After 10 car-free years, I am a car owner once again.

Shedding my car meant mastering new ways of moving around the world. The alternatives come naturally now, which is why so many of my posts try to encourage—hector, even—readers to take up their carbon-dependent, gas-guzzling beds and walk, ride a bike, or take the bus.

But for a year now I have suffered from what transportation planners call the “last mile” problem. My wonderful local transit hub can get me around and between towns from Canada to Portland, Oregon. But only a handful of buses can get me the three miles to the Skagit Station—all before 6 pm, and never on Sundays. Bicycling is a great option for good weather and daylight savings time, but from November to April my biking day ends by 5 pm—and snow, ice, showers, or 40-mile-per-hour gusts can keep it from starting at all.

My new challenge is to own a car without lapsing back into blind dependence on it. To stay committed to biking, walking, and taking buses FIRST instead of lazily letting the convenience of my car gradually eclipse the other options. To continue to SEE the options and to start figuring out how to overcome that last-mile—or last-three-mile—problem.

Fortunately, trends are going my way. Google Transit is taking the mystery out of planning a public transit trip. Cities like New York and Mexico City declare some areas car-free on weekends. More than half a million members share almost 8000 cars in car-sharing programs across the U.S. (Find the closest to you here) General Motors itself is a partner in the new RelayRides program in San Francisco, a system through which private car owners profit by sharing (for a fee) their cars with neighbors who have been vetted and screened.

I see my car ownership as temporary, a sort of bridge to the world I have been trying to create by not owning one. Perhaps I’ll persuade more people to take my country bus line so we can extend its hours. Perhaps I’ll organize a small car-sharing group among my country neighbors. I have lots of allies, especially among the young.  A recent New York Times article noted that 46 percent of people 18 to 24 would choose access to the Internet over access to their own car. Only 15 percent of their baby-boom parents felt that way. “The iphone is the Ford Mustang of today,” quipped an automotive analyst.

Even more exciting, car ownership is declining among the young. In 1978, 50 percent of 16-year-old Americans obtained their first driver’s license. In 2008, only 30 percent did. My son was over 18 when he got his first license, and at 24, he still has no car. Those with licenses drive less, said the Times:  21- to 30-year-olds now drive eight percent fewer miles than they did in 1995.

Life without a car takes ingenuity, creativity, and commitment. It also costs a lot less. (Buying, registering, insuring, fixing, and fueling a 14-year-old-car in the last six weeks of the year boosted my 2011 expenses by 11 percent.) And it’s getting easier.

My 2012 resolution is to own a car that stays off the road as much as possible. Here’s where I get back to hectoring. Won’t you join me? Get to know your local bus system. Walk to the store. Set up a carpool. Urge your mayor to declare a popular part of town car-free for an afternoon. Dust off your bike. Keep your car, but drive it less. Broaden your transportation strategy to include some more active choices. Together we can figure out the last-mile problem.

Anne Basye, Sustaining Simplicity

On December 6, St. Nicholas put presents in the shoes of Dutch children. On December 13, candlelit girls in Sweden brought their parents breakfast in bed. Eight days of Hanukkah gift-giving started at sundown on Tuesday the 20th. And we’re cruising into the gift-heavy Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Kwanzaa, and, on January 6, El Día de los Reyes Magos—Three Kings Day.

Gift giving is much older than Christmas. We’ve been giving one another gifts since time immemorial, anthropologists suggest, in order to establish bonds with one another or to show hospitality. Giving a gift can show honor and respect–or intimidate by parading wealth and power. Psychologists say it’s good for us, and that there’s as much pleasure in giving as receiving. Maybe more, said Jean Paul Sartre, who called giving an act of aggression, because it puts the recipient under obligation to the giver. If that’s true, Americans are incredibly aggressive. Don’t you sometimes feel like raising your arms to fend off that barrage of Christmas presents—especially the ones you don’t need or like?

In the days when I wrote and talked about simplifying Christmas, the aggression of shopping and giving bugged me. But no more. I’m in Christmas no-person’s-land – the long empty stretch after kids and before grandkids, when there’s no one around to delight. My decorations are in storage and there’s no tree. I left my musical responsibilities in Chicago and have no choirs to accompany or Christmas Eve services to prepare. Freelancers like me have no staff party. The people on my gift list don’t need much—just a few bars of goat soap and beeswax candles and, of course, a year-end World Hunger gift. This year the holidays are feeling a little too simple!

In the midst of this dullness an online article (which article? which magazine? I lost the link and can’t tell you) asked a startling question: How have we been gifts this year?

Ticking off to-do lists and measuring year-end accomplishments and “progress” feels natural to me. So does totting up what I spent and what I gave. But to reflect on my inherent giftedness—who I have been and what I brought to God’s world in 2011 just by breathing—that’s tough. And profound. Goodbye, gripes about gifts as commodities, braggadocio, and aggression; hello, holy and gift-filled weekend.  Jesus may be the miracle, but all of us are gifts. Blemished, kicked around, miles from perfect—but gifts to one another, even if we don’t know why.

But I do know something about the gifts evident in this blog. Thanks to David, for using scripture to illuminate the systemic injustices that surround us. To Mikka, for her cheerful, practical, I-can-deal-with-this-too optimism about 7 billion earthlings and a 99/1 percent schism. To Jessica, for her passion about ending malaria. To faithful blog readers and commenters and World Hunger network people, for your commitment to walking your talk—a huge gift in our spin-happy world.

Gifts, all of you. And no purchase necessary!

Anne Basye, Sustaining Simplicity

And I am at it again…

Unfortunately, this will not be a Christmas post.  Click here or here for more seasonal commentary.  Or just reflect for a moment on the lovely image of the holy family over there.

As I was looking through recent posts and comments I realized that I have been speaking about hunger and poverty very much in terms of personal decisions.  Several of you in the comments rightly pushed back that systems and structures cannot be neglected–they often dictate the options that are presented to us.  Moreover, our individual choices can only be as efficacious as the system allows. I can turn off lights when I leave the room, but what about the carbon and particulate emission and when I need to turn the lights on?  I can support good work in Bangladesh, but the ~$487 million in annual tariffs that the U.S. imposes is really the bigger problem.  I can support migrant worker rights, but that won’t fix our fundamentally flawed food and trade policies with Mexico.  (Maybe you have a better example you would like to share in the comments…)

Here is the rub, and I mentioned this in comments on an earlier post, I am not convinced how well equipped the church (where I have most influence) is to address the systemic issues that perpetuate and exacerbate hunger and poverty.  Some limiting factors:

1)      There is no clear agreement on what the church should be.  Theologians may make proposals, and I have made a few assertions (that are very convincing, if I do say so myself), but pastors and congregants ultimately define the direction of their congregation (this seems to me to be in line with the two most recent social statements released by the ELCA where the “bound conscience” of individuals, congregations, and synods play a large role in moral discernment).  People participate in churches for personal solace, for community, for family programs, because they always have, etc.  The church has become a place where individual piety and preference play an ever increasing role.  Why this may be so is a topic for another day.

2)    The church itself is a part of the system.  The church often benefits from the same structures that keep people impoverished.  My pension depends on companies performing well. Large gifts to the ELCA generally come from those who are beneficiaries of the system.  Those of us employed by the church best not bite the metaphorical hand.

3)     Related to points 1 and 2, the church creates its own system.  Like any institution, the church exists to a certain degree for itself.

In light of these limitations, what can the church do? First, I think it is important (essential even) that the church be engaged in anti-hunger work.  It is part of our identity and key to our public witness.  Second, and related, we do have texts and traditions that present alternatives to the current system.  We need to continue to lift these up and remind people (especially those who identify as Christian) of God’s vision for humanity.  Third, I am convinced that the church is uniquely situated within the system to provide real relief and development.  We are nimble, low to the ground, and work out of longstanding partnerships.  Our accompaniment methodology is sound.

I’ve given you my thoughts, what are yours?  Where is my thinking limited?  How would you frame the issue?  Let’s talk! (Oh, and happy holidays 🙂 )

– David Creech

First, things first, Blog Colleagues—what “quack” wrote that title? (Apologies, I couldn’t resist!) Now that I have that out of my system, have you seen the new ELCA Good Gifts YouTube video yet? Check it out.

A group of animals are collected in a barn with a duck giving the orders:

“Stop looking at your feet…I’ve got an important mission for you guys. You [pig], you’re going to make sure kids have enough to eat. You’re [alpaca] going to help a family pay their medical bills. You’re [goat] going to help a mother start her own small business. You [cow], you will help a community escape poverty.”

This very cute, simple video paints a very real picture of the realities present in the world today. This video also highlights how ELCA World Hunger, through programs like ELCA Good Gifts, serves and works in the world.

Yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugee’s ministerial conference in Geneva. In her comments, as highlighted by yesterday’s ELCA new service new release, Secretary Clinton shared the story of Fatuma Elmi, a Somali refugee who was resettled in Minneapolis and now works with Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota, an affiliated ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and a partner in this church’s efforts to reduce poverty and hunger in communities.

In this highlight video from yesterday’s address, Secretary Clinton goes on to state, “Millions continue to be uprooted by wars or victims of persecution because of race, tribe, religion, political opinion or sexual identity. […] Because of these discriminatory laws, women often can’t register their marriages, the births of their children, or deaths in their families. So, these laws generate generations of stateless people who are often unable to work legally or travel freely. They cannot vote, open a bank account or own property.”

As people of faith, we are journeying through the Advent season. We are reminded fact that once, two people name Mary and Joseph were traveling to register in the town of Joseph’s birth as was decreed by the government. During their travels, a child, who we know as Jesus, was born in a barn to these parents. That child, at the time a refugee as he was in Bethlehem not his home town of Nazareth, was registered to receive his full rights in the community.

Today, we are reminded that everyday, throughout the world, women and children may not be allowed to register, remain stateless people, are unable to feed their families, pay their medical bills or start their own businesses to break the cycle of hunger and poverty that hold them bound.

Through the work of ELCA World Hunger, as highlighted by the ELCA Good Gifts animals, we are part of helping communities escape poverty and helping women, children and families find health and wholeness.

So, in the Advent spirit of hope and the words of our new found friend, the ELCA Good Gifts duck, “Now, go out there and change the world!”

A lot could be said today…

It is World AIDS Day, 30 years after the first case of HIV/AIDS was diagnosed in a medical journal.  Bishop Hanson released a formal statement here.  You can learn about the ELCA’s HIV and AIDS strategy here.  You can financially support healthcare related work of the church here.

I could also speak to the important climate change conference in Durban, South Africa.  I think I will have more to say when the conference finishes but for now I will say that the U.S. is not helping the conversation move forward (of course the obligations are asymmetrical–we hold a disproportionate amount of responsibility!).

Instead of delving more deeply into the previous two topics I would like to ask for the wisdom and insight of my readers.  I am perplexed.  I often wonder why we behave in less than rational ways.  For example, this last Sunday in the NYT, I read this fabulous opinion piece by Samuel Loewenberg on the current famine in the Horn of Africa.  The author notes that although the best way to avoid famine is to work on long-term development, we insist on waiting until there is a full blown crisis to respond.  Loewenburg reminds us that

A common misconception is that hunger crises are about a lack of food. Yet there is food in Kenya and Ethiopia, and even in many parts of Somalia. The real issue is poverty. The people affected are poor to begin with; when things turned bad, they had no recourse. In April the World Bank reported that 44 million people worldwide were pushed over the edge by skyrocketing food prices.

He continues,

Such a perspective is largely missing in our food-aid program. It’s like a health insurance system that waits until someone has a full-blown illness before he or she can get treatment.

What Loewenburg writes is not exactly rocket science (but it is very good!).  If you have systems in place to produce and distribute food effectively you will not be as subject to inevitable shocks.  We see this in the Horn of Africa, where the famine is most acute where the government is most dysfunctional–Somalia.  From the standpoint of the U.S. and people who only give to emergencies, why do we continue to work so ineffectively?  Why not start at the root of the problem (development) and work to create the systems and structures that will feed and support so many more people? (ELCA World Hunger recognizes that sometimes emergency aid is needed just to get to the next day, but it is part of a larger development strategy.)  So, faithful readers, are you more likely to give to an emergency or to support long-term development?  If it is the former, I would love to hear the logic.

Related, I was shocked to find that for ELCA World Hunger’s disaster appeal for the Horn of Africa, we had raised to date about $768,500 for emergency aid.  To date, our appeal for the tsunami in Japan has raised nearly four times as much (more than $2.8 million).  While I see the value in supporting people in Japan, and I know the money will be put to good use, I wonder why we are so moved to help a fully industrialized nation with it’s own emergency response and safety nets in place, but so slow to support the Horn of Africa where the need is much greater.  I have some ideas, but I would love to hear why you think a gift for Japan may be more compelling than a gift for the Horn of Africa.

The title warned you. Let the conversation begin!

David Creech

In October a friend from Holden Village spent a few days with me on her way to Alaska. It was like having a prophet visit. To my dinner table she brought her life as a worker for the Mennonite Central Committee in El Salvador, as a resident of a Catholic Worker house in Portland, Oregon, and as a peace activist who—like her fellow Mennonites, Quakers, and Brethren—earns only enough to support herself but not so much that she has to pay the ‘war tax.’

Because she doesn’t own a car, she didn’t find my carless life strange. She was fine riding the bus and bikes everywhere and sleeping on the floor of my teeny little house. Many details of my existence that strike people as odd were completely familiar to her. But watching her move through life with such principle sent me back to my Bible of simple living, Doris Janzen Longacre’s 1980 book, Living More with Less.

This classic taps the wisdom of Mennonite missionaries who refined their simple living skills on international assignments and kept living that way when they came home. Like my Alaska-bound friend Lisa, they always, always walked their talk.

Rejecting the term lifestyle, Doris proposed that Christians should seek to live by five Life Standards. Her book offers wise suggestions for implementing each one of these standards:

1. Do justice. Living by this standard will always draw us more deeply into economics and politics. It’s up to us to draw the lines that link our consumer ways with environmental and justice consequences around the world.
2. Learn from the world community. Our global partners have a lot to share, if we would only listen instead of continually insisting we know it all! Longacre’s book lifts up “overdevelopment” projects proposed by global Mennonites who would like to minister to North Americans drowning in materialism and “maldevelopment.”
3. Nurture people. What could happen if we cared more about other people than we cared about price, convenience, or comfort?
4. Cherish the natural order. What could happen if we remembered that we are stewards, not owners—that God’s world demands our respect, not our thoughtless consumption?
5. Nonconform freely. What could happen if we were more like my friend Lisa and the Mennonites, and a little less worried about what other people think?

Longacre’s gospel-based Life Standards offer a path out of the lifestyle that is choking us. They are also a tool we can us to “occupy ourselves,” as David Creech suggested (quoting David Brooks) in this post. Occupying ourselves can mean recognizing the consequences of our own habits, actions and purchases instead of reflexively seeking to blame scapegoats.

Mikka said the other day that, from a global perspective, almost all of us reading this blog are the One Percent. Instead of insisting we’re not privileged, asking “who, me?” and pointing fingers, let’s start Advent by following what Longacre calls “the path of health outlined by faith: Repent by recognizing and accepting our guilt, be forgiven, and change!”

Anne Basye, Sustaining Simplicity

Happy Thanksgiving, Blogging Colleagues!

On Thanksgiving Day, we think about what we have and give thanks. However, sometimes this day seems increasingly like the “eve” to the real holiday, “Black Friday,” where we think about we do not have, but that we want.

Recently, I was sharing with a colleague about the last website I blogged about, and she suggested another—the “Global Rich List.” Very interesting…

From the site, “Every year we gaze enviously at the lists of the richest people in world. Wondering what it would be like to have that sort of cash. But where would you sit on one of those lists? Here’s your chance to find out.”

According to the Global Rich List, I am the one percent (to use the catchphrase of the Occupy Wall Street Movement). The site uses a sliding scale to show your position of wealth within the global community. You can see your rich list position, as well as the percentage in which you fall. Simply select the currency of your salary, type in your annual income, and click “show me the money!”

So, I am the one percent. The site asks one follow up question, “how do you feel about that?” and then encourages us to give just one hour’s worth of our salary (calculated using the above information) to a worthy cause.

I will be giving ELCA Good Gifts this holiday season—a very worthy cause in my (admittedly biased) opinion. But on this day of thanks, I will be giving thanks for the many gifts of friends, family, good employment and yes, the wealth that is entrusted to me for good stewardship toward health, wholeness and fulfilling life for all. That is the mindset I want to take into the holiday frenzy…wish me luck!

—–

Check out the Global Rich List site, and post back your comments here. Looking forward to the conversation!

Privilege

This last weekend I was at the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting. This is my one professional meeting that I am sure to attend each year because it provides an excellent opportunity to explore new ways to conceive of and articulate a Christian response to hunger and poverty. This year was no exception and as a result I am consolidating some new thoughts on 1) the role of the Bible in moral deliberation and 2) the apocalyptic imagination as a tool for resisting systems and structures that keep people impoverished. These will likely keep me occupied for the next year (or more!) and they will undoubtedly inform my seminary course at Trinity in Ohio this January.

Today’s post, however, will not explore such heady (and pedantic?) topics (I understand if you just breathed a sigh of relief!). I want to reflect on a dinner conversation I shared with old friends from seminary. Over the meal I suggested that in spite of its claims about liberating ideas and free thinking, the academy is an incredibly hierarchical institution. Your academic pedigree–where you studied and where you teach (God forbid you do not work in an academic institution!) determines your credibility. Both of my friends vigorously denied than any such criteria existed. One received his PhD from an Ivy League school and now teaches at a large and well respected seminary, the other from one of the best schools in the south and now teaches at a strong research institution. They denied my experience and assured me I was wrong… as the one who graduated from a good (but not great) university and now works in the church.

The awkward moment (and it was awkward!) revealed to me in a new way the power of privilege. My friends (who are intelligent and generally committed to social justice) are blind to the hegemonic forces of the academy because they are beneficiaries of the system. And they worked hard to maintain the system, insisting that my impressions were surely misguided. As a white, well-educated male who is financially secure and holds a position of (minor) authority in a national church office, it is not often that my experience is denied so flatly. I did not like it.

Here is the scary question, though. How often do I (who am generally intelligent and firmly committed to social justice) do exactly the same thing? Whose experiences have I unwittingly trampled simply because I am unaware of dynamics of privilege in a given situation? Race, gender, class, and age (to name a few–humans are exceedingly skilled at coming up with arbitrary ways to keep people disenfranchised) are all used to create and maintain (often unspoken) power differentials. In the case of my dinner it was an awkward moment. In more critical situations it can be the difference between being fed or going hungry, having access to medical care or suffering from preventable and treatable diseases.

I am not sure about the take aways from this experience just yet. Here are few initial thoughts: 1) Privilege does exist and too often we operate in it unconsciously. 2) The first step to addressing privilege has to be critical self reflection and repentance. 3) The system will work hard to maintain itself and those with privilege must actively work against it (through awareness and education, among other things). 4) If those who are privileged are unaware of the dynamic they need to be reminded. 5) If they are aware but unwilling to address the problem, perhaps they should be resisted.

David Creech

Hello Blogging Colleagues! Since we last shared “screen time” together, many things have happened. We celebrated All Saints Day, Día de los Muertos, Halloween or All Hallows’ Eve and Reformation Sunday just to name a few. But wait– I’ve missed one.

On October 31, we welcomed the 7 BILLIONTH person to this planet and place we call home (United Nations). In honor of this occasion, I have keyed a letter to our newest member:

Dear 7 Billionth Person,

“Happy birthday to you,” child born somewhere in the human family! Welcome! Welcome to this place that displays all the depth and breadth and beauty and chaos that God is and creates– the land and the sky and seas, the flora and fauna, all the languages and phenotypes.

The New York Times posits that you may have been born somewhere in India and opens with the question “Feeling claustrophobic?” The article goes on to haggle over statistics, but that is not the most compelling focus for me.

I am told* that the global population will continue to increase during my lifetime—10 billion people by 2083. I’m also told that currently, 43% of the global population is about my age. Isn’t that amazing?

However, it is also estimated that in the country I live in, the United States, we consume double the resources used by the rest of the world. That means that if the current population and current consumption trends continue, by 2030, we’ll need the equivalent of two Earths to support you, me and the rest of our global family.

Well, 7 Billionth Person, we’ve got our work cut out for us. And, for the record, I’m not “feeling claustrophobic.” Yes, I’m feeling a sense of urgency that to live my life is to live it alongside and with attention to 7 billion other people’s well being and fullness of life…but I’m not claustrophobic.

In fact, I’m feeling more connected than ever. I know that it is that sense of connected commitment that will help us work and serve together to find balance and promise in this place we collectively call “home.”

Your Global Sister,

Mikka

*Want to learn more about what I was “told?” Visit this great site to find out how many people were alive when you were born and much more. Once you’re “told” post it back here! I look forward to read more about your story.

“All those delicious Brussels sprouts, rotting!” I griped to my brother about a neighbor’s garden.

He shrugged and said, “Get used to it.”

In rural western Washington, not everything gets harvested. Something is always left over. There may be no time to cut something or no place to store it. Too much or too little rain. Too many or too few warm dry days. Nobody to pick. Or nobody to buy, if a crop tastes good but looks horrible, or because the same crop ripened elsewhere first—like potatoes in Idaho, this year—and the supermarket buyers have already filled their contracts.

So I’m glad the word gleaning has busted out of the Bible color plate of Ruth in Boaz’s field and is elbowing its way into national consciousness.  When I promised my mother in March  that the fruit trees on our farm wouldn’t just rot on the ground, I didn’t know I’d discover a national movement to connect what’s left in fields with food pantries and soup kitchens. After I tracked down Harvest for Hope of Skagit, which organizes and dispatches gleaners in our valley, I read Nancy Michaelis’s blog about Ample Harvest, matching gardeners and food banks on the national level.

Not the image I remember, but the right gleaning story!

This fall I’ve been living by Ample Harvest’s slogan: “No food left behind!” On a bike errand, I stopped to pick a bag of carrots declared too homely to sell by their growers. Every couple of days I help myself to zinnias and sunflowers whose flower farmer stopped cutting and told me, “Enjoy!” Gleaning for Harvest for Hope, I made new friends and froze a fall of beans for me. Harvest for Hope accepted the 12 pounds of beans I gleaned from my landlady’s garden and will accept the last of the apples from our family tree. (Thank goodness, because apples are the zucchini of Washington state: so plentiful you can’t give them away.)

At one end of this gleaning stand the field, the farmer, and the willing volunteer. At the other end must be cooks and canners—people who can prepare and preserve food—as well as food pantries with freezers, refrigerators, and efficient distribution systems. Without this important element, the beans I glean in Mt. Vernon will rot somewhere else. Fortunately a couple of activists helped persuade US food pantries to retool themselves to accept and distribute fresh produce. Goodbye, commodity cheese. Hello, beets and carrots.

“Canning is the new knitting,” someone said recently. And just in time, because almost everybody has forgotten how. Food preservation classes are popping up everywhere as people like me decide to recover the lost skills of freezing, canning and dehydrating. Or how to use every single scrap of a vegetable, as the New York Times feature  “That’s not trash, that’s dinner!” demonstrates.

Now if only I can convince my neighbor to let me glean her Brussels sprouts…

Anne Basye, Sustaining Simplicity