The Green Mama

Hi  friends! This week I have the great joy of introducing you to a winsome author and activist who serves as the head of an organization called Plant with Purpose (formerly Floresta). PWP is a non-profit that advocates for those in poverty by helping them regain a healthy connection to the land through agricultural initiatives and reforesting ravaged areas.

Scott Sabin helps lead the PWP team of folks who advocate for others across the globe. He is also the author of a new book called “Tending to Eden.” An outstanding and wise look at consumerism, injustice, poverty, and how a holistic, integrated response by those who call themselves Christians can make an enormous impact on the suffering of those around the world.

I had the opportunity to preview Scott’s new book and fell immediately into the pages. His style is humble, easy-going, thoughtful without seeming preachy, and he’s done his research. Scott has lived and ministered in the places he writes about. He knows the people, he has heard their stories first hand. He has spent a significant amount of time in Haiti and found his heart captured by the Haitian people long before the rest of us shed tears on their behalf this past month. In short, this book is a winner.

Scott grabbed me on page one when he said this “my faith was personal but not particularly relevant to the problems of the world.” I think this is one of the key issues for people of faith today. We come across as preachy, judgmental, or just overly interested in what Jesus can do for us rather than for others. A navel gazing faith does not reveal the true heart of God, one that reaches into the darkest places of this world. Scott immediately asks the looming question that so many in the Christian community are wrestling with today. “What does my faith in God mean for the pain and injustice in this world?” “Is my version of God really big enough to answer this?”

Scott’s journey around the world, from Alberta, Canada to La Muralla, Mexico. From Haiti to the Solomon Islands, from the Dominican Republic to Thailand is a journey of both desperation an hope. He retells our shared human story of needs, desires, and how our desperate scramble for resources endangers us all. He paints a complex canvas that shows how connected we all are to this land God gave us, and how troubled the very soil beneath us is today. But he does not leave us on a wasted hillside like so many gloomy environmental reports can do. He does not leave us with faces blackened by charcoal with no hope at all.

Instead, Sabin leaves us a story of hope, of change, of possibilities. He unpacks the basics about stewardship, sustainable agriculture and forestry, and shows us how the good earth that God gave for our use can indeed meet the needs of us all. Sure, the outlook can seem grim, even desperate, but the greatest hope in the world can be found in the most unlikely places. Sabin’s journey takes us to these places.

I urge you to read Scott’s book. It is by far the most thoughtful primer on the connection between the environment and poverty that I have read of late. Scott’s humble and wise reflections paired with solid theology and a lifetime of traveling the world will leave you both informed and ready for action. I highly recommend it. Thank you Scott for your words.

You can find information about Plant with Purpose here:

http://www.plantwithpurpose.org/page/64/tending-to-eden.html

You can find Scott’s book here (for every book purchased through this link, Amazon will donate a part of the proceeds to Plant with Purpose:

http://www.amazon.com/Tending-Eden-Environmental-Stewardship-People/dp/0817015728/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267734442&sr=8-1

It was sunny today and above freezing. This combination of weather events was pure joy to my gray winter bones. After months of hunkering down it was as if June suddenly descended upon me. I wasn’t the only one. There were more families walking to school today, more runners on the roads, dog walkers looked a bit more giddy than usual. Literally, a spring in our steps and the air.

I kid you not, I actually thought of running in shorts today. The predicted high was only 38. But there is some form of insanity that engulfs a midwesterner after a long winter. I darted in and out of places today without a jacket. 38 degrees is just 6 whopping digits above freezing. There is still snow on my driveway. But I was going to skip out on my jacket if it killed me today.

When it hits 40 middle school kids will start wearing shorts. When it hits 50 the high school students will don them. And by 60 degrees we will all be wearing flip flops. Pasty white toes sticking out of rubber sandals. A sign that we just cannot wait another minute to douse ourselves in the sunshine.

I told my husband to pull the big wheels out and I thought of looking for my son’s bicycle. I am insane. It will snow next week.

But the reminder that spring is coming and my yearning to hurry it up is a great moment to pause and notice the sheer joy we experience in the changing of the seasons. To emerge from winter is to embrace all that is budding and waiting patiently in the earth. Of bulbs waiting to push through the frozen soil, of the magnolia buds already heavy on the tree outside our window. Of the fact that God is bringing new life from the frozen tundra of both the land and our very souls.

If I think on it for too long I get all sappy. And I get stressed. There are seeds to buy and debris to clear from the yard. A squirrel has taken up residence in the basketball hoop and keeps throwing sticks down onto my car. Thunderstorms will come soon, scared children will jump up with a bolt of lightening and drag me from my sleep.

But I am excited for all of these marvels. And for my flip flops. To put my winter feet, complete with lint traces from my wool socks, into a pair of sandals is to declare myself the winner. To trump winter and dance into spring is to overcome both my vitamin D deficiency and some of the darker recesses of my soul. Of course they will still linger on, they always do. Winter always returns. But for a day doused in sunshine I felt for a moment like I could actually handle life. An elusive and always fleeting moment, but one to embrace nonetheless.

May your days bring warmth, budding life, and the joy of God’s spring to your soul!

It is still very much winter in Chicago. Sure, the calendar says March 1, but the piles of snow on the ground look more like mid-January. Everything is brown and crusty. A little bit of warmth is creeping back into the days, it is no longer pitch black before dinner. But there is also snow in the forecast this week. So there you have it. Still winter.

As I type I am bundled in a quilt with a sweatshirt and thick socks. I am cold. I’ve been icy for the better part of three months. Those of you who live in cooler climates know what I mean. It’s like your very bones get cold in December and just sort of stay that way until April.

In my last post I alluded to a conversation that I keep having and overhearing. I’d love to share a few more thoughts on it here. In most places it goes something like this “I’m really cold, this has been a crazy cold winter, so much for global warming eh?” This is usually followed with a smirk that sort of asks “what do you have to say for yourself now greenie?”

And of course, the brouhaha concerning fabricated data from British scientists at the University of East Anglia did not help the conversation. Whether botched data and graphs or feuding climate colleagues, many have dubbed this discovery of misinformation one of the greatest scientific scandals of the decade.

So whenever I run my mouth off these days about what we should care about in this world, those who generally disagree instantly bring up either the chilly temperatures of their midwestern winter or the climate scandal from the UK. And they press in and ask, “so what do you do if climate change is not real?”

To which I laugh and ask “is this really the issue?”  As if to say that if climate change is not real then somehow we are all just off the hook, we can do whatever we want? It’s like people who ask how I would live my life if there was not God. Would I suddenly decide to cheat on my husband and take up recreational drugs? Because somehow the moral compass has vanished?

Whether or not climate change is real is not the true issue when it comes to this conversation. The real question is why I insist on living my life in the sort of obnoxious manner that I often do, acting like tomorrow is a  non-issue. I can easily err on the side of a consumer-minded glutton and I can consume like nobody’s business, even on the hottest of days. I need to have this conversation so I can be better.

Let’s say hypothetically that climate change is false. Does that somehow change the fact that most of the garbage dumps are in impoverished neighborhoods? That in Chicago, the only two coal fired power plants in the city itself are both in minority neighborhoods? That my electronic waste still ends up in the hands of Ghana’s children or India’s poor?

The real issue is how my life impacts the poor and those who cannot help the fact that my trash is seeping into their groundwater. You do not have to believe in climate change to believe that this is not the way to live. Our moral compass should not rest in the hands of a scientific outcome. For those of us who are people of faith, the conversation is about more than just a few degrees. Show me a place in the Scriptures where it says to be purposefully wasteful, where we are told to take what we can get and then dump it and run when we are finished.

No, the real issue is not how cold my feet are in January or what climate scientists did or did not do in the UK, or anywhere else for that matter. The real issue is asking myself if I, as a citizen of this planet, am living responsibly. Am I doing everything I can to make life better for others, for my own family, for the future? This is the real question isn’t it? The one that impacts humanity rather than sparks a fierce debate.

Let’s dig into the real issue, the one that is hard to face since (at least in my case) it convicts me and calls my whole life into question. Do I live wisely and well? This is what many of us running around in sustainable circles are asking. Not if the science is accurate (which is important), but is the trajectory of my very life accurate?

Last week I was at the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon. I was sans children and when that happens a trip to the grocery store can feel like spring break. No one nagging me or ripping cans off the shelves. A glorious hour indeed. As I waltzed down the aisles and took my time to actually think about what we wanted to eat, I had the chance to eavesdrop on a few side conversations.

I know, I know, perhaps this is not the most fruitful of pastimes but my brain is normally filled with the banter of three small people under age 7. These three people have little sense of self, have no idea that interrupting is rude, and really think that everyone around them needs to know about the Curious George fruit snacks they just discovered. They consistently suck every inch of empty space from my head.

So, when I am alone, having an affair with my grocery cart, my instinct is to instantly fill my head with noise. Other people’s conversations do the trick.

As I perused the salmon selections there were two old-ish men standing off to the side of the big icy fish cooler. One was lamenting how ridiculously cold it has been in Chicago this past month. The other nodded and said “yeah, and all those environmentalists keep babbling about global warming, they should move to Chicago.” I bristled and grabbed my fish.

Another aisle over a mom who was not on Grocery Spring Break like me was staring blankly at a child who pulled every bag of chips and candy from the “snack” aisle that looked good. The cart was filled with piles of Doritos and sodas, not a fresh piece of produce in the cart.

And of course in the check out aisle, I glanced at a magazine cover of Paris Hilton and reclaimed my disgust (and also jealousy of her waist line) as I watched plastic bag after plastic bag float out the automatic doors.

I sighed. Do any of the conversations about our planet saving ploys really matter?

I could have turned around to my Salmon buddies and said “yes it is colder here now, it’s called Climate Change, not Global Warming you morons! As in, the climate will change and some of us will be shivering more than we used to. duh!”

I wanted to say to the kid with the snacks “hey buddy, ease off the carbs, hello diabetes! go fetch an organic apple.”

I could have yelled to the baggers “tell them to haul it all home without bags if they cannot bring a reusable tote!”

And then I would have had to stare at myself in the mirror and yell “HYPOCRITE!”

You see, I buy the Curious George fruit snacks. And while I haul my totes everywhere these days, there was a time that I did not. And those climate guys, well, yes, it is cold in Chicago and I really don’t want to be on the chilling end of climate change (thank you Jake Gyllenhaal). But how were they to know? At least they were talking about it!

Somewhere in the grocery store. In the stressed out mom’s day. In the conversations of the old fish guys and in my own cart is a place where the reality of our world intersects with the reality of our daily lives. We are busy and tired, we are ill-informed, we are opinionated and stubborn. And I could lead a club on any of these glorious virtues.

But I hope that along the way, we are also open to the conversation. I hope that the fish guys begin to understand that we call it climate change for a reason, that all those people with the plastic bags just forgot canvas versions at home. I hope that we can stop placing the “save the planet” campaigns into any particular political, religious, or social camp. That someday they will not be known as the bastions of liberal, hippie white folks who love animals. That someday the uber-conservative and the uber-liberal, the rich and poor, and every color along the way will care because the air we breathe, the water, the trees, they belong to every affiliation on this planet. And preserving them impacts all of humanity. All of it.

And so with that little rant I come to this point. I wrote a book about all of this. Mostly about my grocery store moments gone wrong. My loser tendencies to yell at people for the things I do wrong every day. And that book just arrived at Zondervan’s warehouses in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And that book will ship out this coming Monday, February 22nd. And I would love for you to read it. I think it furthers the conversation. And some of you will like it and some of you will hate it, but either way, I hope it gets us all talking.

Furthering the conversation, taking a little action, thinking about what we do and why. Can I be so bold to ask you to read along with me? http://tiny.cc/1zxjl

Hope so. I’m a humble and proud girl this day. An odd combination of emotions, but I have them both. Thanks to all of you who made this day a reality.

T

It’s Fat Tuesday. The height of the Mardi Gras celebration. The pinnacle of Carnaval. The time of year when religious and non-religious types alike trek to places like New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro to whoop it up before the season of Lent begins. Granted, most party-goers could likely give a rip about Lent, but to celebrate the storm before the calm is still a tradition many engage in.

Mardi Gras is literally translated “Fat Tuesday” in French. It is the day before Ash Wednesday, the traditional start date of Lent.

So, during this week that marks both the partying of Tuesday followed by Ash Wednesday (which is why Mardi Gras ends abruptly at midnight on Tuesday), people all over the world don beads and masks. And millions of others wake up the next morning making solemn vows to God. Perhaps they decide to fast, skip the wine, the beer, the smokes, the chocolate or Diet Coke.

Lent itself was a tradition practiced by the early church. In the 600’s, under the papacy of Gregory the Great, Lent became a 40 day period of time (not including Sundays) that helped the church prepare for Easter. It was marked by fasting and by denying oneself of pleasures normally engaged in during the other 325 days of the year. In the early tradition, Christians ate only one meal per day, in the evening. For others it was fasting until noon or 3:00 pm.

Most traditions included some form of fasting from meat. During Lent in the early church skipped meat, fish, and animal products. In other words, they went vegan for 40 days.

But today, it is sort of a self help gig for many. I confess to using Lent as a way to prepare for swimsuit season. What could it hurt to skip all the sweets in the name of Jesus? Perhaps if I did it for Jesus I would fit into that swimsuit come Memorial Day. And then I remember that Jesus really does not care how I look at my community pool.

So this year, I’ve got a new idea for Lent. It is based on the history of the church. I’m skipping meat altogether, for all of Lent. For many reasons. Most of which are, of course, rooted in my love of God’s Creation. For those of you who are proud to call yourselves carnivores, this is not as hard for me as it might be for you. Normally I chow down on chicken breast twice a week. The rest of the time I skip the meat. But it is still a significant shift in how I think and view my meals.

And, since raising beef and other meat places a heavy burden on our ecosystems, and because it is considerably kinder to the planet if I eat grain and vegetable products, I’m going to skip it altogether for this season.

My reason for sharing all this randomness? To ask you to join me. Okay, okay, I know, not every day if you don’t want to. But consider skipping it one day? Two days? One meal per day? Whatever floats your Lenten boat. But since God made this place, it seems wise to take note of that fact and make a commitment for a few weeks to help honor that Creation. And if you are a person of faith, when you have a hankering for something beefy and grilled, think for a moment about the sunset, the trees in your yard, or any other scene that helps you connect to God. It can be more than a freaky, earthy thing. It can be a connection to God this month+. It may also help you understand that you can eat and be in this world in a different way. Not too shabby.

So grill up a sirloin, don the beads and then skip the burger until Easter.