On Glaciers and Pentimento

On our pilgrimage up to Rochester this past week to take our son to college, we stopped off at Watkins Glen. If you have not been there, you truly need to go.

It is a gorge carved out by the waters of Glen Creek whose riverbed was swept away by the glaciers thousands of years ago, leaving the watercourse no choice but to suddenly and dramatically plunge down dozens of feet every now and then on its inexorable way to the lake.

While there, we stayed at a renovated New England farmhouse, deep in this micro-climate's wine country, with a grand view overlooking Seneca Lake. It is one of the Finger Lakes that gives this region its name, for truly the lakes look like some giant hand mindlessly played with the earth one lazy afternoon, dragging fingers along the ground, leaving telltale gouges for the water to fill.

That is not far from the truth. For this was glacier country - last scraped clean 12,000 years ago, when long tendrils of packed ice receded, grinding and dragging and depositing the debris of the earth along the route of their retreat.

How harsh that must have been to the world as it was. Animate and inanimate objects alike were mashed and smashed and moved miles away, their world destroyed or re-arranged at the whim of the Ice.

But perhaps it was a blessing too, for it allowed the earth the rare opportunity to begin again. The past could be forgotten, old ways ground into dust, mistakes overturned, the bed dug fresh, the soil renewed, ready to receive the seeds of new life.

No doubt it is because we are in the month of Elul, the prelude to the High Holidays, that glaciers offer themselves to me as metaphors for renewal and blessing. It is that time of year when we review the past, see where we have been and assess how - and what - we did. The scary thing is, we are told that all our deeds have been recorded in the Book of Life. All of them. I don't think I'm alone in wishing (no doubt futilely) for random moments of divine inattentiveness that might have prevented some deeds from being recorded.

Short of that, desperate plots of surreptitious erasure play upon the mind. Imagine if we could construct mammoth glaciers to run along the pages of our lives, celestial glaciers that obliterate the writings of heaven, flattening and shredding any evidence that might be used against us. (Let's call these glaciers "atonement.")

It is not so far-fetched a vision. After all, like the earth, old parchments and old canvases were scraped, ridding them of ink or paint, clearing space for new stories, new images, changed minds, new life.

These are the palimpsests that form the foundations upon which the changing narratives of our lives are recorded.

Inspired by the glaciers, by the view of this new geological chapter writ upon an age-old world, we can find a perfect metaphor for Elul.

The palimpsest is the bedrock of our lives: our parents, our birthplace, our mother tongue, our native culture, our personality. These are the things we did not make and cannot change, the qualities and attributes upon which all other aspects of our life are built, the “us” that travels with us wherever we go. No matter what happens to us, these can never be erased.

Then there is the rest: our tracings, acts, words, desires and passions. It is these we can be judged on, these which are changeable, these which we can atone for and seek to write again.

That is what the High Holidays are all about - a new birth for all the inhabitants of the world.

There is one catch, though. It seems that even the best of scrapers, even the most complete of erasures, leave a little bit behind. This leftover is called pentimento. It is the shadow of creations past that poke through the new layer of art, through the new narrative writ upon the old. The hidden made visible.

These peekings often reveal the mistakes, the re-thought composition, the work less valued that the creators sought to hide.

But that is how it should be. This past is part of our story too. It reveals the paths we took toward our new selves, our new creation, what needed to be rejected so that today could be born.

Such knowledge enriches our appreciation of the effort and hard-earned wisdom that gave birth to handiwork we have beome.

Glaciers and pentimento. Erasures and permanence. These are the makings of the human spirit. And they both go well with the finest of wine.

L'chaim.

(Photo: cascade of water showering us along the walkway at Watkins Glen)

Harvests

The weather turned colder this late week in August, and I, suddenly, compatibly, likewise turned older. This is the week I took my youngest to college.

For 29 years we have had children resident in this house. Twenty-nine years of mess and noise, hugs and hurts, joys and socks and home-made games and piles of shoes that seemed to increase geometrically in volume and size.

So it is perhaps not surprising that this moment hits hard. But it is, gratefully, blunted and eased by the same subtle culprit that caused it to be: the advancing, relentless seasons of time.

In a way, it is right and proper, and indeed pleasurable, that the weather turns cool this time of year. We have all but grown tired of the summer's heat; I am eyeing my woodpiles, eager to put them to use.

So too, sadly, it is right and proper and thankfully a bit pleasurable that my home has turned empty at this time of year.

Fall is the time of reaping what we have sown: if we are fortunate, we are blessed with a full harvest, armloads bursting with bounty. It heralds a time of satisfaction and approaching leisure, when the work is done and we are sated with food, able to enjoy the soothing company of family and friends.

So too in this season of our lives. If we are fortunate, we are blessed with a full harvest, armloads of hugs stored up over the years and a storehouse full of pride in our children. We have tended and tugged them, watered and feed them, guided and prodded and now it is time to let them loose.

We hope never to be far away, but we cannot hover too closely either. It is their time.

Oddly, perhaps appropriately, this entry is my 300th post.

The number 300 in Hebrew is represented by the letter shin, the first letter of the word Shaddai, a name for God that evokes fertility, motherhood and mountains. It is the letter that marks the outside of the mezuzah, the amulet that guards our doorways, guides us across thresholds and watches over our comings and goings.

So it is that my husband and I (and my son!) are coming into a new space, a new year, a new life. All this in the fall of the year, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world. How fortunate that this moment is accompanied by this ephemeral mezuzah, marking this invisible passage of time. Given that life is meant to be lived this way, what more could we ask for?

May you too find that you enter this year with promises anew, and thresholds that are broad enough for all your aspirations.

And may blessings escort you through all your endeavors.

(photo: fall harvest of golden pears, walnut and apple from Seneca Lake, and tomatoes from here)

Ripe

These are the first apples in our orchard, plump and firm and almost ready for picking. It is a joy to see them.

I lost eight trees the first time I planted my orchard, four years ago, oblivious to the deer who savor the sweet, tender leaves of apple saplings. Eight trees. I learned my lesson.

Three years ago, I kept my new potted trees sheltered behind the screen on my porch - a halfway house between domesticity and the wilds. They grew tall and leafed out and were clearly ready to spread their roots.

Two years ago I placed them in the ground, on my front yard, out among the storms and deer and sun and rain. I draped them with netting, covered them in mesh, shielding them from the long, searching tongues of the deer. The act felt sacred, like a gowning or investiture. My trees were now somehow ordained - for what I do not know.

It was a stop-gap measure. The netting protected them, but it also constrained them. Their gangly, youthful branches kept tangling in the net. I had to regularly, gently loose them from their bindings and reset the net a bit higher. Sometimes in the process, a leaf or two tore.

How to balance protection and freedom?

This year we placed lattices around the trees and netting around the lattices. That promised to keep the deer away, which it did, as long as I minded the nets and mended them when they tore. So save for a few branch tips and leaves that were consumed when I was inattentive, the trees thrived and the apples grew.

This year, four years after my first failed orchard, we have apples. Twelve to be precise. Nine on the smaller tree and three on the larger one. (I should have pruned it early in the spring - no doubt it would have sprouted more blossoms and boasted more fruit. Hopefully, we will both do better next season.)

The five apples on the smaller tree seem ripe. They are full and red and hang heavy on their branches. But are they ready? Do they need another rain? Another week? Should we hold onto them just a little bit longer? Perhaps the better question is not whether the apples are ready for picking but is the branch ready to let them go?

My husband and I have decided. We know when we are going to pick the apples. Today, the day we take our baby, our youngest son, to college and send him off to set down roots in the fertile soil of his choosing.

Reiki and Elul

This past week, my cousin initiated my husband and me into the world of spiritual healing. This cousin, a master teacher of Reiki, has been practicing this energy artform for some 20 years. It suits him: he is slow to anger, easy to be around, and exceedingly patient.

He was visiting us overnight, giving of himself and his time to help his mother-in-law through a mild medical procedure. He began telling us stories about healing. We had spoken briefly about his work years before, but this time, at ease on a languid summer's night, we had the leisure to indulge. So, accepting our interest while casting aside our poorly disguised skepticism, our cousin graciously offered to give us a taste.

It just so happened that he had his Reiki table in his car with him (a wonderfully comfortable folding massage table which allows him to travel to clients wherever they are).

Reiki is a technique for inducing calm, relieving stress and helping revive and soothe a person's spirits. It enables us - the clients - to enjoy the benefits of meditation without a large investment of time or the hard-won accumulation of skill. We just lie down, let go and put ourselves in someone else's hands, literally. (Some claim that Reiki can also promote healing of a physical nature. While not repudiating this attribute, the best of masters are cautious and circumspect in what they promise.)

Still, if our cousin was willing to help either our bodies or souls, or perhaps both, right there in our living room, after the dinner's dishes were cleared away, it was definitely worth a try. At best it would be a success; at worst a pleasant diversion. After pointing out one or two minor aches and pains of our own, my husband and I each submitted to a treatment.

I went second. I got up on the table, lay down, stretched out, closed my eyes, and tried to give myself over to the moment. My cousin focused, chose one spot as the point of contact, cradled that spot in his hands, and sat there. And sat there. For twenty minutes he did not move. He simply held on, radiating warmth with unflagging attentiveness, concentration, energy and care. I was less disciplined. My mind was dashing about from thought to thought. Yet despite my contrary energy, his focus and grasp did not vary. They were steady throughout.

The lessons I took away from this experiment were more about my cousin than about me. Or more about what Reiki does for him than it did for me. He was the epitome of constancy and care. Where I was restless, he was at peace - meditative and centered - overcoming my skeptical, questioning, unsurrendering vibes. What a gift to be able to enter that zone, day in and day out. For the practitioners, if for no one else, Reiki is remarkable.

As for me, I cannot tell you that I was healed - either body or soul. I got off the table after a 20 minute treatment with the same pain I had when I got on. And I was in a pretty good mood, deep down, when I lay down, so I cannot say that any spiritual healing visited me when I got up.

What I can say is this: it seems wonderful for my cousin.

And it seems wonderful for Elul.

Elul - the Hebrew month we are in now, the month that precedes Rosh Hashanah - is a time of healing. Healing what is broken; healing what is tattered. Healing the bonds we have ruptured and the bonds ruptured by others. Elul is about forgiving well and letting go.

During Elul, we are reminded of the powers we hold in our hands, and those we don't. Elul is a paradoxical month of calm and frenzy, inviting both quiet and energetic spiritual concentration. We must seek to both mend and amend ourselves, and to soothe the hurt of others. The two in fact are tied. As we seek the spots of pain in others, and cradle them in our hands and hearts, we ourselves become healed. Like my cousin.

It is so very hard to open ourselves to this work, so hard to know when our overtures of healing will be accepted. Which is why we need Elul, to create this bubble in time, this shared season of openness and vulnerability. And healing.

May we all feel the magic and power of Elul and heal the pains that abide in our midst.

Sacred Ground

There is nothing so volatile as a piece of land.

To speak of land is to inexorably enter the gritty world of politics. It is to be immersed willy-nilly in the contentious world of space, ownership, boundaries, identity and power; of determining who and what belong and who and what don't; who has the right and authority to decide and who doesn't.

Just as we speak of people as citizens or aliens, so we speak of plants in terms of native or invasive. We refer to soil out of place as dirt; plants out of place (according to our cultural preferences) as weeds; people out of place as illegals or undocumented. And so too we classify buildings out of place as eyesores, at best, or sacrilegious violations at worst.

It is in this context that we can best understand the controversy surrounding the Ground Zero Mosque, or Cordoba House, or Park51, as the building is now called by its developers.

To contest this building as violating sacred ground is a tactic to establish proprietary claim over the land and control over the culture. It is a way to say: We are the true guardians of this place, we hold the keys, we are the bouncers, the ones who determine who is in and who is out; the ones to decide who belongs and who is alien; whose safety is threatened and who causes the threat.

(Paradoxically, this is an Alice in Wonderland conversation, for in truth, in this focused arena of who can claim a piece of the American story, and who has the right to enjoy America's blessings, the ones who say they are threatened are the ones who are safe and the ones who are "dangerous" are the ones now threatened.)

This fight over the mosque is clearly not a fight over real estate but a fight to determine who owns America. That is why this is so important and so scary.

For any one group to say we own America and declare that America's rights refer only to us and those we like, here but not there, is the true violation of the sacred space, and sacred story, that permeates this extraordinary country. For we know, having tragically learned this from history, that once one group is cast as outsiders in this place, other groups quickly follow.

Which is why almost any conversation about land is also a conversation about politics.

Tzimtzum

(WISE photo from NASA)

Nights are very thick at the juncture of lunar months. Without the reflected rays of the sun, the moon gets swallowed up by the vastness of space, and the darkness that sweeps down upon earth threatens to engulf us too.


It is a frightening time.

And it would be an almost insupportable time, except there is a gift that comes with it: only when the moon is dark do the rest of the heavens shine their brightest.

It is only then that we can see stars otherwise blotted out by the moon's reflected light, finally given their moment to shine. It is then that we can see familiar stars shine with an unfamiliar brilliance. It is then that the shy, the weak, the tired-of-competing can, with only a little effort, present themselves in their fullest.

How true that is for us as well. We all know loving couples where, as if by pact, one member dominates the airwaves, rendering the other all but mute. But when the more loquacious one takes momentary leave, to get the salad dressing or answer the phone, this other's wit and wisdom and charm has the space to shine through.

So too with children. It is often only when a more dominant older child leaves for camp, a sleepover or college, that a younger child can hold forth in the family, now having the space and time to strut their stuff.

We know the quiet ones at a meeting are not necessarily the ones who have nothing to say. They just don't vie for the rare oxygen in the room. They often only air their thoughts when the more talkative ones pause to catch their breath.

Too many of the good things in life are over-looked, out-shone, and otherwise left undiscovered by an over-abundance of light or noise or stuff. Sometimes, paradoxically, the greatest act of creation is the generous act of contraction. Tzimtzum. Such a pulling back and leaving space for the other was, the kabbalists say, modeled for us at the start of it all by God.

You might have heard the story: when God chose to create the universe, there was just one problem: God filled the universe. And even in the kabbalists' world of fanciful physics two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.

So God did what was otherwise inconceivable: retracted, withdrew, condensed the infinite so that the finite world could be born.

No doubt one of the lessons we are to learn from this is that if God can choose to rein in the divine self so that others might come into being and flourish, shouldn't we? Indeed, isn't that the way we all began, pushing aside the organs of our mother so that we may claim the room that was once all occupied by her? Don't we need to move over in our homes and offices, clear out spaces in our gardens, share the seat on the train so that others might have room?

We may feel blinded on the darkest of nights looking down at the ground, stumbling along to find our way. But if we gaze up at the stars when the moon disappears, we can see forever. And indeed, while that is not the best time to hunt for truffles, it is the time that is made for dreams.

Addresses

In an obscure article entitled, "Boundary and Sense of Place in Traditional Korean Dwelling," by Rieh Sun-young (at the time an Associate Professor of architecture at the University of Seoul), I learned how address labels can tell us a lot about our connections to "space", which in turn tell us a lot about the ways we treat "place".

Sun-young tells us that while American address-labels start with the individual (micro) and proceed to building, street, city and state (macro), Korean address-labels start with the region (macro) and proceed down to the individual (micro).

Western custom, she tells us, "seems to originate from the perception of oneself... [where] the individual wants to be identified first." The Korean tradition, however, emphasizes the "collectivity" first. "The people in these cultures identify themselves through larger community groups to which they belong and orient themselves through a series of places in which they experience boundaries." We are where we come from. In order to find me you must first find my community.

Through our most casual act of addressing letters or printing business cards, American culture shows our sense of the accidentalness of space. The individual here is seen as a constant no matter where we are. We are seen as people who, at any particular moment, happen to occupy one random spot. The address is an accident of the moment. If anything, we believe, it is the individual who gives meaning to space rather than place giving meaning to the individual.

(Cell phones, by the way, uproot even this tangential connection to place. With the increasing loss of land lines and the disconnection of area code from dwelling, our phone numbers, which used to be an indicator of person with place, are merely accidental indicators of where we happened to be when we purchased our first cellular contracts.

And with our phones, we can "locate" and connect with our friends without having the slightest idea where they are. It is as if space has momentarily disappeared. Perhaps it is precisely this creeping sense of living dislodged, this growing awareness that we are becoming not just uprooted but unlanded, that is driving the urgency to "eat local" and champion urban farming.)

Korean addresses are just the opposite. They orient us within circles of place. A person cannot be known, has no enduring identity, without first being located in the boundaries, history and culture of place. It is "place" - a combination of landscape and culture - that makes the person, not the person that makes the place.

No doubt this almost thoughtless act of addressing letters sheds light on why we so blithely treat the world as we do. In some ways, we truly believe we are self-made, and our historic wholesale migration from land, county and farm over these past 100 years has led us to believe we can live unlanded.

The way we address our letters shows us that. If we even send letters anymore.

The Songs of Elul

It doesn't matter that it's hot outside, I still prefer sleeping with the windows open. My bedroom abuts a gently wooded quarter-acre or so of land backed by another half-acre of more densely packed woods. And though by day the trees are sentries of hush and calm, by night they are smothered in nocturnal noise. Insects of the jaunty, gentle, jubilant kind invade, the kind of bugs that star in all the white noise sleep machines that sell for lots of money.

So it seems odd to shun the big sounds of summer that we all seek through small machines in winter.

And besides, there is a sad intensity to this late summer's nightly chorus of crickets and katydids that seems to match our mood, as if the insects themselves feel the desperation of a sweet, sultry summer slipping away.

Despite the gift of four distinct seasons that weave themselves in and out of each other's days, it is the end of summer that cuts most sharply across the endless stretch of time. No other season's end is mourned half so much.

Camp, vacation, a slower pace, the longer days, quicker commutes all come to an abrupt end and we tumble back into the frenzy of the world.

For the crickets, summer's decline is even more devastating. And yet while they are here, they never stop singing. That is why I don't want to shut them out. They remind us of a great, bittersweet truth.

Though every one of our days, and every one of our seasons, will also come to an end, while we are here, we can always keep singing.


(the picture is of my woods this rainy morning, the second of Elul 5770)

Maryland Naturalists

Charlie saves the day again.

The deep rattle sound that ripples beneath the chirping of a thousand crickets on late summer nights had forever been a mystery to me. But Charlie sent me to a website that was a nature lover's (or in my case, nature novice's) best friend:

Songs of Insects

It teaches you everything (and more) that you might ever want to know about bug sounds, and allows you to slip cool words like crepitation (the "snapping of insect wings to produce a clicking or popping sound") and stridulation (the rubbing together of wings to make a chirping sound) into your conversation.

From that site I learned that my mystery sound was made by the common true katydid (pictured here).

But if you want more than the sights and sounds that this website can provide, and are interested in becoming a part of an emerging state-wide network of Maryland amateur and professional naturalists, consider signing up for the Fall 2010 Maryland Naturalist Workshop sponsored by the Maryland Naturalist Center. It begins August 21.

As Charlie, who runs the workshop with his wife, Linda, tells us: "The intent of the Naturalist Workshop is to:

1) support individuals as they master routine naturalist skills;
2) establish a groundwork for accumulating knowledge about local plants and animals;
3) cultivate awareness;
4) provide a social forum to enhance learning;
5) provide access to natural science collections and resources to enhance learning;
6) build relationships between people and places; and
7) facilitate a widespread naturalist community in Maryland."

This is part of Charlie's dream to have a network of well-trained naturalists reaching into every neighborhood across the state, so that every fourth grader, young parent, curious new homeowner or local octogenarian is not more than a few houses away from someone who can help them understand the natural world right outside their homes just a little bit better. It is an irresistible idea.

For more information on how you can become a part of it, contact cdavis@marylandnature.org .

Just imagine...

While sitting in my local hair salon earlier today, and seeing all the energy used by the hand-held hair dryers, all the water consumed in the washing and rinsing, and all the vibrant talking that was going on, I began to wonder (the wondering seems to be a constant, insistent companion of mine) how the world could do its work differently, more efficiently, more naturally.

So I began a list of imaginings. This is only the very barest and quite likely the least imaginative of imagining lists. No doubt you have ideas that are wonderfully imaginative. I would love to hear them.

We must fill a stadium full of these ideas, pile them high upon Congress and our Chambers of Commerce. Spin their visions before enrapt children so that they become woven into their dreams. And we must share them with each other, for that is the only way they will come true.

Here are some of mine.


Imagine one day that...


... stores will be powered by the footfalls of pedestrians on the sidewalks of our city streets

... classrooms will run on the collected energy of school children at play

... computers will be powered by the sun during the day and the warmth of our breath at night

... the heat of our refrigerators will warm the water of our homes

... downspout runoff will flush our toilets

... we will pick seasonal fruit from the urban orchard down the block

... we will build steps to our roofs so we can tend and harvest our gardens by day, and see the stars above the city lights at night

... our homes' exteriors will collect sunlight for heat and energy

... street surfaces will be solar collectors

... kinetic energy from our tires will light up neighboring homes

... health clubs will generate rather than consume energy with their treadmills, ellipticals and stationary bikes


... everyone will cease to work one day a week and turn the buzzing world off

shabbat shalom, and pleasant dreams

Our Brothers' Keepers

Once upon a time, we couldn't ask people not to smoke in our presence. Once upon a time, we couldn't ask people not to drive while drunk.

But slowly and with great effort, cultural expectations, the public will and the law changed. Through a groundswell of well-managed, and well-financed, educational campaigns, our attitudes about what was right and what was wrong evolved. Ultimately, both smoking and drunk-driving were not seen as private acts protected by the right of self-determination, but as threats to public health that should be regulated on behalf of public welfare.

So it must be with the environment.

We need a broad-based public will campaign that encourages us to say something when we see each other trash the environment. We need to make it socially unacceptable, taboo and publicly embarrassing to manufacture, purchase, consume and use things whose production or disposal harms us all. Not just because it hurts the environment somewhere beyond view; or that it will eventually affect our children somewhere beyond now. But because, like second-hand smoke and another's drunk driving, we ourselves are put at risk.

It is not about big business vs small animals; or economic development vs tree-huggers. It is about personal and collective behavior vs us and our health, right here and right now. (And sometimes, as in smoking and drinking, it is sometimes us vs us.)

Whether the issue is the behavior of international companies and their factories overseas, federal tax incentives that support bad energy and agricultural policies, lifestyles that are too large, or disposables being used by our own families and congregations when durables would do, we must speak out and say something. Individually and collectively.

For most of us, it is hard to do.

I was in the check-out line in a neighborhood market the other day, and as the cashier was ringing up my purchases, I told her that I did not need a bag, I had my own. Too late. Habit had forced her hand. My purchases were already landing in the plastic bag.

She paused and asked, "So you don't want this bag."

"No," I replied. At which point she dutifully took my foodstuffs out of the bag, placed them on the counter and proceeded to throw away the plastic bag.

That was not what I intended. The exchange was not about me but about the bag. Not about my aesthetic preferences but about not creating waste in the world. This nuance was clearly missed. The ability of so many of us - for this is not the first time such an exchange and result has happened - to blithely throw away a pristine object untainted by use, dirt, blemishes, holes or damage indicates what a profligate and environmentally insensitive lifestyle we live.

But did I say something? No. No doubt because I didn't want to offend. Or have the cashier think ill of me. Or fail in my message. Or any number of other reasons. But at what price did I hold my tongue?

My friend Rebecca, who is a gentle, loving, passionate soul, told me she would have said something like: "You know, you can use that bag again." Not in a chiding or judgmental way but in a hey-here's-an-idea, awakening kind of way.

Once upon a time, we needed to be taught how to ask others not to smoke: "Thank you for not smoking" was crafted as a socially acceptable message which really meant: "No Smoking."

"Friends don't let friends drive drunk" really meant, "Don't drink and drive."

We must craft ways to speak of caring for creation so that the message can be heard, and heeded. We need to learn how to shift cultural attitudes toward the concept of "enough." We need to make a pact with each other that we will all do this together, have each other's back, so that we do not flinch from this task or feel ostracized in the process.

And we need to teach these ways not only to ourselves but to the youngest of children in the earliest of grades. Like "Stop, Drop and Roll," we need to find the way to encapsulate the message of caring for creation in a phrase that is short and sweet.

There are people working on this, and studying this, even as I write. But we don't have that pithy catch-phrase yet.

If, as you speak to those around you, teaching them about our obligation to live well and justly on this earth, you trip upon such a phrase, do share it with the rest of us.

Life Without Oil

(photo from d BP oil spill flickr)

It is hard to imagine living without oil. And yet, if we look at both a thirty-plus year history of oil spills (which does not include the BP Gulf spill or the million gallons that just recently spewed into the Kalamazoo River), and if we remember that scientists are telling us that we have reached the historic peak oil mark, after which oil becomes more and more scarce, and more and more costly, we know the time without oil is coming.

Might as well start the process now. Not just the technical research or business application components, but the emotional, social adjustment part as well.

You know the need: If we dither and dally, we will further destroy the planet, deplete our economy, and spend more and more of our money extracting less and less accessible oil. That will in turn increase the price of everything that depends on oil (food, fuel, fertilizers, transportation, refrigeration, medical supplies, cosmetics, plastics, etc.); and lay the groundwork for a grand economic upheaval.

And more war. Not just between regions and countries but possibly even between neighbor and neighbor.

The gradual way will not be easy, either, but it will be easier than the meltdown promised by the current way. And it will be a change we can manage, that we can survive in and even thrive in. You can't say the same about the too-late version of change.

There are two great lines in William Powers' new book, Twelve by Twelve: a one-room cabin off the grid & beyond the American dream that capture the spirit we need to make these changes. (I am only half-way through the book and can only half-heartedly recommend it to you. For while it could be great, and maybe it will redeem itself, I don't like the way Powers is doling out the story, and manhandling the reader in the process. Nonetheless, it is entertaining enough if you don't mind being manipulated by a writer.)

The first is: "Humans are nature become conscious" (p. 85). This is reminiscent of Thomas Berry's stunning teaching that as far as we know, humans are the only way the universe is able to be aware of itself.

Just as the science fiction movie "Contact" muses that without other intelligent life out there, it would be an awful waste of space, so too we can argue that if there were no one at all to witness and celebrate the grandeur of the universe, it would be an awful waste of creation. It is our job to marvel at creation, and protect and preserve it so that there will always be others to marvel at it as well.

We cannot take this earth for granted, or our place in celebrating and protecting it. And in case we need reminding, Powers simply writes in his second great line: "Everything comes from the earth." Everything. Period.

How easy it is to forget as we go about our day flicking on lights and opening up faucets, pushing buttons and turning keys.

It is our task to remember - and to begin to imagine how we will live in a world freed from the chains of oil. And we must begin to do it, now.