Hey good stuff. Rather more high tech than my last post!
In terms of sustainability we are trying to buy more local: meal from a butchers, fruit and veg produced locally.
One of things that really annoys me, as we try to reduce our carbon footprint, live more sustainably, support local shops rather than the big supermarkets etc. is that it is all so damn expensive! We don’t have load of money, and it just seems so expensive to buy local etc. I find that very frustrating!
As i write this, my wife off doing the weekly shop at the supermarket …
Rupert – I hear what your saying about it being so expensive. For us this is where simplicity comes in. So because we buy our veg from the farmer we can’t afford other stuff – thus we need to not strive for that other stuff but find a simpiler way to live.
The other thing that we do in terms of local is when we buy fruit in the supermarket we look at where it came from. If we can buy apples from the UK, then that’s what we do – not from a protectionist standpoint, but because it’s more local than apples from NZ!
Brodie … good point. I guess this is the journey we are on too, but maybe more starting than a long way down. We have friends who have radically changed the way they eat: they buy meat from a local farm … it is more expensive so they only eat meat once a week. Great stuff, and really challenging. I think i am grappling with the loss of my bacon buttie!
I’m not sure what you are looking for in terms of responses, but here goes with mine! “Living small, slow and local” I’m hoping to read some really good thoughts as the comments start. In terms of us as a family we have just decided to homeschool, which means, for us, that our children can be more involved in our day to day life, they will be able to travel with us, and hopefully experience and witness faith at another level to how they have seen it.
In terms of our locality we live in a community where every other street has a green in the middle of it. We are trying to work out how we can get people from within our church to host bbq’s over the summer for people who live around these greens – not to witness, just to build relationships. We are also involved in the local addiction recovery centre, and domestic violence forum, which we are looking into starting a furniture warehouse for. I think locally churches can get involved in so many “small” ways, such as weekly taking a garbage sack and collecting garbage which has been dropped on the roads, in the local parks etc. Serving our neighbours – going shopping for an elderly neighbour, making a few meals for the lady across the street who has just had a baby etc. Going to chat and hang out with the youths who are hanging out around the liquer store. The saying goes “actions speak louder than words” – when we go and serve our local community, love them, be with them, we are saying and showing so much more than we ever could by dragging someone to Alpha, witnessing etc. People want relationships, as that relationship builds you will have the chance to share your faith, even if they reject your faith you continue with the relationship.
I hope that might be some of what you are looking for.
Hey Makeesha – great thoughts. I wish I could lay out something more substantial, but you’ve got a great manifesto going there.
A word of encouragement and one to spur some thought:
Tomorrow, I’m selling my car, moving to Portland, OR, and doing what I can to pursue the above. Portland is filled with bike lanes, local/organic grocery stores, and whatnot. It’s not terribly difficult to live small, slow, and local.
But different localities lend themselves to different lifestyles. At the moment, I’m visiting family in Indiana who live in a city that seems to be the midwest’s answer to Houston – spawling, entirely unbikeable, and almost exclusively big-box retail. After four medical appointments and a meeting, I’d driven over 150 miles. Organic food is hard to come by, veganism is unheard-of, houses are huge, and you’ll get hit if you venture onto the road at less than 30 mph.
What can greener people / churches do to help folks who live in such carbonated areas? How can our friends in Indiana, Houston, LA, and Columbus pursue a better way? A couple ideas that are coming to me as I type them:
– Community gardens + “farmers’ markets” (this one might be a bit ironic in an area without greenspace – but the more irony the better!)
– Hardcore bikers. Grab a helmet, say a prayer, and give it a go. The law’s on your side, at least!
– Guerilla planting. Could carrots grow between US-30 N and US-30 S?
– Sustainable BBQs (as Lyn mentioned). Death to disposables!
– Green energy. Many electric companies are beginning production projects using renewable sources. If that’s not an option, buy green tags and hope they’re worth something.
– Know your neighbors. (I’m bad at this one)
Like most changes brought about from within, even these can be a bit subversive within systems that discourage sustainability. But they’re fun and some of them are public (I haven’t even mentioned freeganism yet!). When you’re the only person using the sidewalk, people notice.
I think that this might be a productive avenue for discussion. We can pat ourselves on the back, or we can help others live a better way within their oil-addicted communities. Or we can do something entirely different, because that was a false dicotomy anyway. Hehe.
I’m sorry, somehow I completely missed your thoughts Scott. Thank you so much for your reply! I love all your idea. I really want to do a community garden but I have a brown thumb hehe. I think helping others along the way will help us limit our risk of becoming elitist and pompous about our “better” choices.
Great questions/ideas Makeesha. This is something that we have really been trying to champion here in Winnipeg, especially living simply and living locally. When you start doing this, it does not take long to discover how dependent we have become on our consumerist culture. We also find that giving up those dependencies is not as easy as we would have expected.
In no way wanting to take away from what you are saying, my only concern with this approach as I have seen it practiced is that the local focus can result in a failure to be engaged as a global church. As our choices locally have global results, and because the church is at its most beautiful and truest in united diversity, finding a way to do this while maintaining a global perspective is crucial.
Hi Makeesha
It seems that one of the challenges is how to live on the fringes of the
consumer society of which we are a part, while still exerting pressure for
change.
Clearly change is possible, but until there is a critical mass of people who desire to see change
(and unfortunately also have enough pounds, dollars or Rupees to pay for what
they want) then economic forces (Principalities and Powers) are likely to
continue to direct economies towards the lowest common denominator.
I have to believe that WE can bring about change but as long as society has a different trajectory
it will always be an uphill battle. Witness the entire Fair Trade movement,
which grew from a handful of Christians in Oxford, UK, and now occupies shelf
space in every supermarket in the UK. Or the push for organic vegetables, which
again has prompted change in virtually every high street (or rather every out of
town shopping centre). If we choose now to opt out then we become irrelevant,
but if we remain a part then we continue to feed the dragon which we are fleeing
from.
I recommend the books, For the Common Good by Daly and Cobb, and Small is Beautiful by E.F.Schumacher.
Both offer somewhat credible (if slightly utopian) alternatives of how our global
economies might be reorganized, but as to how to get from here to there, that is the real question…
Ian
PS Please forgive me if the formatting is messed up…still learning HTML.
Ian, I think that’s the constant tension we live in as Christians don’t you? how to work from withing but still subvert the system.
I’m not sure that living more simply could be called opting out though.
Comment by Ian
3.09 pm on 12 May 2007
Surely that is exactly what it is!
Choosing to buy locally manufactured or grown products for instance does require choosing not to buy from global chain XYX. I don’t see “opting out” as meaning being disinterested or apathetic, just making choices to go elsewhere.
(p.s. can someone explain to this novice Blogger how it is that when I first tried to post with links to the books the entire post didn’t appear. I eventually gave up and posted without links and finally the post appeared. I now have 4 copies of my post in my inbox (apologies to anyone else who was also subscribed) and the one post on the site is complete with the links that I couldn’t get to work? I suspect the equivalent of the Blogging Fairy at work behind the scenes, but am still confused.)
well of course Ian, any time we make a choice FOR something we’re automatically choosing against the other thing. that’s really what this about right? choosing the “better way” to be consumers.
here’s another spin. I recently read on Dan Kimball’s blog, a comment about how people see Jesus so much differently than Christians/Christianity. And someone asked how that’s going to change when the loudest voices are the worst representatives of Christ.
I immediately thought about this again – small, slow, local.
One person at a time, one friendship at a time, one neighborhood at a time.
I’m a cynic. As a cynic, I find myself questioning and doubting every good thing I try to do. I have to force myself to stop. To be led by the Spirit. To do good even if it’s small or seemingly insignificant.
In friendships that I have had for 5 years, I’m seeing that my mustard seed is growing. But it started small, it has stayed small, and it has grown slowly.
I’m not an economist. I really have no desire to get into that side of it – - I’ll leave it to those people. so I have no idea about the economic particulars but I know that in relationship and in how we run our communities of faith, we CAN make an impact
Hi Mak, I was going to comment by video but I sort of ran out of time :) so here’s my typed effort!
Thank you for your post. I was struck by a conversation i was having yesterday where we were talking about the authenticity of the experience where consuming becomes part of our identity and the struggle in our consumption becomes the heroic tales of our age – so we can’t have just any old pasta but pasta from italy, a villag high on the umbrian hillside which dates back from 220BC, to a traditional speciality recipe, hand rolled on the thigh of a blushing virgin….
The quest to seek out such individualistic products plays into I think the whole local thang where it can be become our struggle to travel to x farm, or shop organically from y shop, where we can recite their ethical policy and feel good about our purchasing.
We can just make this lifestyle of slocal living part of our consumer choice. I know this is not what you are advocating, I am just noting how even protest at processed fast paced living and eating becomes one more piece of the consumer machine.
To avoid being cynical in undoubtedly has its wider benefits, especially for those of us who can afford, just about, to live this way.
I just wonder from our perspective of christians what we can do to help make those people who don’t have the luxury of such consumer choice also find access to to such ethical goods, services and practices that are our choice?
How much do we really have margin in our lives – or is this something that adds time pressure as we now have to go on the consumer quest to some where local and on foot rather than the supermaket shelves?
What alternate rhythms and practices do we haveas christians to allow people to find a different rhythm and priority of life? How much as leaeders do we model a life of seasons rather than a frantic dash for the next goal?
Are we really not only present but a presence in our communities, where family, work, school, neighbourhoods? i liked lyn’s bbq idea that sounds a great way of slowing down and connecting people.
How do we make ourselves glocal – globally aware but locally based? One of the things that I like about our church is that we pray once a month for issues affecting other nations that are in our news as well as having a particular country sri lanka who we are involved in partnering with for mission. It helps me find time to pause and think of life beyond just me and my particular local environment.
Mak, for some elevation of the beautiful idea of living small in the grand story of faith, see anything written by Therese de Liseux, the “little Theresa,” after whom mother Theresa took her name. For her, the idea of the small was her access to the wide wonder, goodness and activity of God in the world.
Search “Little Theresa” for some great riches. On our end, Dr. Peter Fitch here at St. Stephen’s University does a beautiful, artful teaching called “The Three Theresa’s,” and expounds beautifully on the “small” life.
23 comments
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Comment by Rupert Ward
12.22 pm on 11 May 2007
Hey good stuff. Rather more high tech than my last post!
In terms of sustainability we are trying to buy more local: meal from a butchers, fruit and veg produced locally.
One of things that really annoys me, as we try to reduce our carbon footprint, live more sustainably, support local shops rather than the big supermarkets etc. is that it is all so damn expensive! We don’t have load of money, and it just seems so expensive to buy local etc. I find that very frustrating!
As i write this, my wife off doing the weekly shop at the supermarket …
Comment by brodie
3.05 pm on 11 May 2007
Rupert – I hear what your saying about it being so expensive. For us this is where simplicity comes in. So because we buy our veg from the farmer we can’t afford other stuff – thus we need to not strive for that other stuff but find a simpiler way to live.
The other thing that we do in terms of local is when we buy fruit in the supermarket we look at where it came from. If we can buy apples from the UK, then that’s what we do – not from a protectionist standpoint, but because it’s more local than apples from NZ!
Comment by Rupert Ward
6.08 pm on 11 May 2007
Brodie … good point. I guess this is the journey we are on too, but maybe more starting than a long way down. We have friends who have radically changed the way they eat: they buy meat from a local farm … it is more expensive so they only eat meat once a week. Great stuff, and really challenging. I think i am grappling with the loss of my bacon buttie!
Comment by Lyn
12.29 pm on 11 May 2007
Great to hear your voice Mak! :)
I’m not sure what you are looking for in terms of responses, but here goes with mine! “Living small, slow and local” I’m hoping to read some really good thoughts as the comments start. In terms of us as a family we have just decided to homeschool, which means, for us, that our children can be more involved in our day to day life, they will be able to travel with us, and hopefully experience and witness faith at another level to how they have seen it.
In terms of our locality we live in a community where every other street has a green in the middle of it. We are trying to work out how we can get people from within our church to host bbq’s over the summer for people who live around these greens – not to witness, just to build relationships. We are also involved in the local addiction recovery centre, and domestic violence forum, which we are looking into starting a furniture warehouse for. I think locally churches can get involved in so many “small” ways, such as weekly taking a garbage sack and collecting garbage which has been dropped on the roads, in the local parks etc. Serving our neighbours – going shopping for an elderly neighbour, making a few meals for the lady across the street who has just had a baby etc. Going to chat and hang out with the youths who are hanging out around the liquer store. The saying goes “actions speak louder than words” – when we go and serve our local community, love them, be with them, we are saying and showing so much more than we ever could by dragging someone to Alpha, witnessing etc. People want relationships, as that relationship builds you will have the chance to share your faith, even if they reject your faith you continue with the relationship.
I hope that might be some of what you are looking for.
Comment by Lyn
12.32 pm on 11 May 2007
I’ve just seen Ruperts comment! I missed off environment! Yes, try and buy local produce from the baker, grocer etc or fair trade.
Comment by Scott Andreas
3.24 pm on 11 May 2007
Hey Makeesha – great thoughts. I wish I could lay out something more substantial, but you’ve got a great manifesto going there.
A word of encouragement and one to spur some thought:
Tomorrow, I’m selling my car, moving to Portland, OR, and doing what I can to pursue the above. Portland is filled with bike lanes, local/organic grocery stores, and whatnot. It’s not terribly difficult to live small, slow, and local.
But different localities lend themselves to different lifestyles. At the moment, I’m visiting family in Indiana who live in a city that seems to be the midwest’s answer to Houston – spawling, entirely unbikeable, and almost exclusively big-box retail. After four medical appointments and a meeting, I’d driven over 150 miles. Organic food is hard to come by, veganism is unheard-of, houses are huge, and you’ll get hit if you venture onto the road at less than 30 mph.
What can greener people / churches do to help folks who live in such carbonated areas? How can our friends in Indiana, Houston, LA, and Columbus pursue a better way? A couple ideas that are coming to me as I type them:
– Community gardens + “farmers’ markets” (this one might be a bit ironic in an area without greenspace – but the more irony the better!)
– Hardcore bikers. Grab a helmet, say a prayer, and give it a go. The law’s on your side, at least!
– Guerilla planting. Could carrots grow between US-30 N and US-30 S?
– Sustainable BBQs (as Lyn mentioned). Death to disposables!
– Green energy. Many electric companies are beginning production projects using renewable sources. If that’s not an option, buy green tags and hope they’re worth something.
– Know your neighbors. (I’m bad at this one)
Like most changes brought about from within, even these can be a bit subversive within systems that discourage sustainability. But they’re fun and some of them are public (I haven’t even mentioned freeganism yet!). When you’re the only person using the sidewalk, people notice.
I think that this might be a productive avenue for discussion. We can pat ourselves on the back, or we can help others live a better way within their oil-addicted communities. Or we can do something entirely different, because that was a false dicotomy anyway. Hehe.
Cheers!
Comment by Makeesha
2.28 am on 16 May 2007
I’m sorry, somehow I completely missed your thoughts Scott. Thank you so much for your reply! I love all your idea. I really want to do a community garden but I have a brown thumb hehe. I think helping others along the way will help us limit our risk of becoming elitist and pompous about our “better” choices.
Comment by Jamie Arpin-Ricci
3.43 pm on 11 May 2007
Great questions/ideas Makeesha. This is something that we have really been trying to champion here in Winnipeg, especially living simply and living locally. When you start doing this, it does not take long to discover how dependent we have become on our consumerist culture. We also find that giving up those dependencies is not as easy as we would have expected.
In no way wanting to take away from what you are saying, my only concern with this approach as I have seen it practiced is that the local focus can result in a failure to be engaged as a global church. As our choices locally have global results, and because the church is at its most beautiful and truest in united diversity, finding a way to do this while maintaining a global perspective is crucial.
Peace,
Jamie
Comment by Makeesha
4.45 pm on 11 May 2007
thanks all for your thoughts and ideas! I’m going to respond personally in video but I wanted to let you know I read what you all responded :)
Comment by Makeesha
4.04 am on 12 May 2007
you’ll notice in my video reply that I’m a bit spacey – - that’s what happens at the end of a long day I guess hehe…
Comment by Makeesha
4.05 am on 12 May 2007
Comment by Ian
4.46 am on 12 May 2007
Hi Makeesha
It seems that one of the challenges is how to live on the fringes of the
consumer society of which we are a part, while still exerting pressure for
change.
Clearly change is possible, but until there is a critical mass of people who desire to see change
(and unfortunately also have enough pounds, dollars or Rupees to pay for what
they want) then economic forces (Principalities and Powers) are likely to
continue to direct economies towards the lowest common denominator.
I have to believe that WE can bring about change but as long as society has a different trajectory
it will always be an uphill battle. Witness the entire Fair Trade movement,
which grew from a handful of Christians in Oxford, UK, and now occupies shelf
space in every supermarket in the UK. Or the push for organic vegetables, which
again has prompted change in virtually every high street (or rather every out of
town shopping centre). If we choose now to opt out then we become irrelevant,
but if we remain a part then we continue to feed the dragon which we are fleeing
from.
I recommend the books,
For the Common Good by Daly and Cobb, and
Small is Beautiful by E.F.Schumacher.
Both offer somewhat credible (if slightly utopian) alternatives of how our global
economies might be reorganized, but as to how to get from here to there, that is the real question…
Ian
PS Please forgive me if the formatting is messed up…still learning HTML.
Comment by Makeesha
5.07 am on 12 May 2007
Ian, I think that’s the constant tension we live in as Christians don’t you? how to work from withing but still subvert the system.
I’m not sure that living more simply could be called opting out though.
Comment by Ian
3.09 pm on 12 May 2007
Surely that is exactly what it is!
Choosing to buy locally manufactured or grown products for instance does require choosing not to buy from global chain XYX. I don’t see “opting out” as meaning being disinterested or apathetic, just making choices to go elsewhere.
(p.s. can someone explain to this novice Blogger how it is that when I first tried to post with links to the books the entire post didn’t appear. I eventually gave up and posted without links and finally the post appeared. I now have 4 copies of my post in my inbox (apologies to anyone else who was also subscribed) and the one post on the site is complete with the links that I couldn’t get to work? I suspect the equivalent of the Blogging Fairy at work behind the scenes, but am still confused.)
Comment by Makeesha
2.25 am on 16 May 2007
well of course Ian, any time we make a choice FOR something we’re automatically choosing against the other thing. that’s really what this about right? choosing the “better way” to be consumers.
Comment by Makeesha
5.15 am on 12 May 2007
here’s another spin. I recently read on Dan Kimball’s blog, a comment about how people see Jesus so much differently than Christians/Christianity. And someone asked how that’s going to change when the loudest voices are the worst representatives of Christ.
I immediately thought about this again – small, slow, local.
One person at a time, one friendship at a time, one neighborhood at a time.
I’m a cynic. As a cynic, I find myself questioning and doubting every good thing I try to do. I have to force myself to stop. To be led by the Spirit. To do good even if it’s small or seemingly insignificant.
In friendships that I have had for 5 years, I’m seeing that my mustard seed is growing. But it started small, it has stayed small, and it has grown slowly.
I’m not an economist. I really have no desire to get into that side of it – - I’ll leave it to those people. so I have no idea about the economic particulars but I know that in relationship and in how we run our communities of faith, we CAN make an impact
Comment by Paul
5.07 pm on 13 May 2007
Hi Mak, I was going to comment by video but I sort of ran out of time :) so here’s my typed effort!
Thank you for your post. I was struck by a conversation i was having yesterday where we were talking about the authenticity of the experience where consuming becomes part of our identity and the struggle in our consumption becomes the heroic tales of our age – so we can’t have just any old pasta but pasta from italy, a villag high on the umbrian hillside which dates back from 220BC, to a traditional speciality recipe, hand rolled on the thigh of a blushing virgin….
The quest to seek out such individualistic products plays into I think the whole local thang where it can be become our struggle to travel to x farm, or shop organically from y shop, where we can recite their ethical policy and feel good about our purchasing.
We can just make this lifestyle of slocal living part of our consumer choice. I know this is not what you are advocating, I am just noting how even protest at processed fast paced living and eating becomes one more piece of the consumer machine.
To avoid being cynical in undoubtedly has its wider benefits, especially for those of us who can afford, just about, to live this way.
I just wonder from our perspective of christians what we can do to help make those people who don’t have the luxury of such consumer choice also find access to to such ethical goods, services and practices that are our choice?
How much do we really have margin in our lives – or is this something that adds time pressure as we now have to go on the consumer quest to some where local and on foot rather than the supermaket shelves?
What alternate rhythms and practices do we haveas christians to allow people to find a different rhythm and priority of life? How much as leaeders do we model a life of seasons rather than a frantic dash for the next goal?
Are we really not only present but a presence in our communities, where family, work, school, neighbourhoods? i liked lyn’s bbq idea that sounds a great way of slowing down and connecting people.
How do we make ourselves glocal – globally aware but locally based? One of the things that I like about our church is that we pray once a month for issues affecting other nations that are in our news as well as having a particular country sri lanka who we are involved in partnering with for mission. It helps me find time to pause and think of life beyond just me and my particular local environment.
Comment by Makeesha
4.20 pm on 15 May 2007
all very good questions paul :) no answers from me. I’m fudging my way through this all myself
Comment by Paul
7.15 pm on 15 May 2007
mmm i love fudge :)
Comment by Tom
9.39 pm on 18 May 2007
Paul, who do you partner with in Sri Lanka?
Comment by Paul
1.37 pm on 19 May 2007
Hi Tom, see here for more details http://srilanka.vineyardchurch.org/
Comment by Dan Wilt
1.42 am on 16 May 2007
Mak, for some elevation of the beautiful idea of living small in the grand story of faith, see anything written by Therese de Liseux, the “little Theresa,” after whom mother Theresa took her name. For her, the idea of the small was her access to the wide wonder, goodness and activity of God in the world.
Search “Little Theresa” for some great riches. On our end, Dr. Peter Fitch here at St. Stephen’s University does a beautiful, artful teaching called “The Three Theresa’s,” and expounds beautifully on the “small” life.
Comment by Makeesha
2.24 am on 16 May 2007
Funny you should mention that Dan, I hadn’t even made the connection but one of my fav quotes is this
“There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those. ”
Mother Teresa
Comments are now closed.