For me in my life it has been important to have this changing and shifting comprehension of time. It has freed me both simply to be in an experience, and to juggle, compress, and expand time as needed. As I primarily work in the climate justice world, and that is a world made up almost completely of immediate tasks that all requires long time spans, the graciousness of unfolding, in order to be successful and sustainable.
I don’t know how much fear of that grief drives climate inaction -it’s a really messy and complicated topic. But honestly, I think many people don’t get more involved or more deeply active because they have no idea what’s happening around them. I don’t mean a general apathy or disengagement. I mean they simply do not get word, don’t know a group is cleaning up that creek, or have no idea that all you need for composting is to sign up. The planet needs a town crier staff.
We must know ourselves more deeply than we do, that we might be less swayed away from our cores when challenged. We must know what truly motivates us, not just what we’re willing to do. And we must discover what motivates others -it probably isn’t what we thought. We must engage more critically and full-heartedly with our common and civic lives, even if only in increased communication with family or neighbors.
Without a vision of shared life, without something generative to move towards, we turn inwards. Our units of concern become smaller and smaller. A city, a neighborhood. A single church group, a social club. A gaggle of high school friends, college alums. Like-minded companions online. Your biological family.
The most frequent phrase in scripture is “Be not afraid” and it always precedes the messages of God. It is spoken hundreds of times by God’s angles and prophets throughout the stories of God and God’s people.
This is not an accident or a coincidence. This isn’t a joke or a baseless wish. This is actually the entire point.
I believe that worthwhile actions are those that unfold, evolve, and emerge. Very rarely, but sometimes, these include special events with an intended purpose such as a march or rally around a cause, a theme, an anniversary in time. I even gladly participate in these kinds of actions when called to them by those I follow, such as Indigenous voices, youth and children, or on-the-ground collaborative partners.
This week, I am wrapping up the preparation for the first installment in a Seminar series on Scarcity & Abundance. While I have been ordering my thoughts about what to say precisely when, the world has been on fire and crumbling beneath our feet. It has been distracting to both my attention and my heart. It is easy to be swept away in that deluge.
I grew up in the American South but was born in the plain states, near the Yanktoni reservation in South Dakota. We visited our grandparents every summer, giving us a respite from the Memphis heat and providing us a small dive into the world of crop farming and small town rural life. Post retirement, my grandparents were leaning into being farmers and I learned a lot about how important things like soil quality and water access could be key for survival.
The thing is that the American South is fertile land and flush with water. I had never before considered what it was like for the LACK of water to be the problem. Floods and rising waters like creeks that washed out roads and bridges were the dangers around water at home. Well, that and the Cottonmouths, sneaky river snakes.
Now I live in the American Mountain West, and our relationship here with water is much different from both the agricultural plains or the river rich South. Here, fire can consume 150,000 acres in an afternoon and there isn’t enough water anywhere to put it out. On the edge of the Continental Divide, we are very conscious of water. We know that what falls on our western slope flows into the Pacific, and is “owned” by many communities along that route. Water that falls on our Eastern side feeds into the plains rivers and eventually reaches the Atlantic.
And so water reclamation is the name of the game. How can we capture and re-use water? How can we stop its use by the extraction industries? How can we close some of our water systems and not be so wasteful? How do we shift our relationship with water from one of commodification and control to one of respect and asset-based building?
As long as our stance is one of lack, we will choose poorly. Lack is blinding, and creates looping dark holes in our minds that fulfill all their own expectations. There are also dangers to being in a context of plenty without awareness, as this leads to complacency and an assumption of abundance when in fact, control is being seeped away. This very nearly happened recently in Memphis, TN, when the now canceled Byhalia Pipeline threatened the integrity of the Memphis Sands, a huge aquifer that supplies clean water to the region.
We don’t balance lack and plenty well. We tend to live wholly in one or the other. This isn’t a simple matter of whether one sees a glass with water in it as half full or half empty. This isn’t about pessimism or optimism, although their shadows of cynicism and naïveté do reflect this conflict between lack and plenty, this tension.
This week I am preparing for a Seminar Series I am doing on Scarcity & Abundance. And I’m wrestling with the various ways in which we smack right into both these things. The more subtle bits will make themselves known.
And so water again bubbles up. It’s fundamental, as we ourselves are mostly made of it, the planet is mostly water, and we require it to remain alive. And yet for much of our lives, many of us have never considered water -where it comes from, how it gets to us, where it all goes. We turn the tap and it flows. Usually. But even if you live in Flint, MI, or along one of the compromised fracking field routes, your toilet flushes and your laundry works. You can get water FREE at most restaurants. (Remember that one. It won’t last if we don’t change.)
One of the many ironies of this situation is that right now, very few of us actually drink enough water. I know I don’t and I even like water! (I’m told by many friends the reason they don’t drink enough water is that they hate the taste. I don’t get that. Even hard water is interesting.)
“Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.” -Joni Mitchell
We bounce between lack and plenty, and it may be true that we often don’t realize it. I used to be a youth minister and had a special affinity for Middle Schoolers. One of my favorite games to play with them is something called “I Want, I Need, I Have” -swiped 100% in name, if not totally in content, from The Journey to Adulthood curriculum, a progressive Protestant course that attempts to equip young people with what they need to be functional adults.
This game invites a deep inventories not only of items but of attitudes. We catalogue belongings each young person may ‘own’ or have access to, what they don’t or can’t get, what they believe they need to be certain things or claim certain identities. The game invites an exploration of the balance between want and need, something I wish more adults had a handle on.
For all of our own human issues with this tension, and we have wrestled with lack and plenty for a great deal of our history, the last 100 years have had the added layer of mass media advertising. And that industry has been all about perverted images of both Lack and Plenty. Perhaps a piece of the whole conversation must include some deconstruction of messaging techniques themselves.
Fear is also deeply entwined with Lack and Plenty. I can hear blues notes behind me as I think on this, and am struck by how familiar a story it is, the embracing of the fear and then its alchemy into empowerment and fuel for action. And I wish I couldn’t, but I also hear the screeching riffs of angry mutterings as fear hardens hearts and closes borders.
We live in a time of Plenty. We have all we need, yet all we see around us is Lack. And Lack is there -a lack of justice, a dearth of compassion, an abyss of accountability. But within each of these struggles is also Plenty, for when they are based out of love, our actions are generative.
“I have come that you might have life more abundant.” -Jesus
I discovered in my work with young people that they might choose specific words and phrases to test and question, try out and explore, or struggle to describe but that they were also always testing our reactions to their words. Were we listening? Would we be triggered by something salacious or edgy and cease to see them? Could we reach behind the words and hear what was really being said?
I am a word nerd. I have an adversarial relationship with nouns, and they won’t stay in my head. But otherwise, I love language. I love its nuance, how 10 words can mean one thing but just a slightly different aspect of said thing. Or how one word can mean ten different things, depending only on context and use. Word choice matters greatly and has a significant impact in effect. Period. Sticks and stones may draw blood, sure, but words themselves DO have power. Power to illuminate and reveal, explain and describe -but also the power to obscure, deceive.
I grew up in the land of the subtle euphemism, the American South. I understand how carefully chosen words can soften a harsh reality -a terminal diagnosis or an expression of accountability. All our hearts are blessed regularly, and I also understand how seemingly polite words can hold deep barbs. And much to my surprise, I carry pieces of the Lost Cause narrative, a great example of how language and story are used to control. I’ll write about those revelations later in the month.
I was getting a couple of degrees in the ‘90s when the term Political Correctness hit the mainstream conservative media. It was a term we in academia were using to describe an intentionally measured discourse, and it was a term the Left used as a self-critique. By application of that now well-known right media smear machine, ‘political correctness’ became the catch-all pejorative phrase for any pushback against racist, sexist, harassing, or otherwise oppressive language.
But the movements towards excising cruelty from our language, and the emerging awarenesses of the power of naming, claiming, owning the wide diversity of our lives have only marched on, increased. It doesn’t really matter what mocking term Fox News used, the shifts were happening. These days, I even hear a backlash against the PC pushback itself by telling complainers not to be so sensitive about losing their ‘right’ to denigrate others, that changes in language aren’t an exercise of any thought police but rather a choice not to be an asshole.
Although I do hear fellow leftists use it in an ironic way sometimes, so I suppose its use has come full circle.
I have been involved in the environmental movement since I was a child in the 1970s. I first started using the term Global Warming in the 1980s. By the late ‘90s, that same smear machine had begun to take Global Warming apart as a viably descriptive term. A few years later, it was reported widely as evidence Global Warming was a hoax for a sitting Senator to toss a snowball around the Senate chambers. Idiotic.
Climate Change was a term more commonly used only within scientific communities. It was mostly about the various deltas, that is changes, in metrics and crucial data points, some of which have driven our comprehension of climate for centuries. Weather patterns. Rainfall. Snowfall. Air temperature. Ocean rise. Water temperature. Harvests and soil health. Infant mortality. As our ability to measure has become more sophisticated, we have captured more information. As we have more information, we can more accurately predict what kinds of changes are before us, and where those tipping points might be.
The primary pushback against Climate Change seems to be an intentional confusion of weather and climate. Weather can change hourly. A place’s climate, the long term patterns of weather alongside all those other metrics, generally does not change noticeably in one’s lifetime. Michigan would be shocking with a new tropical zone and snow in Miami would shut South Beach down.
About ten years ago, the USDA recategorized Colorado as the slightly warmer 5b planting zone, although there are various zones throughout the state. This happened all over the US and another published change is anticipated. These shifts affect all manner of planting and harvesting, from massive industrial agriculture to your backyard garden.
Floods and fires are increasing throughout the country, and as predicted the frequency and severity of storms is rising. And it snowed in Texas this year. Climate scientist Kathryn Hayhoe brilliantly upends the mockable Global Warming and calls it all Global Weirding, a phrase that’s accessible, funny, and true.
Which brings me to the topic that got me started thinking about words this week, about the use of language to control the narrative, to shift the perception of the truth. Of course, I mean the soon to be outlawed Critical Race Theory. And yes, it’s the same playbook all over again. An idea debated in academia, concepts studied as a framework for years as a way to describe lived experience, made its way into the common discourse and was vilified by the churn of the right wing media that simply cannot tolerate truth, and the required nuance of history.
We are right now experiencing an attempt by nearly a dozen state legislatures around the country to ban the use of teaching actual history, apparently because it makes some white people feel bad about themselves. And I get it. It’s intimidating to face. And for many, this fear traps them, keeps them from facing toxic remnants of history, structures of our institutions and systems that keep us bound, and the fatal and punitive realities of day to day life for nonwhite people in America. Unfortunately, these fearful people in such deep denial make public policy.
Many are right to fear this movement towards a more honest comprehension of our American History and how it forms us now. Education is dangerous for fear and denial and these are tools that address many aspects of our national history that we have never taught. Most white people do not know about mass graves of Indigenous children, massacres of large Black populations, or the destruction of several Black economic centers. Interventions like reparations begin to make sense when you understand the long term patterns of intentional disenfranchisement and destruction. And so they are clamping down, trying to make it illegal to discuss anything that challenges our whitewashed national narrative.
Words matter, and how we teach our national history matters. I am angry every time I discover a huge chunk that I honestly feel was intentionally kept from me in order to perpetuate a toxic system that benefits only me. I can’t understand being okay with not knowing the real stories as much as possible, and choosing a comfortable mythology.
I pray that good educators, anti-racism trainers, truthful curriculum writers, and members of Boards of Education with integrity will figure out a way around these capricious bans through the creative use of language. But honestly, it’s important to pushback against the co-opting of truth and education, especially because children and young people are involved. When we count on attrition or death to hasten cultural shifts (we all do this -all groups), we forget the kids. We forget that modeling continually instructs and that children repeat what they hear, ingest what they are fed.
I know most of the country felt horrified and helpless as Flint, MI, went without a safe water supply for years. YEARS. And even now, the lead pipes remain a clear and present danger to the populations they serve. We rarely think about where the water in our ubiquitous bottled water comes from, but much of it is essentially stolen by mega corporations like Nestle and Coca Cola. You can walk into your local convenience store right now and buy water bottled from Las Vegas’ municipal supply. Las Vegas. A desert city.
Many things matter to me, and I am vocal in several spheres. But it is articulating and uplifting the moral voice in the care of Creation that makes up most of my work. I believe that we who live in that world are ideally placed to help us transform and shift as a culture into one that can thrive in a world of radical global change.
I grew up on the Mississippi River, in Memphis, TN. Water does not only form our western border, water is all over the city itself. The Wolf River winds its way into the Mississippi here, and small streams and creeks are woven throughout the neighborhoods. Much of the city’s storm runoff system is made up of these water channels reinforced with structure and drains.
Happy Arbor Day, National Tree-planting Day!
Tomorrow is Arbor Day in the United States, but Arbor Day is marked all over the planet on different dates. Since the early 1800s, communities have set aside a special time to plant and nurture trees, a civic action of the public sphere for a modern era. But tree planting is an ancient practice, sometimes a sacred one -groves come to mind- and sometimes a civil one such as planting a line of trees to control the path of fire. My hometown of Memphis hosts an old-growth forest, one of the only urban remnants of these 10,000 year old oases.
Last week was Earth Day, also a global celebration, but a new one, and one that was made for the express purpose of celebration and declaring that our planet matters to us. I believe that common intent can have an impact on what is possible, and so I tend to give my nod to Earth Day, and move on from it.
I have heard it said that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is today. To plant a tree is an action of hope. It is a blessing to those who will benefit from it as it grows.
Many faith traditions hold trees to be sacred, or imbued with the holy. Some Buddhists ordain the trees themselves. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, trees are often an image of God’s vision of bounty and healing for all nations. Islam holds haram the cutting of trees that provide shade and shelter. Famous environmentalist John Muir called nature God’s cathedral, and one need not claim a faith tradition at all to feel the resonance of majesty and the fullness of life in the presence of trees.
We know that our planet is in crisis, and going through massive changes due to the human effect, the impact we have had on earth and its ecosystems. We are desperate for a science-based fix to our climate crisis but a single mature tree sequesters nearly 50 pounds of carbon a year, and produces over 250 pounds of oxygen. One tree. Forests are essential for global health, and trees are crucial for us to thrive.
But we see trees as ultimately expendable, a reasonable sacrifice.
At least, that’s how we treat trees here in the US. Want to build a new parking lot? It’ll only cost a few trees. Need a home expansion? That 150 year oak has to go. Want to improve your view? Just clear out all that annoying foliage.
Globally, things are getting rough as well. Fossil fuel industry expansion has led to rapid deforestation of the Amazon, for example, and with the massive fires there in 2019, the region produces more heat now than it removes. Forests are disappearing. The change is stark over the last few decades, as you can see on this Google Earth timelapse compilation.
I grieve when a community allows trees to die, but I am trained as a city planner. I get it. Sometimes, trees have to come down. It would make these decisions less stark and dangerous if a complementary policy required municipalities and other jurisdictions to replace those trees elsewhere. Trees are also good for public safety, and many studies have shown that the presence of vegetation and trees reduces certain types of crime.
But I rage when individual property owners kill trees on commonly held land, especially when they desecrate deeply environmentally sensitive land. This happened last week on the Mississippi River bluff in Memphis. It happened in early April in Arkansas. It happened in Santa Barbara last month. This wanton destruction of trees by wealthy unaccountable homeowners is a symptom of a society that simply does not honor trees as we should.
And so it’s up to the rest of us.
Working together for our common life, for that is the only way any one of us can survive.
Doing the hard work of change, for that is the only way we can forge a different path.
Planting trees side by side, for that is the only way the future has shade.
