What I do in my day job

Every time I think about quitting my environmental work, as I was last week and as I wrote then, something comes up that keeps me at it, reminds me why I do it and what gifts I bring to it.

If you are interested, here is a sample of what I do. The assignment: articulate the heretofore nebulous “future generations” aspect of the organization’s work in two pages or less, for prospective funders.

Note. I am really tired of persuasive writing. I always sit down to do something like this and think I can’t do it. Carolyn, my friend and boss, calls me and gives me her brain dump on the topic. I usually make a false start in the writing. And then I start again, maybe the next day, and it just rolls out in an hour or so. It is a very strange and specific talent.

Who will speak for future generations?

The Science and Environmental Health Network seeks [a pile of cash] over the next year to catalyze a movement for the rights of future generations to a healthy planet.

We who are alive today are rightly alarmed about the damage being inflicted on our environment and our own health. But the cumulative effects of activities that are changing the climate, depleting water and other resources, crushing the bedrock under our communities, and much more portend a bleaker habitat for future humans. Our current legal and regulatory regimes largely ignore or work against the interests of future generations, through practices such as discounting and cost-benefit analysis. Our current culture encourages present-day consumption and provides few outlets even to express commitment to future generations.

We cannot afford only to protect our own interests. We must learn how to speak for future generations. We believe the time is right for a movement for the rights of future generations to a healthy planet—on the order of the civil rights movement and the women’s movement. It must be powerful and pervasive enough to shift consciousness both in institutions and in the culture at large. It must be practical enough to result in concrete changes in law and policy.

Nothing about movements is predictable, but SEHN would like to do four things in the coming 12 months with the goal of catalyzing a movement for the rights of future generations. Whatever the outcome, the time is right for these initiatives:

Define and advance needed changes in the law. SEHN has done extensive groundwork in the past five years with Harvard and Vermont law schools on legal initiatives that would embed the rights of future generations in the law. We have issued white papers, written articles, drafted legislation and constitutional amendments, and outlined new institutions such as guardians or ombudsmen for future generations. These ideas are ready to be fleshed out and applied and we are beginning to do this. The Oregon Bar Association has asked SEHN to consult on such a project for the state. Like much of our work on the precautionary principle, the state, tribal, and sometimes local level is fertile territory for such experiments.

Convene conversations with proponents of the rights of nature. There is an extensive, diverse, international legal and advocacy movement for the rights of nature. We believe that a movement for the rights of future (human) generations could have much in common with this movement. At the same time, our legal work on rights of future generations is perhaps more advanced in terms of specific applications. We could learn much from each other and perhaps create synergy in advocacy and legal circles. Nature rights advocates have responded enthusiastically to this idea. We are convening the first such conversation in late 2011 and expect to follow up with others.

Make the public case. This year Executive Director Carolyn Raffensperger was invited to help an indigenous community draw up “principles of perpetual care” for the abandoned Giant gold mine in Northwest Territories, Canada. What she learned in the course of this consultation shocked even the engineers and government officials in charge of “remediating” the site when she pointed it out to them: The arsenic remaining on the site must be contained forever. The poison is permanent—not unlike the numerous sites around the world contaminated with radioactivity. Clearly, neither the public nor governments—let alone corporations—are prepared to deal with such legacies. Are we prepared to stop creating them? The public, at all levels, needs to be reminded of the consequences of our actions. The more visionary case for institutions and actions that protect future generations must also be made. Public speaking, media conversations, and consultations are an important part of this work.

Convene women to launch a movement. To date, women’s voices have been rarely heard on issues like climate change, but many women are passionately committed to the future of humanity. The wisdom and energy of women could galvanize this new movement. Carolyn Raffensperger has been in conversation with a number of prominent, visionary women—artists, writers, and activists--about convening a gathering of women to launch a movement for the rights of future generations. The response has been enthusiastic. An event is being planned in 2012, in a threatened or devastated place, that will involve art, music, story, statements, and direct action. A core organizing group includes several young women from the newly launched Peaceful Uprising group as well as other women’s activist groups. An elder circle will include luminaries such as Joanna Macy and Terry Tempest Williams. Affinity groups are being formed—artists, writers, singers, dreamers, and others.  

There you have it. That’s the kind of thing I do in my day job. I will get to go to that women's gathering. I guess it's really kind of cool.

Leymah Gbowee and the power of ideas

As soon as I heard that Leymah Gbowee’s memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers, was published, I bought it with a single click. A few days later Ms. Gbowee won the Nobel Peace Prize. I hope this means that her memoir sells well. It’s a great story.

You may have seen Leymah in the documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, about the Liberian Peace Women who sat in the sun and rain and corridors of power until the warring factions that had savaged their country agreed to stop fighting. She was the group’s spokesperson, the one who threatened to strip naked in order to get somebody to pay attention. They finally did and 11 years of civil war came to an end and the last of a series of brutal leaders fled the country (I believe Charles Taylor is still on trial at the Hague).

After a transition, Liberia elected Africa’s first woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf , who shared the Peace Prize with Leymah and a Yemeni peace activist. Although Sirleaf is now facing a runoff in her bid for a second term, her opponent is apparently an honorable man. A real choice between two good candidates is a rarity anywhere, especially in Africa. Although Liberia is still licking its war wounds and only now beginning to pull itself together economically, structurally, and socially, it definitely falls into the “good news” column.

My interest in the memoir was personal. I spent a few weeks in Liberia in 2008 with a peacebuilding organization, helped collect stories from former child soldiers, and found that the country, its struggles, the astounding stories of both war and peace, and the people I met there unlocked something in me that I’m still puzzling over. Simple word for it—love, related in some way to Africa. It is leading me to pursue new friendships and ties through things like the Congo Cloth Connection.

But what struck me in Leymah Gbowee’s memoir was the connection of ideas, how ideas make their way around the world and connect us into some kind of community.  Ideas are personal, not separate from the people who originate and perpetuate them.

There in her memoir was a mention of John Howard Yoder’s 1972 book The Politics of Jesus, which I had just reread—a book that was as formational for a young African woman in the middle of a civil war as it was for a little Mennonite girl in a sedate, rural community on the other side of the world.

Later she comes in contact with the leaders of a West African peace group, some of whom I have met, and I recognize the ideas that are stirring her imagination. Many of these folks have gone through Eastern Mennonite University’s peacebuilding and conflict resolution seminars, and they are putting into action the ideas of people like John Paul Lederach and Howard Zehr.

I remember talking with Tornolah Varpilah, one of Leymah’s mentors who is now a deputy minister of health in Liberia. He was enthusiastically describing how he was applying the “early warning” system developed by Lederach to watch for signs of instability in communities. Leymah also mentions this idea. Later, when she gets to EMU herself, she is drawn to Zehr’s victim-offender reconciliation theories, which she realizes is what she had been trying to do in her work with former child soldiers.

Totally aside from the fact that I dated Howie Zehr in high school, all this warms my heart.  I believe in the power of ideas, especially when they are transmitted through real, human ties and put to work in real, human situations, even the very worst ones.

Life is a-maze-ing

I am thinking of stopping my environmental work in a year, when Vic maybe retires once and for all. But what will I do instead? Years ago I thought that after I was done with policy and grant writing I would write for fun and profit and I began doodling around and taking workshops but I have run into plenty of dead ends on that front. (“Oh, you are a writer? What have you written?” Well I have this book that nobody wants and like everybody else I write a blog. . . .)

There have been many other apparent dead ends in my work life and I don’t want to write about all of them. But here is the thing. I keep expecting one thing to lead to another and it seldom does—not in the way I expect and hope, not even when I apply myself and exercise uncharacteristic determination. And this occasionally throws me into a panic, like it did last night as I was thinking that I want to stop what I am doing but I am not ready for outright retirement. I woke up with this dream:

I was a struggling academic. I needed to choose a research project and write a grant proposal to support it. I was weighing several options. I didn’t want to do any of them, nor did I think any of them had a good chance of working out. But the project that presented itself most insistently was to study the giant vortex of garbage growing in the Pacific Ocean.

I recognize the different levels of this dream. Some of it is pretty literal: I write grant proposals, and there is indeed a garbage gyre in the Pacific. And then, metaphorically, environmental work is a study in the endless and, despite our efforts, growing collection of human garbage on Planet Earth. My environmental circles (that image again) are dominated by academic and policy-type thinking, at which I am pretty good but I don’t really feel at home in it. I struggle. I am growing tired of doing any of it. And yet the projects, the needs, keep presenting themselves.

Stepping out of this work would feel like an escape from the swirl but into what? The vast ocean of possibility that is life, with no clear direction.

Perhaps life is more like a maze than a journey. We go in one end, wander around, explore the rich possibilities and intriguing dead ends, and come out the other end, which may be very near where we entered. Do not panic, like the family who recently got lost in a corn maze and had to call 911 although they were only 25 feet from the exit.

Above all, do not be sucked in by the swirl of garbage. Study it, or escape from it for awhile and see where the currents of the Universe bear you.

Community

I believe in community. Mennonites do community pretty well because it’s at the center of our faith. We believe that the church, in all its foibles, is how the Kingdom of God is to be introduced and lived on this earth, and we don’t limit “church” to the worship services that bring the people of God together. That is just the beginning of the bonds that carry through the week and into every aspect of our lives.

So going to a new church, as Vic and I started to do early this year, is a pretty big deal, like being adopted into a whole new family. I have been reminded, during this process, just how important community is. And like most things that are close to my heart, it is also prime territory for frustrations and annoyances.

Most of my frustrations have to do with how busy people are. Through the church we signed on to a CSA, run by an Amish farmer who happens to live 60 miles away from us as well as from the church building, which, in turn, is some 20 miles from us. Produce was to be picked up by someone every Friday at the farm and delivered to the church, where some 20 members would, in turn, pick up their personal shares.

Thinking I would do my part for community—and form ties with others who share our hunger for beautiful, organic food and for justice for small farmers—I volunteered to help with the farm pickups. But Vic and I ended up doing nearly all the pickups until well into the season. And we seldom see our fellow members because they come to the church to get their produce at different times and sometimes they don’t come at all. There have been complaints about the messy boxes left in the church foyer and other matters. There have been lapses in communication. In short, much of the messiness of community and few of the rewards.

This is not usually the case with community stuff, in which the annoyances are more in the nature of a Shakespearean comedy of errors. Here is today’s example.

Carolyn, a wonderful new friend from this church, called last week wondering if Vic could do a favor for one of her friends who incidentally came from the same home territory as both Vic and Carolyn, eastern Pennsylvania. This friend, who now lives in Michiana, has a niece who lives in Evanston, IL, a suburb of Chicago. The niece has a piece of furniture that needs to be delivered to the aunt back here in this general vicinity. Carolyn knew Vic goes to Chicago for work a few days each week. Could he possibly pick up this antique bench on one of his runs to the city?

Although Evanston is more than an hour away from where Vic works, it turned out that he had been thinking about attending a lecture at Northwestern U., where he got his PhD, this very week. Today. Northwestern is in Evanston. And so he agreed to drive the SUV instead of the economy car into the city this week (which meant I had to arrange for someone else to do the CSA pickup), spend an extra day, attend the lecture, and pick up the bench. Carolyn gave him the address and phone number of her friend’s niece in Evanston.

As I write this, Vic has been trying for two days to contact the niece, to no avail. More phone calls to Carolyn (via her husband) put him in touch, this morning, with the aunt, Mary Jane. They had a nice chat, enumerating all their connections. Mary Jane knew Vic’s sister, yada yada. (It’s called the Mennonite Game). Mary Jane will keep trying to contact her niece. The lecture is this afternoon and that is when the handover was supposed to take place.

But if the phone connection doesn’t work, the bench is in the niece’s garage. The door is probably unlocked. Mary Jane says, feel free to carry it off.

Community. If only it didn't involve so much driving and phoning. If only we actually lived in our community!

Jesus

Even though I am a Christian I haven’t always been sure what I think about Jesus or what he means to me or to the world. This may sound contradictory. Christians are followers of Jesus, right? Whatever that means.

Over the past number of years I have become confused by the “whatever that means.” There are so many interpretations of what it means to be a Christian. These can be a distraction from who Jesus was and what his coming meant and means. I look at them all and say, not this, not that, or I don’t know, and pretty soon I find myself saying well Jesus doesn’t really matter that much to me right now. The Holy Spirit, the Creator God, and the Christian community are much more important in my life these days.

I don’t disbelieve in Jesus. I have just become intellectually and spiritually lazy about the second person in the Trinity. I have set him aside for a long time without feeling I had to decide one way or another what I think about him or, more important, how I might need to adjust my life accordingly. Jesus has become background, not the focus of my conscious thought. Jesus is the assumption I share with other Christians. Jesus is our backstory. Jesus lived, died, and (perhaps? probably? does it matter?) rose again, but what matters now is what is happening now.

So it’s been a revelation to reread John Howard Yoder and discover that I do know what I think about Jesus after all, and that what I think about Jesus has been, all along, the foundation for how I want to live in the world.

This controversial, brilliant theologian evidently influenced my thinking about Jesus at a very early age because rereading The Politics of Jesus is like going home after being away for a very long time. It’s all familiar but the outlines are sharper, the emotional impact more intense.

I have a terrible memory. I am, in fact, a champion forgetter. I need to forget and rediscover important ideas periodically to freshen them up. And although I have heard echoes and variations of all this in countless sermons over the years, here are some words that rang clear and true as I read them:

“Jesus was, in his divinely mandated (i.e., promised, anointed, messianic) prophethood, priesthood, and kingship, the bearer of a new possibility of human, social, and therefore political relationships.” p. 52

He was “announcing the imminent implementation of a new regime whose marks would be that the rich would give to the poor, the captives would be freed, and the hearers would have a new mentality if they believed this news.” p. 32

Jesus calls us to “an ethic marked by the cross, a cross identified as the punishment of a man who threatens society by creating a new kind of community leading a radically new kind of life.” p. 53

Whether I even remotely lead this radically new kind of life; contribute in any way to the new age, the new kingdom he proclaimed; or suffer the slightest inconvenience (let alone crucifixion) for doing so--this is the Jesus I follow.

Falling in love with theology

I didn’t think rereading John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus would prompt a dream. I thought it was an intellectual exercise, the beginning of an exploration of where I stand today in relation to Jesus, Christianity, and Mennonites.

I have not thought much about theology since college. My heart turns, instead, to spirituality—direct experience and insight, the presence of the Holy Spirit. But I recently read the theologian Stanley Hauerwas’s wonderful memoir, Hannah’s Child. My sister-in-law Louise recommended it and she was right. Hauerwas, whom Time named the most important theologian in America in 2001, is an interesting man whose life intersects with my experience in a number of ways. Same generation, shared neighborhood (he was at Notre Dame for 14 years), and I like his style.

What stirred my curiosity was Hauerwas’s lifelong love affair with theology—not, at first, the church or even Christianity. On top of that, Hauerwas came under the influence of the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder at Notre Dame and became a pacifist.

I also came under Yoder’s influence, but in the way of most young Mennonite intellectuals from the 60’s on. We more or less sucked it out of our thumbs. Pacifism, “radical” Christianity, Kingdom living. These were the background of our understanding and experience of Christianity, the church, what it meant to be a Mennonite.

As I read Hauerwas I began to wonder whether I was still that kind of Christian. What did I believe these days? What was John Howard’s contribution to that and was it still relevant?

I looked all over the house for our copy of his most popular book and couldn’t find it. I paid for an e-version of The Politics of Jesus, started reading it last night, and found it surprisingly hard to put down.

And then I had a buoyant dream set in church:

Fellowship time in a brightly lit hall. I am talking with someone I’ve admired, an unrequited love. The attraction becomes mutual. We are falling in love. We hold each other’s hands and rise to the ceiling. I just think about rising and then I levitate. We are laughing, encouraging others to do the same. “You have the lightness inside you,” I say. “Just connect to it.” I tell my partner that this is like one of those flying dream except that it is real.

There is an interlude about cycling, also set in church. Then Vic appears with a large, unusual flower, tall as a person and with a flat, stylized blossom. I decide we should use the flower on the altar even though it is way out of proportion to other things placed there. I will look for a carboy--a large glass bottle bigger than a water dispenser bottle--to use as a vase. I find many such bottles in a room behind the altar but they are all full of drinking water. I see another tall vase that will do.

I love my occasional church dreams—they are full of symbols and joy. Dreams like this are part of what keeps me connected to church. This is where love is, where we connect to the light and lightness within us—the church is the home for my experiential spirituality. It is where we come into possession of outsized gifts, like that flower, like John Howard Yoder, which we don’t quite know what to do with except place it on the altar, and the container for the offering is also given to us, like the snagged lamb was revealed to Abraham. The water of life is stored abundantly here.

Are theology and I falling in love? A conversation is beginning, anyhow.

Fear of falling

I haven’t gotten on the bike since the Ride of the Century. It’s been too rainy or windy or both. I’m not looking for more suffering. Getting back on the bike after a ride like that is a little like getting back on the proverbial horse.

But I will. Maybe tomorrow.

I had to overcome some fear to do the ride at all. Of what, exactly, I’m not sure. Fear of pain? Chill? Collapse? I have a real fear around biking that didn’t figure in the century ride, but it does have a role in my next biking goal. That is the fear of falling.

My next goal is to get a serious bike, a road bike, equipped with the pedals that clip onto special shoes. I want to keep up with Vic especially up the hills. Vic’s road bike is 30 years old. He is going to get a new one next spring, so I will really trail him if I keep riding a hybrid.

And I don’t like the tandem idea. Too much opportunity for conflict.

The road bike decision, however, presents some challenges. My current bike has stirrups on the pedals and I fell a few times, not seriously, when I was getting used to them. Most people who get the shoes also take a few spills when they’re learning. Add to this the hazard of getting used to a new, lighter-weight, speedier bike with more sensitive brakes and the likelihood of at least a fall or two increases. This is a big deal for me because I am not young. I do not like the idea of falling at all. 

I tried out a road bike once 10 years ago. It was at the beginning of a biking vacation in the Canadian Gulf Islands with Bicycle Adventures. We were choosing our wheels in a Victoria, BC parking lot at the beginning of the tour. I had reserved a hybrid but was feeling adventurous and said I’d like to try a road bike.

I mounted the bike and began rolling down an incline a lot faster than I expected. I grabbed the brakes and they responded more strongly than I expected. I pitched right over the handlebars and landed on my face on the asphalt.

I got right back on a bike that time—but not that bike. I did the weeklong trip on a stable, plodding hybrid, huffing and puffing up the hills with scraped knees, bruised legs, and a large band-aid on my very fat lip. It was the only serious fall I’ve ever taken. The scar on my upper lip is concealed now among the fine lines of age, a caution about taking risks for which I am not prepared.

The twinge of fear about the century was just enough to keep me faithful in my training. I wanted to be really well prepared. Now I want a road bike but I know I have to prepare. I will need to overcome the fear of falling, maybe by anticipating falls but doing everything possible to prevent them.