Living word by word

Having The Talk

     Sandra Steingraber, one of my favorite environmental writers, has a great piece in the newest Orion about how we talk to our kids about global warming. Will and I are so often laid low by the constant drumbeat of Bad Climate News -- and the public's apparent immunity to it --   we've been reluctant to be upfront with our daughter as she approaches the age of reason. How do we explain how the massive stuffed polar bear she lugs around the house has become the emblem of an endangeered species? We'd love to put off the conversation, but she's reading well enough to decipher the newspaper now, so we can't wait much longer.

Steingraber notes that there is a crop of books for kids out there on the issue, and that somehow most of them end on an upbeat note, a can-do approach introducing kids to  many people in the world who are working on the problem. It's a distinct contrast to the we're-all-going-to-die fatalism of most adult literature on the subject.

 Like Steingraber, I'm still not sure how to approach this with my daughter, but reading her essay prompted me to make two vows for the months ahead: (1) I will stop reading the speculation that passes for analysis in the newspapers about the election before us. It's not a "horse race," and so much is at stake that people who treat it as such are not worth my time. (2) I'll stop worrying and just do something -- in this case volunteering my one free morning a week between now and the election.

Whatever happens in November, whatever happens to our climate, I want to be able to tell my children that I did the most faithful and hopeful thing I could think of:  I prayed, and I worked.

co-authors!

Besides still being married to each other after sabbatical, Will and I can now add co-authorship to our list of accomplishments. We collaborated on a piece for Word and World entitled, "Actually, you did go to seminary to deal with parking!" It's an attempt to merge our professional worlds a bit. Maybe not our best writing, but perhaps a peek into what dinner table conversations are like at our house (when we're not telling the kids to stop using their forks as musical instruments. . ). The full article isn't online, but you can see the table of contents at the link above.

Blessed Ash Wednesday

That thing you thought would save you, is killing you.

The margarine you ate for all of the 1980’s was worse for you than real butter and still clogs your arteries. The marathon training that made you feel so healthy turns out to have ruined your joints and reduced your immunity. The diet that they said would turn around your health messed up your metabolism for good. The drug  therapy that you thought would make your life better now turns out to raise your risk of heart attack.

The time-saving devices that our forefathers developed to save their backs now mean that we don’t get any exercise.

Remember the prediction that personal computers would give us  a paperless society?

The international alliances of a generation ago come back to bite us, and the children of those allies are now dreaming of jihad against us.

We live in a time with so much information and so little reason to trust anything we read. We can get practically anything we want from anywhere in the world, but half the time we don’t know anything about how it was made or whether it is safe.

And even our best intentions can come back to bite us.

A few months ago my husband and son were in a car accident one block from his nursery school. They slammed into the side of a moving truck at an uncontrolled intersection. They were fine. The car was not. Not having faced any decisions about cars in nearly ten years, we immediately began the research on what to get next for our one and only family vehicle. Hybrid or not? Compact or wagon? Side airbags too? What about diesel?

One thing we were certain of – it would not be a new car. Both for financial and environmental reasons, we did all our research in the used car market. We even contemplated buying a compact diesel station wagon from a few states away for its stunning gas mileage.  In the end, we found an acceptable conventional vehicle from a local small dealer, still second guessing ourselves about forgoing the diesel.

And then, a few days later a new report was released. It turned out that diesel fumes, because of the soot they emit, are so bad for their effect on climate change that any savings in gas mileage is canceled out. That thing you thought was so righteous? It’s not.

That thing that you thought would save you, in fact is killing you.

Forgive us Lord, for all our efforts to save ourselves. We make terrible messiahs.

my son the evangelist

The thing about having a toddler is that you teach them a few things just in the course of living, and -- look out -- you're stuck with it for good! It's true, of course, for those unguarded moments when you say something you wish you hadn't: "Where did he learn that word? Oh, yeah. From me."

But fortunately, it's also true of the better things. Johannes has become our family evangelist, both of his mother's vocation and his father's. As a one car family, we've slipped into the pattern that the "girls" go to church at the drack of cawn before the first service -- usually with the car. Johannes and Will follow later on the bus, which conveniently runs in a direct  line from our block to church. It works out well because Johann LOVES the bus.

Now, once in a great while, my DH would prefer to, shall we say, worship according to the First Article of the creed. Or, maybe, celebrate Sabbath with a truly long nap. But Johann will not stand for it. Skip church! God forbid!

I'm not sure, to be honest, whether it's the bus ride or church he is really insisting on. But a) he gets his father to worship and b) once there, he tells anyone who listens that he RODE THE 6B BUS!!  Good news all around!

my year in books

I love lists, and every year I resolve to read some of the top picks from the New York Times Book Review list of “ten best.” I am usually a year or two behind on these “best of” books (as you'll see below), and I don’t read nearly enough to justify generating my own list of top ten recommendations. But here are the ones that resonated with my year. (I feel churlish, of course, leaving out some of the best fiction, but in terms of influence on my life, this is where I was this year. . .)

 Winter:
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

The beginning of 2007 was marked by a number of deaths, many of them tragic, touching me, my congregation, and my clergy colleagues.

Joan Didion’s memoir of her husband’s sudden death and the ensuing grief is the best window I’ve seen into what death does to the heart and mind of a mourner. Absolutely a must read for anyone trying to understand the grieving.

Spring:

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan

I’ve long been a fan of Michael Pollan’s journalism on food production and its political and environmental implications, but this book blew me away. I learned more than I ever wanted to about what is wrong with our relationship with food and farms in this country, but I also felt affirmed in taking a basically human approach to what I personally eat. Yes, what we eat is political. But we are cultural, social beings as well, and Pollan never loses sight of the many roles food plays in our lives. This book was a tremendous comfort as I sorted through some new health issues in my life and experimented with some nutritional solutions for them. Pollan has some spirited defenses of food as food (which I expect we’ll hear more of in his new release in January), not as a list of nutritional elements, and his writing kept me from feeling like I’d stepped out into a netherworld of supplements and ingredient lists.

Summer:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling

What can I say? Our high school youth mission trip departed the morning after Book 7 was released, and I spent a week with teenagers absorbed in a 700-plus page book. I didn’t get around to reading it myself until August, but I enjoyed it and look forward to the day my own kids will read these books. Rowling is no J.R.R. Tolkien, but ultimately her tale is also one of redeeming love. What’s not to like?

Fall: 

Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion by Sara Miles

I’ve been itchy at work lately, trying to move my congregation to think about its mission differently, and struggling to help Baby Boomers understand that their own issues with faith don’t necessarily resonate with younger generations. Sara Miles’ memoir of her own conversion to Christianity and involvement in food pantries is one I’ve been passing around. For socially concerned Christians who usually find themselves reacting against the fundamentalisms of their own childhood, Miles’ fresh lens on the church brings new clarity about the treasures and the pitfalls of life in community that we so take for granted. Here is a woman who wasn’t put off by Holy Communion, but actually drawn to Christianity by it, and saw in it a calling to share bread with all God’s children.  Her account of her marriage to her partner at San Francisco’s city hall, though a sidelight to the main narrative, brought me to tears.

What's next for 2008? Expect to see more fiction (I have a sabbatical coming up!) and something about China, where I'll be traveling in July.

Harmonic convergence

Will and I have often talked about how our apparently unrelated fields of work intersect. In fact, we’re co-writing an article with the working title, “Actually you did go to seminary to solve parking problems.” But it’s rare for us to see these two areas intersect in anyone else’s mind.

But here it is, in no other place than a New York Times’ article about Radiohead’s decision to put their latest album up for download on a whatever-you-want-to-pay basis. Basically, they couldn’t imagine signing another major record deal. Mr Yorke explains:

“I mean, it’s tempting to have someone say to you, ‘You will never have to worry about money ever again, but no matter how much money someone gives you – what , you’re not going to spend it? You’re not going to find stupid ways to get rid of it? Of course you are. It’s like building roads and expecting there to be less traffic.”

And there you have it: human fallibility and traffic planning, straight from Radiohead.

Bali

    If you're only reading our local paper, you'd hardly know there was an international climate change conference going on in Bali.
    UN agreements and international diplomacy don't generally get my heart a-thumping, but read this blog's eyewitness account of the international pressure that finally led to the United States' joining in on the "compromise language" for future reductions in greenhouse gases. It's clear that the U.S delegation was doing anything but leading. . . but at least they were pulled along by our global peers.

a voice in the wilderness

Just a question: what's the difference between a prophetic voice in the wilderness and a pathetic voice crying out? I mean, really:  with our biblical hindsight we see John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus. In his own time, he probably seemed like an odd, irritating -- albeit pious -- crank who got his head cut off by the Empire.  In our culture which loves the individual hero, we can sometimes get confused about the strong individual swimming upstream. Sometimes we think we're being the "leaders of the free world" and fail to notice that no one is following anymore. . .perhaps because they see the cliff in front of us better than we do.

I think of this because of the news that the U.S. is now the sole holdout from a UN process to replace the Kyoto protocol with a new international agreement to fight climate change. We're the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, and the only ones not willing to cooperate in change. I am so ashamed.

Meanwhile, it's snowing again (!) in Minnesota. I'm sure retailers think this is bad for Christmas business. I say, bring it on!

Bury us Lord

This winter, please, dear Lord
Send us a real good storm
One where we’re all snowed in
. . .

We who get so uptight
Need a good snowball fight
And should be forced to ski
To rent a DVD
So heap it up to the window sill
Make the mad world stand still
Bury us Lord
Under a real good storm
-- Peter Mayer (the Minnesota one)

We are giddy around here, anticipating a real good SNOW tomorrow! For people who fear every winter is our last (and I mean that our in the collective sense, and winter in the meteorological sense), there's nothing like a prediction of 6-10 inches to lift the spirits.

Now, those of you who hate shoveling and long for wearing your sandals again, I don't want to hear any whining. It's almost December, and you live in Minnesota. The larger climate pattern of the earth favors you summer people anyway. Let us have our snow days. .. lots of them, please.

I luuuuuv the Cities

One of my husband's colleagues in the world of urban planning has a great new blog, live.eat.play.Twin Cities, a New Urbanist's  (and new Mom's) take on all that is wonderful about the neighborhoods of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Take a look. If you live here, it will make you proud you do. If you don't, it may help you explain the rabid look of pride in Minnesotans' eyes when they speak of home.