Prescriptions for Health

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” Mother Theresa

Marilyn at Communicating Across Boundaries linked to this article entitled "You Can't Buy Your Way to Social Justice", which I read with interest. I read some of the author's posts at Djibouti Jones, which I really enjoyed. Which I say to highlight that I really like the author and her brave life in Djibouti, so this is not a criticism of her.

What I found interesting is the debate in the comments, and the overarching question of what represents the "right" thing to do for the world as a Christian. What is "enough" to make us a good Christian? It's like we got this massive loan and though we can't ever pay it back we should probably try.

I felt like this article, and so many others at Christianity Today, place a very heavy burden on people- one that is unnecessarily heavy given our own smallness. The question in the article seems to be whether it is more important to give one's life to people in a far-off land, or figure out how to consume fairly and justly. I sometimes stray towards legalism, and I think my writing betrays that, but at bottom I believe that God's burden is light. We don't have to know how to fix the world, and when we do think we know we're probably wrong. God's burden is a doctor's prescription meant for our own health, our Boston pastor often said, not a boss's order to somehow get a better employee. The prescription is enough to make us useful and whole as part of a bigger story of redemption. For those with less of a faith-based perspective, I wonder if what I'm trying to describe is similar to the smallness we all feel the first time we worked for an NGO or tried to do something meaningful to change the world.

This is not to say it doesn't matter whether I notice strangers in need or buy fair trade. Both matter (and perhaps neither matter very much unless they get some supernatural turbocharging!). But the prescription God has for one person - to leave them healthy and make them whole - is not the same as for another. And the prescription at one stage of life is not the same as at another.

I want to move towards a deeper life of faith- whether that simply means being kinder, or praying for people, or noticing strangers, or selling everything and giving our money to those who need it. But I am  for the most part called to small things and small days- where big things might unexpectedly happen, and they sometimes do. I very seldom expect the adventure or change in mindset when it comes, so I would be wrong to tell you your adventure when I don't even know my own.

To tentatively take the "light burden" metaphor a little further, I wonder if we can happily bear more and try more as we get stronger muscles. When I was pregnant, at the end I felt like my babies were just huge and they needed to get out. They were a pretty heavy burden. Then they came out and seemed so tiny, and as they grew in the baby carrier I largely had them on me the first year or so. During that year their growth was so gradual that I didn't feel terribly burdened. I had gotten much stronger without really noticing.

That is to say that changing the world might be spirit-filled, gentle, adventuresome and at times a bit scary, with no human action so momentous that it can transform the world to Eden on its own. In this context, we need each other and we need all the years we're given here on earth. Which is really good news.

Beyond "zero waste"

A big mind-shift I'm experiencing is around waste, and I'm seeing the earth- and God's provision here- as a new kind of perfect.

I'm reading a book called "Food and Faith" by Norman Wirzba and just finished Michael Pollan's "Cooked." I highly recommend them both. Another book that I found totally inspiring and which you can read for free is The Humanure Handbook:  it made something that seems so radical if you're situated in mainstream western life (composting human feces and urine) seem like common sense, and our current complex systems for using drinking water to flush feces seem completely absurd.

When I first read about Zero Waste it was mainly about packaging and unnecessary travel: reducing packaging, not putting out the trash too often, and not going on too many exotic vacations or long drives. This is still really important and our lives are very imperfect- we still do have trash. Water down the drain and flushed toilet didn't seem terribly wasteful because for the most part, out of sight meant out of mind. And composting was great mainly because it kept things out of the landfill.

The overlap between Food and Faith, Cooked, and the Humanure Handbook is in their description of the relationships between organisms here on earth. There's this perfect cycle whereby death and life co-exist and our disassociation and specialization has meant that suddenly our leftovers- whether poop or food scraps or water from washing- is toxic rather than something valuable and necessary to keep the world healthy.

These books have also helped me to understand some of the ways that the convenience of the city can blind me to the high cost of these conveniences.

So what to do, here in the city, in a really imperfect world? I'm trying to think beyond reducing plastic waste and packaging waste in general, though I think that's hugely important.

• I can't compost feces safely in the space we have, but urine is fine so I've started doing that by putting the potty in the toilet and emptying it into the worm bin when I remember. Noah pees directly onto the lemon trees. I read that a year's worth of pee has enough nitrogen for a year's consumption of wheat. I found that remarkable.
• There wasn't a simple way to catch rain water (yet) or reuse our greywater for the plants via pump or pipe, but I've started watering the garden exclusively with reused water. This means a little work: taking the water from the bath down to the plants, waiting for the pasta water to cool before watering the plants with it. 
• To my surprise, in just a month this meant saving R80 in water/sewage costs. We pay less than R10 (about $1) for both per month. The savings may seem like a pretty trivial amount, but it's 4 trays of seedlings, or around 6 packets of seeds, or the difference in costs between a month's worth of organic, free range eggs vs. caged eggs! Isn't that pretty amazing? These are all things that are sometimes hard for me to buy because they seem expensive, but it's mainly my frame of mind. 
• Attempting to reuse potting soil (after cycling it through the worm bin) so that there's pretty much a closed system- no fertilizer, no purchases necessary. It's by no means perfect and I'm no farmer yet, but I'm amazed by the possibilities.
• We don't use non-solar energy for water heating. This means fewer showers in winter, which kindof makes sense because we're not as sweaty.

This isn't about becoming more radical or feeling more self-righteous. I'm just excited that there are real, meaningful life alternatives in the space between living here in the city and living an agrarian life off the grid. Join me in these dreams!

Abundance shifts

When Eugene and I did a course called Lazarus at the Gate about six years ago, it was transformative for us. The course was about economic discipleship and learning what Jesus' approach to money might be. We learned a lot about fair trade consumption, as well as trying to decrease our consumption. For Eug and I, entering our second year of marriage, we suddenly had to make a budget and confront our debt. Rather than simply confront our spending and budget in terms of necessities and extras, we got to look at our budget as a moral document, and at our money as a potential vehicle for blessing others. At the end of group, with the other members we pooled our money and gave to groups that we had all researched.

One of the tenets of the course is that "wealth is a blessing" and the second is that, as a blessing "wealth must be justly distributed." I don't mean to conflate wealth and abundance, but I've been thinking of how the two relate and are similar and different.

Since finishing the course and going on with our lives, abundance has at times meant being able to do things that were financially possible because of our relative wealth. Travel. Good food. Giving away stuff. This sense of abundance was real and has its moments.

But there was another sense in which abundance is in tension with just distribution. I sometimes will say things like "I can handle anything, but I need [fill in the blank]" Whatever filled the blank provides some tension for me, because the reality is that, for example, flush toilets for the whole world isn't sustainable. Cars for everyone is not reasonable or helpful or attainable. So to the extent that I measure blessing by having those "needs", I'm claiming an exclusive blessing for myself that doesn't fit with the kind of God I read about and connect with. If blessing is experienced as house or going on a beach holiday, then how is God blessing or loving the poor? I don't mean this in a legalistic way. I drive a car and flush the toilet. What I'm trying to grapple with is that these 'blessings' are not what abundance means. As such, if we do give these things up, we won't be giving up abundance or blessings in favour of a negative kind of austerity.

Rather, we'll be entering into a new type of abundance, not mediated by luxury. I get glimpses of this kind of abundance when I bake bread or cook something simple or take some spinach from our garden and cook it: at a very basic level providing my sustenance is beyond my control, it is a gift (as I learn every time the slugs come). Perhaps financial wealth is the opposite of this, where we work on abstract problems and buy anonymous things and it feels like our livelihood is proportional to our striving.

A couple of weeks ago, Eli started to walk, and I thought I got a little glimpse of abundance in first steps, and his steps even now. Eli has had a very simple life. He's been carried, breastfed, and loved, but he's just sortof slipped into our life. Yet in the course of a year, he went from a floppy little blob to a walking, talking, laughing boy. The process was deeply natural and beyond my control, and witnessing it seemed as close to a pure gift as I could imagine- like my own very personal sunrise or sunset.