I Am Not an Environmentalist

Some of you know me as someone who avoids chemicals in my food and body care.  That means I deliberately travel miles out of my way to buy pastured, organic meats and vegetables.  I also hunt and gather household products with minimal petroleum-based ingredients.  You will have to search to find artificial fragrances or preservatives in our home.  It is time-consuming and expensive.

Yesterday, I tuned out of my public radio station's fundraiser (not without some guilt) to the local Christian station.  They had on a Christian scientist discussing the Biblical view of the earth and the environment.  Full disclosure:  I did not listen very long because frankly, it made me impatient.  But it also made me think more clearly on why I choose to live the way I do.

The program made three very important points in the Christian, Biblical world view:
A.  The earth was not created to last forever.
B.  Human beings are distinct from all other living creatures.
C.  We will not find eternal life in preserving the earth.

And I ascribe to those points.  The Bible tells of the "end times," that God created man and woman distinctly from the rest of Creation, and that it is through faith in the Messiah alone that will bring us back to a full, eternal fellowship with God.  I will not become holy by the things I eat or not eat.  Those are "orthodox" Christian beliefs.

"Orthodox" Environmentalism, however, espouses saving our planet because it is our only home, that all creatures are equally valuable, and that we will endure only if we have an earth to call Home.  These views are distinctly different, aren't they?

But in addition, I believe these Biblical views:
1.  We are to be thankful for what God gives us and be wise stewards of our resources.
2.  We are to take care of our bodies and ourselves, not only as the temple of the Holy Spirit, but also as a way to increase our gifts (talents.)
3.  We should not act carelessly, expecting God to show His grace.

I do not find A, B and C to contradict 1, 2 and 3. 

However distasteful it may be to some of you to think of raising animals only for their fur, I have no intention of throwing red paint on anyone.  I suppose it may be distasteful to some that I condone the raising of certain animals only so I can enjoy eating its meat.  The Bible says all things are approved for us to eat.  Whether I choose to do that or not, is a different issue.  That I would save a human being over any animal any day, may not be palatable to some.  I refuse to call fish "sea kittens" to promote PETA's world view. However, I believe that saving bats and bees is taking care of the earth that God made for us, intricate in its interconnectedness, which sustains humankind.

I am not an Environmentalist, or a Feminist, or a Democrat or any other label - I am a Christian.   Firs.  And from that world view do all other views flow.  I choose to live my life caring for the things and Creation that God gave to me.  I choose to feed and care for my family with the safest and healthiest out there so they can be strong and productive for Him.  I married a man who respects all people as the image of God, and that each of us have a useful role to play.  I teach my child the same thing, to be grateful for the garbage collector. to be kind to everyone.  I believe in caring for the poor, that they are not any more lazy or cursed than the rich; that the poor will always be with us.

I do and believe all these things because I am a Christian.

Cleave

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.  - Genesis 2:24 (NASB)

I just read Little Bee.  We is thinkin it be bout goodies and baddies.

There is a horrific scene of g*ng r*pe. This isn't a spoiler because as soon as you start the book, an ominous valance of doom hangs over you.  Like a cloud which lovely fullness turns gray at the horizon.  It's just a matter of how and when the story unfolds.

Cleave isn't a word you hear much these days.  Except on the Food Network for cutting meat. Isn't it odd that a word would have a meaning and it's opposite? The word that means

to adhere closely; stick; cling.  to remain faithful.

also means

to split or divide by or as if by a cutting blow, especially along a natural line of division, as the grain of wood.

It made me wonder why r*pe is so traumatic.  Such a deep, primal wound that seems to even overshadow beatings.  Why children, who are barely aware of their body parts are almost irreparably damaged by it.  Not just the physical pain and physical trauma but there seems to result in a knowledge of deep betrayal.  A knowing.  

She also gave some to her husband....and he ate it.  Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.  - Genesis 3:6b - 8 (NASB)

When sin entered, why did Adam and Eve know they were naked, of all things?  How did they think to cover their loins of all things?  Could it be that their cleaving physically represented their cleaving psychologically, emotionally...primally?  And that something deep, at their very core, had been irreparably broken?

God is a poet.  God is Poetry.  Would He create us with this Cleaving which does not reference His own Cleaving to His trinity?  I cannot help but think that for  us to Cleave is to see a little glimpse of the Trinity.  Separate but Whole and Equal.  At His earthly end, it was not hanging by nails through his body, cleaving his sinews.  It was the agony of the cleft between Himself and The Father.

Perhaps the r*pe, the forcing, the tearing, perhaps it is essential humanity cleft to the core.  Left broken and shattered down the primal human grain.

Bedtime Butterflies, Birds & Bees

Butterfly kisses on his damp cheeks.  A long, rough day for my 9-year old.
A punch from a camp-mate.
Too much sun.
Too much fun.
Too much of everything today.
He fought my hugs, wanting to fight the world.  A bed time book, a long, long prayer and lots of hugs brings him to sleep's door.

Little flutters of oma's eyelashes on his baby skin.  Butterfly kisses.

"Is that what butterflies do when they get married?"
I chuckled and said, "I don't know. "
He ponders, "They don't have weddings because they're just insects."
Then concludes, "They just mate - like snakes."

I hope I'll remember this night.  These moments...these moments? They're what make up our life.

Good night, sweet one.

A Player

Boo is an enthusiastic player.  I mean, that boy knows how to play.  Anything and everything.  I am so grateful.  I've had parents tell me they had a second, third or fourth child so the kids would have playmates.  I assume there was more to it than just that.  As an Only, I can't help but feel that parents pity him a bit, pity me a bit.


We were told by his foster family that even as an infant, he loved the water and being outdoors.  Neighbors may see him in our yard, playing with sticks and stones and water and running through the grass, making piles of dirt and collecting bugs. At the pool, he is busy pretending and making up games, swimming and squirming like an otter.

Although not particularly athletic, he has great balance and we took off his training wheels before his fifth birthday.  We are not a particularly athletic family, preferring the outdoors, the arts and culture.  On the other hand, he never showed much interest in sports until recently.

I saw other families spend much of their free time running from one activity to another, giving up much of their weekends to sports teams and tournaments.  There's even a recent book called Until It Hurts: American's Obsession with Youth Sports & How it Harms our Kids.  I heard an interview on NPR with the author who was a "soccer dad" type and how he drove his kids to perform.  There was a time when kids didn't start sports until they were maybe 11, 12.  Now of course, you start at 5 with tee ball.  That is not the life I wanted for us.  Given Boo's history, we wanted as much family time, relational time and bonding time as possible.

I also wanted him to "be a kid," like we were when we were young.  Not out of mere nostalgia but because of the rich benefits we derived from wandering around, feeling different textures, smelling all the smells, discovering God's handiwork.  And yes, even sometimes, getting bored.  It turns out that our brains develop from all the sensory input by being around nature.

Because of how our culture has become, it is a natural question to ask if Boo is involved in sports.  I find myself explaining, almost apologizing for not, as if I were a bad mother.  It's not that I think they are judging me; they are just making friendly conversation.  But I do get that question a lot and I haven't been able to find a gracious way of replying, without apologizing, without explaining all of Boo's neurological weaknesses, without sounding righteous.

Strawberry Fields Forever

One of our favorite things to do - a sure sign of summer: pick-your-own strawberries.  There's an organic farm over the river and through the woods that we go to.  With Boo traipsing through the rows and eating right off the plants, I'm glad they're pesticide free.  He might end up eating a bug or two, but, eh!  Even the Husband went, but I didn't get any pics of him.
.

.

.

.

.

[There is just no way to be stylish when going to the farm.]

.

.[There

Let It Be

A section of dried vine.  It was in turn a staff (which turned into a snake,) a plow, a lawn mower, a whale's tail.  Lift it -  slap it  on the gold and orange ocean - so like the sound of water being broken.  He sings a whale song with amazing mimicry.

We made our way from one trail marker dab of paint to another - like so many bindi on the trees' foreheads.  He saw a face on one rotting trunk.  "Look, dad!"  Ridges on felled trees made by beavers.  Rapunzel vines sinuously, sensually wrap around a beech tree.

Miles Standish, Powhatan, Plymouth fill his history slot.  "Let's be Indians, dad!"  He yells and his voice is clear, perfect.  Like God is listening.  God is listening.

The shu!crunsh of our steps, the lapping of the lake, the coos of birds.  And only the slightest Doppler woosh of a car assuring me civilization is near.

Stooping over moss or a rock I see eternity; looking a mile back to where we started and I see a moment. The closer I look, the deeper I see.  Moss jungle, bark canyon.

And to an 8-year old, a vine can be anything, if only you let him.

Do Not Adjust

the color on your screen...

There's a farm practically in my back yard. They have a road side stand. The watermelon is picked by hand, one by one when each one is ripe. I wait all summer for these yellow melons.  They know me there as the watermelon lady.

Fly

Catching fireflies with cousin.  These are precious times.

The Apple of My Eye

Adam was lonely. Despite all the animals. I guess a dog is not man's best friend.  So God made a woman just. for. Adam.  A soul mate.  God who merely thought and it happened.  God who did not ponder and wonder but was wholly complete in thought, word and deed.  He made a creature that would completely fill Adam's needs.

Then the serpent came and pointed to the forbidden fruit.  Eve looked at the fruit and it looked good to eat.  How many things were there in the garden that were good to look at and good to eat?  It was only when the serpent pointed that forbidden one out that maybe Eve started to want it.  It's like going to the mall...you see all these things you never knew you had to have! 

Eve was living in paradise.  PARADISE.  Do you understand the circumstance?

Perfection.  Living someplace that was perfectly designed for her, for him.  Living with your soul mate.  So much so that they had no name for each other.  It was only after the fall, when there was a separation that they needed an identifier.  There was no death.  No aging, no wrinkles, no imperfections. I bet she never had to say, "Adam, does this make me look fat??"

And yet.
And YET.

She had everything, but it wasn't enough.  She had to have that other fruit.  Is the Genesis Garden of Eden a true story, a myth or an allegory?  What does this story say about us as a woman?  Do you see yourself in Eve?  I do.

I pondered this as I tend to do.  Percolate.  Simmer.  I have a wonderful husband, a marriage blessed by God, a beautiful earthly home.  I really cannot ask for a more fabulous husband - one who loves me, who cares for me, takes care of me, is patient with me.

And yet.
And YET.

I want more.  I want him to be neater.  My bedroom usually looks like a laundry bomb went off.  Over the years, I just could not keep up and slowly gave up.  I was going to fight and nag every day or I was going to accept it.  I chose to accept it.  But not really.  It eats away at me in a deep, dark corner of my being.  Dissatisfied, unhappy.  This is my home!  My nest!  My sanctuary!  Blah blah blah.  Yadda yadda yadda.  Am I not just. like. Eve??

Oh, the fruit of a perfectly clean bedroom looked good to me.  And I wanted it.  I recognized that desire for something more than I have, something else to make me happier, even though I am in Paradise!  I have turned away from that fruit and to enjoy all the goodness of my world that God has blessed upon me.

I love you HH.  Even if your chair is piled high with clothes.

SNOOOOooooooW!!

I am SO lovin this snow.  Ferreal snow.  Not Wussy Snow like what I lamented about last year about this time.

Aaaaah.

A Decade

The decade according to 9-year-olds from allison louie-garcia on Vimeo.

Peace

Henny Penny

When we were first married, we lived in what might be laughably called a small city.  Not just a small city, but the outskirts of a small city way out in the country.  It was on a knoll that used to be all farmland.  Ours was an out building that had been added to and added to, all constructed by the owner himself.  It was a house nailed and glued together with Masonite . . . and cardboard.  When he ran out of baseboard, he just . . . stopped.  Every room was covered with wood panel-look Masonite.  Each room was a different color.

For me to have moved into that house with my new husband showed the extent of my love fore him.  Me, who would go camping only at the Hilton.

The house sat on 3-1/2 acres, backed up against wooded game land with horse trails.  Every once in awhile, I could hear the clop-clop of someone going for a ride.  Having been farmland, the soil was dark and lush.  My husband spent years nurturing the long-forgotten plants and bringing back the array of plants that abounded on the property.  I would go out in the Spring and Summer to cut huge boquets of annuals and you'd never know any had been taken.

I'm afraid of being in nature.  I am sure that an axe murderer lurks out there, who will get me and leave my corpse to rot.  Let me say again:

For me to have moved into that house with my new husband showed the extent of my love fore him.

I'd rise at 5:30 am...or try.  I'd drag myself out of bed in the dark and get ready for my 48-mile commute to work.  I ran late more often than not and would come crashing out of the driveway and speed down our country road.  My hair was often damp and my lipstick not on.

One day, I patted the top of my damp head because my hair felt out of place, like it was touching the roof of my car.

It felt furry.

I SCREEEEEEEEAAMED, careened the car practically into a ditch, threw the door open and shook my head like a mad woman.  Something fell out of my hair and onto the road side.  A Wolf Spider.

You all know there's another cold spell sweeping the country, especially across the South. In Alabama, it's so cold the Iguana are falling out of trees. These cold-blooded creatures get so cold, they're dropping out of trees like popsicles.

IGUANAS.

The sky is falling.

Too Much

Is there such a thing as too much of a good thing? Flippantly, we'd all say a hearty "NO WAY!" But as I made my way through the aisles of exquisite finery on Friday, I was thinking . . . you know I'm always thinking . . .What does "good thing" mean? Really, doesn't it mean nothing of what we consider good and decent, but everything about excesses and our greedy hearts? What happens when everything is exquisite? when you can get everything you want?

I'm picturing a celebrity who drives, no is driven in, the best car, carrying a Bottega Veneta purse, wearing the latest Manolo Blahnik, having eaten the most exquisitely prepared fine food, walks into her Pacific Ocean-view home, where she crashes onto her 1,000-count sheets on her Hypnos bed.

What happens to your head? Can you stay level and sane? What if you're a teenager and your lithe young body and swivels earn you millions? I read that a woman's brain isn't fully developed until she is 27. Twenty seven! Can you see why some young women go insane?? What would happen to you? Does the 1,000-count sheet feel like sandpaper if not perfectly washed and dried? Would that justify firing the housekeeper? Does a mere Coach bag seem cheap and stiff?

. . . or would you get bored and long for a swing on your grandma's back porch?

When God created the Heavens and the earth, He said it was "good." Can we take a lesson from the Lord Almighty? He might know something. Has that word been a victim of grade deflation? Did "good" come to mean adequate, when really, it means "just right" and "Fitting?"

You know I'm no camper. I joke that I'd be glad to camp at any Hilton. You think this is a non-sequitur, but hang on. When I'm by the ocean, when I watch the sun set, when I'm seeing a mountain range, or the infinite color range of the Grand Canyon, I don't get sucked dry. I feel filled. OK, a few minutes looking into the Grand Canyon is fine by me. I have no compulsion to climb down it or anything. But being near such exquisite beauty, I feel a part of something infinte. I can look and look and never see the end; I feel enlarged and filled.


After Friday's foray into a world of exquisite madness, I was exhausted. I was enlightened, inspired and awed, yes, but also wrung out. Is it just me? What is it about material goods that seem to suck me dry? What about human endeavor that seems to be . . . limited? It makes me want, but doesn't satisfy.


I'm thinking, maybe you can have too much of a good thing. Depending what you mean by "good."

Exquisite

On Friday, my best friend and I went to the Philadelphia Museum's Craft Show. We're not talking crocheted toaster covers or refrigerator magnets. We're talking $4,000 pieces of hand-woven and hand-dyed fabrics, biomorphic porcelain sculptures, hand made sterling silver cameras smaller than an Elf.
But first we had to eat. We went to the Reading Terminal Market, which is one big tourist trap - in the best sense of the word! A historic place that lost its way but after some growing pains, came back around to be true to Philly. There were Amish rolling pretzels, Koreans filleting fish, Philitalians hauling meat. Three musicians in Brooks Brothers suits, having walked down the block from their office, adding steel brush drums and amped guitar twangs to the rumbling of voices and scraping of chairs. We pushed our way past the line at the pork sandwich shop. She said "Indian!" like a sailor on the SantaMaria, and I said "Land Ho!" We sat on round vinyl stools at the counter. Our coats were crumpled on our laps, our purse straps draped across our knees. We were jostled by people walking by, and those standing by to place their order. I ate chicken korma and vegetables over saffron rice, the ochre juices running over the styrofoam plate. She ate off my plate like only girlfriends do.

We tried to make ourselves small, pressing between coats and made it back out to the street. We crossed over Arch into the Convention Center, my heels getting stuck in the sidewalk cracks. We walked down the runway-width hall to the main exhibition space, green - wearying and deadening. It glared and pressed us down. Six double rows of exquisiteness. The stalls were storage cubes, tied together like K'nex. Row after row. Homosote tables with a calculator and receipt pad, a stack of business cards, draped fabric and Zen pebbles for make-shift drama. Little cube worlds of their own compulsions. A bored artisan sits on a chair. Their 5th show this year, 2nd day, the 4th hour of a 10-hour day. A self-conscious artist sits alone on her chair, trying not to seem like a loser.

Every stall had incredible wares. We were drawn to certain cubes like flying bugs. A whirling path, like the seemingly random path of a fly. Brenda and I'd buzz over to one, lose each, find each other. Bump. Every artisan had exquisite craftsmanship. Every stitch, every leaf, every weave, every surface was perfect. Many of them had to have some exquisite madness that compelled them to make stroke after stroke after stroke on their leathered clay form; to pick, dry, treat, wind and weave strands of grasses into watertight baskets of fine, consistent patterns; to melt and meld and form and sand and carve minute layers of gold around a pearl in just the right twist, just the right wave. Row after row. Cube after cube. Black ceiling glowing shots of green, sucking life out of us.

Hyperventilating at so much beauty and perfection. My eyes burned. My heart tied. Throat scraped. My soul spent.

Exhausted, I sat alone, over a bowl of hot soup, trying to remember the ground I had walked on just a few hours earlier, when I was a mere suburban mortal. I don't know what I am now, but I'm not what I was before.

Black nor White

.
Black and White.

A friend wishes all things were objective. I'm not sure what her brief facebook comment was about, but it might have something to do with wanting things to be either/or. Black or white. Her friend then commented:

". . . all human beings want a clear goal to work toward not some mushy middle ground that you have no way of knowing if you have achieved! Aren't we blessed to have a God who has a clear plan for us and reveals it to us!"

Indeed!

Objective. Clear. Black. White.

If you've gone to a paint store to get a can of white - whoooa! not so easy, right? If you've ever tried to wear a black shirt with black pants, you quickly realize the blacks don't match. How can that be?? White is white; black is black. Isn't it?

Pearl White
Luminescent White
Antique White
Pure White
White Flour
Rice paper
Snow bound

Toucan Black
Baby Seal Black
Space Black
Jet Black
Black Iron
Black Bean
Night Black

Is God the only One who can truly be and see Black and White? Perhaps we human beings, with all our failings and baggage and self-centeredness can really only see black and white from a distance, and easily call it such. But as we approach the ends of objectiveness, can we really be so clear and simple and finite as we think?

If we got in the sparkling light of pure white, would we know we were fully immersed? Or if we were enveloped in a night darker than black, would we know we were fully enclosed? Can only the Ultimate Being speak "Black" and know the richness and fullness of it? Can only the Great Amen know White in its pure, final light? We are to reach for Black because there is a Black. We are to seek White because there is White.
.
I contend that all the colors in between are not a justification for Relativism, because indeed, there is a Black and there is a White. If we choose to say we want black or white, are we missing all the beauty in between? Are black and white goals that we look to while on our path of sanctification? Does God give us this prismatic refractory to show us the complexities and fullness of his Infinite character?

The Mathematics of Jesus

We little humans strive to understand our amazing world. We try to describe it, make sense of it. We look at this vast Creation, explain a tiny little minikin of it and hand out a Nobel prize.

For thousands of years, people have been defining the world. A point. A line. A triangle. A polygon. Slicing the world into simple shapes like wielders of a subtle knife, hoping to open up the magic of this world. But what about the rest of it? The mountains, the waves, the clouds - all chaotic forms - ruled by something other than Order? It wasn't until the 1970's when Benoit Mendelbrot cohesively described the mathematical principle of these supposed chaotic forms in Creation. What looks chaotic and random to us, and to mathematicians, is in. fact. highly. ordered. (And here I ask myself rhetorically, "Could this be a random act??")

Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.
-B. Mandelbrot, in his introduction to The Fractal Geometry of Nature

.
Medelbrot coined the word "fractals" to describe this phenomenon. It wasn't until we had computers that mathematicians
could plot out these fractals. What happened? They created cyber mountain ranges, coastlines, clouds. The strange new planet scape on the Star Trek movie? Yup. Fractals. Let me try to explain the concept as best as I can using Mendelbrot's diagram. (And stay with me here. I've got a point to make.)

Take a triangle, left. On each leg, put another triangle, like this:

Keep doing it - add smaller triangles to the small legs, and even smaller triangles to the even smaller legs. If you took a close up of one leg, it would look like this:


Here's the entire triangle and what it would look like:
Cool, right? So what, you're saying.

OK. Next, let's measure the perimeter of the equilateral triangle we started with. If you were to measure the figure on the right, you would intuitively understand that this perimeter is bigger/longer, than that of the triangle on the left, right? (Ha! get it??)

Theoretically, you can add triangles infinitely, then the perimeter length would get longer and longer into infinity. And of course, the area would also get bigger and bigger into infinity.

Here is the paradox:
This figure, looking like a snowflake, or the arabesque of Islamic architecture:

is an enclosed form; a solid, complete polygon, and yet, it's area and dimension can increase into infinity! Here. Here's my point - and thanks for reading this far down - here I have found an excellent analogy for Jesus Christ. How can a man be the Son of God, be God? How can His eternal character fit into our aching, aging, dying, imperfect body? God says in His Word that all can look to Creation and know Him. How can a finite Man, be Eternal?

Bound and limited in a human body,
and infinite in nature.

*

Tale End

Do you know the old show Zoboomafoo? It stars a lemur named Zoboo, supported by brothers Chris and Martin Kratt. It's a great show that's silly and informative.

Boo has been particularly interested in the wild cats, including the lynx and serval. He told us at dinner that Chris and Martin were trying to find all the spotted and striped animals they could.

". . . and oma? the first aminal they saw was a hiney-nah."

Strawberry Fields Forever

My little buddy.

Moooooooooo

Hello, my name is Grace. I am addicted to craigslist. I am NOT addicted to farm life. But can you possibly not think this is stinkin' cute??

MOM IS REGULAR SIZE JERSEY COW, EASY TO MILK BY HAND,
DAD IS MINI NAMED GABE #120J1201
CALF IS 1/2 MINI, MAKES A GREAT FAMILY COW
1400.00
1 AVAILABLE AND 2 MORE DUE ANY DAY.