Saving God's Green Earth

I was asked to write a book review for the church newsletter to help take up space. Here's what I wrote. I hope I don't get a lot of negative comments about what I wrote at church. I can just hear myself being labeled a liberal tree-hugger...

Growing up I never thought of myself as an environmentalist. Perhaps that was due in part to growing up in a family that didn’t recycle because we were too cheap to pay for garbage pickup. Instead we would dump the trash in my grandparents dumpster or more recently my parents dump the garbage in their church dumpster. (It’s a job perk for my mom because she is the church secretary). Anyway, after I became an “official adult” and got my own place I began to realize the importance of creation care. How could I justify throwing out cardboard boxes that could be recycled? I began keeping everything that was reusable and taking it to the local recycling center, but that was only the beginning of my passion for environmental stewardship. Now I reflect on every action and every purchase – is what I am about to do good for creation or detrimental?

Unfortunately, environmental stewardship has gotten a bad rap recently and is considered something that only tree-hugging people do. Yet, there is a large movement within the evangelical church to bring creation care back to the forefront. This overwhelming desire by churches and individuals to take full responsibility for the world God has given us is the premise of Tri Robinson’s book Saving God’s Green Earth. Robinson is the founding pastor of the Vineyard Boise Church in Idaho and has led his congregation in making creation care an outreach tool.

One of the big projects Robinson’s congregation began was a canvas bag movement in their community. Members of his congregation carried the canvas totes around town to do their shopping in so they wouldn’t have to use plastic or paper bags. The bags generated a lot of talk as people wondered where everyone was getting the cool bags. As Robinson notes in his book, “Before you can say ‘paper or plastic,’ the questions start coming. Suddenly an unsuspecting grocery shopper is arrested by the thought that a church in their city just might actually care about God’s creation as much as the shopper does.” Creation care at became an outreach tool to strike up conversations with the community.

Robinson gives other ideas in his book about ways a church can engage in environmental protection. Establishing recycling stations for cans and paper products at church events is one idea. Another is recycling cell phones and other electronics (an idea our church is already doing). Robinson’s book offers countless suggestions with simple, practical ways to make creation care a part of the church’s life.

Too often today we know next to nothing about the world we live in. Beyond our day-to-day activities our knowledge of how the world functions in minimal. Environmental stewardship is pushed to a dusty corner of our mind or not thought about at all. Instead of forgetting about it, let’s consider it another spiritual discipline we should practice just like we practice prayer, read our Bible and share our faith. Let’s put God’s world first because as Christians we should lead the way in protecting the place He has given us to call home.

For more ideas about how to engage in creation care visit Robinson’s website www.savinggodsgreenearth.com

My embarrassing Valentine

I’ve always had the unfortunate luck of embarrassing myself. I used to regularly go out in public with two different tennis shoes on. I never checked to see if my shoes matched, they felt comfortable so I figured they must look okay.
I have also been known to wear my shirt backwards and inside out without noticing. One of the best things about getting married is having someone to catch these embarrassing errors before I leave the house. However, even Andrew can’t catch all the absentminded fashion mistakes I make.
I have this favorite pair of khaki pants. They’re made of soft, thin corduroy. They’re a little baggy and perfect for a long day at the office on casual Thursday. I woke up on Valentine’s Day in a great mood. I had flowers and chocolate from Andrew and an apple fritter for breakfast and my favorite pair of pants on.
I wondered around the office all morning, bending over to file patient charts in the file cabinet, walking into the waiting room to greet patients and running around the office to get supplies for the front desk. Midmorning one of the patients came up to my window and said, “Did you know your pants have a giant hole in the back?”
“No…” I replied. “I didn’t know.” I ran to the bathroom and examined the hole. It
couldn’t be THAT big. No one else had notice. Nope, it was enormous. Ripped right down the center seam, showing off my fine, white underwear.
Well, at least it was only two hours until lunch.
I went back to my desk and wrapped my sweater around my waist to hide the hole.
“Did you know I had a giant hole in my pants?” I asked the hygienist.
“No. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it,” she responded.
“Well, I guess I should be glad I wasn’t wearing a thong today,” I replied.
I seem destined for miscommunication and embarrassing situations. At lunch I jumped in my car and sped home to change my pants. I only had 30 minutes for lunch and it takes me 10 minutes to get home if I hit all green lights. I was putting Speedy Gonzales to shame as I drove home and back.
The cats were thrilled to see me for lunch. At least they saw the positive in a giant hole in my pants.
I grabbed a wrinkled pair of khaki pants and threw the ripped ones in the guest room to be buried another day. As I was heading out the door, I called Andrew.
“Hey, guess where I am.”
“Where are you? Guess where I am?” Andrew replied.
“Oh…are you at my office?”
“Yeah, I’ve been waiting for you. I brought you a Valentine’s snack.”
Shoot, my ripped pants even ruined a Valentine’s Day surprise.
“I’ll be there in like 10 minutes,” I said, praying I hit every light green from home to the office.
I roared into the parking lot ten minutes later and ran in just as my lunch break was ending. Everyone was up front laughing at me for running out the door three minutes before my husband pulled up with a cup of tea and snack for my afternoon at the office.
So, I then had to admit the fact that I HAD to run home or spend the afternoon with my underwear sticking out of pants.
What a Valentine’s Day.

Grown up lessons

One day as a little girl I was riding in the car with my mom and I mentioned how I couldn’t wait to grow up. I imagined myself as a tall brunette who drove a red convertible and had lots of stylish clothes (how far off from reality that vision was). “You don’t want to grow up any sooner than you have to,” my mom cautioned. “Being a grown up isn’t as fun as you think. It’s a lot of work.” You can sure say that again.
I look back at my naiveté and wish I could be a little girl whose biggest concern was getting her homework done and making friends. Now I have bills to pay and years and years of work ahead of me – isn’t being a grown up grand?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this how grown up thing. I feel I’ve lived most of life to-date in the land of someday. “Someday I’ll finish my masters degree,” “Someday I want to teach college writing classes,” “Someday I want to have kids.” However, I am almost past the someday phase. This revelation was rather shocking to me. I discovered about a month ago that I am almost done with my master’s degree.
My last two classes will be this summer and then I just have to finish my portfolio/thesis and I’m done. My first thought when I realized this was not joy. I was depressed. I love learning and research and I didn’t want to stop going to school.
So, I was presented with a real grown up problem. Do I try to find a job with a masters degree or do I reach for the stars and go after a Ph.D. I’ve always wanted a Ph.D. It’s one of those “someday” dreams of mine. I’ve always said someday I’ll get a Ph.D., but I always picture me completing the degree when I was over 50.
Yet, I started to think if I really want to teach college classes then I’m going to need a degree that focuses on teaching as well as the writing or communications. My previous plan of getting a masters of fine arts in creative nonfiction didn’t meet this teaching requirement. Plus, most four-year colleges wouldn’t even look at me as potential professor material unless I had a Ph.D.
So, did I want to postpone life a bit more and go after my biggest “someday” dream? I’d have to conquer my fear of the GRE, and I would have to come to terms with the fact that I would spend another three to four years or longer working on a degree. I think I do.
The biggest problem with always planning for “someday” is that when that day does come you can’t be sure your plan will turn out as you hope it will. It’s a matter of faith, but then I think having faith in our dreams and faith that God is there to guide them, even if they don’t turn out exactly like we hope, is perhaps the biggest grown-up lesson I’ve had to learn.

The Wire provides new prospective

Growing up I was the sheltered little white girl who was scared to drive in downtown Columbus after dark. So, I don’t claim to be street smart or to understand what it’s like to grow up in a poor, urban community.
However, I can claim a better understanding of urban issues since watching the HBO series The Wire. The gritty drama about the streets of inner city Baltimore is thought-provoking and scarily accurate.
The show tells the story of crime, drugs and corruption from the points of view of the drug dealers, the drugies, the cops, politicians and journalists. Most shows gloss over the facts or overly dramatize events to create hype, but The Wire shows life as it really is in the inner city.
A recent New Yorker articles heralds the series as the best television show ever produced, claiming it’s on the cutting edge. The show’s producers take excruciating pains to make sure the actors dialogue is 100 percent 2008 street talk. The show doesn’t gloss over death. People pay for their actions and sometimes people die who shouldn’t, but isn’t that life?
For me, The Wire has exposed this suburban, middle-class girl to what life is like for other people who haven’t been as blessed as I have. Perhaps, this is why the show is difficult for some people to watch. The show’s primary audience is other poor, urban individuals who relate to the characters or intellectuals who are fascinated by the show’s use of social stratification.
Yet for the rest of us who have never had to fear bullets flying through the windows of their home or having drug dealers solicit their children, we want to avoid the themes in the show.
The language is harsh. Sure, there is a lot of swearing, but the show is realistic. Would you expect a drug dealer not to use the F word or a tough cop not to throw out a couple swear words? You can’t change a person’s dialect. It’s like asking John Steinbeck to remove the swear words from The Grapes of Wrath. You don’t mess with a classic. The language is a part of the culture, just like the death, murder and drugs. It’s a part of society that most of us would prefer to overlook. It makes us uncomfortable and shocks us.
However, is it fair for us to turn our back on problems or to hope that someone else solves them? I look at The Wire as a form of social education. I have a new respect of individuals who have grown up in the inner city. I also have a better understanding of what poverty in America looks like.
So, my plea to everyone who reads this blog is to give The Wire a chance. Get past the language and look at the story and the struggle behind the words. It’s well worth the effort.