Life

So over the past year I have found myself pondering (in many cases out of need, but also out of interest) our budget, our health, gardening, sustainable living, green lifestyles, child rearing, urban living, philosophies for my ideal school, and godly stewardship. The more I ponder, the more I come to see how interrelated these things are.

Every once in awhile I'll get lost in the world wide web reading blogs that lead me from one site to another, to a book or a youtube video or website. People are strongly opinionated on these matters! There's the right, the left, the indifferent. It always amazes me to talk with some Christians who have very strong opinions about recycling. They think it's rubbish (had to throw that in.) Why bother? Global warming is hog wash.

I haven't spent the last year pondering global warming, only reading what I come across, but still, this opinion baffles me. Hasn't Christ called us to be stewards of this earth He created? Don't we want to perserve it for our children's children to come? How much harder is it to throw a pepsi can in a recycling box than the waste bucket? On the other side of this argument are the people who believe gardening and sustainability to be an expression of activism.

Where are those that simply want to save money, be healthier, take care of the earth and enjoy God's creation? It is a miracle in itself to watch the transformation of a tiny seed into a lumbering plant that actually feeds a family!

There are two books I have read reviews of and am interested in reading:

"Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community" by Heather Coburn Flores
and "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" by Michael Pollan. These 2 books have mixed reviews and seem to be worth reading. Flores is an activist and takes the more extreme posistion - reviews say she comes off as "preachy" quite a bit, but the lawns to gardens or lawns to food idea makes so much sense to me!

One thing I appreciate and have come to love about Portland, Or is that concept. A large number of homes have taken out their lawns and replaced them with gardens. The result is actully a much more beautiful home! Amazing smells as you take your walks, endless things to look at, less time spent caring for your property and money actually saved (after some initial output, of course.) There seem to be many pros to this idea:

1. Americans spend $27 billion per year caring for lawns.
2. A 25' x 40' lawn needs 10,000 gallons of water each summer.
3. A conventional mower pollutes as much in an hour as driving 100 miles in your car.
4. We send over 160 million tons of lawn clippings as solid waste to the landfill each year.
5. The average urban lawn can produce several hundred pounds of food a year!
(gathered from various sources)

Pollan's book makes some of these interesting points:

1. Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food
2. Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high fructose corn syrup.
3. Pay more, eat less (in other words, food isn’t just about quantity and price, it’s about quality, too).


I don't know. I don't have a philosophy or an agenda to all this. It just seems to make sense to me. So far my garden is looking great. I enjoy it, we all eat it and it continues to grow.


All praise to you, O Lord of all creation;
You made the world, and it is yours alone,
The planet earth you spun in its location
Amid the stars adorning heaven’s dome.
We lease the earth but for a life’s duration,
Yet for this life it is our cherished home.

With grace you clothed the earth in splendor;
With teeming life you filled the sea and land.
Instill in us a sense of awe and wonder,
When we behold the bounty of your hand.
Then when we hear the voice of bird or thunder,
We hear the voice our faith can understand.

To tend the earth is our entrusted duty,
For earth is ours to use and not abuse,
O gracious Lord, true Source of all resources,
Forgive our greed that wields destruction’s sword.
Then let us serve as wise and faithful stewards,
While earth gives glory to creation’s Lord.
-Jean Sibelius