Green

It's the buzz word of the last few years. Everyone is now becoming more eco-friendly. In fact, my kids have both come home with assignments to create art from recyclable products. My daughter came home demanding on composting and threw whole mango peels and lemon rinds into the garden (which I later plucked out and threw over the fence to the rabbits, not that I didn't want to compost, it's just we weren't set up for it...yet). They are teaching it at the schools, creating entire networks in our cable line-up about it (Planet Green), and marketing more and more products with "green" in the title.

So, what's to come of all of this? Nothing. Nothing will come of all of this hype unless we actually do something about it. Obviously, there is huge profits in it for the big producing giants who are featuring all natural and green products. Which is completely backwards since it's our consumerism that has gotten us in this mess in the first place. Let me be clear, just because a product is labeled "green" because it features orange oil instead of bleach- does not neccisarily make it "Green". It still comes in the same type of packaging and is distributed by the same means as it's conventional counterpart, which doesn't exactly win me over for it's benefits to the environment.

New packaging and different recipes are not the solution. The solution will be manifested when we, as consumers, begin to change our daily habits that are inflicting harm on our surroundings and continually filling our planet with the excess consumer waste that we accumulate everyday.

I am currently reading a fascinating collection of essays by Wendell Berry called "The Art of the Commonplace". In his essay "Think Little", he describes how change can be effective. Rather than relying on Big Government to provide our solution with new laws and plans which will achieve little and lead to a "persistence of the problem, and the enlargement and enrichment of the government". He suggests that change can occur within the walls of our own personal lives, by executing our passions and concerns into activism.

Here is an excerpt:

"The citizen who is willing to Think Little, and, accepting the discipline of that, to go ahead and on his own, is already solving the problem. A man who is trying to live as a neighbor to his neighbors will have a lively and practical understanding of the work of peace and brotherhood, and let there be no mistake about it- he is doing that work. A couple who make a good marriage, and raise healthy, morally competent children, are serving the world's future more directly and surely than any political leader, though they never utter a public word. A good farmer who is dealing with the problem of soil erosion on an acre of ground has a sounder grasp than any bureaucrat who is talking about it in general. A man who is willing to undertake the discipline and the difficulty of mending his own ways is worth more to the conservation movement than a hundred who are insisting merely that the government and the industries mend their ways."

And his solution to the Green movement?

"I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating. The food he grows will be fresher, more nutritious, less contaminated by poisons and preservatives and dyes than what he can buy at the store. He is reducing the trash problem, a garden is not a disposable container, and it will digest and reuse its own wastes. If he enjoys working in his garden, then he is less dependent on an automobile or a merchant for his pleasure. He is involving himself directly in the work of feeding people."

(Amazingly, he wrote this in 1972. It resonates even today.)

So, the summary of my rant? Obviously, change will not come easily. It will require a personal commitment of indivduals to vow to change their lifestyles. We are coming off the heels of an extremely self-motivated, indulgent generation. It is time to remember what hard work is, and understand that our purpose lies within working hard, peaceably, and to the honor of God.