Vacation

Off for a needed rest and vacation with Wonderful Wife.

Tax Energy Use, Not Work

The Boston Globe today offers a thought on local food: perhaps not so good for the environment (Hat tip to M).

But a gathering body of evidence suggests that local food can sometimes consume more energy -- and produce more greenhouse gases -- than food imported from great distances. Moving food by train or ship is quite efficient, pound for pound, and transportation can often be a relatively small part of the total energy "footprint" of food compared with growing, packaging, or, for that matter, cooking it. A head of lettuce grown in Vermont may have less of an energy impact than one shipped up from Chile. But grow that Vermont lettuce late in the season in a heated greenhouse and its energy impact leapfrogs the imported option. So while local food may have its benefits, helping with climate change is not always one of them.

Eating local food has a number of benefits-- which the article points out-- but reducing energy consumption isn't necessarily one of them. (An Economist article a few months ago offers more documentation for this claim.

The environmental consumption movement in general faces a problem: we don't have a simple measure to quantify a product's impact on the environment. For instance, the production of cotton may use less energy than polyester, but because it needs more washing and longer dry cycles, over a lifetime, a cotton garment may use more energy.

I'm with economists in thinking that the price system is the best way of addressing this: let the price of a product reflect the harm it does to the environment. Tax CO2 emissions or energy use more generally. It's called a Pigovian tax.
Simple political program that everyone should support:
1) increase gas taxes and energy taxes
2) reduce income taxes progressively, so that there is no net financial impact on low-income households

Results: equivalent tax burden, lower energy usage

Out of practice, not so perfect

A review of Unbinding the Gospel over at The Christian Century talks about successful mainline churches:

Even if their faith is in a universal salvation, they have learned to tell the story of how they have experienced God's grace in their community of faith and to share that story with enthusiasm. They have broken through the mainline fear of offending people and decided to talk about their church.

It has long struck me that the same mainline church members who pass resolutions on gay marriage and propose solutions to conflict in the Middle East suddenly shrink in silence on the subject of their faith, and they do this—here's the irony—so they won't offend anyone. For too long, our noble impulses toward tolerance and inclusivity have turned us into spiritual illiterates who, being out of practice, have forgotten how to speak the words of our faith.

Amen.

People here at First Church often mention being afraid that they'll be misjudged as a conservative or evangelical if they talk about their faith in Liberal City. Of course, if the liberals keep quiet, most people who talk about faith will in fact be conservative/evangelical. We need to 1) get it out into the culture that progressive Christians have experiences of God too; and 2) learn how to share them again.

The Prius: Because no one sees you not drive a car.

When we do good things, we often want others to know that we're doing good things. (What was it that Jesus said about your right and left hands?) As a result, the environmental movement will tend to focus too much on green consumption and not enough on reducing consumption.

Great quotes from Prius owners (New York Times archive, July 4, 2004):

''I really want people to know that I care about the environment,'' said Joy Feasley of Philadelphia, owner of a green 2006 Prius. ''I like that people stop and ask me how I like my car.''

Mary Gatch of Charleston, S.C., chose the car over a hybrid version of the Toyota Camry after trading in a Lexus sedan.

''I felt like the Camry Hybrid was too subtle for the message I wanted to put out there,'' Ms. Gatch said. ''I wanted to have the biggest impact that I could, and the Prius puts out a clearer message.''

No one sees you not drive a car.

Question of the day: is there some way to brand non-consumption? Green wristbands that indicate you've taken a pledge to cut back on buying things?

God is Still Speaking

I read about Hillary Clinton and her faith in the New York Times:

As for how literally to interpret the Bible, she takes a characteristically centrist view. “The whole Bible gives you a glimpse of God and God’s desire for a personal relationship, but we can’t possibly understand every way God is communicating with us,” she said. “I’ve always felt that people who try to shoehorn in their cultural and social understandings of the time into the Bible might be actually missing the larger point.

The UCC advertising is effective. First thought: "God is still speaking."

Not Cutting It

Though we're coming from different places and heading in somewhat different direction, Andrew over at Emergent Village reminds me of my call:

Our work is critical to the future of the church—ok so maybe that sounds a bit dramatic, but I’m serious—deadly serious! If the church in the west is in decline and our current approaches to mission are not cutting it, then we must take the time to explore other ways we can configure ourselves to connect with the world we live in. We desperately need more pioneering missionaries who are willing to follow Jesus into the difficult places and explore ways of engaging with a world that doesn’t care if we exist.

A hearty second over here at The Great Homesickness! My faith home is the liberal mainline church, and it's pretty clear that the old way of being a mainline Christian (basically, assuming that we are the dominant culture) is dying. But what an opportunity to revisit the basics in how to shape our lives after Jesus' model.

Do the same thing, get the same results

Over at the blog of the Christian Century, Julie Clawson laments:

I am passionate about social justice and have come to believe that Christians are required to care for the poor and the oppressed. It is the essence of my faith to work for change in the world. But baby boomers tell me that I will eventually grow up and leave behind these passions. They tell me, on a regular basis, that I will eventually see how trivial such things as debt relief, gender equality, global warming and ending hunger really are.

Yet I was feeling similar to these baby boomers during church today after a discussion of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Of course, debt relief is not trivial, but I ask, Is there room in my life for yet another thing? Often, the gospel message seems to be try harder. Occasionally such an exhortation can revive my flagging will, and I do try harder, and it can make a difference. But if the message is (and has been) "we're not doing enough," it's quite clear that the message will continue to be "we're not doing enough" a decade from now.

What we need--and it is not at all easy-- is to reshape the way we live together so that we can change. So much of how we live is not a conscious choice, but shaped by our community.

Contingency, Freedom, and the Nature of God

Sarah Coakley, crediting Peter Geach, offers a analogy for reconciling the power of God with contingency and human freedom:

God is like a chess master playing an 8-year-old chess novice. There is a game with regularities and rules; and although there are a huge number of different moves that the child can make, each of these can be successfully responded to by the chess master—they are all already familiar to him. And we have no overall doubt that he is going to win.

More:

Thus, it is not that God has not intervened in the history of the evolutionary process to put right the ills of randomness and freedom. For in one sense God is "intervening" constantly—if by that we mean that God is perpetually sustaining us, loving us into existence, pouring God's self into every secret crack and joint of the created process, and inviting the human will, in the lure of the Spirit, into an ever-deepening engagement with the implications of the Incarnation, its "groanings" (Romans 8), for the sake of redemption.

A God Who Hurts

Via Call Me Ishmael shares his notes from a Bible study with Marilyn Robinson, author of Gilead:

"We have broken His heart a million times over." And every time we do, God responds. "The whole Bible is God trying to say, 'I take this very seriously.'"

But we just won't listen, and we keep knocking God around. God, says Robinson, can be understood at times as like an abused wife -- an interesting idea about who holds the power in this relationship between humanity and the divine.

At first I thought, maybe Robinson has been reading Rilke ("What will you do God, when I die?"). But wasn't it Jesus hanging on a tree who showed us the face of God?

What does it mean for our worship if we believe Robinson's (hearsay) claim about who has power in humanity's relationship with God?

Essence Precedes Existence?

Parker J. Palmer's Let Your Life Speak presents a liberating view of vocation and God's call:

Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation ... comes from a voice "in here" calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God. (p.10)

This vision is freeing at first glance. Vocation-- God's call-- is not about living up to some list of things that I'm supposed to do. It's about going inside, living out what brings me joy, listening for my "true self".

And yet. I don't like the concept that who I really am is given to me, and I just need to listen for it. Rather, I create myself through the choices I make. Who I "really" wind up being could be pretty far from who I was called to be.

Perhaps it's a matter of language. Palmer prefers to say that our true selves exist and we can either live them out honestly or dishonestly. I prefer to say our true selves are what we make them, but that we can answer or reject to God's call to be a (very general) kind of person.

What then is discernment? Practical wisdom: figuring out how to respond to God's call given what we in particular have got: a history, a body, a community.

What do Christopher Hitchens and Jerry Falwell have in common?

They sound like they both went to the same Sunday school.

Hitchens has accomplished something quite deft in his book God is Not Great. Take a pre-modern reading of the Bible. Call that interpretation "religion". Show how ridiculous it is. Repeat as necessary.

Money quote from Atlantic Monthly interview

Interviewer: Reform Jews do believe that the Bible was written by humans. Should Reform Judaism still be called a religion?

Hitchens: Well, that’s honestly what I wonder, whether it should be in that case, or whether it’s just a social club. There, I almost sympathize with the people who say, “Well, it’s not heresy, but it’s just another name for hedonism or believing whatever you like.” I’m okay, you’re okay—that’s not a religion. Religion is saying that you know the mind of God and you want to obey His revealed commandments, on pain of losing your soul, at least. People who really live their lives in fear of that—God-fearing, as they used to say—I can respect. People who are somewhere between Unitarianism and Reform Judaism—it just seems weak-minded to me. Why bother?

So, what Hitchens is saying is: Believe the Bible was dictated word-for-word by God = foolish. Believe the Bible is more complex than that = "seems weak-minded to me". Nice of him to ignore fifty-plus years of hermeneutics.

Sounds like the work of a hack.

Home again

A brief introduction: World, meet me. (Me, meet world?)

This blog is an experiment, a first for me. The blog has a name, but this blogger does not, yet. Perhaps that is something I will grow into. Drop a note if you're reading!

"The great homesickness" is an image for God from Rilke's Book of Hours, and I've been drawn to his poems since college. The biblical images of God that I cherish -- the God that called to Abraham, that led the Israelites out of Egypt's oppression, that dined with the sinners and tax collectors, that died on the cross-- come with a lot a baggage and history. Their history has an appeal, but sometimes I need to meet God anew, and Rilke helps put us in touch.