Blogsplosion

So, haven't been on in a while.  Here are the reflections I've been writing.

(May 19-20) Weekend blog

Saturday was energy sabbath. Learned that having fun on a Sabbath is just a short walk away.  It was great to gather with others and relax and celebrate together.  Going to a wedding in the middle of the day was lovely, but this activity had a strange effect on the sabbath--I was consumed by guilt about breaking the rules.  rules rules.  Today [Sunday] at Holy Comforter we worshiped with many people who had disabilities.  It's a real parish!  Forty-some-odd years ago (if that long) they invited some folks from a nearby group home to worship with them, and, their ministry has grown since to include arts and gardening opportunities for their parishioners.  This seemed like a very cool place.

I see some hope now for a locally organized church.  I wonder how long we will be able to so generally self-select a distant congregation.  I wonder if that's even a help to our growth as  peacemakers--to only associate and worship with people like us.


May 21 (Monday)

Today was a water day.  Atlanta is a thirsty city.  It's a huge city for its water supply--the Chattahoochee.  Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper came to teach us about their work to protect it, and we bookended their presentation by watching Blue Gold, a movie about the increasing scarcity of this precious resource.  We are depleting our water, no doubt about it.  And Atlanta is growing like crazy--we already knew that.  I greatly valued Jason Ulseth's presentation.  He was not very dynamic, but his content was powerful--he taught us ways to catch people in the act of pollution!  One of the big problems is sedimentation due to improper practices (whether from engineer, contractor, or worker's mistake) on construction sites.  He even has an iphone app to report these problems.

Today was rather smooth.  Generally depressing, as usual, but with obvious opportunities to participate in and witness to another way of doing things.

May 22-23 (Tues-Wed)

I didn't write yesterday--I was tired after our CERC training at the CDC.  It was a fascinating time, thinking about ways the church can respond and bring people together in an emergency.  Could a network of local churches even begin to offer assistance before federal aid was set up properly?  PDA was supposedly amazingly helpful after Katrina.

Today we saw two cool places--Southface and East Lake Commons.  Southface was a wonderfully fun expo of green technologies.  I want a green roof now.  Who wouldn't want to have less heat coming off a building and a pleasant place on the roof to hang out for the building's occupants?  East Lake Commons was awesome!  It's a cohousing community with a parking lot surrounding the actual housing, which is wound through by sidewalks and gardens, but no car traffic.  67 houses (if I remember correctly) and a common house are spread throughout this area, and a farmer runs a CSA on site (called Gaia Gardens--see link on their site).  People are encouraged to attend the weekly dinner meetings at the common house and (more strongly) to volunteer 5 hours a month for the upkeep of the community.  One of my classmates was saying how exclusive it seemed.  I can see that--it is a residential community.  To be a part of it truly, you have to live there.  And it is gated.  Maybe that's what he was reacting to.  How can I find life with others through everyday meetings in passing?  Most of the people I share life with here I began to know better just through being neighbors.  How do those chance encounters, then, give us life?

May 24, Thursday

Today was pretty relaxed.  We had lots of time to talk about hope--how it's not optimism, how it impels us to act, how it awaits God's activity, not humanity's.  We've been quite depressed about the state of the world.  Though I don't know why.  The Sabbath was a lot of fun--sure many people would die if oil ran out, but life without it exists.  Water is another story... Anyway, that's what's been getting us down--because even if I stop using water for the rest of my life (which wouldn't be very long if I don't drink anything) it probably won't make any overall effect on the overconsumption of our resources.  So it's been good to have a day to discuss and process without seeing some new horrible power plant or depressing documentary.  We talked with Professor Brown, who made me again want to read his book.  There is hope in creation--the fact that God created the world and works in it and teaches us through it can give us hope that it is God who will renew it.  We watched a great video that was sobering, but not hopeless--Journey of the Universe first led us to wonder at the amazing patterns of existence, energy, matter, life, and thought and then brought us an ecological imperative.  How does symbolic consciousness, knowing itself, change itself?  How does something that selects in itself the thoughts that are good at thinking themselves, produce truth?  It is not aimed thus.  It is not even aimed at the consistency it professes (as if that were provable, reminds Gödel) or some ability to "explain," but simply at recommunicability.  Patterns which pattern themselves again get patterned repeatedly.  Poems start conversations and tickle memories.  How do eco-folk pattern their speech so it repeats itself all over the world?

May 25, Friday

Saw some cool things today!  In the highest-LEED-rated building in the northern hemisphere, we heard from Ryan Gravel at Perkins+Will.  Their building on Peachtree was not even built from scratch, but when they acquired it they saw to major overhauls, including the installation of a natural gas power plant on the roof which cuts their carbon footprint (Georgia usually uses a lot of coal).  Ryan Gravel spoke to us about the BeltLine, which is far more extensive than I ever knew--not merely a transit line or a system of parks but a whole vision for the future of Atlanta, to which developers, housing authorities, and residents all contribute.  We also heard from Katherine Moore from the Georgia Conservancy (no connection to the Nature Conservancy), which advocates for growth and planning that supports the lives of both people and the environment.  Brilliant powerpoint about congestion and suburbs and recyclable city blocks and multi-use space followed by a tour of NPU G and some of its challenges and opportunities in the realm of planning.

I wonder how we know what we are a part of.  Nobody sees the whole picture--each day with this class we have discovered something new about our city or our food sources or our air or our water.  There are always things about your choices that you cannot see.  How do we work for justice, knowing we choose blindly?

Weekend blog! May 26-28 (written Mon night)
Saturday, didn't do anything for class.  Aaah.
Sunday at St. Andrew's Pres, a few of us watched our classmate juggle fire!  Flaming torches, that is.  I took a big walk yesterday afternoon to experiment--we've been hearing how terrible and uninviting Atlanta is for pedestrians.  Results: This is true.  My feet hurt.  I walked a long way down Lawrenceville Highway and was pretty bored.  I stopped at some grungy gas stations for water and at a Publix for a snack.  All the other food options were pretty unhealthy, hard to see, or a long walk from the road.  There were sidewalks the whole way until I got nearly to Dekalb industrial. I had the most fun there, stopping in an Indian bakery and getting chivda for the first time since leaving Kenya.  There were also some other pedestrians!  But they thinned out again south of North Decatur (after Kroger).  I was happy when a friend saw me and saved me a half hour of walking.  Experimenting is hard work.
Happy anniversary, nerf nerd!
Today we had Sabbath!  Started last night and was a little less legalistic about it--not so consumed with can and can't but more about being aware and playful--games and food and relaxing time.  Read a lot of Good Omens.  Very playful take on the more traditional doomsday (as opposed to an ecological scenario).  I'll see if it's more hopeful than our class.

Camp Calvin--May 29-30

We had a time at Global Village seeing and playing at what everyday life is like for much of the world--some of us weeded and prepared food, others gathered water, and others made bricks (our "cash crop").  We ate a simple meal of beans and rice and some squash and spoke of how to not think of "development" as a track toward being like us.  People in this country are without food security, and some people in poorer countries are richer than we are.  But living as good neighbors and respecting cultural boundaries, we can begin to emphasize what is truly important.  Water, life, food, and love won the day.

Tuesday evening we discussed with Mark Douglas about sloth.  More than simple laziness, we talked of sloth as the loss of ability to desire.  This can come from both a lack of activity, a malaise, as well as the frantic business we use to hide from it and still fail to passionately engage with the world.  It's gross.  But the discussion was helpful, encouraging us not to give up but to work for the small things and pray for the big ones.

Today we went down the Chattahoochee.  We had planned to do the Flint, but it's low--it's just as well, we've been talking about the Chattahoochee the whole class.

How do we work together, supporting each other, finding time to work and play, share meals, share stories, share life, and listen to each other?  That, when it is undertaken out of self-giving love, is the Christian life, the cross-shaped nonsense by which we lose ourselves in wonder, love, and praise.