Struggling to Walk When Things Aren't Right

My friend wrote a post Longing for Things to be Made Right and it inspired thoughts in the middle of the night that I've been mulling around for long and short times. Below is the beginning of her post and then my refined comments.

Thankful for picture from Human Resource Leaders

"For the past month, I've found myself saying these words more and more often.

It's been 285 days since we've had measurable snowfall in Chicago. It's not right.

It's getting harder and harder to find foods in the form in which God made them. It's not right.

Two of my good friends are struggling under the weight of chronic illness which, among other sadnesses, compromises their ability to care for their children.  It's not right.

A little boy, less than six months old, has a near brush with death because of a brain tumor. It's not right.

Twenty children die in an elementary school shooting. It's not right.

The world is broken. Creation is unraveling. Things are not the way they are supposed to be.

Repay evil with evil or overcome evil with good? Seek vengeance or forgiveness? Doubt everything and everyone or trust? Come to terms with what is or seek change? Preserve and protect or let go? Save or give? Despair or hope? These are the tensions that we live into every day. Since the dawn of time, human hearts have been conflicted.

Recently, my kids are getting to the age when they're asking the perennial questions of evil. "God can control the weather, so why doesn't He stop hurricanes? Why doesn't God wipe out the mosquitoes that cause malaria? Ordinary mosquitoes are bad enough! Why do we have to get the flu? Why do people shoot each other?" Different clothes on the same question body... "Why are things so broken?" It's not right.

And my heart aches... because it's true. Things are so broken. The world is not the way it's supposed to be. It's not right....."

The author goes on to talk about people's sinful choices and God's good news. I agree that people make sinful choices that leads to a lot of the problems in the world, but I suspect that the story is a little bit deeper......so I commented:

I liked your post a lot. It sounds like you're having some good discussions with your boys. :) I like that they think deeply about things. I too wonder many of those same questions.

I wonder why did God make us so that we have to struggle to learn? Why does learning to walk mean we have to fall down? Why is it that we learn as much or more from our mistakes than our successes? Are some of the 'not right' things about our world simply because we as a human race are still learning to walk? I suspect that God is not nearly upset about our failures as we are. Like a parent holding a child's hand he knows that the growing process is hard, but has complete confidence that one day we'll 'get it'. That his sadness over our falleness is like a parent trying to comfort a child who lost his balance. Our problem in walking is not thwarting God's ability to take us where we need to go. He knows the way and is patient beyond all measure. And when we get too tired to walk any more, when we lose faith in taking another step, he just picks us up and carries us and we see his miraculous hand at work. But for the most part, God would prefer if we would keep trying to put one foot in front of the other even if it's 'not right' and we fall down.

I believe that much of the brokenness of creation is because we haven't yet learned how to be the image bearers of God. We need to discover the good that God put in each and every part of creation, including mosquitoes and malaria. (I had an idea about malaria bearing mosquitoes: maybe the mosquitoes are tiny vaccinators which haven't been given the right vaccine? Maybe it's our job to give the mosquitoes the vaccine(s)? It might be a preferable way to build up immunity than going to the Dr's office.)

I've been struggling with understanding what is 'right' and I've been comparing and contrasting John the Baptist and Jesus. Each had high praise of the other. Each were prophets. Each were filled with the Holy Spirit from before birth. Each were on a mission to usher in the Kingdom of God. Both preached repentance and changed behavior. Each were killed for their their beliefs, for standing up to the powers of their day. And yet they were so different...

John the Baptist lived a Nazarite vow. He abstained from anything impure to the point of avoiding eating food raised through injustice. Jesus, on the other hand, went where he was invited and ate what was set in front of him. While John's criticism of hypocrites was backed up by a holy life, Jesus criticism of hypocrites was backed up by a holy God that still wanted to connect with his sinful creation. Christ's righteousness was in his grace, therefore he was a friend of sinners and drunkards.

I can make rules for myself that could guide me in living a life that loved my neighbor as myself, but if I think more about the rules than the people for which the rules are made to respect then there will come situations where I am not truly loving my neighbor. I can make the rule that I should not burn fossil fuels because of how it endangers the lives of millions (or billions). But if my neighbor is having a heart attack and the quickest way to the hospital is to drive a fossil burning car and my neighbor dies because I chose a slower non fossil fueled alternative then I didn't really love my neighbor. If I don't love the neighbor who I can see, touch, interact with, then do I really love any of the persons endangered by climate change? Or am I only loving my view of my self?

The resurrection proves that grace is a deeper kind of justice; a deeper kind of right-eousness. Through grace what was wrong is made right: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the prisoner is set free. Grace picks us up. Sets us on our feet. Brushes the dirt off. Kisses the wound. And sets us on the path again. And again. And again.

We may be brilliant at logic, philosophy, or theology, but until we see ourselves as others see us, we will probably always come short of loving our neighbor as ourselves. We will probably always think that we know what is right, rather than depending on God to show us the need in our neighbor that we can love.

Once Upon a Planet

Once upon a time people believed the earth was flat; that you could sail to the edge of the sea and fall off. But scientists discovered the earth was round. Brave men like Christopher Columbus who believed the scientists ventured into the unknown and discovered a whole new world. Scientists have continued to learn how this world works and brave men have continued to venture into new territory that scientists have discovered. In 1961 and the years following some of these brave men ventured into orbit. For the first time humanity could see the truth that scientists had taught: the earth really was round.

Once upon a time people believed that only the gods controlled the forces of Nature. That if you wanted the sun to shine, the rain to fall, and the harvests to be plentiful you had to sacrifice to multiple deities. That the large bones in the rocks were those of giant humans, trolls, and dragons. As scientists dug down and began to uncover layer by layer, piece together bone to bone, they began to discover a time when the world was very different than what we see now. They discovered that the earth went through very warm times and very cold times. That biological development flourished and changed corresponding to cycles of warmth and cold. And that there were times of rapid change when many species went extinct. When the scientists looked closely at the evidence, they found instead of giants, trolls and dragons, six time periods of flourishing life, each period dominated by species of a more sophisticated biology, each time period ending in the mass extinctions of life and variety. Each time period except for the last flourishing, our time period.

Our time period has been one of learning how the world works. Scientists have applied reason and new tools to understanding the forces of Nature. They discovered how they could predict solar and lunar eclipses, sun spots, and that adding carbon dioxide from fossil fuels to the atmosphere would change how warm the planet was. They learned to harness the forces of electricity and magnetism and put them to work predicting the weather. And in 1961 scientists and astronauts over came the force of gravity and began exploring space, first with men on the moon, later with satellites in orbit and flung to the far reaches of the solar system.

Once upon a time people used to use the planets moving amongst the constellations to predict their future. Scientists in their quest to understand the natural forces and expand their knowledge of how the world works to how the universe works, ventured into the unknown with satellites and discovered that the round blue earth is most likely the sole oasis of life in the solar system. They discovered that the morning star, otherwise known as the planet Venus, was a carbon dioxide induced oven. They found that planet Mars, on the other hand, had a scarcity of carbon dioxide which led to large polar ice caps. Each planet or moon was either too warm or too cold for life as we know it. The guiding morning star that navigators used to use to chart their way to the new world now guided scientists to new realizations about the future of the earth. When scientists looked back at home they realized that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was critical to the thriving of life and that we were changing those levels quickly without thought of our future or the future of life on this planet.

For the first time in the history of life, life was witnessing the earth's climate changing. Scientists who studied the stars saw the same danger for earth as scientists who studied the rocks. Changing the carbon dioxide levels was changing the climate quickly from cool to warm; the same phenomena that caused multiple extinctions before. Scientists began to watch what happened in the fossil record play out in real time before their eyes.

For the first time in the history of life, life is forcing the climate to change. Humans are forcing extra carbon dioxide into the air by burning fossil fuels. With increasing carbon dioxide, weather is becoming more extreme. Times of extreme heat heat are becoming more frequent. The times between rain are becoming longer and less seasonable. When rain does fall, it comes in greater quantities. And the storms that bring the rain are becoming more violent. As the earth's average temperature increases, dry places are becoming more dry, wet places are becoming more wet, and frozen places are thawing. There is no precedent for how quickly humans are changing the climate.

While there is no precedent for how quickly humans are presently changing the climate, there is plenty of precedent for how humans have responded to the effects of past climate change. In our brief history on earth we have seen small variations in climate which have caused droughts and severe winters. These trends devastated crops and pasture lands upon which we have been so dependent. As a result there were mass migrations, increased conflict, starvation, and epidemics. Since the last climate variation the human population has expanded exponentially, our weapons have become more deadly, our borders more rigid, and our food distribution more inequitable. The potential for deadly conflict and suffering has multiplied.

Our vulnerability to climate change has increased as well. Large populations live in areas that potentially will be covered when ice from glaciers, Greenland, and Antarctica melt. We are reducing and polluting our water reservoirs both on the surface and underground that could help us manage long dry spells. We have destroyed many wetlands that are nurseries for sea life and protect in-land fields from tidal surges that come with the more frequent and intense storms.

Our food supply is vulnerable to climate change because we have applied industrial methods to such a degree that we have depleted the earth's ability to produce thus putting at risk that which we have worked so hard to provide. We have over fished the seas, over grazed our pastures, our soils have eroded away from our fields, our fertilizers have contaminated our water ways and have created dead zones in the sea, our herbicides and pesticides affect our own health while at the same time contributing to evolutionary processes that are creating super bugs and super weeds able to withstand our lethal soup. The vast expanses of a single crop are a highway of food to new chemically resistant plagues and pestilence. Even without climate change our food supply is vulnerable. With it, the potential for crop failure and suffering has multiplied to become a certainty.

At the heart of our forced climate change is our economic system. The economic system that sent explorers to the new world and men to the moon, is the same system that is burning fossil fuels and forcing our climate to change. The globalization that began in 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue is the same globalization that creates large world wide monopolies; large monopolies which are inflexible to change and reduce citizens' options; large monopolies which control prices, wages, and politicians; large monopolies which cannot survive without tax advantages and subsidized fossil fuels.

At the heart of our economic system is a marketing engine that leaves us dissatisfied with what we have and who we are. We have been lead to believe that there is something better just over the horizon and in our drive to get to the promised land we leave behind a wake of destruction and debris. And because we do not value what we have, we risk falling off the edge of the world and loosing it all in a global catastrophe that threatens every life on this planet.

This earth is the promised land, an oasis of life light years from any other possibility. We have eaten from the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and are witnessing our own fall. We have made ourselves into gods controlling the forces of nature. But we are gods full of pride and greed, bringing about our own self destruction. Our only hope is to humble ourselves before the Creator of the universe, the one eternal god who made everything and seek forgiveness. We must repent of our ingratitude and begin caring for all of his creation. We must use the good we have learned to build places of grace for every kind of creature; sanctuaries that are resilient to catastrophic climate change. We must return our planet to being an ark of life amongst the planets. We must open our arms wide to embrace the weakest members of society. Only then we will become resilient to Siren call of marketing that drives us to our destruction. And only in that embrace we will we find the love and forgiveness and healing our hearts seek. In that embrace we will become a whole people and whole planet.

If we have the courage to become humble and change, we will be embraced by our Creator. If our hearts become full of thankfulness and our hands become generous, we will become secure in the future uncertainty. And if we give grace, we will become a holy people in a Promised Land.

Entering into Forgiveness

Editor's Note: For Lent this year I made an interactive art project which helps the viewer engage in the forgiving process.  What follows are the instructions and visual of the art piece.

When someone hurts us, it is natural for us to want to retaliate. It is natural for us to want to hurt them back. When we retaliate, instead of only taking an “eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth” and satisfying justice, revenge escalates the injury of insults to an ever increasing cost of life. “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.” (Romans 12:19) God encourages us to give him our desire for revenge so that he can exact his justice. On the cross Jesus opens his arms wide to receive the wrath we have for the sin others have done to us.

We are invited to place our wrath and desire for justice on Christ instead of the person who has offended him by throwing stones at the figure. The stones are provided because stoning was an Old Testament way the community exacted the justice of the death penalty (Dt 13:5, Dt 17:5) By throwing stones, we recognize how our desire for revenge ultimately leads to death. Notice how when the stone hits the figure it falls down rather than bouncing back. Through his death Jesus absorbs all our wrath. Instead of returning evil for evil, Jesus bears all sin in his body, allowing it to die with him and thus defeats evil.

Sometimes the sin in this world causes us to feel hurt and shame. We are invited to surrender our hurt and shame by taking a pin and a label and writing on the label our hurt or shame. Remove the label from the backing and wrap it around the pin to create a white flag of surrender or peace. Take the white flag and place it in the figure, remembering Isaiah 53: 5;

But he was pierced for our transgressions,

he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,

and by his wounds we are healed.

The punishment that we feel in the form of hurt and shame is now put upon Jesus through his being pierced. When we surrender our hurt and shame to Jesus, we can find healing and peace with God.

When we move to the other side of the cross, we place ourselves behind Christ in submission. When we look into the mirrors, we see ourselves with our all our faults and we remember how our faults have hurt others. But we also see in the cross a reflection of God's love. “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Cor 13:12) In our mind's eye we can look through this 'window' of mirrors to the other side where we had previously given Jesus our anger, hurt, and shame. Now Jesus is holding open his arms to protect us from the revenge others would give us for how we have hurt them. Jesus is absorbing and healing the hurt and shame we have caused and cannot undo. We can enter into receiving God's forgiveness by remembering Jesus words “Father, forgive (our name), he/she knows not what they are doing.” Notice the light from heaven reflecting off of the cross and onto your body. When you surrender your life to Jesus Christ, he is reflected onto and through you. You become like Jesus of whom the Father said, “This is my child in whom I am well pleased.”

The 1% and our Quality of Life

I believe that every person wants to live a healthy, happy, long life even if some people choose short term gains of happiness at the expense of their long term happiness and well being.  One of the important aspects of our individual health and happiness is our relationships; relationships with family, friends, and the society at large.  The government has an important role in mediating relationships.  It sanctions marriage, provides courts to resolve conflicts, and provides protections from threats.

I don't believe that our happiness is bound up in the wealth we have or don't have.  But I think there is a certain amount of angst we all feel when one person has more and won't share, or when most persons have some except a select few.  This is why it is considered impolite to eat in front of others without at least offering to share.

I recognize that for our economic engine to work there has to be an income differential, just like for a steam engine there has to be a temperature differential.  We have economic collapses when money stops flowing.  The steam engine stops turning if the water can't move through the engine.  And just like there isn't an endless supply of water for the engine, there isn't an endless supply of money.  Somehow the money needs to circle back around. If the money flows to the wealthy through the economic system then somehow that money needs get put back into the economic system at the lowest level.  If the money gets sequestered at the top then eventually the economic engine grinds to a halt. A failed economy hurts everyone in society not just the poor.
 
I watched a TED talk by Richard Wilkinson and I was very impressed with his data.  What he said about wealth on a national level seemed to echo what what I learned in Your Money or Your Life  that the law of diminishing returns also applies to acquiring money and growth of GDP.  There is a point at which getting more does not improve our lives or make us happier, but rather the opposite.

We need leaders in our society who will advance our standard of living, but we need to be careful that our leaders don't get too far ahead of the followers.  When a military platoon advances the front line, they stay close together.  If they spread out, they can be divided and defeated.  When a society experiences too much economic and social inequality, it becomes divided and defeated -either by external or internal forces.  We can build societal unity by making sure that our leaders are not advancing their own personal standards of living through the neglect of the followers' standard of living.  Or even worse, at the expense of the followers' standard of living.

Richard Wilkinson mentions in his TED talk how different societies have chosen different methods to solve societal inequality.  I like the idea that there is more than one way to skin a cat; that each economic solution is custom tailored to fit the people that live in that society.  The best clothes are always the ones that are made with the individual wearer in mind.  Where the wearer isn't trying to fit into someone else's idea of what is fashionable or into some industry predetermined average size. But where the clothes reflect the wearer's artistic expression melded seamlessly with the form and function of their work.

Your solution of "make[ing] sure the bottom rungs of the ladder to economic success are not missing" is an important step in preventing inequality from happening, but it doesn't necessarily create equality.  Considering how different we all are with our different amounts of intelligence, talent, and ability; considering how our society's values favor some talents over others, I don't see how solving broken rungs on the economic ladder will create a society that is more equal in any way, shape, or form.  I don't see how fixing the rungs of the economic ladder solves the problem of keeping money in the economic system circulating.

If we had a system that rewarded people based only on their productivity, then economic inequality would be a function of an individual's own laziness.  I agree that if someone chooses "not to earn, let the[y should] feel the effects of that neglect".  However, I have serious doubts that any economic system could be devised to reward people based on only their personal effort.  And the inability of real economic systems to be fair demands some sort of wealth redistribution in order to create a semblance of equality.

Maybe one of the reasons why God created a world in which it is impossible for us to earn equality is because he wants to teach us grace.  Grace gives regardless of whether or not a person deserves the gift. Even to the lazy and undeserving, Christ's body and blood are offered for us to eat and drink.  And regardless of our choices, God still sends rain and sunshine.  If God treats us this way, then shouldn't we treat others the same?  Regardless of how a person lived their life, I believe we should, both as individuals and as a society, avoid the extreme callousness that allows people to be abandoned in the street to die. For in the fate of the one, is the fate of the whole.

John Dunne says it eloquently in his poem "For whom the bell tolls":

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee. 
 

Society constitutes one body of humanity.  Money is the blood that our society needs to flowing through the whole body. An economic collapse where the money stops circulating is like a heart attack. If the blood stops flowing long enough the body dies. Stopping the circulation of money in certain economic region, is like a person who has a stroke. Where the blood stops flowing through a part of the brain, the brain dies. Even in small situations like when we stub our toe and get a bruise, the accumulation of blood that causes swelling hurts the whole body.  When one part suffers, the whole body suffers. 

The body can also suffer if it gets cancer. At first cancer is not noticeable. It's just a few cells which take control of the local blood supply, and grow uncontrollably. After a while they have multiplied and spread until normal body organs can no longer function properly and the whole body becomes sick.  Eventually, if nothing is done to prevent the cancer, the body will die. We can treat cancer by subjecting the whole body to lethal radiation or toxic chemicals. Or we can cut off the blood supply to the cancer.

Let's not confuse the growing poverty in this country as a cancer of poverty. But rather name the ballooning wealth of the 1% for the cancer that it is. Let's wake up to the fact that the 1% have not only taken control of the blood supply, but are effecting the various nervous centers of control in order to augment their own growth. The growth of the 1% has not only commandeered the blood supply and nervous centers of this country, but through globalization and military might, has dominated the world.  The 99% can live without the 1%, but the 1% cannot live without the 99%.  And if the 99% cannot through democratic means control the blood supply to the 1%, then we are left with other more lethal the dubious choices which may kill the body in the process of trying to cure it.

I have seen the compassion of the American people as they have face numerous challenges.  And I believe in that compassion. I believe that there is still hope for the democratic process.  I believe that as a country we still hold to our ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people and not just the 1%.  I believe that the society which freed the slaves and demanded civil rights, will also win economic rights for all people.  I believe that we will reject the bonds of debt tied to our striving for a higher standard of living, and instead choose a quality of life where health, happiness, and long life are free to anyone regardless of their bank accounts.

An Ecology of Salvation

www.world-builders.org

What I have come to learn from ecology is that even if we were all very modest with our individual consumption and we were the most technologically efficient we could be, and our attitude was that creation is there for our benefit, then our attitude will cause us to treat creation in a way which is unsustainable. Even if we resort to a hunter/gather lifestyle as a possible ideal low-impact lifestyle, if the well being of all of creation is not our top priority in our relationship to creation, we will end up hurting creation rather than helping it. I don't believe there is a middle ground of live and let live. I believe that we should have the attitude of Christ he said that those who would become the greatest must become the servant of all...to serve the least of these...to follow his example of serving. In my mind 'all' and 'least of these' includes creation.

I've been trying to put together Jesus' ideas of serving with what I have learned will best benefit nature. I'm trying to weave together the catechism answer of the purpose of man: to praise God and the Psalms' idea that all creation praises him. Creation praises God by fulfilling the purposes for which it was made. The more creation there is, the more diverse creation is, the more praise God receives from creation. We have a certain control over creation. We know how to promote growth and procreation. We know how to kill. We know how to save lives. Our very act of living influences which and whether other creatures live or die -even if we are vegetarians. Since God gave us a responsibility for creation, the best praise we can give him is in how well creation praises God.

Creation by itself, without humans in the picture, suffers extinction, both periodically as individual species and in large scale global events. There have been five previous global extinctions, and likely there will be more catastrophic events that without some mitigating factor will lead to future extinctions. In my way of thinking, death on that massive of a scale does not praise God. And we have built a great body of knowledge and technology such that our influence is on a global scale, if not a solar system scale. We could become the mitigating factor that prevents global extinctions instead of causing them. We could, if our attitude was to serve creation rather than seeing creation as there to serve us. If we put our very act of living to the service of preventing death on such a grand scale or even on an individual specie scale, then we would be helping creation praise God. Helping creation praise God becomes part of our praise to God.

Because creation has had to suffer extinction or near extinction God built into the evolutionary system a form of grace that produces more offspring than necessary. These surpluses form positive feedback loops and cyclical periods of population boom and bust, which without outside regulating influence, lead to extinctions. I believe Christ has called us to live into grace, not so that we can follow our own selfish desires, but so we become a people who bring him praise and glory. If we confine ourselves to live off the grace God has embedded in the natural system then creation benefits as well as us. To do this will require the self control which you mentioned, intimate knowledge of creation, and an attitude of serving.

The fact that God embedded a form of grace that produces more offspring than necessary in animals as well as in plants, gives us meat to eat. When God put Adam in the Garden of Eden, he gave him responsibility for the plants. Noah was given responsibility for all the animals when he was commanded to build an ark. As a reward for being responsible, God gave him the freedom to eat animals. But God holds us accountable for the life we take. The life we take must be for the purposes of bringing justice to the kingdom of God. We must recognize when the life of one specie comes at the expense of the life of another and exact the justice that God requires.

At each stage in the food pyramid God embedded an over abundance of life. To maintain the health of an ecological system we must maintain the relative relationships between its members. The food pyramid can grow to be larger and more plentiful so long as it retains its shape. What we take from nature for our living must be constrained to live within the abundance that would have unbalanced the system if had been allowed to live. God blessed this diverse consumption when in a dream to Peter he let down the sheet of many animals and told him, “Kill and eat” and “Do not call unclean what God has made clean”. By our consuming in a way that supports the well being of an ecosystem, we call creation into the purpose for which it was made; we cleanse nature and make it holy.

I believe that “through the resurrection that death has no final power” and that “Jesus' death [w]as an unjust end by an unjust system of oppression”. But I believe that we come to the resurrection through the cross. It is a repeated theme throughout the gospels that whoever wants to save their lives, will lose them, but whoever loses their life for Christ will have the eternal life of resurrection. Jesus calls us to embrace the way of the cross, to take up our crosses and follow him. Jesus wants us to remember him by celebrating his death -not that we shouldn't also celebrate his resurrection, but that becoming like him is having the love to lay down our lives for our friends, to pray for those who persecute us and do good to those who hurt us.

As Jesus, our Lord and master, lived and died for us, we, as rulers of creation, should live and die for the sake of the well being of nature. Our lives need to be lived for the benefit of creation, even if creation is unjust in taking our lives. We can face death because we have seen the resurrection of Christ. We do not need to save our earthly life because we have the hope of eternal life.

Jesus' death was redeemed through the new life of the resurrection. Death in nature is redeemed through the new life it gives another creature. As we give up our lives for others, our deaths will be redeemed through the life they bring. When all death becomes the means by which there is new life, then death itself will be redeemed. God is working for the redemption of all of creation, even death itself. There is nothing that he does not transform for his good and perfect will. We are the agents of his redemption, the image of God.

Sustainable Underwear

Another blogger of homemade underwear

I have now sewn myself two pairs of underwear from the fabric of old T-shirts.  One is lavender, the other pink and white stripes.  They are much more colorful than my traditional white ones.  I need to sew myself a few more as my white ones are reaching the end of their useful life.

I got the idea for sewing my underwear from a seamtress' website where she was finding new uses for old favorite T-shirts, particularly those with great slogans.  After a bit of research, I decided to follow the instructions of ripping apart an old favorite pair of underwear and using them as a pattern for the new pair. ehow After carefully cutting apart the pieces I discovered that the front and back did not have left/right symmetry. The curve out of the back corresponded to the curve in of the front and visa versa.

I've had a bit of challenge with the elastic.  With the first pair I tried to follow the example of the traditional store bought pair I pulled apart.  I got wide elastic for the waist and thinner stuff for the leg holes.  I debated whether to make a separate band of fabric to cover over the elastic but decided against it. I stitched the elastic on to the pantie and then folded the elastic under and stitched it again so fabric covered the band.  I decided not to do the leg elastic for the second pair and as long as I don't wear tight fitting pants the lack of elastic is not a problem. 

I have not quite figured out how long to make the elastic for the waist. I measured my waist and cut to the right length.  I needed to stretch the elastic some when sewing it to the pantie, but apparently I used too much elastic because it doesn't pull as tightly around my waist as I would like.

I may decide to find a different way of securing the waist.  Elastic in small quantities is not cheap.  I hate the fact that the cost of the elastic makes homemade underwear almost as expensive as store bought ones.  But my desire to make homemade underwear was not motivated primarily by saving money.  I want to change how I get my clothes so as to reduce my environmental footprint.

Reuse is a great way to reduce my environmental footprint. The environmental footprint of new clothes is huge.  Cotton is farmed using large amounts of irrigation.  One notable example of cotton irrigation misuse is the Caspian sea.  It is much smaller today because so much river water has been diverted to irrigate cotton fields.  Irrigation in general is not a practice that is good for the environment.  It increases the salinity of the soil thus increasing the amount of irrigation necessary to grow crops.  It decreases aquifers. Water from aquifers is useful in cases of drought, but used as a general practice is harmful.

Cotton is grown using lots of pesticides and herbicides. After it is grown, it is bleached with more chemicals. There is some organic cotton out there.  However, there is not enough demand to  bring down the price with economies of scale.  Eventually, I would like to buy bolts of organic cotton to make my clothes, but at the moment I am focusing on figuring out how to reuse what I have.

My goal is to turn all my old T-shirts into underwear.  Then I want to turn all my old turtlenecks into T-shirts. The parts of turtlenecks that wears out the quickest are the cuffs and the collar. If I cut those off I essentially have a T-shirt. I figure if I turn the turtleneck inside out and restitch the seams the out facing fabric will look nearly new; the T-shirt will fit better and more snugly, making it easier to layer under other turtlenecks. If I bought organic cotton to make turtlenecks and then converted the worn turtlenecks into T-shirts, and the worn T-shirts into underwear, then the extra cost of buying organic cotton would be spread over three garments instead of one.

Making my own clothes reduces my carbon footprint. Most of the world's cotton is grown in the USA.  It is then shipped overseas to be spun, woven, and then made into garments.  Each of those processes could require material to be shipped to a different country. By reusing old garments to make new ones, I am reducing the amount of material that needs to get shipped around the world. When I get around to buying my own organic cotton fabric I'm hoping to buy something where all the spinning and knitting has been done locally so that the carbon footprint of the fabric is significantly smaller than that of a ready-made garment.

Making my own clothes takes away jobs from poor people in other countries.  I have mixed feelings about that.  On one hand I want people to have jobs and recognize that my purchases give people jobs.  But on the other hand, I feel like the conditions under which those people have their jobs is not good.  By purchasing ready-made clothes I feel like I am supporting a system which takes advantage of other people.

The economic argument for trade benefiting both parties does not seem to apply here because the exchange of goods is not coming out of a surplus of local resources, but out of a surplus of cheap labor and subsidized fossil fuels.  If fossil fuels were not subsidized, it would not be economical to ship resources around the world.  The reasons there is a surplus of cheap labor has to do with how unfair trading practices have undermined local industry; how local governments do not protect the welfare of the worker; and how education is significantly lacking in some parts of the world. Subsidized fossil fuels have only exacerbated these problems.

I don't feel like I have influence to change system structures which cause people to work in clothing sweat shops. But by entering into their world by making my own clothes, I can better empathize with their situation and reduce my small contribution to the system that binds them.

Earth's Fever Sends Thailand Floating

In January of 2009 I had the great fortune to take a trip to South East Asia.  As the plane began to descend, I could see a patch work of green fields across a great low lying plain whose elevation was not much above the ocean.  Winding between the endless acres of rice fields came the great Mekong river shackled in the middle of the plain by the huge city of Bangkok spiked with sky scrapers and ancient temples. From the modern airport terminal we boarded a large air-conditioned tour bus that took us past miles of monoculture managed western style. Our guide explained how snails were infesting the crops, and the birds that normally ate the snails were not being able to keep up, but were congregating on the few groves of trees left. Their large concentrations were denuding the trees, causing a mess and a nuisance for the farmer instead of being helpful to him. Now that the fields were managed by large tractors, the land owners did not need the hundreds, maybe thousands, of peasants who had previously worked the land for generations.

Where did those people go?  What were they doing now? What was not said could be seen along the edges of towns. Families living in corrugated metal sheds, often times without running water or electricity, whose children would surround us and beg us to buy their postcards, or other handicrafts for a dollar or more. A hand to mouth existence vulnerable to the vicissitudes of Wall Street in currency manipulation, collapse of the economy and it's affects on tourism, lack of social and health infrastructure, and the ever present danger of environmental catastrophe.

These people didn't have health insurance, home insurance, an retirement investments, or savings in a bank.  If disaster struck and took their meager house away, they had no way to replace it. is. I should say “when” instead of “if”.  And the “when” that I anticipated in 2009 is “now” in 2011. There are record floods in Thailand.  The 4% increased moisture in the air due to global warming is coming down in record monsoon rains. People who are used to annual floods are being driven from their homes by extreme inundation.  Their very existence being threated by the failure of local and global crops.

Four percent may not seem like an insignificant increase, but let me ask you to consider your temperature.  In order to keep you functioning at your best, your body regulates it's self to be approximately 98.6F.  If your body's temperature increased 4% from it's normal 98.6F to 102F you would be very sick indeed. 

Our planet is just as sick. Every natural area is under duress from mankind's indiscriminate use of resources.  Every area of our world is becoming a desert. Oceans are losing their life due to excessive fishing, fossil fuel fertilizers, and carbon dioxide acidification. Forests, wetlands and prairies are disappearing under ax and plow, roof and pavement. The remaining soil is eroding.  The plant and animal diversity is rapidly decreasing. The birds have no place to nest or food to feed their young.  What flies through the air are man made machines leaving behind trails of destruction. Each trail of death linked to our wanton use of fossil fuels; carbon dioxide belched out at increasing rates as we rush about our feverish ways trying to get more.

The earth is sick of too much carbon dioxide.  Our planet's atmosphere needs to be regulated to have no more than 350ppm of carbon.  But as of September 2011, our atmosphere has 389ppm of carbon.  That is 39 parts per million more than it should be for the well being of the earth. 39ppm is an 11% increase over what it should be.  Just think, if your body temperature increased 11% to 109F, you'd be dead!  The earth has a dangerous fever that is killing people. It's killing people with extreme weather events.  In a place that has adapted to live with floods, recent extreme flooding has killed more than 370 people.  As famine hits the vulnerable Thai people, many more will die a long excruciating death.

When I came home from my trip to South East Asia and drove my car to the grocery store filled with food shipped in from thousands of miles away, I remembered the faces of the children living on the edges of life -children who had no hope of a future if I continued to use fossil fuels. When set food on my table for my children to eat, I thought of the mothers who would not be able quench their children's cries for food, their crops having been washed away.  Could that someday be me?  Is my part of the world imperious to extreme weather events?  Will the price of food become so high that I cannot afford to feed my children? What hope is there for the future if we continue to force the fever higher with our continuous use of fossil fuels?

As I read about the plight of those in Thailand, I am haunted by the images of vulnerability I saw in 2009, haunted by the fact that I contribute to the fever that is killing our world.  The ghost of Jacob Marley that warns me to change my ways and I cannot send away by sending money to some relief organization to help in time of crisis. The tears of the Thai cry out whenever I chose some fossil fueled  entertainment. Should my pleasure come at the cost of another's survival? I choke on my 'let them eat cake' attitude and pedal my bicycle, I buy organic, I look for local.

Yet, I'm like Frodo, bound up the web of oil unable to break free. Every purchase is stained with the blood of oil.  I cannot get out of bed in the morning without incurring the burning of fossil fuels.  My very existence depends upon the thing that destroys me. In the midst of Mordor I need a Samwise community that will cut through the threads that bind me; a community that cannot be seduced by the power that oil offers.  One whose economic life is not prey to oil's poison.  Together we will bear the powerful ring of oil oligarchy's control to it's destruction, so that it's watchful eye will no longer penetrate the halls of government and threaten the very survival of those who live on earth. Our mission faces impossible odds and yet there is no other choice for hope.  We must persist.

We must chose to put one foot in front of the other.  We must chose to forgo the easy shire life for the rocky hills of sustainability.  We must venture into new territory where our only guide is the gaunt  Gollum figure of our past -primitive, hunting, gathering, with the deformed desire of 'Precious'- and form a new life of contentment, forgiveness, and generosity.  And when at last our desire for more is returned to the forge from whence it came, the powers that be will shatter, earth's fever will break, and a new day will dawn.