (instead of our oil addiction). It has to be practical, easy, cheap, and widespread for it to happen.

So I encourage you to go see the film if it is playing in your area. Get educated about these solutions. We don’t have to be addicted to oil, there are viable alternatives. And this movie is a great reminder that there is hope.

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Self-Interest and Justice

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At a conference I attended recently, the speaker mentioned that she was confused by the current interest in environmental issues as justice issues.  In her view caring for the environment, although a good thing, is merely enlightened self-interest.  We care for the environment because we care about our own survival.  Mess this place up, use up all our resources, and we have a problem.  If we want to ensure a decent, comfortable existence, we take care of the world around us.  It’s as simple as that.

I chuckled at the simplicity of her equation, but failed to see the reality behind her words.   Just because something is obviously and unequivocally good for us doesn’t mean that most people will actually be moved to do it.  Take healthy living as an example.  Most people know that smoking is bad for them or that a diet of fried food, sugar, and red meat might not be the best thing for living a long life.  But people still smoke and super-size it up in the drive-thru.  Similarly, most people know that taking care of the earth is a good thing, but few of them even make time for baby step environmentalism like recycling.  So enlightened self-interest isn’t exactly a motivating factor that works.

I think the recent popularity of seeing environmental issues as justice issues has developed because people need something outside of themselves to motivate them.  Behaviorism and rewards can only work for so long before people get bored.  If the carrot that is dangled before me is that my life will be improved (or safer) if I make the effort to care for creation, I can easily choose to opt out of that particular reward.  If it’s all about me, then it’s only about me.  But seeing environmental responsibility as a justice issue brings love into the equation.

If seeking justice involves loving God and loving others with every aspect of our lives, we then are pushed beyond ourselves into patterns of discipleship and worship.  We can always choose to opt out of such things as well, but sacrificing our relationships with God and with others is a much harder step to take.  So we need to understand that we love God by taking care of his creation and his children.  We demonstrate that love by refusing to trash our oceans and preserving the food supply for communities around the world.  We stop emitting toxic gases into the atmosphere that alter ecosystems in areas of the world where most people have never even driven a car.  We push for the restriction of pesticide use for the sake of the farmer’s exposure to such poisons every day.

Caring for creation is just that – an act of compassion that is done for others.  We aren’t buying into some trend just for the sake of saving our own butts, but because we care about the people God has commanded us to care for.  In loving our neighbor, we are restoring our relationship with them.  If that relationship so far has been based on destroying their ecosystem, then restoring that relationship means ending that destruction.  Instead of being self-centered, it is about being other-centered in obedience to following and serving God.

In short, it is not about me.

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Coming Home Environmentally

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Having recently moved back to the town I grew up in (Austin, TX), I’ve had ample opportunity in the past few weeks to reminisce.  Austin is a very environmentally friendly town and I am enjoying exploring the eco-options for shopping and doing life around town.  Yet as I reflect on my experience as a youth here, I recall that my introduction to environmentalism was a rather conflicted experience.

 

I attended the local science academy for Jr. High where I took classes like Environmental Science and joined the science club.  Our activities included beach and river clean-ups and advocacy programs to get recycling bins in the local schools.  We went river rafting, camping, and bird watching.  One of my classes even created a garden on the school grounds amidst the broken glass, discarded syringes, and used condoms littering the neighborhood.  Appreciating nature and learning to care for it was a vital part of my education.  And we didn’t just talk about it – we lived it out.

 

At the time, I of course dove into environmental causes with the sort of obsessive passion only a Jr. High girl can display.  In that age of big hair and towering bangs I encouraged my friends to stop their bottle a week aerosol hairspray habits.  I wore a pendant that said “Save the Dolphins” and wrote (horrid) poetry for the student section of the Austin paper about keeping our oceans clean.  I did my best to take 5 minute showers (I had a timer) and read everything I could about the watershed issues involving the local aquifer.  My gestures didn’t amount to much, but they were the manifestation of the little I knew and of what I believed.

 

But those beliefs about caring for the earth that I learned at school were rarely echoed at home or in church.  In fact they were often directly discouraged and ridiculed.  Environmentalism was referred to as an anti-Christian value with environmentalists serving as the butt of many jokes.  My parents constantly warned me against loving the creation more than the creator.  In their eyes loving God and loving creation were either/or options – one couldn’t faithfully do both.  I was the rebel treading dangerously close to sin by getting involved with environmental causes.

 

At the time I fought that message knowing that it just didn’t make sense.  But as I left the science academy and the support and encouragement to care about the earth, the message of my church slowly won me over to apathy.  For a long time I just stopped caring about creation – I didn’t recycle; I didn’t think about my lifestyle choices, I just didn’t care.  I didn’t actively hate environmental ideas or endeavors; I just didn’t care enough to be proactive – which in all practical reality amounts to the same thing.  It took years of distancing myself from such anti-environmental beliefs before I was able to truly care for creation again.  It was an emotional journey to finally accept that loving creation is part of what it means to love God.

 

Now, nearly two decades after my Jr. High introduction to environmentalism, I have returned to Austin with new eyes.  Recycling advocacy seems almost quaint these days as many local schools have student gardens and environmental clubs.  I have access to eco lawn care and dry cleaning.  I painted my house with eco-friendly paint and discovered a place to recycle all of my moving boxes.  Once again, all small everyday gestures, but part of what it takes to commit to a lifestyle that loves God by loving creation.  I am enjoying the opportunities offered by a supportive community.  And twenty years have even changed the attitudes of my family and the church.  Creation care is no longer a rebellious sin, but a spiritual discipline to be explored.

 

So my reminiscing on the past has helped me to re-establish myself here with environmental commitments already in place.  I look forward to the journey ahead and am pleased to discover that, environmentally speaking, it’s good to be home.

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Selling Corn Syrup

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It’s all about the spin. I remember back in the early 90’s when medical reports encouraged people to eat less red meat for their health we started seeing the “Beef. It’s What for Dinner” ads. PR to convince us to buy more stuff that isn’t good for us. Well as more people are realizing the dangers and ubiquitous nature of High Fructose Corn Syrup, the Corn Refiners Association has jumped into full PR spin mode. They recently launched a $30 million advertising campaign to convince consumers that HFCS is a natural compound like honey. (It’s made from corn so therefore it’s natural right?) Forget that it can only be made in industrial laboratories using numerous chemicals (including stuff like sulfuric acid), the FDA ruled earlier this summer that it can be labeled as “natural.” Hence the advertising campaign. Take a look at this recent commercial.

 

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Playing on people’s fears and lack of information, the Corn Refiners have hit the sweet spot in labeling lingo. If it is “natural” then it must be good. But honestly even if we buy that “natural” claim, there are still numerous issues with this commercial. First substitute in another natural sweetener like sugar or honey into the dialogue and yes, as a mom I would be worried about feeding that to my child. Added sweeteners are unnecessary and unhealthy. They are a special treat, not just everyday afternoon snack fare. Who cares if HFCS is from corn and is just like sugar and honey – it is just like sugar and honey – full of empty calories and dangerous in large amounts.

The PR spin is necessary because we are consuming HFCS in crazy large amounts. It is in everything, its health issues hidden because it isn’t labeled as sugar. Corn is a veggie and most people might not know that HFCS is a sugar. If they bother to read the ingredients at all the impact of HFCS at the top of the list doesn’t hit them. And so obesity issues and diabetes continue to rise as the food that is easy to find and consume is stock full of high empty calories. And that doesn’t even account for the number of other health issues and allergies that are linked to HFCS.

Because HFCS is so popular (its in everything), most of the corn that is grown is very similar. We have lost the historic varieties of corn and the array of nutrients they provide. We now eat a very nutrient poor form of corn that not only sweetens most of our food but is the feed for the cows and chickens we consume. Our diet in essence is based strictly on corn. This is a health risk as we need a greater variety of nutrients to stay healthy. But it is also a societal risk to rely on one substance as our main food supply. If corn somehow faced a blight like potatoes did in Ireland, we would be facing a serious food crisis.

But even beyond the health risks, by supporting the use of HFCS one is supporting a seriously broken economic system. Our market is flooded with corn. It is a highly subsidized commodity. Farmers must grow ever increasing amounts of corn that are sold at low prices. Without the government subsidies most farmers would make no profit on their corn at all. But the more corn one grows the more subsidies one receives. So farmers must turn to genetically modified corn that is copyrighted (meaning they must buy new seed each year). They must use vast amounts of fertilizers and pesticides (some which are built into the genetic structure of the corn itself). These chemicals not only destroy the ecosystem and poison water supplies, but they are oil based. To grow this corn we are expending large amounts of oil, an ever dwindling resource in our world.

In addition the US reliance on corn to insert into all of our food has encouraged more farmers to grow the corn. Since the government subsidizes it (and not other varieties of veggies), it is a way for farmers to actually make a living as a farmer. But only US farmers. There is a huge surplus of US grown subsidized corn that continues to flood the world market. Other countries cannot compete. World organizations have declared the subsiding of food on the trade market illegal, but the US continues to subsidize. Good for our multimillion dollar agribusinesses, bad for family farmers around the world. Counties like Brazil are seeking to sue the US for illegal trade practices, but one doubts the affect such suits will have.

So as one soccer mom embarrasses another mom for her lack of knowledge and encourages her to feed HFCS to her kids, there is a lot more at stake than just a pseudo-natural product. The Garden of Eden parallels in the commercial are frightening. But I guess that’s just good marketing – getting us to not just desire, but eat the forbidden fruit. And we just play along…

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Deep Green Conversation

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So I want to highlight the newish Deep Green Conversation site. This is a great place full of resources and conversations about how faith and green living intersect. I’ve enjoyed the thoughts and conversations expressed there so far and look forward to its development. So if you are looking for a place to learn more about caring for creation I recommend you drop by.

So for the self promotion part – I have a piece up on the blog today called Family Outings to the Hazardous Waste Site. (come on, you know you want to know). Enjoy.

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Sitting in an idling car on a hot summer day with a whining toddler and screaming baby was not how I expected to spend my Saturday. We were on our way to a family outing and decided to make a “quick” stop at the area Hazardous Waste drop-off since it happened to be on our way. Yet as we sat in the line of cars that wrapped around the block and crawled along at an aggravatingly slow pace, I wondered more than once if the “safe and proper” disposal of chemicals was really worth the effort. Did I mention the baby was screaming?

You see we had a jug of old gasoline we needed to get rid of. Having drained it from the lawn mower after a long cold winter (the stabilizer having not sustained it through the season), we had a volatile hazardous chemical on our hands and needed to dispose of it. When I checked with our city’s municipal office I was told that the nearby hazardous waste dump had closed down a few years ago. The next closest one, servicing four counties, was an hour away in an area I hardly ever had a reason to visit. And it was only open on Saturday mornings. So the gas sat in my garage. For a long time.

I thought a few times about just getting rid of it the easy way – dumping it down the drain, hiding it in the garbage. I knew that this was what most people did having heard others brag about how they evaded the hassle of making it out to the hazardous waste site. They didn’t care that it was illegal, dangerous, and seriously harmful to the environment – it made their life easy. But I couldn’t justify poisoning the river, tainting the groundwater, and endangering the sanitary workers (not to mention breaking the law). So I got to sit sweltering in my car all Saturday morning awaiting my turn to properly dispose of a few cups of gasoline. With a screaming baby.

But it made me think. Our society just isn’t geared towards sustainable environmentally friendly living. The hassle I faced to avoid direct pollution only represents a part of the problem though. Sure it’s annoying that the hazardous waste drop-off was so far away and had such limited hours (maybe more people would responsibly dispose of things if it was more convenient), but I had to consider that perhaps responsible living should start before it gets to the point that we need to dispose of hazardous chemicals. If my lawn care practices led to this need, perhaps I should think though what exactly I am doing with my lawn.

Like any good suburbanite I take care of my lawn (okay, so don’t do a very good job at it as attested by the armies of invading dandelions, but at least I give it a vague attempt). I have the gas powered lawn mower and I start getting nervous about what the neighbors will think once the grass gets a centimeter or two too high. I feel the social pressure to make my yard look a certain way despite what harm it does to the environment. Living just a few blocks uphill from the river (and having young children) I have reason enough not to dump chemicals on my lawn to help it look good. But all my neighbors do. I watched my neighbor across the street fertilize his yard five times this season. His lawn looks immaculate. Mine’s the one with the dandelions.

But this compulsion to create nice looking chemical lawns (cut with gas guzzling lawn mowers) generally trumps any desire to be environmentally friendly. Some of us might bother to dispose of the old gasoline responsibly, but it is rare for us to rethink what we are doing to the environment by having the standard lawn in the first place. Instead of working with the natural ecosystem we are fighting to conform it to our unnatural preconceptions of what we think it should be. We call what we do “caring for our lawn,” but often our actions are closer to abuse than care. We introduce foreign plants, we strip the soil of nutrients, and we allow vast amounts of run-off (generally laced with chemicals) from our flat, hard lawns. We dominate the land instead of lovingly care for it.

Like I said, we aren’t geared towards environmentally responsible living. Our convenience and our cultural mores all too often stand in the way. Some of those hurdles even seem insurmountable (like the fact that I get fined by the city if I don’t keep my lawn looking a certain way). But as I sat in the car with the screaming baby inching my way to the drop-off site, I had to consider the ultimate cost of those ingrained habits and expectations. And begin to think though my options.

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Faith and Hope

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Last night we finally got around to watching the movie Children of Men. It was one of those movies we had meant to see when it came out, but given that we hardly ever watch movies anymore that never happened. But in my beached whale on couch stage, Netflix has come in quite handy. I thought the movie itself was engaging – a story of survival and possible hope in a post-apocalyptic world. The story of a world that has destroyed itself where no children are born and prejudice and violence reign of course provided good social commentary for where we are headed as a world today.

But what I found almost more interesting was a short documentary feature included on the DVD. The Possibility of Hope explored the themes of the movie and how close they are to our realities today. Commentary for this feature was provided by philosophers like Slavoj Zizek and writers like Naomi Klein. While the title of the piece implied something vaguely hopeful, I found it to be overly pessimistic. As they presented it, the world is so far past the breaking point that there is little chance for recovery. As some of them put it, even if everyone started to care about issues like the environment, poverty and globalization it wouldn’t matter at this point since we are so far gone. Then they claimed that getting everyone to care would be impossible anyway since caring for others just runs against the grain of human nature. Those who think otherwise were mocked for seeking a fairy tale Utopia. Of course the whole thing ended on a rather cheezy note of – “but we all should continue to have children because maybe they can provide some hope.”

Honestly this is one of those attitudes that I encounter often and that I have issues with. No I am not naive enough to believe that every single person on the planet will one day stop being selfish or that salvation/utopia will suddenly appear if they did. But at least within the bounds of my Christian faith, I don’t see compassion as entirely impossible. Perhaps we are inherently selfish creatures (or perhaps that is partially the conditioning of our individualistic culture), but the whole point of our faith is to be transformed. To assume that just means some magic wand takes care of the economic exchange of sin and forgiveness but does nothing to change who we are as people is a cheap and hollow faith in my opinion. If our faith is real then we should have no problem at least trying to put into practice commands like – “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Perhaps outside of religious faith compassion is too hard or a utopian dream, but within the Christian faith it forms the foundation for how we should be interacting with others. So I can’t buy that things can never change or that all hope is lost, not if I still believe in the transforming power of Jesus in people’s lives.

Unfortunately it is often Christians themselves who fight having to care at all. It is within the church that I hear the most prejudice, nationalism, and individualism. Excuses like – “but Jesus said the poor will always be with us so therefore we shouldn’t help them” to “I don’t want to condone sin (or their religion) if I given them aid” are often on the tip of our tongues. Others point blank state that their family’s needs will always come first (needs being a relative term in that sentence). And while the numbers who are anti-environmental are thankfully dwindling, it is still hard to find those who think that they personally need to make sacrifices to care for our world and its inhabitants.

In other words the one place compassion can and should be rampant is just as self-centered as the rest of the world. Even so, I don’t think this is a reflection of the way things have to be. Call it idealism or call it hope, I’m not ready to give up on my faith and the commands of the Bible that easily. I think the church (as in the body of Christ) can be transformed and be moved to love others. I don’t think all hope is lost or that we should just give up and retreat even further into ourselves. I actually do think there is the possibility of hope that things can be better – in both large and small ways. This is the naive utopianism that the documentary was mocking, I know. But it is part of what I’ve discovered I have to believe if I am serious about my faith. What’s the point of it anyway if I’m not following and trusting Jesus?

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Going Green

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One of the unexpected outcomes of having a complicated pregnancy and having to spend a lot of time waiting in doctors’ offices is that I have ample time to read a variety of magazines (at least the varieties that are to be found in the typical OB/GYN office). Well the April issues of all the home and garden, parenting, and cooking magazines just came out. Given that Easter is in March this year, I suppose that they all had to come up with some other trendy April event to focus the issue on. So in honor of Earth Day, I’ve read a good number of “going green” articles recently. And while these articles have been generally informative, they have also been highly amusing.

There is of course the home magazine that interpreted “going green” beyond environmental themes and had a whole section on incorporating green (as in the color) accents in your house. Cute. The fitness magazine that encouraged readers to buy an eco-sports bra – which of course was only “eco” because a tiny portion of the sale would be donated to some earth friendly cause. I’d really love to know how green (if at all) the production of said sports bra really was. My favorite was an article on “Growing Green Kids” that listed as its number one way to accomplish that as watching a nature movie with your kids so that kids will “develop empathy for the natural world.” Okay, I’m not opposed to watching movies but doesn’t that seem just a bit counter-intuitive? (to give the list credit, gardening made it as #4 on the list).

What struck me the most though were the underlying attitudes present in all of the magazines. Going green wasn’t necessarily about caring for the earth or for others – it was about helping you have a better life (which yes I know is kinda the premise behind most of those sorts of magazines, but still). The message was to say, eat organic for your own health. There were even lists provided as to which foods to buy organically and for which ones that “didn’t matter.” But of course the criteria for “didn’t matter” involved solely the amount of toxins you personally might be exposed to – ignoring anything to do with the amount the earth or the farmers might have been exposed to. Then there were the fashion articles on how to dress eco-friendly and still look trendy and cute (as mentioned above the definitions of eco-friendly varied widely). And it seemed like great lengths were taken to somehow fit what people already do into the idea of “going green.” For example do you know that you are eco-friendly if you shop at Walmart? They apparently provide space for plastic bags to be recycled, so therefore they must be eco-friendly (duh). The message I came away with is that I really don’t have to change much to care for the earth and that going green is just another way to feed my selfish tendencies. It was a bit depressing.

I know I really shouldn’t criticize, each magazine also provided some really good information. But some things just really make me wonder.

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The Roots of Social Change

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So I had an interesting conversation last night on the nature of social change. We were lamenting how so much of the injustices in the world are perpetrated and sustained by untouchable major corporations – systems that control our society so subtly that most of us aren’t even aware of their influence on our lives. It is easy to despair in light of such systems – they have the money to control the opinions of the world and the power to sue you into oblivion if you stand up against them.

It was brought up that often for real social change to occur a dramatic and generally violent event must take place. A bomb must be dropped, the nation decimated by war, a terrorist must strike, a president assassinated, a space shuttle explode… Events that shock us enough to make changes. That change may be immediate – slavery will end, a nation gains independence, people relinquish their civil liberties. Or that change may just subtly change the outlook of a generation – we lose our faith in science to dominate the world. Even the “non-violent” revolutions are long drawn out ordeals that capture the attention of the nation/world before they affect change. Gandhi’s hunger strikes or march to the sea, Rosa Parks on the bus, the “I have a Dream” speech in Washington, or even the decades of marches by women seeking the right to vote. Big events capture attention and our collective imaginations. We are then shocked or scared or passionately motivated into change.

But what is so disturbing about most systems of injustice is that they aren’t dramatic. Take the issues with the environment. There was never any big campaign where the world decided to start destroying the environment. No tragic event that left us convinced we need to trash the earth. But even so, our ancestors of just 100-150 years ago would be horrified at the wasteful and disrespectful habits of our disposable culture. So what happened? One answer is to point to the 100+ years of advertising (by the major corporations) bent on convincing us to adapt a lifestyle most people don’t believe in or need. We were told that if we wanted to be sanitary we needed to buy paper towels, if we wanted to appear educated and upper-class we women needed to use disposable sanitary pads, and if we wanted to be modern and not confined to our grandmother’s kitchen we needed to use foil and plastic wrap. And of course we agreed and bought into the lifestyle of “use it once then throw it away” with little regard to what that would do to our world. We didn’t think about where all that trash would go, the forests that would be destroyed and the dioxins produced to make the paper towels, the diseases the sanitary pads would cause, the oil used for the plastics, and the strip mining for the foil. We just choose step by step, product by product to adopt a disposable lifestyle. Today such philosophy is so ingrained in our cultural psyche that most respond “gross” to the idea that the parchment paper wrapping butter originally had to be marketed as “re-usable” because consumers thought it was wasteful and expensive to throw away perfectly good parchment paper.

The messages we have been fed over the last century or so have done more to completely alter the social habits of our world than any drastic or violent event. There is no date one can point to, or singular event to be blamed, or even a particular person who can be held accountable. We let ourselves walk down the very path – often going quite willingly – that many of now are attempting to change. So while some are asking what sort of drastic event will force us to change our wasteful ways – (the melting ice caps, the extinction of polar bears, $6 a gallon gas prices???), others are simply trying to undo slowly the monster that was slowly created. Sure my decision to alter my shopping habits, or to recycle, or reduce my carbon footprint may not make a huge dent in the problem, but I am taking steps toward change and sending subversive messages. I am letting forces and ideas bigger than major corporations desperate for profit no matter the cost shape who I am. And I believe that a culture that has been shaped to believe in the message of destruction has the potential to be shaped into conscientious stewards as well. Sure those of us who care for creation and its inhabitants don’t have the money or the power to reach masses, but that should never stop us from sending out alternative messages. We may be labeled as extreme or ridiculed, but I take heart in the fact that the first public paper cup drinking fountain was attacked by a group of soldiers convinced that it represented a threat to society. Swaying popular opinion takes time, but lies can be unraveled and better choices can be made.

Social change can take many forms. Dramatic events make the history books, but the slow subtle capturing of the cultural imagination may have the most profound long term effects. The real question is – how can we be agents of this sort of change?

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Slow Food and the Kingdom

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The Kingdom of God is like a well-cooked Italian meal.  Now it might seem a bit strange to start off a reflection comparing the Kingdom of God to Italian food, but I recently stumbled upon an encounter with the Kingdom of God in a book about food.  This wasn’t even some esoteric aesthetic encounter with the beauty of the earth or even a divinely inspired recipe for the perfect chocolate cake, but an exploration of food that is ethical and good.  In the foreword to Carlo Petrini’s Slow Food Nation I read Alice Waters’ summary of the themes of the book and the Slow Food movement-

“[Carlo] argues that, at every level, our food supply must meet the three criteria of quality, purity, and justice.  Our food must be buono, pulito, e giusto – words that resonate with more solemnity in Italian than do their literal English counterparts.  Our food should be good, and tasty to eat; it should be clean, produced in ways that are humane and environmentally sound; and the system by which our food is provided must be economically and socially fair to all who labor in it.  Carlo’s great insight is that when we seek out food that meets these criteria, we are no longer mere consumers but co-producers, who are bearing our fair share of the costs of producing good food and creating responsible communities.”

As I read those words, the concept of people being co-producers in creating an alternative and ethical world intrigued me.  Christ proclaimed that the Kingdom of God is among us and gave his followers the task of being the witnesses (or heralds) to the advent of the Kingdom.  Although the Kingdom was already a reality, it took the work of these witnesses to make it concrete to those who had not yet heard.  In a sense they were the co-producers of the Kingdom – proclaiming its existence, spreading it values, and training others in the way of Christ.  Active ongoing work was required to insure the Kingdom visibly reflected the pictures Jesus had so vividly portrayed it as in his parables.

In reading the goals of the Slow Food movement of being co-producers in ensuring that our food is good, clean, and fair I saw a parallel to the Kingdom of God.  This movement stands in opposition to the dominant systems of the world and insists on a better way of producing and eating food.  Bypassing the destructive industries of agriculture and the siren’s lure of fast food represent struggles undertaken only by those with a commitment to this better way and a compassion for others.  The goal is to care for people, to care for the earth, and to care for ourselves.  I think in many ways the Slow Food ideals have captured the ethos of those who serve and witness to the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom of God exists as a radical alternative to the systems of the world, challenging the status quos of oppression and injustice.  It includes the calls to love and to serve and to seek a better way of living that cares for those around us.  The outworkings of these endeavors often echo the goals of the Slow Food movement in our commitment to care for God’s creation, our celebration of the good, our passion to treat people fairly and with dignity and respect, and our desire to bond together in responsible communities that seek to live on earth as it is in heaven.    It is a call to a life that isn’t merely “convenient” or rubber-stamped by the dominant paradigms of the world, but one that takes deliberate effort and committed passion to maintain.  Being witnesses (or co-producers) of the Kingdom requires lifestyle choices that are often seen as odd as the Slow Food desire to cook a sustainable, fair, healthy, authentic and natural (not to mention yummy) Italian meal.  But oddity and difficulty don’t impede the committed.  In seeking God’s Kingdom we are never mere consumers of the way things are, but witnesses proclaiming the good news of a different way.

And so the Kingdom of God is like an Italian meal, but with far greater rewards.

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