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Joyful, joyful

I was reading something about voice recently on somebody's blog (I can't find it now, and if it was your blog, I apologize profusely. My memory for sources is like a sieve), and it made me realize that it's time to do something about the voice in charge of this blog. If you were to listen to me, you'd get the impression that simplicity means a joyless guilt-ridden life, which I think is the impression that most Americans already have.

But while I may publicly kvetch here about my car guilt and my refrigerator purchase, IRL I try hard to consider my actions--before and after--and then move on. True, I get an unseemly amount of pleasure from "releasing my books into the wild" through BookCrossing or finding a pair of broken Adirondack chairs through FreeCycle and fixing them up again, but not, I don't think, because it allows me to circumvent the cycle of guilt and consumerism. As a Lutheran, I don't think I get to escape from guilt--we are all implicated (and the "we" is a slippery pronoun here, but let me finish) in an imperfect, in this case capitalist, system. Middle-class Americans much more than most. But again as a Lutheran, I don't think that's the end of the story. Grace happens, and we are freed to experience the abundance of creation. There is enough for everyone's needs (although obviously not for everyone's manufactured desires).

I'd like to figure out a way to focus this blog on my quest to find the "enough," especially in very small things.

Danger: invalid at the wheel

Today was the day I was going to sheet mulch a spot for the apple trees to go next year. Sheet mulching, for the uninitiated, means taking layers of various decomposable materials--first newspaper or cardboard to smother the weeds, then straw or leaves or or something full of carbonaceous goodness, mixed together with a few lawn clippings, then already-achieved compost (as if!) or plain old dirt, and then, for the landscape designer in you, wood chips or other commonly-conceived "mulch." You put these things together in pleasantly moist layers like a torta or a trifle, and then they are supposed to magically make your soil into black gold.

Well.

Instead I sliced about 3/4 of an inch off the pad of my big toe by stubbing it against a rough concrete block. I was raised to believe that unless you can soak a dishcloth with blood in less than a half an hour you don't really need stitches, but it gave me pause for thought. Not to mention a throbbing foot that didn't really feel like playing Iron Chef with garden implements.

So instead I commenced dreaming beautiful dreams about my someday-paradisical garden (hmm, do I smell trouble ahead?) and wound up buying a new refrigerator online. What!? I calculated the amount of carbon dioxide represented by running my 687 kWh model and realized that I could save 585 pounds of the stuff per year by upgrading to a very modest new unit. I do believe, though, that a refrigerator represents the very farthest, most expensive frontier of impulse shopping I have ever done. Please God, let me go back to work tomorrow.

Ah, rain

Is there any sound sweeter than a much-needed rain?

I've been praying lately with Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Send my roots rain."

Driven to distraction

Over the last month, I've been dealing with one of those Life Stressors up near the top of the chart. I didn't want this blog to become about that, but I have had very little space in my head to think about anything else either, so I have been pretty silent.

Now, I find I've come to a place of stock-taking. Suburubia, like its region, is sunk deep in a drought, the kind that seems to confirm all my worst fears about global warming. An editorial in the local paper said scientists opine that the lush southeast is among the most at-risk areas, and that we are likely to become an arid plain before long. The drought-resistant clover I planted to increase nitrogen in the soil has all dried up, and chipmunks and moles are making my kitchen garden into swiss cheese with their attempts to find moisture. On the other hand, every tree and bush that I planted and mulched is thriving.

Other actions in my not-so-simple simple life have had equally mixed results. The west windows installed earlier in the year, plus extremely low humidity, have made it possible not to turn on the air conditioner or use the dryer yet this year, a first. The two rainbarrels that I bought in anticipation of water restrictions stand empty, still waiting for enough rain to make them worthwhile. Progeny is enjoying a week of Zoo Camp, away from the temptations of tv and Yu-gi-oh cards.

But the most mixed news of all, as you, dear reader, may have anticipated, is that my mileage for the year so far is almost exactly the same as my mileage last year. Since you'll remember that I made a promise to cut my driving in half, this is more than a disappointment, it's a travesty. Partly, it has to do with lending my car to someone who drives it 120 miles on the weekend, partly it has to do with unexpected driving due to the aforementioned Life Stressor, but mostly it's about my ineffectual attempts to use alternatives and my addiction to driving because it saves time, blah, blah, blah. Lord forgive me.

I have some serious thinking to do about the rest of this year. Most of the work I do is volunteer work with a serious claim to be about making the world a better place. I believe it to be literally true that I would need to give up about 2/3 of my volunteer work if I refrained from driving. But my driving is not making the world a better place; it is making the world a smoggier, warmer, more unstable place. As I said, I'm in a place of stock-taking. What are your thoughts?

Good neighbors

Last fall and winter, Progeny and I heard nightly serenades from the local Suburubian coyotes, and only slightly less frequent singing by a resident owl. The other night, out to watch Venus doing a dance with the new moon, I realized it's been months since I've heard either. It might be that they're busy with denning and nesting, or it might be that these brand honkin' new efficient windows are dampening the sound. I hope it's not that our friends have succumbed to the lure of the cheaper real estate east of here.

He is risen

My father-in-law, who believes that all bad things can be placed at the feet of religion, once asked me if I actually believed in the resurrection. The implication was that someone as educated as I am couldn't possibly believe in something so plainly contrary to fact.

I said, simply, yes.

I believe in the power of narrative to bring all kinds of things back from the dead: hope, green leaves, relationships, the people we love, dreams, butterflies, neighborhoods, a sense of community.

I believe that the much greater danger than believing something contrary to fact is to think death or abuse or resentments or cynicism have the final word, are the end of the story.

I believe that it is less illogical to believe in something that can't be verified by my own eyes than it is to believe that only things I can see exist.

I choose to think that God decided to favor a poor, subversive rabbi from a small town over the dominant powers and principalities, and that God's strength is more often found in those of any faith or religious background refusing the thrall of violence and coercion than in any number of proclamations of glory or righteousness from God's followers.

Make no mistake. I do not reject the teachings of the empirical and the humanistic: the world is not flat; human beings did not cavort with dinosaurs, except in the mind of Hollywood animators; God's plan does not include slavery; and I'm fine with women shaving their heads if they damn well choose to. When I'm sick, I want the insights of modern medicine available to me, but when I'm in pain, I'll be glad to accept the insights of acupuncture as well, which modern Western medicine has had to scramble to try to explain.

I hadn't intended to preach an Easter sermon, but these are the things I wish I had said to my father-in-law.

This I believe.