My mornings used to be my own. I used to have a few hours to myself between the time I awakened and the time M woke up. Not any more. Though I don't mind, most days, because I wake up to a smiling baby boy. When he sees me looking at him he lights up with a big toothless grin. Sometimes he even coos. It's impossible to mind waking up to that :)
Little Man seems to be done with his growth spurt and I'm able to keep up with him milk supply-wise. I haven't needed to supplement with formula for a couple of weeks, and I've actually been able to freeze about 3 ounces of breastmilk a day. He is looking more and more like his father now, and he's
growing into his (my) nose. In addition to inheriting my nose and feet,
he seems to have gotten my light-sensitive eyes, poor thing.
He handled being passed around to a dozen different people pretty well at the party this weekend. M and I both were concerned that he might be overwhelmed by all the attention and handling, but he seemed to enjoy it. We might have an extrovert on our hands, instead of an introvert, like us. The jury is still out on handedness. I hope Little Man is a lefty like us just so it is easier for us to teach him to write and whatnot. I remember how difficult things were for me given that my parents were both right handed. M actually does a lot of things right-handed because that was the only way he could learn from right-handers, whereas my paternal grandfather was a leftie and taught me how to hold my pencil and fork, etc, and my mother fought the schools to keep me left-handed. My father's family has a strong left-handed streak, and a lot of people in the older generations stammer when they speak as a result of being 'thwarted' and forced to become right-handed, my father included.
Yesterday a friend of mine from Portland had a layover at SFO so I got a chance to see her and her daughter. We talked about the need to find a woman friend or two with infants to provide support and commiseration -- and my somewhat misogynistic tendencies. My misogyny is surprising to people who know that I attended a women's college and have dated women -- until I clarify. I don't dislike women -- I dislike the lowest-common denominator level that so many women sink to. Having gone to college with over 3000 brilliant women, I know what women can be -- and it annoys me no end to see what women resign themselves to being. I'm just not good at relating to a lot of the concerns that occupy so many women: I'm not into appearances, so swapping stories on clothes shopping, makeup and hair styling flat out bore me. I'm not a wanter. I despise shopping in general and conspicuous consumption in particular. I prefer simplicity and an uncluttered life. I'd rather have a meaningful conversation about what's going on in the world than gossip about movie stars and neighbors. And I don't play the woman-games -- I don't do the passive-aggressive competitor-co-dependent friendships most women seem to perpetuate with each other. I'm animus-dominant, and while I've definitely given my anima room to grow this past decade, I accept that I'm always going to prefer the company of men or masculine-minded women. Thus, finding women I can connect with is difficult enough without adding criteria like new-mom and over-Forty. But I'm not giving up :)
On this 'unintentional mother' blog I've mostly avoided mentioning the things that occupy my thoughts that seem unrelated to the topic. But politics and the environment and technology impact today and tomorrow -- they impact the world my son will inherit. M and I are looking at buying an electric car and putting solar panels up on the house. We're trying to reduce the amount of waste we produce by reducing consumption. We're following the breakthroughs in battery technology and alternative energy. And medicine. It would be lovely if my son came of age in an era in which a cancer diagnosis was not a tragedy, and diseases like malaria and cholera are no longer endemic to Third World. I have hopes that we'll revolutionize education so that young people will be able to learn and retain what they need to in order to take over for the technology priesthood and further the interests of humanity by evolving their thinking. I have hopes, but there are days when the omens and portents point to a dark future and a dying planet, and even my eternal optimism and sunny nature are no match for it. I have a dread that one day that my son will tell me he wishes he'd never been born into such a mess of a world. So I'm doing what I can to make it a better place, bit by bit, neighbor by neighbor, street by street. I'm Being Love, but I know I can try harder. I know I have to. There is too much at stake.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Climate Change and Christians as Stewards of the Earth
I grew up a native Californian Reagan Conservative with strong fundamentalist Christian values. At the same time, the terrible air quality, acid rains, and pollution which spawned the 1970s Green Movements were embedded in my childhood memories. I can remember the dirty brown smog in the LA basin rolling by, entirely obscuring the mountain ranges for months at a time. When I came of age in the 1980's, acid-rain and pollution were waning thanks to regulation, but the Cold War was still raging. Things were so bad that I took perverse comfort in living in proximity to both an air force base and a nuclear power
plant because I knew that if there was a nuclear war I'd likely die
early so I wouldn't have to live in the hellish aftermath.
It was the documentary film "Broken Rainbow", which launched me from complacency into activism. The forced relocation of Navajo Indians for the purposes of making the land accessible to mining activities, the visuals of children playing in uranium tailings, the high rates of cancer, and the knowledge that our treatment of the Navajo people had been models for Nazi concentration camps inflamed me. I learned about the pollution along the Mississippi River corridor, of watersheds so compromised that poor mothers were nursing babies with toxic breastmilk. I worked with inner-city children who grew up in extreme poverty and drug abuse and sexual abuse. It was the death of one of "my kids," the mistaken-identity shooting of a bright young single mother who had still managed to finish high school and college and climb out of the ghetto that broke me and ended my activism for nearly a decade.
The re-election of George W Bush and the marked failure of compassionate conservatism to address the very real needs of the American people brought me back to activism. In despair over the national political scene, I sought community and responsibility on the local level. And I found it. I also found myself. I discovered that I could maintain a balance between advocating for others and caring for myself. I felt called to become an ordained minister, and to pick up the sex-education efforts I'd put down years earlier. I wrote extensively. I joined a community that focused on heart-centered connection and intimacy. I cared for the dying and the living as my family entered a period of one catastrophic illness after another, and then I took a much-needed break to rest and determine what I wanted to do next in my life.
I care passionately about the world I live in. The Snowmass Wilderness and the Big Sur coastline were my backyard when I was a child, and I experienced God through joy in His Creation. I was taught to love God and the works of God, and to love my fellow man as Jesus loved me. As such, I've tried to help people in need, especially children and the elderly, I've tried to be environmentally responsible, and I've tried to make a contribution to each community I've been a part of.
Now that I'm bringing a child into the world, everything feels different, like everything I've done isn't enough. It's still globally encompassing, but more personal somehow. I evaluate the-world-as-it-is and I find myself despairing over the-world-as-it-will-be when my son comes of age. I feel frustrated and angry that we've been such poor custodians of this planet, and that so many people feel justified in ignoring the cumulative consequences of our actions. The dominant ethos of America appears to be one grounded in Greed and Apocalyptic Vision: God set Man in dominion over the world, so exploit it for all it's worth. Then God will take care of what is left -- with Fire.
But does the command in Genesis 1:28 to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it really give humanity license to recklessly exploit the planet? I think not. Genesis Chapter 2 describes God's creation of the garden of Eden, and His placement of Man in the Garden to dress it and to keep it (Genesis 2:15). What does "dress it and keep it" mean? Cultivate it and care for it. God put Man into the Garden of Eden to be it's caretaker, it's master gardener.
Now, After Adam and Eve's fall from Grace, God was pretty upset. He basically said cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life (Genesis 3:17). This would seem to set mankind up in an adversarial role with our environment. No longer would the ground readily sustain us, we'd have to work hard to find and grow food -- we'd have to work harder at subduing the planet. But what people seem to forget is that if God initially gave us dominion over the earth, the earth is still His. Even after granting Adam and Eve stewardship of the earth, even as he created the Garden of Eden for Adam to care for, He retained ultimate authority and ownership -- as demonstrated by His choice to curse it so we'd have to work hard in order to survive. (Jeremiah 27:5 I by my great power and outstretched arm made the earth, land and animals that are on the earth. And I can give them to whom I please.)
I can't help but feel that this was a test of sorts, a God-given opportunity for mankind to prove ourselves worthy of the role he'd given us as sovereigns and caretakers of the earth. I can't help but feel that we are once again failing in our charge.
The Bible tells us that even as humanity slipped into sin and depravity, and so lost our connection with God and Creation that God felt it necessary to wipe the works of Man from the face of the earth, God found one man, Noah, and charged him with building an ark to save not only those who kept faith with God, but also the creatures of the earth. We'd slipped so far from our sacred beginnings that God wanted to cleanse the earth of our taint, but not of His Creations. Once again, he reminded us of our responsibility as stewards of this planet. Even so, we continue to fail in those responsibilities, and have for thousands of years:
So I'd like to ask all the Christians out there, and indeed, all people who believe that the world was created by God, to think before they snicker or roll their eyes at those darned environmentalists who warn of the dire consequences of our current way of living on the earth. They could be the Noah's of our era, and if we ignore them, who is to say that they aren't prophesying the destruction of the world by fire (2 Peter 3:7. But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men)?
And if we willfully ignore their warnings because of inconvenience or political or ideological differences, and continue to be poor stewards of the earth, what world are we leaving to our children, and to the creatures of this planet, and how will God judge us when that time comes?
I feel it is time for those who consider themselves righteous or godly or God's Chosen to embrace the mantle of environmental stewardship. It is time for everyone to love what God has created, to dress it and to keep it as God charged us to do, and to stop wasting time on judging others when we should be loving them as Jesus also charged us to do. I think that we should unite to protect and preserve this planet all of us live on, because, really, if we fail in this, who can be smugly assured of their place in Heaven if everything does go to hell?
It was the documentary film "Broken Rainbow", which launched me from complacency into activism. The forced relocation of Navajo Indians for the purposes of making the land accessible to mining activities, the visuals of children playing in uranium tailings, the high rates of cancer, and the knowledge that our treatment of the Navajo people had been models for Nazi concentration camps inflamed me. I learned about the pollution along the Mississippi River corridor, of watersheds so compromised that poor mothers were nursing babies with toxic breastmilk. I worked with inner-city children who grew up in extreme poverty and drug abuse and sexual abuse. It was the death of one of "my kids," the mistaken-identity shooting of a bright young single mother who had still managed to finish high school and college and climb out of the ghetto that broke me and ended my activism for nearly a decade.
The re-election of George W Bush and the marked failure of compassionate conservatism to address the very real needs of the American people brought me back to activism. In despair over the national political scene, I sought community and responsibility on the local level. And I found it. I also found myself. I discovered that I could maintain a balance between advocating for others and caring for myself. I felt called to become an ordained minister, and to pick up the sex-education efforts I'd put down years earlier. I wrote extensively. I joined a community that focused on heart-centered connection and intimacy. I cared for the dying and the living as my family entered a period of one catastrophic illness after another, and then I took a much-needed break to rest and determine what I wanted to do next in my life.
I care passionately about the world I live in. The Snowmass Wilderness and the Big Sur coastline were my backyard when I was a child, and I experienced God through joy in His Creation. I was taught to love God and the works of God, and to love my fellow man as Jesus loved me. As such, I've tried to help people in need, especially children and the elderly, I've tried to be environmentally responsible, and I've tried to make a contribution to each community I've been a part of.
Now that I'm bringing a child into the world, everything feels different, like everything I've done isn't enough. It's still globally encompassing, but more personal somehow. I evaluate the-world-as-it-is and I find myself despairing over the-world-as-it-will-be when my son comes of age. I feel frustrated and angry that we've been such poor custodians of this planet, and that so many people feel justified in ignoring the cumulative consequences of our actions. The dominant ethos of America appears to be one grounded in Greed and Apocalyptic Vision: God set Man in dominion over the world, so exploit it for all it's worth. Then God will take care of what is left -- with Fire.
But does the command in Genesis 1:28 to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it really give humanity license to recklessly exploit the planet? I think not. Genesis Chapter 2 describes God's creation of the garden of Eden, and His placement of Man in the Garden to dress it and to keep it (Genesis 2:15). What does "dress it and keep it" mean? Cultivate it and care for it. God put Man into the Garden of Eden to be it's caretaker, it's master gardener.
Now, After Adam and Eve's fall from Grace, God was pretty upset. He basically said cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life (Genesis 3:17). This would seem to set mankind up in an adversarial role with our environment. No longer would the ground readily sustain us, we'd have to work hard to find and grow food -- we'd have to work harder at subduing the planet. But what people seem to forget is that if God initially gave us dominion over the earth, the earth is still His. Even after granting Adam and Eve stewardship of the earth, even as he created the Garden of Eden for Adam to care for, He retained ultimate authority and ownership -- as demonstrated by His choice to curse it so we'd have to work hard in order to survive. (Jeremiah 27:5 I by my great power and outstretched arm made the earth, land and animals that are on the earth. And I can give them to whom I please.)
I can't help but feel that this was a test of sorts, a God-given opportunity for mankind to prove ourselves worthy of the role he'd given us as sovereigns and caretakers of the earth. I can't help but feel that we are once again failing in our charge.
The Bible tells us that even as humanity slipped into sin and depravity, and so lost our connection with God and Creation that God felt it necessary to wipe the works of Man from the face of the earth, God found one man, Noah, and charged him with building an ark to save not only those who kept faith with God, but also the creatures of the earth. We'd slipped so far from our sacred beginnings that God wanted to cleanse the earth of our taint, but not of His Creations. Once again, he reminded us of our responsibility as stewards of this planet. Even so, we continue to fail in those responsibilities, and have for thousands of years:
Leviticus 25:23-24. The land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.When public figures like politicians and ministers say that catastrophic global climate change can't happen no matter what Man does because The Bible says the world will always be here -- they miss an important point. The Bible doesn't say Man will always be in the world, nor does it say that our way of life will always be sustained. We've gotten so caught up in serving up heaping helpings of the earth's resources that we've lost sight of he fact that the world doesn't exist to serve us. God created Man to serve as caretakers of Creation, to love it and take joy it as God Himself does.
Jeremiah 2:7. I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce. But you came and defiled my land and you made my inheritance detestable.
Luke 16:2,10,13. And He called him and said to him, "What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward. He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous in much. You cannot serve both God and mammon.
James 5:5. You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
So I'd like to ask all the Christians out there, and indeed, all people who believe that the world was created by God, to think before they snicker or roll their eyes at those darned environmentalists who warn of the dire consequences of our current way of living on the earth. They could be the Noah's of our era, and if we ignore them, who is to say that they aren't prophesying the destruction of the world by fire (2 Peter 3:7. But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men)?
And if we willfully ignore their warnings because of inconvenience or political or ideological differences, and continue to be poor stewards of the earth, what world are we leaving to our children, and to the creatures of this planet, and how will God judge us when that time comes?
I feel it is time for those who consider themselves righteous or godly or God's Chosen to embrace the mantle of environmental stewardship. It is time for everyone to love what God has created, to dress it and to keep it as God charged us to do, and to stop wasting time on judging others when we should be loving them as Jesus also charged us to do. I think that we should unite to protect and preserve this planet all of us live on, because, really, if we fail in this, who can be smugly assured of their place in Heaven if everything does go to hell?
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