I was ruminating (but not producing CH4 I hope!) reading the last chapter of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, on the tension I feel between optimism and pessimism around Climate Change and Peak Oil. Then today, Nikki asked whether we would be Survivalist or Preservationist.
In Barbara's words:
'I share with almost every adult I know this crazy quilt of optimism and worries, feeling locked into certain habits but keen to change them in the right direction. And the tendency to feel like a jerk for falling short of absolute conversion. I'm not sure why. If a friend had a coronary scare and finally started exercising three days a week, who would hound him about the other four days? It's the worst of bad manners - and self-protection, I think, in a nervously cynical society - to ridicule the small gesture. These earnest efforts might just get us past the train-wreck of the daily news, or the anguish of standing behind a child, looking with her at the road ahead, searching out redemption where we can find it: recycling or carpooling or growing a garden or saving a species or something. Small, stepwise changes in personal habits aren't trivial. Ultimately they will, or won't, add up to having been the thing that mattered...
Something can happen for us, it seems, or through us, that will stop this earthly unraveling and start the clock over. Like every creature on earth, we want to make it too. We want more time.'
As a follower of Christ, I believe I am compelled towards being a Preservationist, living in community as modelled by our Early Church in the years after Christ walked with them. More ruminating and discussing with friends is happening on what this looks like in our current environment. I'll leave you with another quote from an author I much admire:
'Poverty of heart creates community since it is not in self-sufficiency but in a creative interdependency that the mystery of life unfolds itself to us.' Henri Nouwen (emphasis mine).
So what did creative interdependency/preservationism/Christian community look like for us today?
- Ali taking all the children for a walk to look at the early blossoms
- Shared lunch at our place discussing seed propagators and worm farms
- Passing on A Crude Awakening DVD for Ali & hubby to watch.
- Cornflour gloop at Ali's while we talked Charlotte Mason and home-learning
- A pot of vegetable soup slow-cooking at one house, bread baking at another then swapping the results for a complete meal for each family
- Carpooling for Girl's Brigade tonight
Let's continue to encourage the small steps.
