I had reason recently to read again the first line of the stunning, soaring, disturbing poem that Moses dramatically proclaims to the people Israel as his farewell address. (Deuteronomy 32) In another day, he will walk to the mountaintop, see the land his people will enter without him, and die.
He opens his song to his people with the following words: "Give ear, you heavens, and I will speak. Listen well, land, to the words of my mouth." Rashi asks the obvious question: if Moses is speaking to the Jewish people, why does he begin by addressing the heavens and the earth?
The great teacher explains: Moses is reminding Israel, in fact warning Israel, that the heavens and earth will be witnesses to his exhortation, and to the Israelites behavior. Moses himself is flesh and blood and will die. He imagines that the people Israel might on occasion be tempted to think: after Moses dies, who will there be to hold us to the promises we re-commit ourselves to today? If we choose to say, 'We did not take upon ourselves the covenant,' who will there be to contradict us?
So Moses invokes before them "the heavens and earth as witnesses, for they endure forever." The heavens and the earth will be there when Moses is not, and they will dispense God's justice. That is, "If Israel merits it, the witnesses will come give Israel their reward, as it says, ' the grapevine will give of her fruit and the land will give its bounty, and the heavens will give its dew.' But if Israel should be guilty (faithless), the hand of the witnesses will be the first against them, and the heavens will be shut up, there will be no rain, and the land will not give of its produce, and thus you will be lost."
This time when I read it, it cut very close to home. Daily we make a compact with the earth: it gives us air to breath, produce to eat, stored and current waves of energy to ride on and nestle in. In return for all this goodness, we are bidden to tend well to the earth. In the words of Genesis 2, our task, our covenant, is l'ovdah and l'shomrah: to make good use of the earth, and to protect it in the process.
It seems we have forgotten the second half; as if we have neglected and violated the compact. Yet, who is able stand before us and say so? Who will we listen to even if they speak this truth?
But should we dare, in our hubris, to say: we did not make such a covenant, we are not off the hook. The earth is here to stand witness against us.
And it is. This is what is happening. Our bad behavior is causing the heavens to seize up or to explode in unpredictable ways and places. The earth is stripped of its nutrients and unable to produce its bounty. Even if we manage to live out our lives well-fed and comfortable, we will not be able to hide our misdeeds from the next generation. The heavens and the earth will testify against us. They are our witnesses, and they cannot be fooled, silenced or bought off.
What is the story we want them to tell our children and grandchildren, for generations to come? We must write the narrative of that story with our deeds today.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
reconnecting with place
My oldest son and daughter-in-law live literally one block away from me, over the river and through the woods. To see them emerging from the stippled wooded land behind our house onto the grassier "meadow" of our backyard is to imagine that I indeed live beside an enchanted forest. The only problem is that sometimes, when they come, the ground is wet, muddy in parts. So I have determined that my project for the summer is to build them a path.
First I had to determine who would do this. It quickly became apparent that to contract with a yard company would cost way too much. Besides, I had discovered two summers ago that while gardening was not exactly my cup of tea, heavier-duty yard work - moving stones, improving soil, composting, raking, working with wood, did have an appeal. So, in an effort to (1) provide a dry passage for my children, (2) create an even more enchanted backyardscape, (3) get a good summer's workout and (4) enjoy that satisfying sense of accomplishment at the end of summer, I determined to do the backyard "improvements" myself. What I didn't realize was how much it would (re) connect me with the particularities of this place. Through this work, I am seeing, sometimes for the first time, how radically the tracks of the sun change from month to month and season to season; how the land was used in lifetimes before me; the literal lay of the land and the subtle ways it swells and recedes; the bugs I like and the bugs I don't.
Second I had to figure out what to do. What kind of trail would I make? What track would it trace? What would it be made of? Again, cost made this decision easy. Bricks, pavers, slate, slab, tiles all would be too expensive. So I settled for a combination of packed dirt for the wooded area and crushed stone for the yard. I found a great vendor out in Timonium. They delivered the 10 tons they said I needed for my job (!) in three hours. Just what the impatient diy-er loves!
I laid out the path with my garden hoses (everything can multitask), used my excess stone left over from the renovation 9 years ago as edgers, and voila, the project was underway.
Some things to keep in mind: almost all the internet sites that tell you how to make a stone path tell you to put down a plastic liner. I didn't. It seems to me that we want to move away from impervious surfaces and allow the rain to seep into the ground wherever it can! So I dug my path, edged it with large stones and dropped in the stones (ah, the blessing of a wheelbarrow). Then comes the raking, perhaps the most physically and emotionally gratifying part of the enterprise. Raking the stones into place, spreading them around, pushing and pulling them here and there to even them out feels like giving the earth a back rub. You can almost feel the earth settling in, softening up, accepting this gift of tending. If the earth could purr, I imagine it would.
And while all the sites tell you to dig out 4 inches of dirt the length and breadth of the walk, they do not tell you what to do with it!! So, the good news is that we have bald patches of yard and awkward ridges and valleys left over from the heavy equipment used during the renovation years ago. I found that if I in-filled the gulleys with the dirt from the path, not only will the ground smooth itself out a bit, but the grasses from the "sod" will take root in the bald areas. So all in all, I get to have my path and seed the lawn too.
Next steps: continue to add to the fantasy. Home should always offer a bit of enchantment, even in the midst of the most familiar and mundane. We can be our own dream-weavers. So I will try to make gateways of fallen wood - twigs and tree limbs - that mark the threshold from yard to wood and from path to meadow; gateways that feed the imagination.
Homes should always be portals to enchanted worlds! Paradoxically, it is through reconnecting with the particularity of place that we are transported to the enchantment beyond.
First I had to determine who would do this. It quickly became apparent that to contract with a yard company would cost way too much. Besides, I had discovered two summers ago that while gardening was not exactly my cup of tea, heavier-duty yard work - moving stones, improving soil, composting, raking, working with wood, did have an appeal. So, in an effort to (1) provide a dry passage for my children, (2) create an even more enchanted backyardscape, (3) get a good summer's workout and (4) enjoy that satisfying sense of accomplishment at the end of summer, I determined to do the backyard "improvements" myself. What I didn't realize was how much it would (re) connect me with the particularities of this place. Through this work, I am seeing, sometimes for the first time, how radically the tracks of the sun change from month to month and season to season; how the land was used in lifetimes before me; the literal lay of the land and the subtle ways it swells and recedes; the bugs I like and the bugs I don't.
Second I had to figure out what to do. What kind of trail would I make? What track would it trace? What would it be made of? Again, cost made this decision easy. Bricks, pavers, slate, slab, tiles all would be too expensive. So I settled for a combination of packed dirt for the wooded area and crushed stone for the yard. I found a great vendor out in Timonium. They delivered the 10 tons they said I needed for my job (!) in three hours. Just what the impatient diy-er loves!
I laid out the path with my garden hoses (everything can multitask), used my excess stone left over from the renovation 9 years ago as edgers, and voila, the project was underway.
Some things to keep in mind: almost all the internet sites that tell you how to make a stone path tell you to put down a plastic liner. I didn't. It seems to me that we want to move away from impervious surfaces and allow the rain to seep into the ground wherever it can! So I dug my path, edged it with large stones and dropped in the stones (ah, the blessing of a wheelbarrow). Then comes the raking, perhaps the most physically and emotionally gratifying part of the enterprise. Raking the stones into place, spreading them around, pushing and pulling them here and there to even them out feels like giving the earth a back rub. You can almost feel the earth settling in, softening up, accepting this gift of tending. If the earth could purr, I imagine it would.
And while all the sites tell you to dig out 4 inches of dirt the length and breadth of the walk, they do not tell you what to do with it!! So, the good news is that we have bald patches of yard and awkward ridges and valleys left over from the heavy equipment used during the renovation years ago. I found that if I in-filled the gulleys with the dirt from the path, not only will the ground smooth itself out a bit, but the grasses from the "sod" will take root in the bald areas. So all in all, I get to have my path and seed the lawn too.
Next steps: continue to add to the fantasy. Home should always offer a bit of enchantment, even in the midst of the most familiar and mundane. We can be our own dream-weavers. So I will try to make gateways of fallen wood - twigs and tree limbs - that mark the threshold from yard to wood and from path to meadow; gateways that feed the imagination.
Homes should always be portals to enchanted worlds! Paradoxically, it is through reconnecting with the particularity of place that we are transported to the enchantment beyond.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
displacing consumerism
In a recent New Republic article on the ills of consumerism (June 17. 2009), communitarian leader Amitai Etzioni explains the problem: “A culture in which the urge to consume dominates the psychology of citizens is a culture in which people will do most anything to acquire the means to consume…” This unrestrained, indeed communally-driven impulse to buy is, he argues, a prime cause of our current financial malaise. We all want too much, and will fill our days, contort our lives, to be certain that we get it. (Even if we end up storing half of it in off-site storage units.)
Yet studies show that more stuff does not yield greater happiness. Since WWII, per capita income has tripled in the US, but overall satisfaction has plateaued. Indeed one of the greatest determinants of personal satisfaction is not a matter of fullness, but how we measure up against our neighbors. “Relative rather than absolute deprivation is what counts.”
The problem of consumerism, then, begins with us and our appetites, so it must be resolved through us and our appetites. Regulation can help stop the most egregious offenses, he continues. But it is changing the billions of consumer decisions we make every day that will truly heal our broken system.
His point is that our incessant, even desperate, pursuit of things is a surrogate for our incessant, even desperate, pursuit of happiness. The only way to dislodge consumerism, then, is to replace it with something more satisfying. “[I]t is not enough,” he writes, “to establish that which people ought not to do… Consumerism will not just magically disappear from its central place in our culture. It needs to be supplanted by something.”
What is that something? He offers two suggestions: communitarianism and transcendental pursuits. Etzioni is more compelling in his assessment of the problem than his presentation of a solution. But I believe he is on the right track. That is, if consumerism is at heart a spiritual pursuit, however misguided, then it can only be displaced by an authentic spiritual pursuit.
In his own way, Etzioni is arguing that religion is a prime arena for combating rampant consumerism, and therefore a prime source for motivating toward a life of “green.” After all, domestic consumption in the US drives 80% of our marketplace, and our marketplace is the premier source of environmental degradation. It is our behavior, then, our values and our appetites that can drive our economy toward sustainability.
This won’t happen overnight, but it can happen. The world was not always driven by consumption. We need to engage in what Etzioni calls a megalogue, that is, a national conversation conducted by millions of people over a million cups of coffee in a million conference rooms or dinner tables, or cafes. Perhaps that way we can make “less” become the new “more”; fill our hearts’ longings without filling our closets. Fodder for off-site storage facilities is not food for the soul.
Imagine that stuff would be more equitably created and distributed around the world; that instead of spending so much time shopping we spent it visiting and reading and playing music and re-building community. Imagine that the money we saved went to purchase services instead of unnecessary stuff so that more people would have more jobs that meant more to them and did more good; imagine that we could spend more of our creative energy on learning about the world and figuring out how to make things constantly better; imagine more time at home without the commutes that we endure to get to work to earn the money to buy the cars that get us to work…
This idea, seeded by Etzioni, seems like a chimera, a fantasy. But we were once driven by the lure of learning and justice, discovery and medicine, leisure and music. That is, a life filled with the pursuit of culture and meaning, and not the acquisition of stuff. No doubt we can be again.
Yet studies show that more stuff does not yield greater happiness. Since WWII, per capita income has tripled in the US, but overall satisfaction has plateaued. Indeed one of the greatest determinants of personal satisfaction is not a matter of fullness, but how we measure up against our neighbors. “Relative rather than absolute deprivation is what counts.”
The problem of consumerism, then, begins with us and our appetites, so it must be resolved through us and our appetites. Regulation can help stop the most egregious offenses, he continues. But it is changing the billions of consumer decisions we make every day that will truly heal our broken system.
His point is that our incessant, even desperate, pursuit of things is a surrogate for our incessant, even desperate, pursuit of happiness. The only way to dislodge consumerism, then, is to replace it with something more satisfying. “[I]t is not enough,” he writes, “to establish that which people ought not to do… Consumerism will not just magically disappear from its central place in our culture. It needs to be supplanted by something.”
What is that something? He offers two suggestions: communitarianism and transcendental pursuits. Etzioni is more compelling in his assessment of the problem than his presentation of a solution. But I believe he is on the right track. That is, if consumerism is at heart a spiritual pursuit, however misguided, then it can only be displaced by an authentic spiritual pursuit.
In his own way, Etzioni is arguing that religion is a prime arena for combating rampant consumerism, and therefore a prime source for motivating toward a life of “green.” After all, domestic consumption in the US drives 80% of our marketplace, and our marketplace is the premier source of environmental degradation. It is our behavior, then, our values and our appetites that can drive our economy toward sustainability.
This won’t happen overnight, but it can happen. The world was not always driven by consumption. We need to engage in what Etzioni calls a megalogue, that is, a national conversation conducted by millions of people over a million cups of coffee in a million conference rooms or dinner tables, or cafes. Perhaps that way we can make “less” become the new “more”; fill our hearts’ longings without filling our closets. Fodder for off-site storage facilities is not food for the soul.
Imagine that stuff would be more equitably created and distributed around the world; that instead of spending so much time shopping we spent it visiting and reading and playing music and re-building community. Imagine that the money we saved went to purchase services instead of unnecessary stuff so that more people would have more jobs that meant more to them and did more good; imagine that we could spend more of our creative energy on learning about the world and figuring out how to make things constantly better; imagine more time at home without the commutes that we endure to get to work to earn the money to buy the cars that get us to work…
This idea, seeded by Etzioni, seems like a chimera, a fantasy. But we were once driven by the lure of learning and justice, discovery and medicine, leisure and music. That is, a life filled with the pursuit of culture and meaning, and not the acquisition of stuff. No doubt we can be again.
Friday, June 19, 2009
bread from the earth
Last week I spent four days studying Jewish texts about nature with 30 other rabbis. The gathering was organized by Oraita, a study program for rabbis sponsored by the [Boston] Hebrew College and its rabbinical school.
One of the texts we explored was the Zohar's commentary on Psalm 104, the soaring biblical paean to God's creation, and how nature and its wonders are witness, mediator and messenger of God's majesty. (Our teacher on this text was Melila Hellner-Eshed, a gifted scholar of the Zohar.) We could have spent the entire four days on this psalm alone, not just delving into it as a transporting biblical text but as a new way of looking at our spiritual relationship with the physical world.
This is something I hope to do over the course of the summer, and may be inclined to share some insights I glean with you.
For now, here is one I find captivating. Like most good insights, it takes some work to get there, so I am hoping you will stay with me til the end and find that it was worth the journey.
If you ever wondered where our bread blessing, hamotzi lehem min ha'aretz (Blessed are you God, who brings forth bread from the earth) comes from, it is from here, Psalm 104: 14. "God causes the grazings to grow for the cattle, and grasses in response to the labor of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth."
As we all know, bread does not spring forth ready-made from the earth. Rather, we classically explain the surreal imagery of this blessing as an acknowledgement of the exquisite God/human partnership that yields both the fruits for human survival and the majesty of civilization. That is, God's creation provides the raw material, and human ingenuity transforms it into the stuff of our lives.
But the kabbalists allow us to take this one step further. At least, they inspired in me the following thoughts:
In verse 29 we read: "When you hide your face, God, people are troubled: when you take away their breath, they die, and return to their dust." Or so the more literal reading would have it.
To the kabbalists, this verse reads more like this: "When you are displeased with us, God, when the world stands before you in judgment, You turn your face away and the supernal flow of life-giving forces is unable to reach us. We are troubled. Our breath is taken from us, and we are like someone who has died (in a state of impurity). What is the solution? What is the remedy? For us to reconnect with the dust, with the earth, the stuff and substance of your primordial creation and the possessor of its purifying powers."
Now that is quite a handful to unpack and quite a handful to grasp. But bottom line, the kabbalists seem to be saying that the most fundamental and essential products of God's physical creation - the earth and its soil - are also the most elemental conveyors of God's spiritual sustenance and healing.
So when we find ourselves distanced from God, or suffering from spiritual malaise, we should reconnect with things earthy, the essence of creation.
That, it seems to me, is a hidden message in the odd image of our blessing over bread: "who brings forth bread from the earth, ha-motzi lehem min ha'aretz". In kabbalistic imagery, motzi, "bring forth," is a word that indicates the unimpeded flow of supernal life-giving forces from the most distant of heavens to the most present of earthly realities . Bread, lehem, is more than baked dough, more than the physical staff of life. It represents all nourishment, material and spiritual, that comes from God and sustains humanity. And aretz, land, is the life-giving, renewing stuff of creation.
So when we recite the blessing over bread, we are both thanking God for the partnership that allows us to weave the grasses of the earth into the breadbasket of civilization. And we are thanking God for the constant reminder of spiritual renewal present in the most fundamental of earth's elements, the land.
One of the texts we explored was the Zohar's commentary on Psalm 104, the soaring biblical paean to God's creation, and how nature and its wonders are witness, mediator and messenger of God's majesty. (Our teacher on this text was Melila Hellner-Eshed, a gifted scholar of the Zohar.) We could have spent the entire four days on this psalm alone, not just delving into it as a transporting biblical text but as a new way of looking at our spiritual relationship with the physical world.
This is something I hope to do over the course of the summer, and may be inclined to share some insights I glean with you.
For now, here is one I find captivating. Like most good insights, it takes some work to get there, so I am hoping you will stay with me til the end and find that it was worth the journey.
If you ever wondered where our bread blessing, hamotzi lehem min ha'aretz (Blessed are you God, who brings forth bread from the earth) comes from, it is from here, Psalm 104: 14. "God causes the grazings to grow for the cattle, and grasses in response to the labor of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth."
As we all know, bread does not spring forth ready-made from the earth. Rather, we classically explain the surreal imagery of this blessing as an acknowledgement of the exquisite God/human partnership that yields both the fruits for human survival and the majesty of civilization. That is, God's creation provides the raw material, and human ingenuity transforms it into the stuff of our lives.
But the kabbalists allow us to take this one step further. At least, they inspired in me the following thoughts:
In verse 29 we read: "When you hide your face, God, people are troubled: when you take away their breath, they die, and return to their dust." Or so the more literal reading would have it.
To the kabbalists, this verse reads more like this: "When you are displeased with us, God, when the world stands before you in judgment, You turn your face away and the supernal flow of life-giving forces is unable to reach us. We are troubled. Our breath is taken from us, and we are like someone who has died (in a state of impurity). What is the solution? What is the remedy? For us to reconnect with the dust, with the earth, the stuff and substance of your primordial creation and the possessor of its purifying powers."
Now that is quite a handful to unpack and quite a handful to grasp. But bottom line, the kabbalists seem to be saying that the most fundamental and essential products of God's physical creation - the earth and its soil - are also the most elemental conveyors of God's spiritual sustenance and healing.
So when we find ourselves distanced from God, or suffering from spiritual malaise, we should reconnect with things earthy, the essence of creation.
That, it seems to me, is a hidden message in the odd image of our blessing over bread: "who brings forth bread from the earth, ha-motzi lehem min ha'aretz". In kabbalistic imagery, motzi, "bring forth," is a word that indicates the unimpeded flow of supernal life-giving forces from the most distant of heavens to the most present of earthly realities . Bread, lehem, is more than baked dough, more than the physical staff of life. It represents all nourishment, material and spiritual, that comes from God and sustains humanity. And aretz, land, is the life-giving, renewing stuff of creation.
So when we recite the blessing over bread, we are both thanking God for the partnership that allows us to weave the grasses of the earth into the breadbasket of civilization. And we are thanking God for the constant reminder of spiritual renewal present in the most fundamental of earth's elements, the land.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
reclaiming Jew as am ha'aretz
For the past 2,000 years, the Jewish social elite have been the learned folk. First among them, occupying the inner circle, are the rabbis. They are the keepers of the tradition, the arbiters of our sacred texts. But since rabbinic Judaism has a democratizing tug, almost anyone who chooses to learn, whether in the company of others or by themselves, is also be considered part of the elite, even if only on the margins.
The opposite end of the social spectrum is occupied by the so-called am ha-aretz, the intellectual boor, unlearned and crude in habit. They were considered not only ignorant of Jewish learning and Jewish law, but indifferent or perhaps antagonistic to it as well. Or at the very best, sloppy about keeping it.
But here's the thing: Am ha-aretz literally means the people of the land.
While the rabbis epitomize the people of the book, the life of the mind, the timeless and placeless pursuit of religious imagination and learning, the amei ha-aretz are associated with land, the earth, the body located in time and place.
These two are complementary elements of life. They are the aleph (eretz) and taf (Torah), the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Life can exist only in the combination of the two, when lived nestled between the two. Yet somewhere along the way, they became severed from each other.
Even back in the talmudic period, when Jews still lived in Israel and were mostly comfortable in Babylonia, the rift between the rabbinic class (the haverim - the "brethren," the initiated) and the amei ha-aretz (the distrusted and sometimes reviled "lower class") was profound.
Internecine divisions are clearly nothing new for Jews. But my point for the moment is not how we must overcome class distinctions and name-calling, as important a subject as that is. My point on this blog is to call for a reclamation, a redemption, of the very idea of am ha-aretz.
First of all, we as a people have returned to our land. We are literally as much the people of the land - especially today - as we are the people of the book. We need to burnish both sides of this coin of identity: the mind and the body, the intellect and the labor.
Even more, we need to reconnect with the romance and appreciation of the land itself. All land. Nature. The Jewish people were nurtured on the land of Israel: its geography, its images, its trees, its watercourses, its climate, its produce, its agricultural laws. Our religious cradle, our spiritual expression was bound up in nature. The vocabulary with which we spoke to God was that of nature: the first of the harvest, the first of our flocks, the final harvest all were taken up to Jerusalem to celebrate with our people. We are bidden not to go to Jerusalem empty-handed, for the bounty of our land was a demonstrated of our bondedness with God.
Now more than ever, we need to remember that part of our heritage. Now, when humanity has the capacity not just to degrade one area, one region, one watershed, but the entire earth, Jews must reclaim the lofty and sacred name Am Ha-aretz, the people of the land. It will change the way we think of ourselves, what we teach in our seminaries, our day schools and synagogues. It will expand our legal categories and impact the questions we ask of our laws. It will inform our behavior, enhance our lives, help heal the earth and reconnect us to the sacred traditions of our landed past.
Interestingly, the phrase am ha-aretz was a laudable title in the biblical world. How appropriate for this generation, then, to renew it even as in doing so, it promises to renew us.
The opposite end of the social spectrum is occupied by the so-called am ha-aretz, the intellectual boor, unlearned and crude in habit. They were considered not only ignorant of Jewish learning and Jewish law, but indifferent or perhaps antagonistic to it as well. Or at the very best, sloppy about keeping it.
But here's the thing: Am ha-aretz literally means the people of the land.
While the rabbis epitomize the people of the book, the life of the mind, the timeless and placeless pursuit of religious imagination and learning, the amei ha-aretz are associated with land, the earth, the body located in time and place.
These two are complementary elements of life. They are the aleph (eretz) and taf (Torah), the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Life can exist only in the combination of the two, when lived nestled between the two. Yet somewhere along the way, they became severed from each other.
Even back in the talmudic period, when Jews still lived in Israel and were mostly comfortable in Babylonia, the rift between the rabbinic class (the haverim - the "brethren," the initiated) and the amei ha-aretz (the distrusted and sometimes reviled "lower class") was profound.
Internecine divisions are clearly nothing new for Jews. But my point for the moment is not how we must overcome class distinctions and name-calling, as important a subject as that is. My point on this blog is to call for a reclamation, a redemption, of the very idea of am ha-aretz.
First of all, we as a people have returned to our land. We are literally as much the people of the land - especially today - as we are the people of the book. We need to burnish both sides of this coin of identity: the mind and the body, the intellect and the labor.
Even more, we need to reconnect with the romance and appreciation of the land itself. All land. Nature. The Jewish people were nurtured on the land of Israel: its geography, its images, its trees, its watercourses, its climate, its produce, its agricultural laws. Our religious cradle, our spiritual expression was bound up in nature. The vocabulary with which we spoke to God was that of nature: the first of the harvest, the first of our flocks, the final harvest all were taken up to Jerusalem to celebrate with our people. We are bidden not to go to Jerusalem empty-handed, for the bounty of our land was a demonstrated of our bondedness with God.
Now more than ever, we need to remember that part of our heritage. Now, when humanity has the capacity not just to degrade one area, one region, one watershed, but the entire earth, Jews must reclaim the lofty and sacred name Am Ha-aretz, the people of the land. It will change the way we think of ourselves, what we teach in our seminaries, our day schools and synagogues. It will expand our legal categories and impact the questions we ask of our laws. It will inform our behavior, enhance our lives, help heal the earth and reconnect us to the sacred traditions of our landed past.
Interestingly, the phrase am ha-aretz was a laudable title in the biblical world. How appropriate for this generation, then, to renew it even as in doing so, it promises to renew us.
Monday, June 1, 2009
The Future
Sarah Saxon is a senior at Roland Park Country School working as a BJEN intern this spring. She authored this guest entry.
When I was little I used to think that the only thing that could jeopardize the future of the planet, thus my future, was that the sun was going to explode…eventually. As I got older, in school I started to learn about the infamous green house gasses and the hole in the ozone layer. I learned that the polar ice caps are going to melt and the sea level will rise flooding the coastal states…some day. These things always seemed so far away to me and really not that bad; considering I would already be gone by the time the sun exploded, and if the coastal states flooded I would move inland.
But now I (and the entire world) am faced with an immediate problem that really will affect my future in a drastic way. The truth is I am terrified by what might be the future of this planet. I am terrified by the fact that a large percent of the general public, including corporate executives and officials, know and understand the dangers of their actions and just carry on in their merry way like nothing is happening.
We are using up the world’s resources, we are wasting half of the resources we use, we are polluting the air and water, and all the while becoming less and less humane. So the question is, how can we get word out about what to do to fix this problem? How can we convince people that they need to start changing the way they think about things?
The media is always a good way, but it is not necessarily as effective as we would like it to be. Take a movie, for example. How about “An Inconvenient Truth”. Yes it did have a huge effect on the public, and Al Gore even won the Nobel Peace Prize for his effort. But, how many people are still talking about it today?
I think it is more effective to start small. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Lead by example. I have a friend who never used to recycle. He saw me doing it a lot and he started to become more conscious of the things he was throwing away. Of course he did have a little extra encouragement from me. We were at a restaurant the other day and he saved a plastic bottle just so he could take it home and recycle it. I was a little dumbfounded actually. You never know how much your actions can affect other people. That’s why it is important to set a good example.
Sometimes when I write for this blog, my fear about the future of our society and the planet is somewhat assuaged. I know there are people out there, especially those of you reading this, who genuinely care, like me, about the future and the environment. I urge you to set the example for your friends and family. Maybe they will catch onto it too.
When I was little I used to think that the only thing that could jeopardize the future of the planet, thus my future, was that the sun was going to explode…eventually. As I got older, in school I started to learn about the infamous green house gasses and the hole in the ozone layer. I learned that the polar ice caps are going to melt and the sea level will rise flooding the coastal states…some day. These things always seemed so far away to me and really not that bad; considering I would already be gone by the time the sun exploded, and if the coastal states flooded I would move inland.
But now I (and the entire world) am faced with an immediate problem that really will affect my future in a drastic way. The truth is I am terrified by what might be the future of this planet. I am terrified by the fact that a large percent of the general public, including corporate executives and officials, know and understand the dangers of their actions and just carry on in their merry way like nothing is happening.
We are using up the world’s resources, we are wasting half of the resources we use, we are polluting the air and water, and all the while becoming less and less humane. So the question is, how can we get word out about what to do to fix this problem? How can we convince people that they need to start changing the way they think about things?
The media is always a good way, but it is not necessarily as effective as we would like it to be. Take a movie, for example. How about “An Inconvenient Truth”. Yes it did have a huge effect on the public, and Al Gore even won the Nobel Peace Prize for his effort. But, how many people are still talking about it today?
I think it is more effective to start small. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Lead by example. I have a friend who never used to recycle. He saw me doing it a lot and he started to become more conscious of the things he was throwing away. Of course he did have a little extra encouragement from me. We were at a restaurant the other day and he saved a plastic bottle just so he could take it home and recycle it. I was a little dumbfounded actually. You never know how much your actions can affect other people. That’s why it is important to set a good example.
Sometimes when I write for this blog, my fear about the future of our society and the planet is somewhat assuaged. I know there are people out there, especially those of you reading this, who genuinely care, like me, about the future and the environment. I urge you to set the example for your friends and family. Maybe they will catch onto it too.
india's farmers go organic
In case you missed this amazing story, it seems that 300,000 farmers in India are bucking the fossil fuel/artificial fertilizer trend of the past 40 years that both degraded the soil and put them into debt to companies such as Monsanto, and returning to the "old fashioned" way of organic farming. India's leaders are calling for scientists to do a rigorous study of the best practices for various regions so that soil, harvest yield and standard of living all continue to rise. A fascinating development we should all keep our eyes on. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104708731
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