When do you know that a traffic light is broken?
There I was, early this morning, sitting third car back from the intersection waiting for the red light to change. We were on the secondary street, in the snow, at that time of day when traffic light intervals tend to generously favor the primary streets. So it was not unusual for the light to be long. And so it was. Very long. Long enough for daydreams to come and go. Long enough for me to start wondering, if I were the first car in line, would I make a move? Long enough for several cars behind me to swing out and run the light.
But just as the third or fourth car broke through, the cross street light changed to yellow, and soon we had our green. So, it wasn't broken after all. Just delayed. Not even delayed - for it was in sync with its own computerized schedule, just out of sync with ours. It just disappointed our anticipated timetable. So we judged it, all of us impatiently; some of us wrongly.
All of which made me wonder, how do we know when other parts of our lives are no longer working? How can we distinguish between our impatience, our unreasonably hurried timetable responding to life's unpredictable unfolding, and life's true brokenness?
Who is responsible, after all, for setting the timing of life's signals? Who has the right to demand that life unfold in prescribed intervals, acceptable to them? How do we learn to match our rhythm with those around us? How do families, neighbors, nations negotiate their differing paces, urgencies, insecurities?
It is somewhat irresistible to insist that all signals follow a standard, established, timed sequence. It is irresistible to hope that we know for certain when a relationship is done; when our job has run its course; when we should seek another path, another way, another lover. But life doesn't work that way.
So we come back to our initial question: how do we know when something is broken? How do we know that it's time to move, that we've waited too long, or moved too soon? And what happens if we are wrong?
The bottom line is, we cannot always know. Sometimes those around us are the first to see the truth. We can listen to them. But then again, they may be the ones who cannot wait out the green.
Sometimes it doesn't matter if the light is working or not. It may still be taking way too long for us, and we must, for our own sake if not also for that of others, move on.
Then there are other times when we can manage the uncertainty. For the good thing about people, as opposed to traffic lights, is that people can talk, and we can speak with them. And maybe, just maybe, an answer will emerge. But even if not, a bit of adventure, a bit of breaking out of line and challenging the status quo is sometimes just what we, and society, needs. Lord knows, our economy and response to the environment need something radically new.
So, there is mystery in wholeness that appears broken. But then again, there is occasional need to indulge our impatience.
May this coming year bring you insights into these mysteries, guidance in your response to life's signals, and true satisfaction in your life's work.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Loss and Love
One of the most deeply compassionate and engaging texts about the place of God, the Temple and community in the lives of the Jewish people is found in a little known rabbinic source, almost 2000 years old.
The text speaks about how a visitor is to approach the Temple mount. As with all sacred places, there is an etiquette of expectation guiding how we are to behave there. Such expectations are not meant to constrain us, but rather to prepare us. We do not go to such places to simply pass through as observers, voyeurs. We go to be transported, to see what lies beyond the quotidian, to see what anchors and prods give meaning to life, and to feel how we can connect to them. We go so that we will learn both who we are, and who we can ultimately, and most fully, become.
Let other texts speak about the laws of sacrifices, who brings what, and how the Temple should be cleaned.
This text speaks to the heart of the visitor:
“These are the ones who, when visiting the Temple in Jerusalem, enter by circling around counter-clockwise (everyone else enters clockwise):
A mourner, an outcast, one whose loved one is ill and one who lost something.
[In meeting someone walking towards them, those walking clockwise inquire:] What is it that causes you to walk that way?
If they answer: I am a mourner, the inquirer responds: May the One who dwells in this house comfort you.
If they answer: I am an outcast, the inquirer responds: May the One who dwells in this house turn their hearts so they may take you back.
To the one whose loved one is sick, they respond: May the One who dwells in this house be merciful to your loved one.
To the one who has lost something, they respond: May the One who dwells in this house cause the one who found it to return it to you.”
(Massekhet Semahot 6:11)
I am captured each time I read this. For each time I wonder, “Which direction am I walking in now? Which of the visitors have I become today?”
Somedays, I am the unremarkable one, moving routinely, perhaps even hurriedly, clockwise through the affairs of my day. But in meeting someone approaching from the other way, I remember that I am blessed, and tasked with asking the question and offering the words of comfort. Other days, I am the one seeking comfort, waiting for someone to notice and offer their kindness and blessing to me, grateful that there is a place to go to with my sorrow. This is not a static text. I must choose who I am every time.
It is easy enough to know if I am a mourner – thankfully, I rarely am. It is harder to know if I have a loved one who is sick. How far in my circle of warmth need someone stand to be called my “loved one?” And do I really have to love the ones close to me that I seek prayers for? Is this a legal category: parents, spouses, siblings, children, etc? Or is this a matter of choice and feeling? Perhaps both?
As for outcast, we hardly know what the word means today, with boundaries and voluntary communities being as pliable as they are. Excommunication has little resonance for us. But what if outcast also means a child who is estranged from a parent; a friend who is shunned by a friend; siblings who no longer speak to one another? There are far too many of us who suffer such alienation to imagine that this category is obsolete.
This text absorbs us. From the moment it opens itself to us, we tumble in – body and soul.
But then, in the midst of such imagining and comforting and healing, we read what seems to be almost petty, and jarring: “To the one who has lost something, they respond: May the One who dwells in this house cause the one who found it to return it to you.”
If we lost something? How can that compare to death, illness, exile? Do we really want to gather the full spiritual energies of our sacred community, and invoke the compassion of the Heavens, simply because someone lost their keys? Their earring? Their sock? Yet it hardly seems possible that coarse materialism could have seeped into this tender, tearing text. How, then, can we understand it? Perhaps in two ways.
So perhaps, rather than demonstrating a misplaced obsession with possessions, this call indicates just the opposite: that households were generally spare; that possessions carried greater value and import; and that objects largely carried the identifiable imprint of their owners, either through craftsmanship or use. And that in a way perhaps even greater than we can know, people's possessions were an extension of and keeper of their identity. To lose a piece of their belongings was akin to losing a piece of their sense of self. It is so even today; perhaps it was even more so in an era of fewer, and thus more precious, belongings.
But perhaps there is even a more profound purpose for this part of the text. Perhaps it is reminding us, ever so gently, that loss is not always material. We can suffer loss of affection, loss of faith (in ourselves, a loved one, God), loss of a job, loss of home, loss of confidence. Placing this unnamed loss among the other three penetrating, fundamental losses, calls forth an awareness of the inevitable shadow that trails us. Life brings loss. Perhaps it is we who experience loss today; it will be the other who suffers tomorrow. There is not a one of us, on an almost daily basis, who can avoid bumping into or experiencing the sad sense of loss. And so there is not one of us who can refrain from offering blessings of return and wholeness on a daily basis, and seek our share of blessings in return.
“Loss is what we begin with...” writes Robert Pogue Harrison in his poetic book Forest: the shadow of civilization. “We may define the loss mythologically, as a fall from the garden of Eden, and Eden, in turn, we may identify with this or that dream of lost plenitude. One way or another, longing is the loss of life, and loss the life of longing….” (p. 231)
Despite all our blessings and moments of celebration, we live in a world of constant loss. There is no way to fight it. We live, therefore, also in constant need of the comforting presence of each other. We have no Temple today, and no one is approaching us from the other direction, demanding that we notice their hidden pain. But all the more reason we should attend well to the possibility of someone’s loss as we wend our way through the chores of our day. We needn’t make a big deal of this. The midrash itself tells us that in our daily rounds, at work, at home, at the gym, we are to ask one simple question, and, if appropriate, offer one single-sentence response. Anything less would be cold. But anything more may potentially be too much.
May the One who dwells among us, and in whose house we all live, bring you the comfort that you seek in the year ahead.
(written in the inaugural light of my wood burning stove, 12/29/09)
The text speaks about how a visitor is to approach the Temple mount. As with all sacred places, there is an etiquette of expectation guiding how we are to behave there. Such expectations are not meant to constrain us, but rather to prepare us. We do not go to such places to simply pass through as observers, voyeurs. We go to be transported, to see what lies beyond the quotidian, to see what anchors and prods give meaning to life, and to feel how we can connect to them. We go so that we will learn both who we are, and who we can ultimately, and most fully, become.
Let other texts speak about the laws of sacrifices, who brings what, and how the Temple should be cleaned.
This text speaks to the heart of the visitor:
“These are the ones who, when visiting the Temple in Jerusalem, enter by circling around counter-clockwise (everyone else enters clockwise):
A mourner, an outcast, one whose loved one is ill and one who lost something.
[In meeting someone walking towards them, those walking clockwise inquire:] What is it that causes you to walk that way?
If they answer: I am a mourner, the inquirer responds: May the One who dwells in this house comfort you.
If they answer: I am an outcast, the inquirer responds: May the One who dwells in this house turn their hearts so they may take you back.
To the one whose loved one is sick, they respond: May the One who dwells in this house be merciful to your loved one.
To the one who has lost something, they respond: May the One who dwells in this house cause the one who found it to return it to you.”
(Massekhet Semahot 6:11)
I am captured each time I read this. For each time I wonder, “Which direction am I walking in now? Which of the visitors have I become today?”
Somedays, I am the unremarkable one, moving routinely, perhaps even hurriedly, clockwise through the affairs of my day. But in meeting someone approaching from the other way, I remember that I am blessed, and tasked with asking the question and offering the words of comfort. Other days, I am the one seeking comfort, waiting for someone to notice and offer their kindness and blessing to me, grateful that there is a place to go to with my sorrow. This is not a static text. I must choose who I am every time.
It is easy enough to know if I am a mourner – thankfully, I rarely am. It is harder to know if I have a loved one who is sick. How far in my circle of warmth need someone stand to be called my “loved one?” And do I really have to love the ones close to me that I seek prayers for? Is this a legal category: parents, spouses, siblings, children, etc? Or is this a matter of choice and feeling? Perhaps both?
As for outcast, we hardly know what the word means today, with boundaries and voluntary communities being as pliable as they are. Excommunication has little resonance for us. But what if outcast also means a child who is estranged from a parent; a friend who is shunned by a friend; siblings who no longer speak to one another? There are far too many of us who suffer such alienation to imagine that this category is obsolete.
This text absorbs us. From the moment it opens itself to us, we tumble in – body and soul.
But then, in the midst of such imagining and comforting and healing, we read what seems to be almost petty, and jarring: “To the one who has lost something, they respond: May the One who dwells in this house cause the one who found it to return it to you.”
If we lost something? How can that compare to death, illness, exile? Do we really want to gather the full spiritual energies of our sacred community, and invoke the compassion of the Heavens, simply because someone lost their keys? Their earring? Their sock? Yet it hardly seems possible that coarse materialism could have seeped into this tender, tearing text. How, then, can we understand it? Perhaps in two ways.
So perhaps, rather than demonstrating a misplaced obsession with possessions, this call indicates just the opposite: that households were generally spare; that possessions carried greater value and import; and that objects largely carried the identifiable imprint of their owners, either through craftsmanship or use. And that in a way perhaps even greater than we can know, people's possessions were an extension of and keeper of their identity. To lose a piece of their belongings was akin to losing a piece of their sense of self. It is so even today; perhaps it was even more so in an era of fewer, and thus more precious, belongings.
But perhaps there is even a more profound purpose for this part of the text. Perhaps it is reminding us, ever so gently, that loss is not always material. We can suffer loss of affection, loss of faith (in ourselves, a loved one, God), loss of a job, loss of home, loss of confidence. Placing this unnamed loss among the other three penetrating, fundamental losses, calls forth an awareness of the inevitable shadow that trails us. Life brings loss. Perhaps it is we who experience loss today; it will be the other who suffers tomorrow. There is not a one of us, on an almost daily basis, who can avoid bumping into or experiencing the sad sense of loss. And so there is not one of us who can refrain from offering blessings of return and wholeness on a daily basis, and seek our share of blessings in return.
“Loss is what we begin with...” writes Robert Pogue Harrison in his poetic book Forest: the shadow of civilization. “We may define the loss mythologically, as a fall from the garden of Eden, and Eden, in turn, we may identify with this or that dream of lost plenitude. One way or another, longing is the loss of life, and loss the life of longing….” (p. 231)
Despite all our blessings and moments of celebration, we live in a world of constant loss. There is no way to fight it. We live, therefore, also in constant need of the comforting presence of each other. We have no Temple today, and no one is approaching us from the other direction, demanding that we notice their hidden pain. But all the more reason we should attend well to the possibility of someone’s loss as we wend our way through the chores of our day. We needn’t make a big deal of this. The midrash itself tells us that in our daily rounds, at work, at home, at the gym, we are to ask one simple question, and, if appropriate, offer one single-sentence response. Anything less would be cold. But anything more may potentially be too much.
May the One who dwells among us, and in whose house we all live, bring you the comfort that you seek in the year ahead.
(written in the inaugural light of my wood burning stove, 12/29/09)
Sunday, December 20, 2009
the lesson in forests
"There is too often deliberate rage and vengefulness at work in the assault on nature and its species, as if one would project onto the natural world the intolerable anxieties of finitude which hold humanity hostage to death." (from Forests: the shadow of civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison)
Forests, published almost 20 years ago, is a little-known, poetic treatise that deserves a much broader audience. It offers a look at the deep emotional relationship humans have with forests, and by extension, the wilds of nature.
Harrison believes that we can understand ourselves better if we look at the way we look at forests. A forest, he argues, is like a mirror. When we look into them we see "a strange reflection of the order to which they remain external."
That is, while forests and woods, by definition, lie beyond the bounds of civilization, their presence out-there evokes, demands, a response to what we believe, and do, in-here. The forest - by persistently remaining outside, mysterious, even dangerous - demands explanation. For a settlement to sit comfortably beside the wildness of the woods, it needs to capture and control, as best it can, the fear that rises from living so close to the wild unknown.
Civilization, in this attempt to contain the wild and fearsome, creates a narrative and symbol of forest, even as it holds it at arm’s length. The forest becomes, as the subtitle of the book says, "the shadow of civilization", the darkness that civilization casts out beyond itself, because of itself, but that it dares not call part of itself.
Harrison's point is compelling, and challenging. What if it is not just greed that compels our gluttonous taking of the earth's precious resources; what if it is not just arrogance that encourages us to create thousand-fold waste for the sake an ounce of usable natural treasure (think of the destruction of whole mountains for the comparative pittance of coal we retrieve); what if it is not just ignorance that allows us to continue to consume beyond the point of replenishment?
What if our harsh behavior toward the resources of the wild is based on something even deeper - our dread of personal extinction?
Then truly religion in general, and Judaism in particular, may play a powerful role in crafting responses. For we offer not a view of darkness and emptiness at the end, but a vision of eternal renewal and hope, for humanity if not for ourselves.
The eternal light that shines above the aron, the ark, in the synagogue is not just about the constancy of the daily sacrifices that were offered in the Temple. Not just about the constancy of God's presence in the midst of the Jewish people. It is also about the enduring promise of life. If, in the iconography of the human imagination, the forest's darkness equals death, the lamp's light equals life.
Perhaps this message of hope, this vision of a vibrant future that is ours to enjoy if we do not mess it up, this impulse of possibilities, can restrain us from trashing the world out of our despair, and an overwhelming sense of impending, irretrievable, loss.
Forests, published almost 20 years ago, is a little-known, poetic treatise that deserves a much broader audience. It offers a look at the deep emotional relationship humans have with forests, and by extension, the wilds of nature.
Harrison believes that we can understand ourselves better if we look at the way we look at forests. A forest, he argues, is like a mirror. When we look into them we see "a strange reflection of the order to which they remain external."
That is, while forests and woods, by definition, lie beyond the bounds of civilization, their presence out-there evokes, demands, a response to what we believe, and do, in-here. The forest - by persistently remaining outside, mysterious, even dangerous - demands explanation. For a settlement to sit comfortably beside the wildness of the woods, it needs to capture and control, as best it can, the fear that rises from living so close to the wild unknown.
Civilization, in this attempt to contain the wild and fearsome, creates a narrative and symbol of forest, even as it holds it at arm’s length. The forest becomes, as the subtitle of the book says, "the shadow of civilization", the darkness that civilization casts out beyond itself, because of itself, but that it dares not call part of itself.
Harrison's point is compelling, and challenging. What if it is not just greed that compels our gluttonous taking of the earth's precious resources; what if it is not just arrogance that encourages us to create thousand-fold waste for the sake an ounce of usable natural treasure (think of the destruction of whole mountains for the comparative pittance of coal we retrieve); what if it is not just ignorance that allows us to continue to consume beyond the point of replenishment?
What if our harsh behavior toward the resources of the wild is based on something even deeper - our dread of personal extinction?
Then truly religion in general, and Judaism in particular, may play a powerful role in crafting responses. For we offer not a view of darkness and emptiness at the end, but a vision of eternal renewal and hope, for humanity if not for ourselves.
The eternal light that shines above the aron, the ark, in the synagogue is not just about the constancy of the daily sacrifices that were offered in the Temple. Not just about the constancy of God's presence in the midst of the Jewish people. It is also about the enduring promise of life. If, in the iconography of the human imagination, the forest's darkness equals death, the lamp's light equals life.
Perhaps this message of hope, this vision of a vibrant future that is ours to enjoy if we do not mess it up, this impulse of possibilities, can restrain us from trashing the world out of our despair, and an overwhelming sense of impending, irretrievable, loss.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Nature as host
Stewardship is the term so many of us use to speak of our relationship with nature. Stewardship allows us to see the world as a precious object gifted to humanity by God and bequeathed to us by our ancestors over the generations. For the time we are here, it is our turn to be the world's earthly guardians. It is our job to protect it, tend to it and care for it. It is our job, when our time is done, to hand a healthy world on to the next generation.
I have always been troubled by this view. For two reasons:
(1) Stewardship leaves undefined the ways in which we are to use the resources of this world, which we must do in order to both survive and thrive. The most common view of stewardship seems to me to be one of conservation and protection. That is, the steward is to make sure that the object guarded is returned exactly as it was received.
But that of course is not how we can be with the world. We rely on the stuff of the world for our every physical and some spiritual needs. Proper guidance on how to use the stuff must be built into the core of this narrative, or else we can go astray. As we have.
Judaism offers some welcome nuances to assist this narrative. There is, for example, in Jewish law the concept of the shomer, the one who is given an object to keep and protect while the owner is away. The shomer, in return for his kindness, has the right to use and benefit from that object, as long as the object is not depleted or unreasonably degraded in the process.
With this construct, we can imagine, then, that the earth is God's possession, given to humankind, with us as shomer. We can then use the earth and its resources as a shomer uses a valuable deposit left in his care. Or, if we are not theologically inclined, we can imagine the earth as the common possession of all humanity, for all time, deposited with us momentarily, which we are bidden to hand on, well-used and well-preserved. shomer,. Or even more, we can see it as the common inheritance of all creatures for all time, whose protection and good use are temporarily put in our hands.
I can see how these can be compelling visions, motivating us to live gently and well on this earth, in covenant with God, all humankind and all creation. Not bad.
But I still am uncomfortable, because...
(2) ... Regardless of how we nuance stewardship, it reverses the true order of things. Nature is not an object placed in the realm of humanity. Rather, humanity is creature placed in the realm of nature. That is, we are guests in this world, and nature is our host. More precisely, from a religious point of view, God is the ultimate host, but nature is God's surrogate. It is through nature that God speaks to humankind, and it is through nature that we experience God. That is why miracles are so prominent in the revelation stories. God is not an idea, or concept, or even feeling that can be immediately, rationally and intellectually perceived. God is first experienced as response to the wonder and awe of physical realm that surrounds us. Nature is the sacred currency, the sacred medium, through which God communicates with us.
God is the ultimate host, while nature is the earthly host. And we are nature's guest.
That alone confers upon us a clear sense of roles and propriety.
(1) As guests, we don't own anything here (this is a status we share with stewards). We are welcomed into this world, and given full access to all parts of the "house". But we cannot confuse access with ownership, or power with entitlement. We did not create this world; we are visiting it. The owner has opened its doors wide to us. We are its explorers, not its exploiters.
(2) As guests, we must be respectful of boundaries. It is not right for us to go rifling through nature's storage closets, upending dressers, dumping huge mounds of
debris and refuse on the floor. It is not right for us to start dismantling the floorboards and the furniture, the picture-frames and doorposts, particularly for some immediate, short-term desire. Some things, especially those that compromise the integrity of the house, are beyond our rights.
(3) As guests, we should use only what is renewable. There were guests here before us, and there will be guests here after us. Just as we only have access to those things the previous guests were gracious enough to leave behind, so we must be gracious and leave the full measure of what we find to those yet to come. It is not our role to diminish their earthly options.
(4) As guests, while we are not permitted to diminish the home of our host, we can enhance it. It is proper for a guest, in some sort of grateful remuneration, to bring a gift to the host. Why else would a host invite a guest if not for some benefit in return? There are so many possibilities for gifts. We can bring the stories we tell about the ways of creation and the awesomeness of nature (think of the last chapters of Job or Psalm 104). We can uncover the secrets of antibiotics, bioluminescence, photosynthesis, how the gecko walks on ceilings. We can deepen our appreciation of the miracle of life through better understanding it. And through bio-mimicry, using the secrets that 4 billion years of evolution has revealed, we can create a richer, safer, healthier world.
(5) As guests, we should pick up after ourselves. Those who come after us should find the place as hospitable as we did, if not more so. That does not mean we have to be invisible. Quite the contrary. We can, and should, leave our mark. Exhibiting evidence of our stay is most appropriate, as long as that evidence offers wisdom, benefits and blessings, and not harm.
These are some of the rules if we see nature as host. There is one more, harsher, rule, that the Torah reminds us of. The host has the right to throw out an unruly guest. The Bible tells us again and again that if the people Israel live heavily and unjustly in the land of Israel, they will be thrown out, spit out. This image startles. But it is the image we need to keep in mind as we trash the world around us today. For scientists remind us that even if we humans were to drive ourselves into extinction, the earth would ultimately survive.
How would our behavior change if we truly mined this vision of humankind as guest? It is worth pondering, for both parties. For, we might rightly ask, not only how living well as guest enriches our lives, but also, how lonely is the host without the company of a grateful and wise guest?
I have always been troubled by this view. For two reasons:
(1) Stewardship leaves undefined the ways in which we are to use the resources of this world, which we must do in order to both survive and thrive. The most common view of stewardship seems to me to be one of conservation and protection. That is, the steward is to make sure that the object guarded is returned exactly as it was received.
But that of course is not how we can be with the world. We rely on the stuff of the world for our every physical and some spiritual needs. Proper guidance on how to use the stuff must be built into the core of this narrative, or else we can go astray. As we have.
Judaism offers some welcome nuances to assist this narrative. There is, for example, in Jewish law the concept of the shomer, the one who is given an object to keep and protect while the owner is away. The shomer, in return for his kindness, has the right to use and benefit from that object, as long as the object is not depleted or unreasonably degraded in the process.
With this construct, we can imagine, then, that the earth is God's possession, given to humankind, with us as shomer. We can then use the earth and its resources as a shomer uses a valuable deposit left in his care. Or, if we are not theologically inclined, we can imagine the earth as the common possession of all humanity, for all time, deposited with us momentarily, which we are bidden to hand on, well-used and well-preserved. shomer,. Or even more, we can see it as the common inheritance of all creatures for all time, whose protection and good use are temporarily put in our hands.
I can see how these can be compelling visions, motivating us to live gently and well on this earth, in covenant with God, all humankind and all creation. Not bad.
But I still am uncomfortable, because...
(2) ... Regardless of how we nuance stewardship, it reverses the true order of things. Nature is not an object placed in the realm of humanity. Rather, humanity is creature placed in the realm of nature. That is, we are guests in this world, and nature is our host. More precisely, from a religious point of view, God is the ultimate host, but nature is God's surrogate. It is through nature that God speaks to humankind, and it is through nature that we experience God. That is why miracles are so prominent in the revelation stories. God is not an idea, or concept, or even feeling that can be immediately, rationally and intellectually perceived. God is first experienced as response to the wonder and awe of physical realm that surrounds us. Nature is the sacred currency, the sacred medium, through which God communicates with us.
God is the ultimate host, while nature is the earthly host. And we are nature's guest.
That alone confers upon us a clear sense of roles and propriety.
(1) As guests, we don't own anything here (this is a status we share with stewards). We are welcomed into this world, and given full access to all parts of the "house". But we cannot confuse access with ownership, or power with entitlement. We did not create this world; we are visiting it. The owner has opened its doors wide to us. We are its explorers, not its exploiters.
(2) As guests, we must be respectful of boundaries. It is not right for us to go rifling through nature's storage closets, upending dressers, dumping huge mounds of
debris and refuse on the floor. It is not right for us to start dismantling the floorboards and the furniture, the picture-frames and doorposts, particularly for some immediate, short-term desire. Some things, especially those that compromise the integrity of the house, are beyond our rights.
(3) As guests, we should use only what is renewable. There were guests here before us, and there will be guests here after us. Just as we only have access to those things the previous guests were gracious enough to leave behind, so we must be gracious and leave the full measure of what we find to those yet to come. It is not our role to diminish their earthly options.
(4) As guests, while we are not permitted to diminish the home of our host, we can enhance it. It is proper for a guest, in some sort of grateful remuneration, to bring a gift to the host. Why else would a host invite a guest if not for some benefit in return? There are so many possibilities for gifts. We can bring the stories we tell about the ways of creation and the awesomeness of nature (think of the last chapters of Job or Psalm 104). We can uncover the secrets of antibiotics, bioluminescence, photosynthesis, how the gecko walks on ceilings. We can deepen our appreciation of the miracle of life through better understanding it. And through bio-mimicry, using the secrets that 4 billion years of evolution has revealed, we can create a richer, safer, healthier world.
(5) As guests, we should pick up after ourselves. Those who come after us should find the place as hospitable as we did, if not more so. That does not mean we have to be invisible. Quite the contrary. We can, and should, leave our mark. Exhibiting evidence of our stay is most appropriate, as long as that evidence offers wisdom, benefits and blessings, and not harm.
These are some of the rules if we see nature as host. There is one more, harsher, rule, that the Torah reminds us of. The host has the right to throw out an unruly guest. The Bible tells us again and again that if the people Israel live heavily and unjustly in the land of Israel, they will be thrown out, spit out. This image startles. But it is the image we need to keep in mind as we trash the world around us today. For scientists remind us that even if we humans were to drive ourselves into extinction, the earth would ultimately survive.
How would our behavior change if we truly mined this vision of humankind as guest? It is worth pondering, for both parties. For, we might rightly ask, not only how living well as guest enriches our lives, but also, how lonely is the host without the company of a grateful and wise guest?
Friday, December 11, 2009
Hanukkah thoughts
Tonight is a special Shabbat.
It is the first night of Hanukkah, that desperately needed time of renewal which bolsters our spirits when things appear to be at their darkest.
It is also the first week of the Copenhagen conclave on which we set our all-too shaky hopes that the world will turn from its self-destructive ways and commit to pursuing life lived in harmony and justice within the renewing capacity of earth.
This weekend, around the world, people will hold candlelight vigils to call out this message (organized by www.350.org). Adding our lights, and our voices, to this effort is easy for us to do, for our Hanukkah candles will already be blazing in our windows.
Please dedicate the lighting of your candles both to the incomparable story of the intrepid Maccabees and all who fight for freedom and justice, and to the healing of our over-burdened natural world.
The fight for justice and the fight for sustainability are, after all, intertwined. Naturalists tell us that every species alive today occupies a distinct niche within their ecosystem. There is, for better or worse, no absolute redundancy in nature. If one species has evolved to thrive in one niche, no other species will do so. Each species is unique unto itself. When it is lost, a hole is made in the universe.
As it is in nature, so it is with us. We too each fashion ourselves in response to the place we inhabit in our stretch of the world. The world makes us even as we make the world. It is the unique combination of the various pieces of our personal world that forms who we become. Each people, each culture, each individual, is irreplaceable. It is in such a niche that we develop the gifts and talents that define us, which no one else has in the same abundance and combination. When one person, one people, one culture is lost, a hole is made in the universe.
It is only when we come together, then, in nature and society, joining piece to piece, that we can begin to grasp the vision of this grand puzzle we call life.
It is the first night of Hanukkah, that desperately needed time of renewal which bolsters our spirits when things appear to be at their darkest.
It is also the first week of the Copenhagen conclave on which we set our all-too shaky hopes that the world will turn from its self-destructive ways and commit to pursuing life lived in harmony and justice within the renewing capacity of earth.
This weekend, around the world, people will hold candlelight vigils to call out this message (organized by www.350.org). Adding our lights, and our voices, to this effort is easy for us to do, for our Hanukkah candles will already be blazing in our windows.
Please dedicate the lighting of your candles both to the incomparable story of the intrepid Maccabees and all who fight for freedom and justice, and to the healing of our over-burdened natural world.
The fight for justice and the fight for sustainability are, after all, intertwined. Naturalists tell us that every species alive today occupies a distinct niche within their ecosystem. There is, for better or worse, no absolute redundancy in nature. If one species has evolved to thrive in one niche, no other species will do so. Each species is unique unto itself. When it is lost, a hole is made in the universe.
As it is in nature, so it is with us. We too each fashion ourselves in response to the place we inhabit in our stretch of the world. The world makes us even as we make the world. It is the unique combination of the various pieces of our personal world that forms who we become. Each people, each culture, each individual, is irreplaceable. It is in such a niche that we develop the gifts and talents that define us, which no one else has in the same abundance and combination. When one person, one people, one culture is lost, a hole is made in the universe.
It is only when we come together, then, in nature and society, joining piece to piece, that we can begin to grasp the vision of this grand puzzle we call life.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Thanksgiving musings
I was interviewed last week about the spirituality of housecleaning. While the conversation focused on Passover/Pesah cleaning, and the heightened sense of purpose and satisfaction in (re)creating or (re)capturing order for the holiday, the lessons apply year-round, even if at a less fevered pitch.
I was reminded of this earlier today while on my hands and knees cleaning the kitchen floor after a wonderful holiday weekend of family, visitors and food preparations. The floor was definitely in need of attention, as, so it seemed, was my spirit. The serendipitous combination of the two yielded a welcome insight on cleaning.
Spiritual awareness is a full-body experience. Those who meditate and practice yoga know this. But in that case, the effort is to transcend body, to ignore the body's call for movement, stimulation, responsiveness, claims to attention. That too is a response of sorts to the hegemony of the body.
Those who seek the mountains, the rivers, the sea, the open road also know that the placement of the body, its surroundings and experiences, conjure up certain spiritual responses. We need to preserve nature not just for its physically sustaining properties but for its spiritually sustaining properties. For the ways our bodies connect to the physical world can evoke and inspire powerful spiritual experiences.
Thomas Berry writes: "We have a wonderful idea of God because we have always lived on a planet that is chock-full, every nook and cranny, with marvels and mysteries, dark beauty, happy encounters and splendid landscapes. How could we picture God in our heads as an ever fresh and creative daybreak, as a compassionate father or nurturing mother, as a wonder-counselor if we had never experienced these qualities in the people, land and life around us?
What kind of God would we pray to if we lived on the bleak surface of the moon? We are literally killing off our religious imagination when we destroy the natural world."
Cut to my dirty kitchen floor (not as far a leap from the mountaintop as you might think): cleaning the floor with a mop - to grandly over-state and over-dramatize the issue - has a colonizing, subjugationist, somewhat violent air to it. (Okay, just indulge me on this melodrama just for fun and to help me better make the point.) It is difficult to bond with the floor, appreciate it for being anything more than constantly underfoot, when it places itself everywhere beneath me, conveniently trod on. And more, it disturbingly demands attention to be cleaned by me because it can't take care of itself. So if I wash it from afar, from way up here, keeping a safe distance with a mop, my sense of self and of floor is master and subject.
But that is not how I wash the floor. Rather, I grab a wet rag and get down on my hands and knees, and wipe. This is radically different, more intimate and spiritual experience. First of all, the floor reveals itself in much greater detail from 18 inches than from 5 feet. Its contours, its places that need special attention, are more evident. Its material hints of its connection to the natural world, and thus conjures up an awareness of my reliance on it and its welfare.
But perhaps more, it is the posture of my body, the penitential attitude of being on hands and knees, that conjures up a spiritual and appreciative attitude toward the stuff of our lives in general, and the stuff of my home in particular. Why would we even imagine that tending well to the things that shelter our families, or to the matter that cocoons the work of homes, is not of the same spiritual caliber as planting a tree or being awe-struck at a sunset?
And we cannot overlook the pure satisfaction we can get in seeing the immediate results of our handiwork - our kitchen moving from "not clean" to "clean" because of our few minutes of work. In this world of distant results and deferred gratification, we should take our rewards where and when we can.
Two ritual acts that Jewish women in Italy undertook as their expressions of spiritual engagement (as significant to them as praying in a minyan was to men) were waxing and buffing the pews in the synagogue and making wicks for the candles that lit the building during services. Tending well to the condition of these things, like the condition of things in our homes, sensitizes us to the short tie that connects us to the natural world from which all our stuff comes. How much more could be our delight when we tend well to the natural world outside our windows?
I was reminded of this earlier today while on my hands and knees cleaning the kitchen floor after a wonderful holiday weekend of family, visitors and food preparations. The floor was definitely in need of attention, as, so it seemed, was my spirit. The serendipitous combination of the two yielded a welcome insight on cleaning.
Spiritual awareness is a full-body experience. Those who meditate and practice yoga know this. But in that case, the effort is to transcend body, to ignore the body's call for movement, stimulation, responsiveness, claims to attention. That too is a response of sorts to the hegemony of the body.
Those who seek the mountains, the rivers, the sea, the open road also know that the placement of the body, its surroundings and experiences, conjure up certain spiritual responses. We need to preserve nature not just for its physically sustaining properties but for its spiritually sustaining properties. For the ways our bodies connect to the physical world can evoke and inspire powerful spiritual experiences.
Thomas Berry writes: "We have a wonderful idea of God because we have always lived on a planet that is chock-full, every nook and cranny, with marvels and mysteries, dark beauty, happy encounters and splendid landscapes. How could we picture God in our heads as an ever fresh and creative daybreak, as a compassionate father or nurturing mother, as a wonder-counselor if we had never experienced these qualities in the people, land and life around us?
What kind of God would we pray to if we lived on the bleak surface of the moon? We are literally killing off our religious imagination when we destroy the natural world."
Cut to my dirty kitchen floor (not as far a leap from the mountaintop as you might think): cleaning the floor with a mop - to grandly over-state and over-dramatize the issue - has a colonizing, subjugationist, somewhat violent air to it. (Okay, just indulge me on this melodrama just for fun and to help me better make the point.) It is difficult to bond with the floor, appreciate it for being anything more than constantly underfoot, when it places itself everywhere beneath me, conveniently trod on. And more, it disturbingly demands attention to be cleaned by me because it can't take care of itself. So if I wash it from afar, from way up here, keeping a safe distance with a mop, my sense of self and of floor is master and subject.
But that is not how I wash the floor. Rather, I grab a wet rag and get down on my hands and knees, and wipe. This is radically different, more intimate and spiritual experience. First of all, the floor reveals itself in much greater detail from 18 inches than from 5 feet. Its contours, its places that need special attention, are more evident. Its material hints of its connection to the natural world, and thus conjures up an awareness of my reliance on it and its welfare.
But perhaps more, it is the posture of my body, the penitential attitude of being on hands and knees, that conjures up a spiritual and appreciative attitude toward the stuff of our lives in general, and the stuff of my home in particular. Why would we even imagine that tending well to the things that shelter our families, or to the matter that cocoons the work of homes, is not of the same spiritual caliber as planting a tree or being awe-struck at a sunset?
And we cannot overlook the pure satisfaction we can get in seeing the immediate results of our handiwork - our kitchen moving from "not clean" to "clean" because of our few minutes of work. In this world of distant results and deferred gratification, we should take our rewards where and when we can.
Two ritual acts that Jewish women in Italy undertook as their expressions of spiritual engagement (as significant to them as praying in a minyan was to men) were waxing and buffing the pews in the synagogue and making wicks for the candles that lit the building during services. Tending well to the condition of these things, like the condition of things in our homes, sensitizes us to the short tie that connects us to the natural world from which all our stuff comes. How much more could be our delight when we tend well to the natural world outside our windows?
Friday, November 27, 2009
the call and response of mitzvah
What can the age-old concept of mitzvah mean for us today? Does it possess relevance that can inspire, even ignite, us?
We live in a world which celebrates autonomy, self-determination, and guidance coming from within. Can the concept of mitzvah, which classically is understood as 'commandment', an 'obligation', an urgency coming from without, remain compelling, even central, to our lives?
And how would it be incorporated into our understanding of Judaism and environmentalism?
I wish to argue that not only can the concept of mitzvah be compelling for us today, but that it already is. We need to acknowledge it and name it and bring it to the fore.
Mitzvah, it seems to me, is degraded and flattened when translated as commandment. It becomes static, two-dimensional; it loses context, passion and purpose in such a translation. It becomes something that is thrown down, cold and isolated, a burden to be picked up and attended to.
But I imagine mitzvah to be totally otherwise. I see mitzvah as the choreography, the dance, of call and response; it is the very currency of relationship, of one calling out, seeking a response from the other and the other turning toward, and responding to the one who seeks.
It takes two for mitzvah to be. It begins as a need, a desire, the reaching that comes from the one calling out, extended to the other being called to. Sometimes this calling is directed to a specific audience. Sometimes, it is a broadside, cast out in desperation for anyone to pick up. Either way, mitzvah conjures up calling, need, intimacy, hearing, response.
This is the way we all live our lives, intentionally or not. The world calls out to us at all times and we respond, either by engaging or turning away. Both are responses. The first is the way of mitzvah; the second is not.
Sometimes it is a person, or a community, or even a nation that calls to us. Serving as agents on their own behalf, they put forward their needs, more or less forcefully, and wait expectantly. We either choose to engage, or we disappoint.
But sometimes it is those who have no voice, no agent, no advocate who call to us: the land, the earth, the claims of unborn generations, the hopes and charges of past generations, the vulnerable and powerless. These calls are harder to hear, but they are there. These too make claims on us; these too are potential beginnings of mitzvah. And we respond with our actions, the quotidian and grand behaviors that together comprise the fullness of our lives.
Everyday the world, its possessions and its people, call to us. Everyday we put out our call, to family, to friends, to the world at large: be with us, love us, listen to us, encourage us, teach us, make room for us... We do not expect to be turned away, empty-handed. Tears, loneliness, distress well up if we are. As we expect the world to hear and respond to us, so we are bidden to hear and respond to it.
Mitzvah, then, is about naming and acknowledging this relationship; about being honest about the truth that all life is lived in call and response. It is about the fact that our daily lives are lived on both sides of this coupling, and that our happiness, and the world's health and prosperity, rests on the graciousness or narrowness of our response.
So it makes no sense to ask if mitzvah can be a compelling concept for us today. It already it. The only question is: how well do we tend to it?
We live in a world which celebrates autonomy, self-determination, and guidance coming from within. Can the concept of mitzvah, which classically is understood as 'commandment', an 'obligation', an urgency coming from without, remain compelling, even central, to our lives?
And how would it be incorporated into our understanding of Judaism and environmentalism?
I wish to argue that not only can the concept of mitzvah be compelling for us today, but that it already is. We need to acknowledge it and name it and bring it to the fore.
Mitzvah, it seems to me, is degraded and flattened when translated as commandment. It becomes static, two-dimensional; it loses context, passion and purpose in such a translation. It becomes something that is thrown down, cold and isolated, a burden to be picked up and attended to.
But I imagine mitzvah to be totally otherwise. I see mitzvah as the choreography, the dance, of call and response; it is the very currency of relationship, of one calling out, seeking a response from the other and the other turning toward, and responding to the one who seeks.
It takes two for mitzvah to be. It begins as a need, a desire, the reaching that comes from the one calling out, extended to the other being called to. Sometimes this calling is directed to a specific audience. Sometimes, it is a broadside, cast out in desperation for anyone to pick up. Either way, mitzvah conjures up calling, need, intimacy, hearing, response.
This is the way we all live our lives, intentionally or not. The world calls out to us at all times and we respond, either by engaging or turning away. Both are responses. The first is the way of mitzvah; the second is not.
Sometimes it is a person, or a community, or even a nation that calls to us. Serving as agents on their own behalf, they put forward their needs, more or less forcefully, and wait expectantly. We either choose to engage, or we disappoint.
But sometimes it is those who have no voice, no agent, no advocate who call to us: the land, the earth, the claims of unborn generations, the hopes and charges of past generations, the vulnerable and powerless. These calls are harder to hear, but they are there. These too make claims on us; these too are potential beginnings of mitzvah. And we respond with our actions, the quotidian and grand behaviors that together comprise the fullness of our lives.
Everyday the world, its possessions and its people, call to us. Everyday we put out our call, to family, to friends, to the world at large: be with us, love us, listen to us, encourage us, teach us, make room for us... We do not expect to be turned away, empty-handed. Tears, loneliness, distress well up if we are. As we expect the world to hear and respond to us, so we are bidden to hear and respond to it.
Mitzvah, then, is about naming and acknowledging this relationship; about being honest about the truth that all life is lived in call and response. It is about the fact that our daily lives are lived on both sides of this coupling, and that our happiness, and the world's health and prosperity, rests on the graciousness or narrowness of our response.
So it makes no sense to ask if mitzvah can be a compelling concept for us today. It already it. The only question is: how well do we tend to it?
Sunday, November 22, 2009
sacred currency
If attitude, in large part, determines behavior, and we wish to change our behavior toward the natural world, then we must attend well to our attitude toward it.
(The converse is also true: behavior shapes attitude, that is, what we do shapes what we believe. The two are interdependent; chicken and egg. For now, however, I focus on the attitude as the cause.)
It is not much contested that the western, industrial world sees nature as a commodity, something, gratefully, put here to fill our needs and fulfill our desires. When mined, captured, gathered, contained and pressed into the service of humankind, natural resources become satisfiers - products that satisfy our various needs and appetites. We have no particular affection or connection to them beyond the experience of our using them. They are to be bought and sold, interchanged with other commodities that can also satisfy us. And when we are done with them, we throw them away.
But this commodity attitude is taking us to a dead end. Literally. In a world of limited natural resources but infinite appetite and needs, both spiritual and physical, we cannot afford to squandor the stuff of the earth. Nothing should be indiscriminately and profligately used, and used up, and nothing can be thrown away. As I wrote elsewhere, the very concept of waste is unnatural. It is a human conceit that lies outside the domain and processes of the natural world, treif. Nature knows no waste. Everything returns, recycles, re-engages. There is no "away". There is no "there". When something is finished and used up, it is just the beginning of a new round.
The dispassionate commodity attitude of procurement, production, consumption and disposal does not jibe with the natural world, and indeed is becoming its undoing.
What then should be a contemporary attitude toward the natural world that both honors the ways of the earth and affords the means and vocabulary of contemporary society?
I would like to suggest we find the answer in the phrase: "sacred currency." For several reasons:
1) nature is the "currency" with which God and the Jewish people communicate to each other.
2) currency is a concept readily integrated into the contemporary mind
3) the ethics of managing, investing and growing the value and volume of currency is something we understand
Let me explain each one a bit more.
1) Nature is the "currency" with which God and the Jewish people communicate to each other.
There is the pesky question of how the presence of God - immaterial, infinite, discernable only by a sixth sense and not the five with which we are physically endowed - becomes present to us clod-bound humans. Not only how do we sense God, but how, as it were, can God talk to us, intersect physically with us?
Tanakh in general, and Torah in particular, answer this in a most direct way: through the physical, natural world. Among the many places we see this in Torah is the following one, in which Moses, upon the eve of his death, adjures his precious but feisty people to be faithful to God and the covenant (Deuteronomy 28):
"All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God:
You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.
The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.
You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.
The LORD will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.
The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity — in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground — in the land he swore to your forefathers to give you. The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none."
The blessings, and the communication, between God and the people Israel (and by extension all humanity), are couched in terms of the fertility and productivity of the land, or, in contrast, the failure and impoverishment of the land.
Land, rain, natural resources, become the currency of exchange between God and Israel. God gives us the resources to thrive and we in turn take portions of that abundance to the Temple to give back to God.
To speak of our natural resources as currency instead of commodity, then, re-enchants the physical world for us, evoking the sacred and awesome sense that the physical world held for our ancestors.
2) currency is a concept readily integrated into the contemporary mind
Currency is a shared medium of exchange, a common way for us to meet each others' needs. It assumes movement, fluidity, change. But unlike commodity, it does not expect to be used up or consumed. Modernity understands that things have costs, and that the shapes and constitution of things may change. But fundamentally, value remains, and must not get degraded (or, dare we say, falsely inflated) else the system fails. As with monetary currency, so with natural currency. Only as we know, natural degradation enjoys no quick bailout. As the midrash in Kohelet tells us: "Upon showing Adam around the garden of Eden, God offers a warning: 'Be careful to tend well to this earth. For if you destroy it, there will be no one after you to set it right.'"
3) the ethics of managing, investing and growing the value and volume of currency is something we understand
Currency is not to be squandered but neither is it meant to sit idle. Currency is meant to be used, put to work to improve the lot of humankind. To be used well, it needs to be both protected and worked. That is the charge of the human in Genesis 2, the reason given for why humanity was created: l'ovdah u'l'shomrah, to till and to tend the garden (the earth). Natural resources, like any sacred currency, is to be tilled, worked, invested, so that it can create the value and goods that we need and desire. But at the same time, with the same passion and due diligence, it needs to be protected, cherished and preserved so that it not be wasted or destroyed.
Sacred currency is like a trust fund, money in the bank. To grow and not lose value, it must be invested and minded well. But it must also be guarded against looting, loss and unwise investment. Our task regarding the natural world, as regarding any sacred currency, is to live well with the resources on hand, and invest them well so that both we and our children and our children's children can thrive on its value.
(The converse is also true: behavior shapes attitude, that is, what we do shapes what we believe. The two are interdependent; chicken and egg. For now, however, I focus on the attitude as the cause.)
It is not much contested that the western, industrial world sees nature as a commodity, something, gratefully, put here to fill our needs and fulfill our desires. When mined, captured, gathered, contained and pressed into the service of humankind, natural resources become satisfiers - products that satisfy our various needs and appetites. We have no particular affection or connection to them beyond the experience of our using them. They are to be bought and sold, interchanged with other commodities that can also satisfy us. And when we are done with them, we throw them away.
But this commodity attitude is taking us to a dead end. Literally. In a world of limited natural resources but infinite appetite and needs, both spiritual and physical, we cannot afford to squandor the stuff of the earth. Nothing should be indiscriminately and profligately used, and used up, and nothing can be thrown away. As I wrote elsewhere, the very concept of waste is unnatural. It is a human conceit that lies outside the domain and processes of the natural world, treif. Nature knows no waste. Everything returns, recycles, re-engages. There is no "away". There is no "there". When something is finished and used up, it is just the beginning of a new round.
The dispassionate commodity attitude of procurement, production, consumption and disposal does not jibe with the natural world, and indeed is becoming its undoing.
What then should be a contemporary attitude toward the natural world that both honors the ways of the earth and affords the means and vocabulary of contemporary society?
I would like to suggest we find the answer in the phrase: "sacred currency." For several reasons:
1) nature is the "currency" with which God and the Jewish people communicate to each other.
2) currency is a concept readily integrated into the contemporary mind
3) the ethics of managing, investing and growing the value and volume of currency is something we understand
Let me explain each one a bit more.
1) Nature is the "currency" with which God and the Jewish people communicate to each other.
There is the pesky question of how the presence of God - immaterial, infinite, discernable only by a sixth sense and not the five with which we are physically endowed - becomes present to us clod-bound humans. Not only how do we sense God, but how, as it were, can God talk to us, intersect physically with us?
Tanakh in general, and Torah in particular, answer this in a most direct way: through the physical, natural world. Among the many places we see this in Torah is the following one, in which Moses, upon the eve of his death, adjures his precious but feisty people to be faithful to God and the covenant (Deuteronomy 28):
"All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God:
You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.
The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.
You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.
The LORD will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.
The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity — in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground — in the land he swore to your forefathers to give you. The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none."
The blessings, and the communication, between God and the people Israel (and by extension all humanity), are couched in terms of the fertility and productivity of the land, or, in contrast, the failure and impoverishment of the land.
Land, rain, natural resources, become the currency of exchange between God and Israel. God gives us the resources to thrive and we in turn take portions of that abundance to the Temple to give back to God.
To speak of our natural resources as currency instead of commodity, then, re-enchants the physical world for us, evoking the sacred and awesome sense that the physical world held for our ancestors.
2) currency is a concept readily integrated into the contemporary mind
Currency is a shared medium of exchange, a common way for us to meet each others' needs. It assumes movement, fluidity, change. But unlike commodity, it does not expect to be used up or consumed. Modernity understands that things have costs, and that the shapes and constitution of things may change. But fundamentally, value remains, and must not get degraded (or, dare we say, falsely inflated) else the system fails. As with monetary currency, so with natural currency. Only as we know, natural degradation enjoys no quick bailout. As the midrash in Kohelet tells us: "Upon showing Adam around the garden of Eden, God offers a warning: 'Be careful to tend well to this earth. For if you destroy it, there will be no one after you to set it right.'"
3) the ethics of managing, investing and growing the value and volume of currency is something we understand
Currency is not to be squandered but neither is it meant to sit idle. Currency is meant to be used, put to work to improve the lot of humankind. To be used well, it needs to be both protected and worked. That is the charge of the human in Genesis 2, the reason given for why humanity was created: l'ovdah u'l'shomrah, to till and to tend the garden (the earth). Natural resources, like any sacred currency, is to be tilled, worked, invested, so that it can create the value and goods that we need and desire. But at the same time, with the same passion and due diligence, it needs to be protected, cherished and preserved so that it not be wasted or destroyed.
Sacred currency is like a trust fund, money in the bank. To grow and not lose value, it must be invested and minded well. But it must also be guarded against looting, loss and unwise investment. Our task regarding the natural world, as regarding any sacred currency, is to live well with the resources on hand, and invest them well so that both we and our children and our children's children can thrive on its value.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Generativity and the Jewish covenant
I just finished looking through a book called The Redemptive Self: stories Americans live by, by Dan McAdams. It is an effort to understand a bit of Americana, what makes us tick, through the stories we tell ourselves.
McAdams speaks in one section of the book about Erik Erikson's concept of generativity. While I have not studied Erikson and had not heard this term before, it is somewhat intuitive to the Jewish spirit (once it is explained). In short, generativity is defined as "the concern for and commitment to promoting the well-being and development of future generations." But more than a concept, it is, according to Erikson and McAdams, an altruistic way of framing the meaning of one's life. In the context of the theme of the book, McAdams writes: "When they take stock of their own lives, highly generative American adults tend to narrate them around the theme of redemption." Jews might call it a sacred way of framing our historic narrative. Summed up, that narrative says life is a gift and a challenge. Despite all the pains and troubles, life can get better, and it is up to us make it so.
Our sacred narrative speaks of generativity in at least two ways: (1)dor va'dor, for all generations, and (2) our inter-generational covenant at Sinai and renewed on the eastern shore of the Jordan River.
(1) The very way we refer to ourselves and God, the very way we open our central prayer, the Amidah, conjures up this inter-generational tie: our God and God of our ancestors, Abraham (and Sarah), Isaac (and Rebecca), Jacob (and Leah and Rachel). We are the children of Israel. Our covenant with God, the land and each other is made through and across the generations. It is almost impossible to speak in the first person singular as a Jew. We are situated, each of us, in the vast presence of each other.
(2) Deuteronomy 29: 6-14 lays out the covenant that binds one generation to the next:
"You stand this day," Moses calls to the Jewish people, in his final speech before his death, "all of you, before the Lord your God - your tribal heads, your elders and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to waterdrawer - to enter into the covenant of the Lord your God, which the Lord your God is concluding with you this day, with its sanctions; to the end that He may establish you this day as His people and be your God, as He promised you and as He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I make this covenant, with its sanctions, not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day before the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here this day."
We know that our covenant with God is not with us alone. We have inherited it from the earliest days of our ancestors, and we are the transmitters and caretakers of it to our children. But what the poetry of this text teaches us is that the covenant is not to be seen as a holding that passes sequentially, and temporarily, from this generation to the next; but rather that at all times, in all places, all Jews are members of this covenant. Simultaneously. We were, as the midrash says, all present at Sinai. And we all make claims on the covenant today.
This has grand implications for what we do to the earth on our watch. Our children, and those of all others, can make a claim against us if we damage the resources they need to live, for they are co-beneficiaries right now no less than we are.
What if we were to imagine, then, as we make our way through our daily lives, that our unborn grandchildren, as adults, are by our side? What if they were witness to our deeds today, and could see how our deeds affected them tomorrow? And what if they could, at the moment we made our choices, at the moment of our actions, show us the impact of our deeds, and how they judge us? In their presence, looking into their eyes, how would we choose to act now?
McAdams speaks in one section of the book about Erik Erikson's concept of generativity. While I have not studied Erikson and had not heard this term before, it is somewhat intuitive to the Jewish spirit (once it is explained). In short, generativity is defined as "the concern for and commitment to promoting the well-being and development of future generations." But more than a concept, it is, according to Erikson and McAdams, an altruistic way of framing the meaning of one's life. In the context of the theme of the book, McAdams writes: "When they take stock of their own lives, highly generative American adults tend to narrate them around the theme of redemption." Jews might call it a sacred way of framing our historic narrative. Summed up, that narrative says life is a gift and a challenge. Despite all the pains and troubles, life can get better, and it is up to us make it so.
Our sacred narrative speaks of generativity in at least two ways: (1)dor va'dor, for all generations, and (2) our inter-generational covenant at Sinai and renewed on the eastern shore of the Jordan River.
(1) The very way we refer to ourselves and God, the very way we open our central prayer, the Amidah, conjures up this inter-generational tie: our God and God of our ancestors, Abraham (and Sarah), Isaac (and Rebecca), Jacob (and Leah and Rachel). We are the children of Israel. Our covenant with God, the land and each other is made through and across the generations. It is almost impossible to speak in the first person singular as a Jew. We are situated, each of us, in the vast presence of each other.
(2) Deuteronomy 29: 6-14 lays out the covenant that binds one generation to the next:
"You stand this day," Moses calls to the Jewish people, in his final speech before his death, "all of you, before the Lord your God - your tribal heads, your elders and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to waterdrawer - to enter into the covenant of the Lord your God, which the Lord your God is concluding with you this day, with its sanctions; to the end that He may establish you this day as His people and be your God, as He promised you and as He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I make this covenant, with its sanctions, not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day before the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here this day."
We know that our covenant with God is not with us alone. We have inherited it from the earliest days of our ancestors, and we are the transmitters and caretakers of it to our children. But what the poetry of this text teaches us is that the covenant is not to be seen as a holding that passes sequentially, and temporarily, from this generation to the next; but rather that at all times, in all places, all Jews are members of this covenant. Simultaneously. We were, as the midrash says, all present at Sinai. And we all make claims on the covenant today.
This has grand implications for what we do to the earth on our watch. Our children, and those of all others, can make a claim against us if we damage the resources they need to live, for they are co-beneficiaries right now no less than we are.
What if we were to imagine, then, as we make our way through our daily lives, that our unborn grandchildren, as adults, are by our side? What if they were witness to our deeds today, and could see how our deeds affected them tomorrow? And what if they could, at the moment we made our choices, at the moment of our actions, show us the impact of our deeds, and how they judge us? In their presence, looking into their eyes, how would we choose to act now?
Sunday, November 8, 2009
More thoughts on Sova (enoughness)
I am almost finished reading Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food, and if you filter out his occasionally pedantic and patronizing attitude, the book is a worthwhile read. Its title really is a summary of his thesis: that what we eat today is not so much food (by which he means the stuff that grows and is naturally produced) but rather the pulled-apart, reduced, processed, fortified and reconstituted stuff that we eat in the place of food. He is encouraging us to eat more food, the kind you get from the farmer's market, the kind your grandparents and great-grandparents recognized.
The history of the move from food to foodstuff, from food embedded in folkways to food as a nutrition-delivery system, is fascinating. Explaining that is a large portion of his book. But I want to focus here on three take-aways that I found compelling.
The first is the exploration of the question: How do Americans decide when to stop eating? That is, at what point do we say, I have had enough. To set the stage for the answer, first consider how the French respond: "When I am full." Reasonable enough. But the fact is that we Americans often gobble down our food faster than our bodies can process our fullness. Which means that our sated signal is delayed. We are often full well before we feel full. So we keep eating.
At any rate, "When I am full" is not the answer we give. How, then, do we decide when to stop eating? "When my plate is empty", we answer, or "When we run out of food." That is, while the French use internal sensors or markers to determine satiety (sova), Americans use external sensors.
It occurred to me that if, regarding the most personal, physical and individualized matter of appetite, ie, hunger and fullness, we rely on external signals of sova, then of course we are likely to use external sensors for those most public aspects of appetite, ie, conspicuous possession and consumption of goods. That has enormous implications for those of us who seek to build a society based on the spiritual ethic of sova, enoughness.
We need to ask: what are those sensors, regarding physical, economic and spiritual hunger, that let us know that we are satisfied? What signals, what sense of fullness do we use, and which ones would be best for us to use? The answer to this question can unlock the door to a new, just and vibrant economy, one that fulfills our physical and spiritual needs, assuring the fullness of each and the well-being of all. I will tackle this question in a future blog.
But let me continue to share the two other main take-aways I found in Pollan's book:
Put simply he suggests the following: cook more and eat meals (sitting at a table that is set, preferably with others). Which is to say, the ways our foods are prepared and eaten are as important to our health as the food itself.
Food satisfaction is only partly fulfilled by the taste, nutrients and calories we consume. Food consumption is a cycle of preparation (planning, buying, patchke-ing,cooking); eating (hopefully with companionship, which itself is a word that means sharing bread); and post-prandial moments (sitting, chatting, resting, cleaning up). All this combines to shape our responses to food. When we deprive ourselves of most of the components of this system, the burden of food pleasure falls upon the food itself, partly the taste (augmented these days by fats and sugars) and largely the volume.
When we cook, we tend to use and make healthier, less-processed food. And we tend to eat more sensibly.
Even more, when we eat at a meal, we tend to eat more slowly, more mindfully, and less, all the while feeling more satisfied. Food at meals tends to satisfy more than our nutritional needs, although it may also do that better than grazing or snacking all day.
Essentially, what Pollan is saying is that food is a system, both in the way it delivers its nutrients and nourishment, and in the way it feeds our spirit.
Recalibrating our approach to food to return to and accommodate these systems will be good for our bodies, our spirits and the environment. Seems irresistible.
But there is the matter of time. Making time to make food and to eat food, together at a meal, will take a small revolution. That, then, is next our job.
The history of the move from food to foodstuff, from food embedded in folkways to food as a nutrition-delivery system, is fascinating. Explaining that is a large portion of his book. But I want to focus here on three take-aways that I found compelling.
The first is the exploration of the question: How do Americans decide when to stop eating? That is, at what point do we say, I have had enough. To set the stage for the answer, first consider how the French respond: "When I am full." Reasonable enough. But the fact is that we Americans often gobble down our food faster than our bodies can process our fullness. Which means that our sated signal is delayed. We are often full well before we feel full. So we keep eating.
At any rate, "When I am full" is not the answer we give. How, then, do we decide when to stop eating? "When my plate is empty", we answer, or "When we run out of food." That is, while the French use internal sensors or markers to determine satiety (sova), Americans use external sensors.
It occurred to me that if, regarding the most personal, physical and individualized matter of appetite, ie, hunger and fullness, we rely on external signals of sova, then of course we are likely to use external sensors for those most public aspects of appetite, ie, conspicuous possession and consumption of goods. That has enormous implications for those of us who seek to build a society based on the spiritual ethic of sova, enoughness.
We need to ask: what are those sensors, regarding physical, economic and spiritual hunger, that let us know that we are satisfied? What signals, what sense of fullness do we use, and which ones would be best for us to use? The answer to this question can unlock the door to a new, just and vibrant economy, one that fulfills our physical and spiritual needs, assuring the fullness of each and the well-being of all. I will tackle this question in a future blog.
But let me continue to share the two other main take-aways I found in Pollan's book:
Put simply he suggests the following: cook more and eat meals (sitting at a table that is set, preferably with others). Which is to say, the ways our foods are prepared and eaten are as important to our health as the food itself.
Food satisfaction is only partly fulfilled by the taste, nutrients and calories we consume. Food consumption is a cycle of preparation (planning, buying, patchke-ing,cooking); eating (hopefully with companionship, which itself is a word that means sharing bread); and post-prandial moments (sitting, chatting, resting, cleaning up). All this combines to shape our responses to food. When we deprive ourselves of most of the components of this system, the burden of food pleasure falls upon the food itself, partly the taste (augmented these days by fats and sugars) and largely the volume.
When we cook, we tend to use and make healthier, less-processed food. And we tend to eat more sensibly.
Even more, when we eat at a meal, we tend to eat more slowly, more mindfully, and less, all the while feeling more satisfied. Food at meals tends to satisfy more than our nutritional needs, although it may also do that better than grazing or snacking all day.
Essentially, what Pollan is saying is that food is a system, both in the way it delivers its nutrients and nourishment, and in the way it feeds our spirit.
Recalibrating our approach to food to return to and accommodate these systems will be good for our bodies, our spirits and the environment. Seems irresistible.
But there is the matter of time. Making time to make food and to eat food, together at a meal, will take a small revolution. That, then, is next our job.
Friday, October 30, 2009
How to read the recent polls
Over the past week, the Pew Research Center published studies that indicated a decline among the public in their general concern about the environment. For example, "The survey found 57% saying there is "solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades." In April 2008, 71% said there was solid evidence of global warming, and in 2006 and 2007, 77% expressed this view."
As a follow-up, Pew published attempts at helping us understand how and why that is. Check out the link on this blog to see what they say.
Bottom line, it seems that many of us are distracted by more immediate financial concerns. But we still believe that important remediation and prevention actions need to be taken. 83% of the public are still saying that stricter laws and regulations are needed to protect the environment.
Which makes the religious community's voice all the more important. We must continue to make the case that the earth is in need of healing, and that we need to realign our economic, manufacturing and consumption patterns to match the natural carrying capacity of the earth's systems.
As a follow-up, Pew published attempts at helping us understand how and why that is. Check out the link on this blog to see what they say.
Bottom line, it seems that many of us are distracted by more immediate financial concerns. But we still believe that important remediation and prevention actions need to be taken. 83% of the public are still saying that stricter laws and regulations are needed to protect the environment.
Which makes the religious community's voice all the more important. We must continue to make the case that the earth is in need of healing, and that we need to realign our economic, manufacturing and consumption patterns to match the natural carrying capacity of the earth's systems.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
buying fast update 3
from my co-conspirator:
September
I didn’t buy anything new in September – not even anything new/old from the Consignment shop. I turn inward during this time of year, reflecting more on my inner life than on external appearances. I push things around in my head, evaluate the past, discard that which is unhealthy and unhelpful and arrange and plan for an emotional and spiritual future. Coincidentally, while engaged in this Tishrei exercise, I also re arranged my closet. I packed away the summer shirts which had become too flimsy, in favor of the sturdier more substantial winter turtlenecks and wool jackets. Here too, I arranged and discarded. What surprised me most during this enterprise, was my feeling of gratitude – gratitude that I had the time and space to unpack, gratitude that I did not have to worry about warm clothing and a warm home. I am blessed with both. I spent September arranging what I needed in order to move forward. It was a good month.
NBC again: As for me, I fell off the wagon a bit.
I tend to have a "uniform" that I wear each year, each season. Often, they are the same from year to year. But the problem is that I wear the clothes to tatters. Literally, my shoes have a hole in the toe; my pants have a small tear in the fabric. Not in the seam, in the fabric from being over-worn. So, I will have to retire the shoes after the cool weather settles in, which it seems to be doing even as I write.
The pants I will try to repair. And I will need to return to my winter wardrobe. But I did the same thing with several pants last winter - just wore them out. So I went to get another pair of black pants in September. My wardrobe is simple. It helps me dress in the morning and the reliability and constancy of it helps me hold together a constant persona amid whatever turmoil or distraction I may be struggling with. (I have taught about the spiritual impact of clothes - our wardrobe, our choices in the morning, our costuming ourselves to gird ourselves for taking on the world each day. I hope to write more about that in the book about Home I have been working on. It should only finally flow!)
The problem was I could not find winter pants that worked. However, I did find two items - a pair of leggings and an oddly designed but amazingly warm, body-hugging knee-length sweater. Together, these make an irresistible outfit to wear around the house when we hope once again to keep the thermostat way down low. I have found that women's sweaters are mostly made for appearance, not functionality or warmth. So when I find one that actually is attractive (I do not like to lounge around in sweatpants and sweatshirt) and irresistibly warm, I am not averse to seeing if it fills a need in my wardrobe. This one did.
We will be fixing our house from water damage this fall - an upcoming necessary expenditure. I am not sure it fits within the rubric of a buying fast violation, but I will mention it in the appropriate upcoming monthly log (for it does help the economy and hurt my pocketbook). At the same time, we will be upgrading our insulation to make our home more fit. As long as we are at it, we determined to get a wood-burning stove - we live in the woods after all and are able to find sufficient fuel all around. I will report that too if that indeed comes to pass. But I mention it now for if the stove is sufficiently efficient and the insulation works well, I may not even need the sweater!!
We will see. That is it for my monthly consumption. More to come next month.
September
I didn’t buy anything new in September – not even anything new/old from the Consignment shop. I turn inward during this time of year, reflecting more on my inner life than on external appearances. I push things around in my head, evaluate the past, discard that which is unhealthy and unhelpful and arrange and plan for an emotional and spiritual future. Coincidentally, while engaged in this Tishrei exercise, I also re arranged my closet. I packed away the summer shirts which had become too flimsy, in favor of the sturdier more substantial winter turtlenecks and wool jackets. Here too, I arranged and discarded. What surprised me most during this enterprise, was my feeling of gratitude – gratitude that I had the time and space to unpack, gratitude that I did not have to worry about warm clothing and a warm home. I am blessed with both. I spent September arranging what I needed in order to move forward. It was a good month.
NBC again: As for me, I fell off the wagon a bit.
I tend to have a "uniform" that I wear each year, each season. Often, they are the same from year to year. But the problem is that I wear the clothes to tatters. Literally, my shoes have a hole in the toe; my pants have a small tear in the fabric. Not in the seam, in the fabric from being over-worn. So, I will have to retire the shoes after the cool weather settles in, which it seems to be doing even as I write.
The pants I will try to repair. And I will need to return to my winter wardrobe. But I did the same thing with several pants last winter - just wore them out. So I went to get another pair of black pants in September. My wardrobe is simple. It helps me dress in the morning and the reliability and constancy of it helps me hold together a constant persona amid whatever turmoil or distraction I may be struggling with. (I have taught about the spiritual impact of clothes - our wardrobe, our choices in the morning, our costuming ourselves to gird ourselves for taking on the world each day. I hope to write more about that in the book about Home I have been working on. It should only finally flow!)
The problem was I could not find winter pants that worked. However, I did find two items - a pair of leggings and an oddly designed but amazingly warm, body-hugging knee-length sweater. Together, these make an irresistible outfit to wear around the house when we hope once again to keep the thermostat way down low. I have found that women's sweaters are mostly made for appearance, not functionality or warmth. So when I find one that actually is attractive (I do not like to lounge around in sweatpants and sweatshirt) and irresistibly warm, I am not averse to seeing if it fills a need in my wardrobe. This one did.
We will be fixing our house from water damage this fall - an upcoming necessary expenditure. I am not sure it fits within the rubric of a buying fast violation, but I will mention it in the appropriate upcoming monthly log (for it does help the economy and hurt my pocketbook). At the same time, we will be upgrading our insulation to make our home more fit. As long as we are at it, we determined to get a wood-burning stove - we live in the woods after all and are able to find sufficient fuel all around. I will report that too if that indeed comes to pass. But I mention it now for if the stove is sufficiently efficient and the insulation works well, I may not even need the sweater!!
We will see. That is it for my monthly consumption. More to come next month.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
if nature had closets
Closets are indispensably useful things. They hide our stuff, holding it well out of sight. They keep the floors and surfaces clear and orderly, even if in their darkened depths they overflow with our unwanted clutter. They call no attention to themselves, do not demand to be tended to or cared for. They disappear into the walls, their doors becoming almost invisible unless we choose to adorn them. If not ill-treated, they generally do not leak their contents into the open air; they tell no tales; they protect our confidences. We can usually expect that when we put something away, it will stay there, inert, secure, static.
Not so with nature. There are no such closets in nature. There is no "there" there; no place we can safely stuff our unwanted detritus and walk away, secure that nature will hold our trash in confidence and safety. Carbon sequestration, burial of spent uranium, municipal landfills, all must be put in "closets" which have the potential to leak; which must be monitored, cared for and tended to, demanding funding just so we can be certain they won't misbehave.
Imagine, then, if we had to live in a house without closets, in the presence of all the stuff we had, new, aborning and used. Nowhere to escape our stuff. That, in a way, is how we live in the world.
Would that change the way we chose to live?
Not so with nature. There are no such closets in nature. There is no "there" there; no place we can safely stuff our unwanted detritus and walk away, secure that nature will hold our trash in confidence and safety. Carbon sequestration, burial of spent uranium, municipal landfills, all must be put in "closets" which have the potential to leak; which must be monitored, cared for and tended to, demanding funding just so we can be certain they won't misbehave.
Imagine, then, if we had to live in a house without closets, in the presence of all the stuff we had, new, aborning and used. Nowhere to escape our stuff. That, in a way, is how we live in the world.
Would that change the way we chose to live?
Friday, October 9, 2009
350.org
On the weekend of October 24 and 25, people the world over will be thinking "350". That is the number of carbon dioxide parts per million in the atmosphere at which contemporary life flourishes, at which humanity and our nourishing world thrive. The world is now hovering around 390 parts per million, and moving up, way out of kilter with the norm and threatening the stability of the climate and the natural cycles as we know them.
So on the last weekend of October, individuals, communities, schools, and congregations the world over will mark the significance of 350 ppm, with an array of programs, reminding us that we need to roll back the amount of carbon dioxide we put into the air, and to do that, we need to change the ways we do things.
That weekend also happens to be Parashat Noah, the Shabbat on which we read the story of Noah. What better serendipity of occurrences could there be? The biblical cautionary tale of the world's near-destruction is a fitting frame for us to mark the need to tend well to our common home. God promised never to destroy the world again through flood. Who would have thought that humans should have been made to sign that covenant as well?
Here in Baltimore several synagogues and community groups will be marking this event in their chosen ways (go to www.350.org to find the events near you).
In addition to these public events, we can reinforce this message of carbon reduction in our own ways, in our own homes, around our own tables. To be effective, the legacy and impact of this weekend must carry over into our daily behaviors, guiding our choices, mundane and sublime. Here are some ideas about how we can begin do that.
1) Gather together and read the story of Noah out loud (Genesis 6-8). While Noah is depicted as a lonely hero in the Torah, one midrash presents a different take:
“When Noah came out of the ark, he opened his eyes and saw the whole world completely destroyed. He began crying for the world and said, God, how could you have done this? ... God replied, Oh Noah. when I told you I would destroy the entire world, I lingered and delayed, so that you would speak on its behalf. But when you knew you would be safe in the ark, you were content. You thought of no one but yourself and your family. And now you complain? Then Noah knew that he had sinned.”
We now are like Noah before the flood. What can we personally do to avoid the tragedy of indifference?
2) At the end of the Noah story, God pledges to always care for the earth (Genesis 8:22): "So long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease". Perhaps we can read this promise as follows: as long as humans allow a healthy earth to endure, God will roll out the pattern of the seasons, a predictable climate and an earth that annually provides for our needs.
Even as the Torah has God pledge, so should we. Craft your own pledge, and identify 2 or 3 specific commitments you too will undertake over this next year to protect this precious home of ours.
3) The number 350 equals the word: keren, or horn, or principal (as in stock or funds). If you have a shofar, a horn, blow it on Sunday and say a few words about your connection to the earth. Give to an organization that works to protect the earth, the principal stock that supports us all.
4) Learn one new environmental fact or go to one environmental website every day for the next 350 days.
5) Set an energy reduction goal for yourself or your household that you can achieve over the next 350 days. (Conserving water; driving less; line drying your clothes; unplugging your second refrigerator; adjusting your thermostats; turning lights out; etc.)
6) Volunteer 350 minutes over the course of the year at a community garden, environmental organization, or greening your own yard.
7) Check out the 350.org website for additional ideas and a sense of the scope of this world-wide, grass-roots program.
Thank you!
So on the last weekend of October, individuals, communities, schools, and congregations the world over will mark the significance of 350 ppm, with an array of programs, reminding us that we need to roll back the amount of carbon dioxide we put into the air, and to do that, we need to change the ways we do things.
That weekend also happens to be Parashat Noah, the Shabbat on which we read the story of Noah. What better serendipity of occurrences could there be? The biblical cautionary tale of the world's near-destruction is a fitting frame for us to mark the need to tend well to our common home. God promised never to destroy the world again through flood. Who would have thought that humans should have been made to sign that covenant as well?
Here in Baltimore several synagogues and community groups will be marking this event in their chosen ways (go to www.350.org to find the events near you).
In addition to these public events, we can reinforce this message of carbon reduction in our own ways, in our own homes, around our own tables. To be effective, the legacy and impact of this weekend must carry over into our daily behaviors, guiding our choices, mundane and sublime. Here are some ideas about how we can begin do that.
1) Gather together and read the story of Noah out loud (Genesis 6-8). While Noah is depicted as a lonely hero in the Torah, one midrash presents a different take:
“When Noah came out of the ark, he opened his eyes and saw the whole world completely destroyed. He began crying for the world and said, God, how could you have done this? ... God replied, Oh Noah. when I told you I would destroy the entire world, I lingered and delayed, so that you would speak on its behalf. But when you knew you would be safe in the ark, you were content. You thought of no one but yourself and your family. And now you complain? Then Noah knew that he had sinned.”
We now are like Noah before the flood. What can we personally do to avoid the tragedy of indifference?
2) At the end of the Noah story, God pledges to always care for the earth (Genesis 8:22): "So long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease". Perhaps we can read this promise as follows: as long as humans allow a healthy earth to endure, God will roll out the pattern of the seasons, a predictable climate and an earth that annually provides for our needs.
Even as the Torah has God pledge, so should we. Craft your own pledge, and identify 2 or 3 specific commitments you too will undertake over this next year to protect this precious home of ours.
3) The number 350 equals the word: keren, or horn, or principal (as in stock or funds). If you have a shofar, a horn, blow it on Sunday and say a few words about your connection to the earth. Give to an organization that works to protect the earth, the principal stock that supports us all.
4) Learn one new environmental fact or go to one environmental website every day for the next 350 days.
5) Set an energy reduction goal for yourself or your household that you can achieve over the next 350 days. (Conserving water; driving less; line drying your clothes; unplugging your second refrigerator; adjusting your thermostats; turning lights out; etc.)
6) Volunteer 350 minutes over the course of the year at a community garden, environmental organization, or greening your own yard.
7) Check out the 350.org website for additional ideas and a sense of the scope of this world-wide, grass-roots program.
Thank you!
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
am ha'aretz
The Associated's Center for Funds and Foundations (CFF) held a briefing today on the state of environmental activism and programming in the Baltimore Jewish community. It was a remarkable moment, demonstrating that greening is being woven into both our community's deeds and identity. While we still have miles to go, this was a great boost. Many thanks go out to Mark Smolarz (CFO and COO of the Associated), Nancy Kutler and Lauren Klein of the CFF, as well as Ben Greenwald (past-chair of the Associated) and Ben Gershowitz (VP of Facilities), and many others who made this event possible. Over 45 people, both funders and staff, attended.
The panel of presenters included Ben Greenwald, who spoke about our desire to fund a Sustainability Officer to assist the community in its energy efficiency and conservation efforts; expand our rotating loan fund (more on this in a few weeks when we get our protocols in place); and the desired creation of a general Green Fund to support local greening projects of all sorts.
Jakir Manela, the farmer and creator of Kayam Farm, spoke about their successes and, as always, wowed and charmed the gathering.
Mollye Lipton, a senior at the Cardin School and a founder of JEYO (the Jewish Enviromental Youth Organization) spoke of their projects and desired goals.
I spoke briefly about BJEN.
The goal of the gathering was to find synergies and connections between funders and current and desired programs and initiatives. Time will tell how successful this introduction has been.
I also had the honor of delivering the devar torah to this august gathering. I attach it here:
"Yesterday [Yom Kippur], we spent a lot of time thinking about ourselves, even more to the point, thinking about our deeds: deeds of commission and deeds of omission; things we did that we shouldn’t have done and things we avoided that we should have done.
Yesterday was a reminder, an urging, for us to focus on the impact of our deeds.
Impulses are nice, intentions are good, desires are powerful, but it is the DEED that finally matters.
For after all is said and done, there is one question that we will all be held accountable for: Did we, or did we not, do the right thing?
For 100 years or so, we have built an astonishingly vibrant economy utilizing the very best that nature and human ingenuity have to offer. We have taken what we wanted, used it up and tossed it aside, turned around and gotten some more.
Who knew, who believed, that we would run out of stuff so soon? Who knew that the air and sea could hold only so much trash? Who believed that our disposable, fossil-fueled society could so readily and quickly degrade our very large earth?
Who knew that our once innocent affluent lifestyle would put in peril the well-being of every creature on this earth, not only 100 years from now, or 50 years from now, but frighteningly right now?
Once, we could claim we did not know. But now we can't, for we do know. So now we must act. None of us wishes to impoverish or imperil our children and our children’s children through our own deeds of affluence, or indifference.
And while we may be rusty at this greening effort, living in harmony with the cycles and resources of the earth is not foreign to us. We lived it 3000 years ago. We were born into it as a people. We read about it in our Torah and speak of it in our daily prayers. It is time we reclaimed a name that we jettisoned and demeaned for the past 2000 years: the title of Am Ha’aretz, the people of the land.
Our tradition is of the land, we must return to it and preserve it.
There is a midrash about the story of Noah – and his failure to act to preserve his world. “When Noah came out of the ark, he opened his eyes and saw the whole world completely destroyed. He began crying for the world and said, God, how could you have done this? ... God replied, Oh Noah. when I told you I would destroy the entire world, I lingered and delayed, so that you would speak on its behalf. But when you knew you would be safe in the ark, you were content. You thought of no one but you and your family. And now you complain? Then Noah knew that he had sinned.” (Midrash Tankhuma, Parashat Noach).
We too are being warned. We too are being asked to cry out, and act. We have so little time and so much to do. We dare not keep silent. And we dare not keep still.
The panel of presenters included Ben Greenwald, who spoke about our desire to fund a Sustainability Officer to assist the community in its energy efficiency and conservation efforts; expand our rotating loan fund (more on this in a few weeks when we get our protocols in place); and the desired creation of a general Green Fund to support local greening projects of all sorts.
Jakir Manela, the farmer and creator of Kayam Farm, spoke about their successes and, as always, wowed and charmed the gathering.
Mollye Lipton, a senior at the Cardin School and a founder of JEYO (the Jewish Enviromental Youth Organization) spoke of their projects and desired goals.
I spoke briefly about BJEN.
The goal of the gathering was to find synergies and connections between funders and current and desired programs and initiatives. Time will tell how successful this introduction has been.
I also had the honor of delivering the devar torah to this august gathering. I attach it here:
"Yesterday [Yom Kippur], we spent a lot of time thinking about ourselves, even more to the point, thinking about our deeds: deeds of commission and deeds of omission; things we did that we shouldn’t have done and things we avoided that we should have done.
Yesterday was a reminder, an urging, for us to focus on the impact of our deeds.
Impulses are nice, intentions are good, desires are powerful, but it is the DEED that finally matters.
For after all is said and done, there is one question that we will all be held accountable for: Did we, or did we not, do the right thing?
For 100 years or so, we have built an astonishingly vibrant economy utilizing the very best that nature and human ingenuity have to offer. We have taken what we wanted, used it up and tossed it aside, turned around and gotten some more.
Who knew, who believed, that we would run out of stuff so soon? Who knew that the air and sea could hold only so much trash? Who believed that our disposable, fossil-fueled society could so readily and quickly degrade our very large earth?
Who knew that our once innocent affluent lifestyle would put in peril the well-being of every creature on this earth, not only 100 years from now, or 50 years from now, but frighteningly right now?
Once, we could claim we did not know. But now we can't, for we do know. So now we must act. None of us wishes to impoverish or imperil our children and our children’s children through our own deeds of affluence, or indifference.
And while we may be rusty at this greening effort, living in harmony with the cycles and resources of the earth is not foreign to us. We lived it 3000 years ago. We were born into it as a people. We read about it in our Torah and speak of it in our daily prayers. It is time we reclaimed a name that we jettisoned and demeaned for the past 2000 years: the title of Am Ha’aretz, the people of the land.
Our tradition is of the land, we must return to it and preserve it.
There is a midrash about the story of Noah – and his failure to act to preserve his world. “When Noah came out of the ark, he opened his eyes and saw the whole world completely destroyed. He began crying for the world and said, God, how could you have done this? ... God replied, Oh Noah. when I told you I would destroy the entire world, I lingered and delayed, so that you would speak on its behalf. But when you knew you would be safe in the ark, you were content. You thought of no one but you and your family. And now you complain? Then Noah knew that he had sinned.” (Midrash Tankhuma, Parashat Noach).
We too are being warned. We too are being asked to cry out, and act. We have so little time and so much to do. We dare not keep silent. And we dare not keep still.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
The Principle of the Pieces
Years ago, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner published his theory of personal puzzle pieces. He posited that we each come into this world with our own jigsaw puzzle. But the set is incomplete, in two ways: it has both missing pieces and extra pieces. Each of us were born with extra pieces that belong to others, and missing pieces that somehow got bundled in someone else’s puzzle.
The thing is, we don’t, we can’t, fully know what these pieces are. We don’t know who really owns our extra pieces, nor even what those pieces are. And we do not always know what pieces we are missing, or who is in possession of them.
One of the grand adventures of life is found in the exchange, almost always accidental. Sometimes it happens in the most casual and fleeting of ways. I remember once I was in a small store on a country road in Vermont many summers ago. I had stopped for some snack and a drink. I cannot remember what business I had up there, where I was going or what my plans were, but I do remember that I was in one of those throes of young adulthood (I was about 20 at the time), wondering both about the grand mysteries of all life and worrying about the particular mysteries of my own. I would not say my spirit was in turmoil, but neither was it in repose.
I roamed the narrow aisles of this picturesque store, gathered my snack and drink, and went to check out. Remarkably, despite the remoteness of this place, there was a short line at the cash register. There were two people waiting, both with their backs to me. The person at the front of the line was moving with dispatch. I could not have stood in line more than 90 seconds. But in that time, as I moved into the space of the woman in front of me, I was washed over with a wave of peace. It was clearly emanating from this woman. She was short, no taller than I was, and much older. Her hair was gray, cropped in a not-unattractive but efficient manner, the way one cuts one’s hair not because one doesn’t like it but just so as not to be bothered by it. I am not sure I ever really saw her face. But I was overcome by the glow of peace that surrounded her.
It felt to me like an aura, of both a gentle resignation at life’s unfairness and hurts, and unblemished joy in the goodness and blessings that still abound. It was not an innocent, Pollyanna peace, but a deep, hard-earned, battered-edges peace.
Now of course, this whole thing could have been merely a projection, an imagining on my part, I suppose. But you still have to explain why then, why her and that feeling?
Either way, I figure that was a moment of puzzle piece exchange right there – the meaning and power of which I am still trying to figure out.
On the other hand, an exchange of pieces can knock you off your feet. When you meet your bashert (your “intended,” your beloved). Or it could be with a teacher, a coach, an author long gone of a book that touches you.
Much of life’s great joy and wisdom is passed along through these chance encounters.
As Yom Kippur looms, almost upon our door, my mind turns to the mystery of these puzzle pieces. And I began to ruminate on Rabbi Kushner’s powerful and suggestive metaphor, crafting a few “principles” to help us better understand how it works.
1) The exchange of pieces is unearned. Neither giver nor recipient merits this exchange, though both benefit from it. (The one discarding something they cannot use; the other receiving something they need.) These exchanges are not intentional or planful. They just happen. One cannot boast about it or take pride in it. One can only marvel at it.
2) The exchange of pieces is non-reciprocal. That is, most times, the flow is only in one direction, from giver to recipient. This uneven, one-sided aspect is neither good nor bad. It just is. Ideally, over the expanse of space and time, the marketplace of exchange evens things out and we all end up with just the right pieces to complete our puzzle. But any one-way transaction can be full and complete in and of itself. True, when lovers are involved, or teachers, or friends, the exchange is mutual, but that is only one form of exchange, not a necessary form.
3) The exchange of pieces is unconditional. There are no strings, on either side. The one who gives has no additional responsibilities; the recipient can make no claim on them, cannot hold them responsible for the impact of their piece, and cannot require them to even acknowledge their gift. Indeed, the giver may not even know the exchange happened. (I doubt the gray-haired woman knew her affect on me.) Likewise, the giver cannot expect or seek expressions of thanks, for they gained as much in giving up a bit of clutter to them, as the recipient gained in receiving it.
4) The awareness of this exchange can happen either immediately or much later. Sometimes the exchange can be felt in the moment, like a bolt or a salve or a wave of peace. Other times it happens in stealth, and it is only in retrospect that one can look back and say, Ah, that is when it began, that is when it must have happened. I imagine that in fact most exchanges are acknowledged only in delay. Which is why days like Yom Kippur are so valuable, for they clear away the rubble and distractions so that we can find new pieces hidden under our quotidian debris.
5) The exchange of pieces should awaken feelings of gratitude. Not, as we said above, that this gratitude should or even can ever be openly expressed or directed to the source of the piece. But when fully experienced, the exchange of puzzle pieces is a twice-received gift: the value of the piece itself and the gratitude for it. Perhaps this is the glory of the exchange: it loops back on itself, weaving a web of benefit and gratitude securely, enduringly around the recipient.
The introspection that engulfs us on Yom Kippur is lapping at the door, so it is not surprising that these thoughts should spill into my mind at this moment. And they take on an additional resonance and awareness for me when placed in the context of our ailing earth and the resultant impact on those less privileged than we.
Perhaps, then, we need to extend this lovely personal metaphor of puzzle pieces and craft a sixth principle of the exchange: exchanges can happen gobally, at a distance. Without even knowing the names of the recipients, when we conduct our lives in ways that protect the world, we offer pieces of health, sharing, prosperity to others all around the world.
Even more, Rabbi Kushner conjured up pieces that confer only goodness. In this sixth principle, we realize that we can also exchange pieces that are toxic, that some unearned exchanges can harm as well as help.
Bottom line, I imagine, for this Yom Kippur message, is that exchanges happen, both personally and globally, both for good and for ill. And to the best of our ability, in all our transactions, we should exchange pieces of healing and hope, and banish all pieces of pain and destruction.
Gemar Hatimah Tovah – may you inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life.
The thing is, we don’t, we can’t, fully know what these pieces are. We don’t know who really owns our extra pieces, nor even what those pieces are. And we do not always know what pieces we are missing, or who is in possession of them.
One of the grand adventures of life is found in the exchange, almost always accidental. Sometimes it happens in the most casual and fleeting of ways. I remember once I was in a small store on a country road in Vermont many summers ago. I had stopped for some snack and a drink. I cannot remember what business I had up there, where I was going or what my plans were, but I do remember that I was in one of those throes of young adulthood (I was about 20 at the time), wondering both about the grand mysteries of all life and worrying about the particular mysteries of my own. I would not say my spirit was in turmoil, but neither was it in repose.
I roamed the narrow aisles of this picturesque store, gathered my snack and drink, and went to check out. Remarkably, despite the remoteness of this place, there was a short line at the cash register. There were two people waiting, both with their backs to me. The person at the front of the line was moving with dispatch. I could not have stood in line more than 90 seconds. But in that time, as I moved into the space of the woman in front of me, I was washed over with a wave of peace. It was clearly emanating from this woman. She was short, no taller than I was, and much older. Her hair was gray, cropped in a not-unattractive but efficient manner, the way one cuts one’s hair not because one doesn’t like it but just so as not to be bothered by it. I am not sure I ever really saw her face. But I was overcome by the glow of peace that surrounded her.
It felt to me like an aura, of both a gentle resignation at life’s unfairness and hurts, and unblemished joy in the goodness and blessings that still abound. It was not an innocent, Pollyanna peace, but a deep, hard-earned, battered-edges peace.
Now of course, this whole thing could have been merely a projection, an imagining on my part, I suppose. But you still have to explain why then, why her and that feeling?
Either way, I figure that was a moment of puzzle piece exchange right there – the meaning and power of which I am still trying to figure out.
On the other hand, an exchange of pieces can knock you off your feet. When you meet your bashert (your “intended,” your beloved). Or it could be with a teacher, a coach, an author long gone of a book that touches you.
Much of life’s great joy and wisdom is passed along through these chance encounters.
As Yom Kippur looms, almost upon our door, my mind turns to the mystery of these puzzle pieces. And I began to ruminate on Rabbi Kushner’s powerful and suggestive metaphor, crafting a few “principles” to help us better understand how it works.
1) The exchange of pieces is unearned. Neither giver nor recipient merits this exchange, though both benefit from it. (The one discarding something they cannot use; the other receiving something they need.) These exchanges are not intentional or planful. They just happen. One cannot boast about it or take pride in it. One can only marvel at it.
2) The exchange of pieces is non-reciprocal. That is, most times, the flow is only in one direction, from giver to recipient. This uneven, one-sided aspect is neither good nor bad. It just is. Ideally, over the expanse of space and time, the marketplace of exchange evens things out and we all end up with just the right pieces to complete our puzzle. But any one-way transaction can be full and complete in and of itself. True, when lovers are involved, or teachers, or friends, the exchange is mutual, but that is only one form of exchange, not a necessary form.
3) The exchange of pieces is unconditional. There are no strings, on either side. The one who gives has no additional responsibilities; the recipient can make no claim on them, cannot hold them responsible for the impact of their piece, and cannot require them to even acknowledge their gift. Indeed, the giver may not even know the exchange happened. (I doubt the gray-haired woman knew her affect on me.) Likewise, the giver cannot expect or seek expressions of thanks, for they gained as much in giving up a bit of clutter to them, as the recipient gained in receiving it.
4) The awareness of this exchange can happen either immediately or much later. Sometimes the exchange can be felt in the moment, like a bolt or a salve or a wave of peace. Other times it happens in stealth, and it is only in retrospect that one can look back and say, Ah, that is when it began, that is when it must have happened. I imagine that in fact most exchanges are acknowledged only in delay. Which is why days like Yom Kippur are so valuable, for they clear away the rubble and distractions so that we can find new pieces hidden under our quotidian debris.
5) The exchange of pieces should awaken feelings of gratitude. Not, as we said above, that this gratitude should or even can ever be openly expressed or directed to the source of the piece. But when fully experienced, the exchange of puzzle pieces is a twice-received gift: the value of the piece itself and the gratitude for it. Perhaps this is the glory of the exchange: it loops back on itself, weaving a web of benefit and gratitude securely, enduringly around the recipient.
The introspection that engulfs us on Yom Kippur is lapping at the door, so it is not surprising that these thoughts should spill into my mind at this moment. And they take on an additional resonance and awareness for me when placed in the context of our ailing earth and the resultant impact on those less privileged than we.
Perhaps, then, we need to extend this lovely personal metaphor of puzzle pieces and craft a sixth principle of the exchange: exchanges can happen gobally, at a distance. Without even knowing the names of the recipients, when we conduct our lives in ways that protect the world, we offer pieces of health, sharing, prosperity to others all around the world.
Even more, Rabbi Kushner conjured up pieces that confer only goodness. In this sixth principle, we realize that we can also exchange pieces that are toxic, that some unearned exchanges can harm as well as help.
Bottom line, I imagine, for this Yom Kippur message, is that exchanges happen, both personally and globally, both for good and for ill. And to the best of our ability, in all our transactions, we should exchange pieces of healing and hope, and banish all pieces of pain and destruction.
Gemar Hatimah Tovah – may you inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life.
Friday, September 25, 2009
a momentous gathering
Yesterday, I participated in an interreligious gathering at the Episcopal Cathedral of the Incarnation. It was convened on behalf of the Baltimore County/Baltimore City Watershed Agreement, offering religious leaders and activists insights into the goals and challenges facing us as we work toward replenishing and renewing our seriously degraded water-systems.
We were greeted by the Episcopal Bishop, Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, an impressive man who is eager to be known as Maryland's first green Bishop. In his welcoming remarks, he laid out a compelling challenge to us all. He told of a visit to Africa he made a few years ago. Witnessing the devastation of land through what was due in part to climate change as well as the importation of international agri-business practices, the Bishop was asked by a destitute villager: What changes will Americans make in their lifestyles so that we can live?
It is a searing question. How mindful are we that it is not our extraordinary behaviors but our casual, habitual, daily ones that contribute to the troubles the world is in? What changes are we prepared to make to help heal the world? What changes in our manufacturing, distribution, housing and consumption patterns will we fight for so that all people everywhere can live?
The villager's question sounds harsh and condemnatory cast in this way. It sounds as if we are being asked to give up our excessive habits, and sacrifice our wanton and chosen greediness on behalf of the needy. But what if we ask this question another way? What if we asked: if we knew the outcome of our behaviors, would we continue to do them? If we saw the impact that our daily habits have on the environment and the health of others, could we continue as we are? If we got immediate feedback about the harm we were causing by buying this dress instead of that, by driving to that store instead of there, wouldn't we make different choices?
I do not believe we Americans are particularly greedy, nor are we notably mean. I think rather that we are sadly ignorant, illiterate about the way our learned behavior of the late 20th century affects the world and the inhabitants throughout it. We never knew and were never taught. Given the knowledge and the chance, I believe we would work to align our behaviors with our values, which would include protecting the well-being of the earth and all humankind.
Someone suggested that if all our tailpipes vented directly into our cars, we would demand cleaner cars today. I agree. If we did not hide, whisk away or delay seeing the degradation we cause, if we truly knew the impact of our actions, and if we had appropriate alternatives, I believe we would choose to behave differently.
That seems to be our task, then: to learn about the invisible or distant but nonetheless devastating and cumulative impact of behavior; and to demand that industry, the marketplace and government provide alternatives. Sustainability will be achieved not only or even mostly through our personal behavioral changes but by demanding systemic changes throughout our society: how we make things, how we move things, how we design things, how we think of systems (eg, asking not what we do with our waste but how we design production so there is no waste), etc.
What was momentous about this gathering was not just the airing and exploration of this powerful message, but the fact that so many religious folk (almost all non-clergy) determined to convene again, to explore how our various religious communities can come together to make a public pledge to work to health this wounded world. Through this high-profile effort, should it come to be, we hope to elevate sustainability to a high religious priority for all of us. In time, perhaps, it will be as unacceptable for a congregation to pursue unsustainable practices as it is for a congregation to turn away from the needy and destitute.
Kudos to those who organized this gathering - and here's hoping that it changes the religious landscape of our community.
We were greeted by the Episcopal Bishop, Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, an impressive man who is eager to be known as Maryland's first green Bishop. In his welcoming remarks, he laid out a compelling challenge to us all. He told of a visit to Africa he made a few years ago. Witnessing the devastation of land through what was due in part to climate change as well as the importation of international agri-business practices, the Bishop was asked by a destitute villager: What changes will Americans make in their lifestyles so that we can live?
It is a searing question. How mindful are we that it is not our extraordinary behaviors but our casual, habitual, daily ones that contribute to the troubles the world is in? What changes are we prepared to make to help heal the world? What changes in our manufacturing, distribution, housing and consumption patterns will we fight for so that all people everywhere can live?
The villager's question sounds harsh and condemnatory cast in this way. It sounds as if we are being asked to give up our excessive habits, and sacrifice our wanton and chosen greediness on behalf of the needy. But what if we ask this question another way? What if we asked: if we knew the outcome of our behaviors, would we continue to do them? If we saw the impact that our daily habits have on the environment and the health of others, could we continue as we are? If we got immediate feedback about the harm we were causing by buying this dress instead of that, by driving to that store instead of there, wouldn't we make different choices?
I do not believe we Americans are particularly greedy, nor are we notably mean. I think rather that we are sadly ignorant, illiterate about the way our learned behavior of the late 20th century affects the world and the inhabitants throughout it. We never knew and were never taught. Given the knowledge and the chance, I believe we would work to align our behaviors with our values, which would include protecting the well-being of the earth and all humankind.
Someone suggested that if all our tailpipes vented directly into our cars, we would demand cleaner cars today. I agree. If we did not hide, whisk away or delay seeing the degradation we cause, if we truly knew the impact of our actions, and if we had appropriate alternatives, I believe we would choose to behave differently.
That seems to be our task, then: to learn about the invisible or distant but nonetheless devastating and cumulative impact of behavior; and to demand that industry, the marketplace and government provide alternatives. Sustainability will be achieved not only or even mostly through our personal behavioral changes but by demanding systemic changes throughout our society: how we make things, how we move things, how we design things, how we think of systems (eg, asking not what we do with our waste but how we design production so there is no waste), etc.
What was momentous about this gathering was not just the airing and exploration of this powerful message, but the fact that so many religious folk (almost all non-clergy) determined to convene again, to explore how our various religious communities can come together to make a public pledge to work to health this wounded world. Through this high-profile effort, should it come to be, we hope to elevate sustainability to a high religious priority for all of us. In time, perhaps, it will be as unacceptable for a congregation to pursue unsustainable practices as it is for a congregation to turn away from the needy and destitute.
Kudos to those who organized this gathering - and here's hoping that it changes the religious landscape of our community.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The web of needs on the doorstep of a new year
Every year, once a year, the High Holidays come and strip life down to its very essence. Thank God!
The veneers, facades and distractions we dutifully and skillfully craft to shield ourselves from the parts of life we don't like, and the parts of ourselves we prefer not to see, fall away. If we give ourselves over to the season's power, despite how raw and exhausting it can be, we may be able to find comfort in the truths we have feared.
I learned something new this year about need, satisfaction and desire.
I had the privilege of studying the field of Strategic Sustainable Development this past year. SSD is a methodology that assists businesses, industry and governments in understanding and embracing sustainable practices and behavior as the only way toward enduring success. (It is also known as the Natural Step Framework.)
Part of that methodology teaches us about the economist Max-Neef's understanding of fundamental human needs. Differing radically from Maslow's classic hierarchy of needs, Max-Neef offers a new construct based on the belief that people have simultaneous, not hierarchical needs, and that we often confuse needs with their satisfiers. A need, he explains, is "an internal state. It cannot be an outside object..." Satisfiers respond to and fulfill those needs. "Fundamental human needs are finite, very few, and classifiable." And they are invariable. "They are the same everywhere, for every person, for every culture, in every historical period, the needs have
always been, and are still, the same. What changes is what you do in order to satisfy those needs that are common to everybody."
He reduces fundamental human needs to nine: Subsistence, Protection, Affection (or love), Understanding, Participation, Idleness, Creation, Identity and Freedom. Food, shelter, work, for example, are not needs but satisfiers for subsistence. Responsibilities, duties, work, rights, privileges are not needs but satisfiers for participation.
Our task is to pursue appropriate satisfiers for each of our needs, and to help others find satisfiers for theirs. Two lessons powerfully emerge from this construct:
1) We need to choose our satisfiers well. Eating, drinking, working, exercising are healthy in appropriate amounts and attached to appropriate needs. They are unhealthy when used otherwise. When a satisfier is need-specific (some are precise while others are multivalenced), it cannot spill over and serve as a satisfier to another aching, empty need. We cannot fill our affection need through subsistence satisfiers.
2) We must rely on each other to satisfy our needs. Depending on the specifics, what I do in an effort to satisfy my need may essentially and reciprocally satisfy yours. For example, my need for affection can be satisfied through friendship which simultaneously fulfills your need for affection satisfied through friendship. Each of us can benefit only if both of us benefit. Or regarding the need for identity: these satisfiers are cultural elements such as language, religion, historical memory. My need for identity can only be satisfied when I join you in our shared sense of tradition.
(You can find a chart of Max-Neef's needs and satisfiers at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_human_needs)
One more lesson puts this chart of needs and satisfiers in the economist's domain: objects are not the stuff of satisfiers. As Max-Neef puts it: "In this matrix there is nothing material, there are no objects." (save food and shelter)
Despite what advertisers tell us, enduring happiness, ie, the feeling we seek from satisfiers, is not found in purchases, consumption and the use of stuff. There is no doubt that we need stuff; but how we need stuff, and how we use it, needs to be radically re-imagined. Max-Neef's matrix offers us a way to create a new vision of a vibrant economy not based on unnecessary consumption; a way to define a healthier, sustainable use of our natural resources; and a way to join these two - wise consumption and wise use - in a more successfuland enduring pursuit of fulfilling human satisfaction.
May we, in turn, use it wisely.
Shana tova to you all.
The veneers, facades and distractions we dutifully and skillfully craft to shield ourselves from the parts of life we don't like, and the parts of ourselves we prefer not to see, fall away. If we give ourselves over to the season's power, despite how raw and exhausting it can be, we may be able to find comfort in the truths we have feared.
I learned something new this year about need, satisfaction and desire.
I had the privilege of studying the field of Strategic Sustainable Development this past year. SSD is a methodology that assists businesses, industry and governments in understanding and embracing sustainable practices and behavior as the only way toward enduring success. (It is also known as the Natural Step Framework.)
Part of that methodology teaches us about the economist Max-Neef's understanding of fundamental human needs. Differing radically from Maslow's classic hierarchy of needs, Max-Neef offers a new construct based on the belief that people have simultaneous, not hierarchical needs, and that we often confuse needs with their satisfiers. A need, he explains, is "an internal state. It cannot be an outside object..." Satisfiers respond to and fulfill those needs. "Fundamental human needs are finite, very few, and classifiable." And they are invariable. "They are the same everywhere, for every person, for every culture, in every historical period, the needs have
always been, and are still, the same. What changes is what you do in order to satisfy those needs that are common to everybody."
He reduces fundamental human needs to nine: Subsistence, Protection, Affection (or love), Understanding, Participation, Idleness, Creation, Identity and Freedom. Food, shelter, work, for example, are not needs but satisfiers for subsistence. Responsibilities, duties, work, rights, privileges are not needs but satisfiers for participation.
Our task is to pursue appropriate satisfiers for each of our needs, and to help others find satisfiers for theirs. Two lessons powerfully emerge from this construct:
1) We need to choose our satisfiers well. Eating, drinking, working, exercising are healthy in appropriate amounts and attached to appropriate needs. They are unhealthy when used otherwise. When a satisfier is need-specific (some are precise while others are multivalenced), it cannot spill over and serve as a satisfier to another aching, empty need. We cannot fill our affection need through subsistence satisfiers.
2) We must rely on each other to satisfy our needs. Depending on the specifics, what I do in an effort to satisfy my need may essentially and reciprocally satisfy yours. For example, my need for affection can be satisfied through friendship which simultaneously fulfills your need for affection satisfied through friendship. Each of us can benefit only if both of us benefit. Or regarding the need for identity: these satisfiers are cultural elements such as language, religion, historical memory. My need for identity can only be satisfied when I join you in our shared sense of tradition.
(You can find a chart of Max-Neef's needs and satisfiers at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_human_needs)
One more lesson puts this chart of needs and satisfiers in the economist's domain: objects are not the stuff of satisfiers. As Max-Neef puts it: "In this matrix there is nothing material, there are no objects." (save food and shelter)
Despite what advertisers tell us, enduring happiness, ie, the feeling we seek from satisfiers, is not found in purchases, consumption and the use of stuff. There is no doubt that we need stuff; but how we need stuff, and how we use it, needs to be radically re-imagined. Max-Neef's matrix offers us a way to create a new vision of a vibrant economy not based on unnecessary consumption; a way to define a healthier, sustainable use of our natural resources; and a way to join these two - wise consumption and wise use - in a more successfuland enduring pursuit of fulfilling human satisfaction.
May we, in turn, use it wisely.
Shana tova to you all.
Buying fast report 2 from my friend
From my co-conspirator, her report about the second of our six month buying fast:
I made two purchases in August – and while so doing I was keenly aware of precisely why I broke my ‘no new purchase diet.’ In fact, my impulse was akin to indulging in a bowl of luscious chocolate ice cream – short term gratification at a high price. But it was more than that. During a difficult economic period I needed to feel in control. I needed to feel that I had purchasing power. Both items that I bought were incredibly modest [jeans and sneakers] but that was not the point. Nor was it the point that I could easily justify both. More to the point was that I used those two moments to fill an emotional need – buying as filling empty spaces, holes that need to be plugged by more gainful pursuits. In fact the entire enterprise – from leaving my house because the silence was too loud, to driving fifteen minutes, to entering the store which smelled as if the clothes had been doused with chemicals, did not give me peace either. For the 20 or so minutes that I played dress up in the dressing room, I pretended l could be someone else and suspend myself temporarily. But in fact I can’t assume a new identity in a dressing room. Nor can purchasing offer me control or power. And so, in this unique season of confession and hope, I hope to fill the empty spaces with that which is real, purposeful and enduring.
I made two purchases in August – and while so doing I was keenly aware of precisely why I broke my ‘no new purchase diet.’ In fact, my impulse was akin to indulging in a bowl of luscious chocolate ice cream – short term gratification at a high price. But it was more than that. During a difficult economic period I needed to feel in control. I needed to feel that I had purchasing power. Both items that I bought were incredibly modest [jeans and sneakers] but that was not the point. Nor was it the point that I could easily justify both. More to the point was that I used those two moments to fill an emotional need – buying as filling empty spaces, holes that need to be plugged by more gainful pursuits. In fact the entire enterprise – from leaving my house because the silence was too loud, to driving fifteen minutes, to entering the store which smelled as if the clothes had been doused with chemicals, did not give me peace either. For the 20 or so minutes that I played dress up in the dressing room, I pretended l could be someone else and suspend myself temporarily. But in fact I can’t assume a new identity in a dressing room. Nor can purchasing offer me control or power. And so, in this unique season of confession and hope, I hope to fill the empty spaces with that which is real, purposeful and enduring.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Our modern dust bowl
San Francisco will begin mandatory composting this fall, including every residence (single homes and apartment buildings) and businesses. The idea is to limit the amount of waste wasting away in expensive landfills. One third of the city's garbage is compostable, and another third recyclable. That seems typical of most municipalities. With just a bit of due diligence, then, we can reduce our garbage, and our taxes, easing local government's burden of tending and monitoring our waste, while selling off the good stuff that can be reused.
I recently read a wrenching retelling of the Dust Bowl years, by Timothy Egan. Particularly striking was his description of the times tons of dust from the mid-section of the country rolled across the skies to blot out the sun of the mid-Atlantic and southern New England cities. The soil of the plains, where it had been created and lain, nourishing the vast grasslands for hundreds of thousands of years, had come to the Atlantic. The loss to the plains was incalculable.
It seems to me that we are in the midst of another version of the Dust Bowl. The nutrients, benefits and even small dirt particles of the plain's soil comes east in droves, in the body and on the surface of our produce. We buy it, eat it and then toss it away, to waste, largely inert and unusable, in our eastern landfills. To replace these nutrients, farmers rely on artificial fertilizer, which, under current practices, is neither good for the land nor for the water it runs off into. Hence, not good for us.
By composting at our homes, however, as many of us do today, we break this non-cycle. We return the blessings of foreign soil to our local soil here. The law of local return might not be in play here, but at least the fruits of the land get returned to land somewhere.
But I am thinking that with wholesale composting, it may just be possible for the east to capture the plain's lost nutrients, cook them for a while under our eastern care, and truck them back home (fueled by the very compost the trucks are carting?), to nourish and produce next year's bounty.
I would imagine that with more people than farmed land along the eastern coast, we will consume more compostables than we can readily use. What a great symbiosis - the plains feed us and we in turn feed the plains. It is far better than tossing into dead-end landfills irreplaceable, renewable fertilizer that can fuel our harvests for generations to come.
I recently read a wrenching retelling of the Dust Bowl years, by Timothy Egan. Particularly striking was his description of the times tons of dust from the mid-section of the country rolled across the skies to blot out the sun of the mid-Atlantic and southern New England cities. The soil of the plains, where it had been created and lain, nourishing the vast grasslands for hundreds of thousands of years, had come to the Atlantic. The loss to the plains was incalculable.
It seems to me that we are in the midst of another version of the Dust Bowl. The nutrients, benefits and even small dirt particles of the plain's soil comes east in droves, in the body and on the surface of our produce. We buy it, eat it and then toss it away, to waste, largely inert and unusable, in our eastern landfills. To replace these nutrients, farmers rely on artificial fertilizer, which, under current practices, is neither good for the land nor for the water it runs off into. Hence, not good for us.
By composting at our homes, however, as many of us do today, we break this non-cycle. We return the blessings of foreign soil to our local soil here. The law of local return might not be in play here, but at least the fruits of the land get returned to land somewhere.
But I am thinking that with wholesale composting, it may just be possible for the east to capture the plain's lost nutrients, cook them for a while under our eastern care, and truck them back home (fueled by the very compost the trucks are carting?), to nourish and produce next year's bounty.
I would imagine that with more people than farmed land along the eastern coast, we will consume more compostables than we can readily use. What a great symbiosis - the plains feed us and we in turn feed the plains. It is far better than tossing into dead-end landfills irreplaceable, renewable fertilizer that can fuel our harvests for generations to come.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Too much of a good thing
A 2004 entry from the New York Times Science Q & A addresses the question of life expectancy for vegetarians. Having been a vegetarian for almost 30 years now, this is an area of great interest to me. After all, the logical answer seems internally contradictory: the longer I am a vegetarian, the greater the health benefits I derive from it. And yet, the longer I am a vegetarian... Well, the article, in its dry, scientific manner, completes the bleak prognosis in its last sentence:
"A study published last year (2003) in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reviewed data from six studies that included people who ate meat less than once a week. The study also looked at new findings on the life expectancy of longtime vegetarians in the Adventist Health Study.
The authors of the Journal study found that a very low meat intake was associated with a significant decrease in death risks in four studies, and a nonsignificant decrease in the fifth study; they found virtually no association in the sixth.
[NBC: Hmmm.]
Two studies also indicated that being on a vegetarian diet for a longer time contributed to a significantly greater decrease in mortality risk.
[NBC: Yeah!]
In all the studies, the protective effect seemed to weaken after the ninth decade."
[NBC: Bummer. Like so many things, the news starts off great, and then, wham. Although, there is that hedge: the authors say the benefits of vegetarianism only "seemed" to weaken after the 9th decade of life. So when you turn 90, if you are a gambler, keep eating veggies.
If you are an ethical hedonist, grab a steak knife and pitchfork and plow up to a side of beef.
Of course, that doesn't address the land issues.
I love science.]
"A study published last year (2003) in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reviewed data from six studies that included people who ate meat less than once a week. The study also looked at new findings on the life expectancy of longtime vegetarians in the Adventist Health Study.
The authors of the Journal study found that a very low meat intake was associated with a significant decrease in death risks in four studies, and a nonsignificant decrease in the fifth study; they found virtually no association in the sixth.
[NBC: Hmmm.]
Two studies also indicated that being on a vegetarian diet for a longer time contributed to a significantly greater decrease in mortality risk.
[NBC: Yeah!]
In all the studies, the protective effect seemed to weaken after the ninth decade."
[NBC: Bummer. Like so many things, the news starts off great, and then, wham. Although, there is that hedge: the authors say the benefits of vegetarianism only "seemed" to weaken after the 9th decade of life. So when you turn 90, if you are a gambler, keep eating veggies.
If you are an ethical hedonist, grab a steak knife and pitchfork and plow up to a side of beef.
Of course, that doesn't address the land issues.
I love science.]
Monday, September 7, 2009
august buying fast check-in
Well, I didn't think this buying fast would be so boring. For the month of August, anyway, I did not buy anything new, nor second-hand, nor recycled. I just didn't need anything, and I didn't want anything. It wasn't that I valiantly wrestled temptation to the ground, victoriously refusing to buy. I wasn't even tempted. Even though I spent a week at the beach...
Oh, wait. I did buy a house-warming gift, a wedding present and a small hand-thrown bowl at the Rehoboth Art League's annual summer fair. The presents have been dutifully given away. The bowl is in my cupboard. (To put it in perspective, it is four inches in diameter, and it went to support a needy artist. But yes, I bought something new.)
And while we are at it, I did buy school books for my son; and 2 re-used books for me. But I am torn here: according to the rules, consumables are exempt from the fast. So the question is: are books consumables? Are they different from going to the movies? or downloading audio books from the public library? I leave this to the jury to decide.
If I had younger children, I clearly would have lots more to confess. So it is important to acknowledge that my stage in life (with a passable if fading wardrobe and grown kids) enables me to limit my purchases in ways others cannot.
Still, I much rather enjoyed spending my time doing things other than shopping.
I know the controversy that often arises around arguments to reduce our purchases: the economy needs stimulation and that comes best from consumer purchasers (with government stimulus packages being a powerful but costly substitute). I continue to believe, however, that as we pursue the elixir of a sustainable economy, a component of that will need to be reduced consumption. We need economists to show us how we can both reduce our stuff and stimulate progress.
And we need to make room for those things that truly fill our spirits, and not have those needs crowded out by objects that pretend to satisfy us.
Oh, wait. I did buy a house-warming gift, a wedding present and a small hand-thrown bowl at the Rehoboth Art League's annual summer fair. The presents have been dutifully given away. The bowl is in my cupboard. (To put it in perspective, it is four inches in diameter, and it went to support a needy artist. But yes, I bought something new.)
And while we are at it, I did buy school books for my son; and 2 re-used books for me. But I am torn here: according to the rules, consumables are exempt from the fast. So the question is: are books consumables? Are they different from going to the movies? or downloading audio books from the public library? I leave this to the jury to decide.
If I had younger children, I clearly would have lots more to confess. So it is important to acknowledge that my stage in life (with a passable if fading wardrobe and grown kids) enables me to limit my purchases in ways others cannot.
Still, I much rather enjoyed spending my time doing things other than shopping.
I know the controversy that often arises around arguments to reduce our purchases: the economy needs stimulation and that comes best from consumer purchasers (with government stimulus packages being a powerful but costly substitute). I continue to believe, however, that as we pursue the elixir of a sustainable economy, a component of that will need to be reduced consumption. We need economists to show us how we can both reduce our stuff and stimulate progress.
And we need to make room for those things that truly fill our spirits, and not have those needs crowded out by objects that pretend to satisfy us.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Lessons from the Beach
I had the distinct pleasure to spend a week at the beach in a most graciously, if somewhat indulgently, appointed house this past month. My room was ground floor, facing east, not more than 30 paces from a private pool and 50 paces from the beach. I could hear the surf gently pounding when the door was open. (Sadly, in all this extravagance, there was no window to open to let the sea air and the ocean’s noises in.)
My routine was as follows: to bed around midnight, awaken around 6:00, open the shades to see if sunrise will be visible (it was all week), throw on just enough clothes to get by, unlock the door and step out into the fresh, humid ocean breeze. It was hard to sit down for everything was wet, not from some Camelot-ish, overnight rain (though it was tempting to think so), but from the condensation that is ubiquitous at seaside. Throw a beach towel on the rail to dry at 3:00 pm and, while it will likely be dry by nightfall, it is also likely to be damp again by morning.
I have not checked this out but I wouldn’t be surprised if one way the dune grasses (of which there were thankfully an abundant amount this year, testament to the beach reclamation efforts of the local communities) thrives is through the moisture they pluck from the air at dawn. (Israel is developing pioneering methods for the age-old technology of harvesting dew by channeling the water droplets directly to plant roots before the dew either evaporates or dissipates.)
After a week of watching, it was clear that each sunrise was different, as if each had its own story to tell, each dawning its own personality, each morning truly a new day. Gifted with this enchanted week, I rediscovered what is obvious to anyone living close to nature, and largely invisible to those of us who don’t:
1) This extraordinary spectacle of sunrise breaks upon us every morning, everywhere, to everyone, worldwide, equally, with no cost or human effort. Yet I would bet that most often, unless there is some rare obscurity or natural oddity, most of us don’t think about it much. (Birkat Hahammah, the sunrise blessing we recite every 28 years that occurred this past spring, is a rare moment when we directly, ritually acknowledge the gift of the sun.)
2) The sun, as our biologists, geologists and environmentalists tell us, is the only open system on earth. All else is closed, contained, save for the errant meteor that comes crashing in every now and then. What we have here and now is all that we will ever have. Except for the remarkable life-giving power of the sun. The world runs on sunlight. Plants are powered by the sun; animals eat the plants; other animals eat the animals that eat the plants; the people eat the plants and animals that ate the plants that were powered by the sun. It is one big chain of sunlight.
3) And we do one more thing with sunlight: we burn it. In open pits and hearths, cars and power plants, we burn sunlight. Most of today’s fuel – coal, natural gas, oil - was made from the plants that were powered by millions of years of sunlight millions of years ago. In other words, we burn, travel by, cook with and heat ourselves with stored sunlight.
4) Of course, we also use the products of current sunlight: wood, biomass, wind, the circulation of the air and the flow of the ocean waters, like the gulf stream, and direct sunlight itself. The wise ones of our generation tell us that we must change our ways and live off of current sunlight, the sun’s income, that which comes in to us daily and whose products are renewable, and not its savings, that which is stored and not replenishable. With proper research and development, we can do that. Sunshine provides abundant energy for all earth’s needs, including our ever-growing, ever-demanding power-hungry society. It is that that we must use.
5) If I had the privilege, and the skill, I would create a photo-montage, a documentary of sorts, of 365 days of sunrise from the same spot on earth. Right here on the eastern seaboard of the mid-Atlantic states overlooking the ocean would do. Perhaps such a visual spread would remind us that each day is new and different, bringing its own opportunity for adventure and achievement and learning and, sadly, loss.
The photos would show the arc that the sun sketches as it moves from solstice to equinox and back again. We would see the “stopping and turning” of the sun at its northern and southern most outposts. We could see how the sun hangs lower in the sky throughout the lesser days of winter, and how it rises high overhead in the blazing days of summer. We could see the phases of the moon and its relationship to the sun. (The moon was in its last quarter that week, rising just a bit earlier than the sun, and rapidly disappearing into a thin sliver that got visibly thinner over the few days we were there.)
Perhaps it would forever remind us that no matter how much we pave over this earth, no matter how much dirt we move or dig up, no matter how powerful our machines and how much we alter and force the earth to do our bidding, in the end, we are dependent on it, as it is dependent on the constancy of the sun.
Short of such a montage, perhaps we can simply commit to checking out the placement of the sun every morning (or evening, the key is constancy) noting the time, marveling in the heavenly cycles, and remembering how life really works.
My routine was as follows: to bed around midnight, awaken around 6:00, open the shades to see if sunrise will be visible (it was all week), throw on just enough clothes to get by, unlock the door and step out into the fresh, humid ocean breeze. It was hard to sit down for everything was wet, not from some Camelot-ish, overnight rain (though it was tempting to think so), but from the condensation that is ubiquitous at seaside. Throw a beach towel on the rail to dry at 3:00 pm and, while it will likely be dry by nightfall, it is also likely to be damp again by morning.
I have not checked this out but I wouldn’t be surprised if one way the dune grasses (of which there were thankfully an abundant amount this year, testament to the beach reclamation efforts of the local communities) thrives is through the moisture they pluck from the air at dawn. (Israel is developing pioneering methods for the age-old technology of harvesting dew by channeling the water droplets directly to plant roots before the dew either evaporates or dissipates.)
After a week of watching, it was clear that each sunrise was different, as if each had its own story to tell, each dawning its own personality, each morning truly a new day. Gifted with this enchanted week, I rediscovered what is obvious to anyone living close to nature, and largely invisible to those of us who don’t:
1) This extraordinary spectacle of sunrise breaks upon us every morning, everywhere, to everyone, worldwide, equally, with no cost or human effort. Yet I would bet that most often, unless there is some rare obscurity or natural oddity, most of us don’t think about it much. (Birkat Hahammah, the sunrise blessing we recite every 28 years that occurred this past spring, is a rare moment when we directly, ritually acknowledge the gift of the sun.)
2) The sun, as our biologists, geologists and environmentalists tell us, is the only open system on earth. All else is closed, contained, save for the errant meteor that comes crashing in every now and then. What we have here and now is all that we will ever have. Except for the remarkable life-giving power of the sun. The world runs on sunlight. Plants are powered by the sun; animals eat the plants; other animals eat the animals that eat the plants; the people eat the plants and animals that ate the plants that were powered by the sun. It is one big chain of sunlight.
3) And we do one more thing with sunlight: we burn it. In open pits and hearths, cars and power plants, we burn sunlight. Most of today’s fuel – coal, natural gas, oil - was made from the plants that were powered by millions of years of sunlight millions of years ago. In other words, we burn, travel by, cook with and heat ourselves with stored sunlight.
4) Of course, we also use the products of current sunlight: wood, biomass, wind, the circulation of the air and the flow of the ocean waters, like the gulf stream, and direct sunlight itself. The wise ones of our generation tell us that we must change our ways and live off of current sunlight, the sun’s income, that which comes in to us daily and whose products are renewable, and not its savings, that which is stored and not replenishable. With proper research and development, we can do that. Sunshine provides abundant energy for all earth’s needs, including our ever-growing, ever-demanding power-hungry society. It is that that we must use.
5) If I had the privilege, and the skill, I would create a photo-montage, a documentary of sorts, of 365 days of sunrise from the same spot on earth. Right here on the eastern seaboard of the mid-Atlantic states overlooking the ocean would do. Perhaps such a visual spread would remind us that each day is new and different, bringing its own opportunity for adventure and achievement and learning and, sadly, loss.
The photos would show the arc that the sun sketches as it moves from solstice to equinox and back again. We would see the “stopping and turning” of the sun at its northern and southern most outposts. We could see how the sun hangs lower in the sky throughout the lesser days of winter, and how it rises high overhead in the blazing days of summer. We could see the phases of the moon and its relationship to the sun. (The moon was in its last quarter that week, rising just a bit earlier than the sun, and rapidly disappearing into a thin sliver that got visibly thinner over the few days we were there.)
Perhaps it would forever remind us that no matter how much we pave over this earth, no matter how much dirt we move or dig up, no matter how powerful our machines and how much we alter and force the earth to do our bidding, in the end, we are dependent on it, as it is dependent on the constancy of the sun.
Short of such a montage, perhaps we can simply commit to checking out the placement of the sun every morning (or evening, the key is constancy) noting the time, marveling in the heavenly cycles, and remembering how life really works.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Buying fast report
My turn to come clean on the adventures of my buying fast:
My New Purchase Inventory for July:
2 metal clothes drying racks
1 sandisk data storage device
That's it. I did buy some used books on Amazon marketplace but everything else was a consumable.
This was not difficult. (But then again, I have not yet gone away for vacation. That will be a test!)
The drying racks - as I noted earlier on this blog - were a necessity if I was going to move away from my addiction to the dryer. I would say that I now use the dryer 2-3 times a month. What will happen if it continues to be unreasonably humid or when I have to bring the drying inside during winter? I cannot say for sure. But for now, over this mostly glorious summer, the dryer has been more a countertop to store folded clothes than an electric device to help get them that way.
Re the sandisk, okay, a bit of indulgence but hopefully not unreasonably so. My husband and I are both eager to walk more, but our schedules rarely coincide. And while sometimes walking bare-eared is refreshing, creative thoughts rising on the flowing waves of cicada songs, other times having "company" is desired. Eager also to "read" more books than time allows, we determined to get a device upon which we could download free books (the library has hundreds, which we hope lasts us a good while). So we purchased this device to accompany us on our long walks. So far I have listened to the history of the Dust Bowl, Magellan's ill-fated if successful circumnavigation of the earth, and am in the middle of Barabara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, history of 14th century Europe.
These are not the kinds of books I would pick up either for casual home entertainment or professional development, but this third kind of time/space experience seems just right for these ponderous but enlightening books. Anyway, we bought the sandisk.
Oh, and did I mention it was our joint anniversary present?
My New Purchase Inventory for July:
2 metal clothes drying racks
1 sandisk data storage device
That's it. I did buy some used books on Amazon marketplace but everything else was a consumable.
This was not difficult. (But then again, I have not yet gone away for vacation. That will be a test!)
The drying racks - as I noted earlier on this blog - were a necessity if I was going to move away from my addiction to the dryer. I would say that I now use the dryer 2-3 times a month. What will happen if it continues to be unreasonably humid or when I have to bring the drying inside during winter? I cannot say for sure. But for now, over this mostly glorious summer, the dryer has been more a countertop to store folded clothes than an electric device to help get them that way.
Re the sandisk, okay, a bit of indulgence but hopefully not unreasonably so. My husband and I are both eager to walk more, but our schedules rarely coincide. And while sometimes walking bare-eared is refreshing, creative thoughts rising on the flowing waves of cicada songs, other times having "company" is desired. Eager also to "read" more books than time allows, we determined to get a device upon which we could download free books (the library has hundreds, which we hope lasts us a good while). So we purchased this device to accompany us on our long walks. So far I have listened to the history of the Dust Bowl, Magellan's ill-fated if successful circumnavigation of the earth, and am in the middle of Barabara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, history of 14th century Europe.
These are not the kinds of books I would pick up either for casual home entertainment or professional development, but this third kind of time/space experience seems just right for these ponderous but enlightening books. Anyway, we bought the sandisk.
Oh, and did I mention it was our joint anniversary present?
Monday, August 10, 2009
Waste Not
I am torn about the Cash for Clunkers stimulus initiative. As reported in the Chicago Tribune and calculated by the Associated Press using Dept of Transportation figures (in other words, sources that don’t have a particular environmental ax to grind):
“The total savings per year from cash for clunkers translates to about 57 minutes of America’s output of the chief greenhouse gas.” One billion of your tax dollars and mine for less than one hour of emissions savings is a very expensive program. Somehow, I think we could have used that money, and the lessons it could have allowed us to teach, better.
Such modest savings could be achieved, I dare say, by greater efficiencies, or everyone driving less, or adding a 5 cent tax to a gallon of gasoline (which fluctuates so violently anyway this would be almost invisibly swallowed up by the erratic market swings; quick, what is the price of a gallon of gas around you right now?), which gives us the added benefit of using those monies to invest in green energy research and development, or simply by giving America off one more day a year.
Even more, Cash for Clunkers reinforces the economic model that says only by buying more stuff can the economy thrive. But we know that the human appetite is infinite while the earth’s resources are finite. We simply cannot build a sustainable economy on the practice of buying more stuff. Yet, despite the current admonition that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” we are wasting this crisis. We should be using it to build a truly sustainable economy.
I realize that our car industry is “too big to fail”. And that this initiative was an economic stimulus gift dressed up in green clothing. But as others are saying, we will all go down if we continue to support a marketplace that allows companies and industries to get too big to fail.
The question we must continue to ask is this: how do we create an economy that is both friendly to people and nations, and healthy for the environment?
In 1996, Herman Daly, an economist who explores what sustainable economic development might mean, offers this definition of our goal: “Development without growth beyond environmental carrying capacity, where development means qualitative improvement and growth means quantitative increase.”
In other words, how do we build a better, healthier, happier world without increasing material amounts of stuff and waste? How do we do more with less?
Sustainable development economists increasingly are saying that companies should focus more on selling services than selling stuff . For example, I want to keep my food cool and extend its shelf life. Therefore I buy a refrigerator. Now, the refrigerator company is happy that I bought one refrigerator but will be happier when I buy another. So what do they do? One, they don’t worry about what happens to my refrigerator at the end of its life for any obligation or connection they have to it was likely severed after the warranty ran out. And two, while they build the refrigerator well enough so I will want to buy another one of their making, they don’t want to build it so well that I will die before it does. In other words, as soon as I buy one refrigerator, they want - and need - to sell me another.
The emerging green economy logic challenges the culture of buying stuff. It suggests that businesses offer services. By offering “a service instead of a product, a company profits by reducing its use of materials and energy, and providing that service at the lowest cost possible. Lovins argues, for instance, that air conditioner manufacturers should offer cooling as a service – not AC units as a product – so they’d have an incentive to make the systems highly energy efficient. In some green business circles, the idea of recasting a product as a service, often called “servicing,” is the holy grail of environmental innovation.” (Green to Gold by Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston)
An additional component to servicing is that the company is responsible for the disposal of the item (in this case, the air conditioner) at the end of its life. Inevitably, the company will begin designing a/c units whose component parts can either be easily disassembled, recaptured and recycled, or readily disposed of in the environment and naturally degraded. No more indiscriminate hauling and trashing.
Is this the silver bullet to solve all our environmental problems? Clearly not. All our needs cannot be met this way. But for those that can, let’s try it.
Judaism offers an imperative that can guide us in this work. It is the phrase bal tashkhit. Classically, this phrase means do not wantonly and indiscriminately destroy things. It comes from the biblical prohibition against cutting down fruit trees to build fortifications during a siege. It was expanded to include all unnecessary destruction.
In the 21st century, in an era when we now understand that in nature there is no such thing as waste, we can, and I want to argue should, re-cast bal tashkhit as not just a valuable admonition against inappropriate destruction. But rather, as the admonition which counsels: Create no waste! Waste itself needs to be seen as an anathema to healthy, sustainable living. Just as nature makes no waste, so humans must make no waste. Which means we cannot consume and discard in ways and amounts that overwhelm nature.
Will this harm the economy? On the contrary, the research, development, design, creation, manufacturing, servicing, reclaiming, re capturing, remanufacturing, re-selling, re-installing, fixing, maintaining, etc will create its own form of vibrant green economy, which, while utilizing the best of a global marketplace will also be powerfully grounded in local resources - both human and economic.
A no-waste, or at least low-waste, economy is the way of the future. Bal tashkhit is the way to the land of milk and honey.
“The total savings per year from cash for clunkers translates to about 57 minutes of America’s output of the chief greenhouse gas.” One billion of your tax dollars and mine for less than one hour of emissions savings is a very expensive program. Somehow, I think we could have used that money, and the lessons it could have allowed us to teach, better.
Such modest savings could be achieved, I dare say, by greater efficiencies, or everyone driving less, or adding a 5 cent tax to a gallon of gasoline (which fluctuates so violently anyway this would be almost invisibly swallowed up by the erratic market swings; quick, what is the price of a gallon of gas around you right now?), which gives us the added benefit of using those monies to invest in green energy research and development, or simply by giving America off one more day a year.
Even more, Cash for Clunkers reinforces the economic model that says only by buying more stuff can the economy thrive. But we know that the human appetite is infinite while the earth’s resources are finite. We simply cannot build a sustainable economy on the practice of buying more stuff. Yet, despite the current admonition that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” we are wasting this crisis. We should be using it to build a truly sustainable economy.
I realize that our car industry is “too big to fail”. And that this initiative was an economic stimulus gift dressed up in green clothing. But as others are saying, we will all go down if we continue to support a marketplace that allows companies and industries to get too big to fail.
The question we must continue to ask is this: how do we create an economy that is both friendly to people and nations, and healthy for the environment?
In 1996, Herman Daly, an economist who explores what sustainable economic development might mean, offers this definition of our goal: “Development without growth beyond environmental carrying capacity, where development means qualitative improvement and growth means quantitative increase.”
In other words, how do we build a better, healthier, happier world without increasing material amounts of stuff and waste? How do we do more with less?
Sustainable development economists increasingly are saying that companies should focus more on selling services than selling stuff . For example, I want to keep my food cool and extend its shelf life. Therefore I buy a refrigerator. Now, the refrigerator company is happy that I bought one refrigerator but will be happier when I buy another. So what do they do? One, they don’t worry about what happens to my refrigerator at the end of its life for any obligation or connection they have to it was likely severed after the warranty ran out. And two, while they build the refrigerator well enough so I will want to buy another one of their making, they don’t want to build it so well that I will die before it does. In other words, as soon as I buy one refrigerator, they want - and need - to sell me another.
The emerging green economy logic challenges the culture of buying stuff. It suggests that businesses offer services. By offering “a service instead of a product, a company profits by reducing its use of materials and energy, and providing that service at the lowest cost possible. Lovins argues, for instance, that air conditioner manufacturers should offer cooling as a service – not AC units as a product – so they’d have an incentive to make the systems highly energy efficient. In some green business circles, the idea of recasting a product as a service, often called “servicing,” is the holy grail of environmental innovation.” (Green to Gold by Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston)
An additional component to servicing is that the company is responsible for the disposal of the item (in this case, the air conditioner) at the end of its life. Inevitably, the company will begin designing a/c units whose component parts can either be easily disassembled, recaptured and recycled, or readily disposed of in the environment and naturally degraded. No more indiscriminate hauling and trashing.
Is this the silver bullet to solve all our environmental problems? Clearly not. All our needs cannot be met this way. But for those that can, let’s try it.
Judaism offers an imperative that can guide us in this work. It is the phrase bal tashkhit. Classically, this phrase means do not wantonly and indiscriminately destroy things. It comes from the biblical prohibition against cutting down fruit trees to build fortifications during a siege. It was expanded to include all unnecessary destruction.
In the 21st century, in an era when we now understand that in nature there is no such thing as waste, we can, and I want to argue should, re-cast bal tashkhit as not just a valuable admonition against inappropriate destruction. But rather, as the admonition which counsels: Create no waste! Waste itself needs to be seen as an anathema to healthy, sustainable living. Just as nature makes no waste, so humans must make no waste. Which means we cannot consume and discard in ways and amounts that overwhelm nature.
Will this harm the economy? On the contrary, the research, development, design, creation, manufacturing, servicing, reclaiming, re capturing, remanufacturing, re-selling, re-installing, fixing, maintaining, etc will create its own form of vibrant green economy, which, while utilizing the best of a global marketplace will also be powerfully grounded in local resources - both human and economic.
A no-waste, or at least low-waste, economy is the way of the future. Bal tashkhit is the way to the land of milk and honey.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
It is not good for the human to be alone
A friend of mine with both expertise in geology and a passion for religion shared with me a talk he gave about the intersection of the biblical story of creation and the scientific theory of creation. He reads and mines the first chapters of creation with an environmental eye as I once read and mined the first chapters of creation with a feminist eye. It is forever remarkable to me how pliable, how full, how unendingly revealing those first few verses are. So now I too return to our founding text with a new agenda, to learn from it how we, as human beings, are to live in this complex, teeming yet all too fragile world.
As my friend reviews the march of life, both as it is depicted in the parade of days in Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis, and in the geological record here on earth, he says that, "each kind of organism settled into its role, ceas[ing] to be alone and becom[ing] a member of a mutually dependent community... The first ecological community invented the basic rule of ecology, a rule that still shapes the way we live today: No complex creature can live alone."
For anyone who knows the biblical text of creation, these words jump off the page, singing with familiarity. In Chapter 2:18, after creating the human and putting him in the garden, God recognizes the problem: There is no other creature there. It is only then that God creates all the other animals, culminating in the creation of woman. "Lo tov heyot adam livado" it says in the Hebrew: "It is not good for the human to be alone." "No complex creature can live alone." The two sentences are practically translations of one another.
But we needn't stop there. In the first chapter of Torah, Genesis 1, this same message is given in its own way, its own idiom. Day after day of God's creating, God looks out upon his latest handiwork and proclaims, "It is good." (True, on the second day, when the waters were divided into the waters above and the waters below, there is no proclamation of goodness. But that is made up for on the third day when God says, "It is good," twice.)
Each installment of creation, each discrete step, feature and creature are judged to be good in their own right. Before humans came into the picture, each incremental stage of creation was bestowed an independent value of goodness by God.
And yet, that was not enough. At the very end of creation, at the end of the sixth day, after all the air, land and water; after all the vegetation; after all the animals and creeping things; after man and woman were created, only then is the ultimate blessing conferred on creation: "And God saw all that he had created, and behold, it was very good."
Life is composed of discrete beings, distinct creations that are born and live and die distinctly. But they can only do that when embedded in a teeming world of interdependence. Complex life cannot live without complexity. "Symbiosis is," as my friend says, "in a sense, the ecological equivalent of covenant."
All life is bound together, covenanted with each other. To protect ourselves we must protect the other; to protect the one we must protect the whole; to protect the whole, we must protect the parts. It is the moral, ecological, Jewish, biblical thing to do.
As my friend reviews the march of life, both as it is depicted in the parade of days in Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis, and in the geological record here on earth, he says that, "each kind of organism settled into its role, ceas[ing] to be alone and becom[ing] a member of a mutually dependent community... The first ecological community invented the basic rule of ecology, a rule that still shapes the way we live today: No complex creature can live alone."
For anyone who knows the biblical text of creation, these words jump off the page, singing with familiarity. In Chapter 2:18, after creating the human and putting him in the garden, God recognizes the problem: There is no other creature there. It is only then that God creates all the other animals, culminating in the creation of woman. "Lo tov heyot adam livado" it says in the Hebrew: "It is not good for the human to be alone." "No complex creature can live alone." The two sentences are practically translations of one another.
But we needn't stop there. In the first chapter of Torah, Genesis 1, this same message is given in its own way, its own idiom. Day after day of God's creating, God looks out upon his latest handiwork and proclaims, "It is good." (True, on the second day, when the waters were divided into the waters above and the waters below, there is no proclamation of goodness. But that is made up for on the third day when God says, "It is good," twice.)
Each installment of creation, each discrete step, feature and creature are judged to be good in their own right. Before humans came into the picture, each incremental stage of creation was bestowed an independent value of goodness by God.
And yet, that was not enough. At the very end of creation, at the end of the sixth day, after all the air, land and water; after all the vegetation; after all the animals and creeping things; after man and woman were created, only then is the ultimate blessing conferred on creation: "And God saw all that he had created, and behold, it was very good."
Life is composed of discrete beings, distinct creations that are born and live and die distinctly. But they can only do that when embedded in a teeming world of interdependence. Complex life cannot live without complexity. "Symbiosis is," as my friend says, "in a sense, the ecological equivalent of covenant."
All life is bound together, covenanted with each other. To protect ourselves we must protect the other; to protect the one we must protect the whole; to protect the whole, we must protect the parts. It is the moral, ecological, Jewish, biblical thing to do.
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