The Sustainist

Path of Life

I have been in New York City for the last 2 weeks. I expected spring weather in April but, except for one day, the days had been rainy and cold. As I practiced what I blogged to “embrace the darkness” and stay in “the empty tomb” during Holy Week (the week leading up to Easter day), I felt that “death,” like winter, had a grip on our world, so strong, that it was overwhelming my movement toward Easter. 

Easter is just one day. The world is the same before Easter. The world is still the same after Easter. There is still no resolution in the unrest in Libya. We are still losing lives in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The crisis in Japan is still a crisis. We are not done with the aftermath of the oil spills in the Gulf, the earthquake in Haiti, the hurricane in New Orleans and all the other disasters around the globe. Healthcare cost is still going up. Gas price is staying at over $4 per gallon. The rich is still getting richer and the poor, well, stays poor. As I wrapped myself in a blanket on Holy Saturday watching the pouring rain outside my window, the nagging question echoes: Easter is here, almost, but has anything changed?

As I wallowed in the darkness, I remembered the book I bought (yes, I still buy books) from visiting the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) called WORLDCHANGING: A User’s Guide for the 21^st Century. In the introduction, Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org  (a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis) wrote:

“I can remember what it was like to give an Earth Day talk twenty years ago – you needed to keep your fingers firmly crossed, and hope. You could conjure up a rough image of, say, solar-powered world, but a rough image was all it was. . . Describing a bright green future took a strong imagination.”

He went on to describe how things have changed today, as many of the innovations we thought about 20 years ago are now reality. But there are still much to do especially when climate change showed little sign of course-changing. He proposed:

“ . . . our job is to speed the transition to the other world these innovations promise – to make them not wonderful exceptions, but the rule. And doing that will be difficult, because the old world doesn’t die away easily.”

Ah, “the old world doesn’t die easily;” that was what I was feeling all through Holy Week. 

As I read this text, I recalled the signs of hope – things have indeed changed and are changing—especially in the area about which McKidden is passionate. For example, I picked up the book WORLDCHANGING from a whole island of books with similar topics—sustainable design, art and architecture—prominently displaced in the middle of the MOMA store.  On a train coming back from Princeton, I saw solar-powered street lamps through a whole section of a town. Walking around Bowery, the neighborhood where I grew up, I discovered a Green Depot store that sells green products and building material. In the tourist-filled streets of SOHO, I found a store call Sprout that sells eco-friendly watches at very reasonable prices. The company says its watches are 80 percent eco-friendly, boasting materials like organic cotton, mineral crystal and mercury-free batteries.

I was visiting my nephew’s business Vision Essential, in Astoria, Queens. As I was helping my friend pick out a frame for his glasses, I was delighted to find a line of frames called Earth Conscious Optics (ECO), made from recycled stainless steel and acetate. For every frame bought, the company would plant a tree.  And the prices were about ½ of what the other designer frames were going for.  Of course, I recommended them to my friend and he bought one. 

Okay, I am now convinced that things do change and that there is a movement and it is a movement forward in spite of setbacks, and we are calling it sustainism. Oh, don’t forget President Obama’s Easter/Passover message for the nation also focused on renewable energy.

So, what has changed now that Easter is here? The world might stay more or less the same before and after Easter. What has changed is the choice I made. What has been transformed through Easter is the mindset I use to engage the world.  I can choose to wallow in the paralysis of a seemingly unsustainable personal life, community, nation, and the world, or I can choose to act in ways that join in the movement for a sustainable future. I can be overwhelmed by death or I can choose the path of life. A sustainist believes that sustainism is already here and he/she sees, acts, and makes decisions through this lens. Sometimes we might not readily see it, but if we pay attention to the signs that are all around us, we will notice that the path of life is like spring waiting behind the wintery rain, ready to spring forth.

As the story of Easter continued with the disciples’ struggles with their post-Easter belief, fear, and doubt but finally came to believe and live and act as a resurrected people, we too are invited to make the shift in our mindset and join in the path of life where our hope for a grace-filled sustainable future is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.

Invite people in your community to spend this week to notice the signs of hope and sustainability in your community/neighborhood. 1. Gather your community and invite them share what they had observed and make a list of the “signs.” 2. Invite them to consider these questions: What are the elements that made up these signs of sustainability? How can we connect these signs to build a stronger movement toward sustainability for our community?

 

Reflection Questions for Second Sunday of Easter (Year A): Acts 2:22-32 Psalm 16 What does it mean for you to walk in the path of life? 1 Peter 1:3-9 What have you inherited through Easter that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading? John 20:19-31 What does it mean to come to believe in the resurrection even though you have not seen?

Eric H. F. Law
Kaleidoscope Institute
For competent leadership in a diverse changing world
www.kscopeinstitute.org

The Empty Tomb

Easter
Children in white, pink and yellow
Stuffed bunnies from supermarkets
Baskets with sparkling cellophane
Chocolate candies in the shapes of rabbits
Colorful eggs hidden behind bushes

Easter
Birds singing
Flowers blooming
Trees budding
Sun warming faces
Fragrances of spring

Easter
A man, a teacher
A friend of the outcasts, poor, unclean, and powerless
He healed the broken
He acted in love
He was hope
A light in darkness

Easter
A man
Falsely accused, condemned, suffered, died

Three days later
His friends discovered his body gone
They went in the tomb
Saw the linen wrappings lying
Puzzled, confused
They left
Went home

Easter
A woman
Remained by the empty tomb
She stayed and wept
She stayed and saw the angels
She stayed and asked questions
She stayed long enough to meet her friend and teacher again
Alive!

Easter
Willingness to stay by the empty tomb
Uncomfortable, confused, unpleasant
But stay
Don’t avoid the darkness
Stay to grief your loss
Don’t dismiss the empty tomb
Stay to ask questions
Don’t run away from the discomfort
Stay long enough to encounter the risen Christ
New light
New hope
New energy
New directions

Text from the video Easter Meditation by Eric H. F. Law

Christians around the world are celebrating Easter this coming Sunday. We can celebrate Easter in many ways—from the religious to the secular with their different rituals.  But a sustainist sees Easter and its original stories as the recognition of an alternative sustainable way of re-sourcing our communities. In the Easter story, the old political and legal system crucified the alternative vision, that was Jesus, and told all his followers that their dream was dead. But his followers, beginning with one woman, Mary Magdalene, according to the Gospel of John, believed otherwise. From there, they found the hope and energy to carry on this alternative vision of the world. They discovered the meaning of the line from the Hebrew Scripture:

The same stone, which the builders rejected, has become the chief cornerstone. (Psalm 118:22)

Living in the United States of America, we are told that we have to be fighting three wars, which are draining our resources daily, while funding has to be cut in our education system, support for the poor, and perhaps even Medicare and Medicaid. We are told our economy is still recovering very slowly, while those who had benefited from unethical financial transactions still get to keep their money. We are told the human-made disaster in Japan still posts a danger, and that it is already having an impact on our economy, while the recovery effort of the natural disaster there has become just background noise. Our system expects us to accept unsustainability as normal and ignore our dreams and visions as if they were dead. As citizens of this country, our voices are supposed to be heard, and all people are equal. In this “wilderness,” how can we find “grace?” 

Our nation needs Easter more than ever. We need to find ways to energize the alternative vision of our nation, which has always been there. We need to learn to reveal that which has been hidden. We probably have seen it before time and again.  But, like the disciples who saw the empty tomb on Easter day, those who did not understand and went home ignored the glimpse of hope that was right in front of us. We need to learn from Mary Magdalene and stay with the empty tomb long enough to understand the true meaning of the missing body. We need to be witnesses to testify to the fact that our vision of sustainability is alive, not dead. We need to find that stone that has been rejected and make it the chief cornerstone of a sustainable world.

Invite people in your community to spend this week to notice the rejected people, ideas and locations in your community/neighborhood. 1. Gather your community and invite them to share what they have observed and make a list of the “rejects.” 2. Invite them to consider these questions: What are the gifts that might be amongst the rejected? How might these gifts be utilized to make us a more sustainable community?

 

Reflection Questions for Easter Sunday (Year A): Acts 10:34-43 How do you testify to the resurrection of Christ in the world today? Jeremiah 31:1-6 What does it mean to find grace in the wilderness? Colossian 3:1-4 How is your life hidden with Christ and how does it get revealed? Psalm 118:14-24 What is the chief cornerstone of your spiritual life? John 20:1-18 Where is the empty tomb of your life? How can you stay in it longer enough to discover new hope?

Eric H. F. Law
Kaleidoscope Institute
For competent leadership in a diverse changing world
www.kscopeinstitute.org

Embrace the Darkness

If you go to church this Sunday, you will find Christians on this day, called Palm Sunday, enacting the tragedy of a man named Jesus. The drama begins with the people waving palm leaves and singing praises to welcome Jesus, whom they consider as someone who could be their savior. But Jesus reviews a different idea of God through his words and actions. He believes that we are all sons and daughters of God and that makes us all equal and connected. And we are to include each other as if we are part of the same body in everything that we do. If one of us is hurt, all of us hurt. If one of us is oppressed, we all suffer. Because of this “sustainist” vision, Jesus is betrayed by one of his best friends, abandoned by most of his friends except for a few women and his mother, and finally sentenced to death by the same people who welcomed him enthusiastically at the beginning of the story. The drama takes us to the bitter end when he is killed like a criminal. Why do Christians want to replay this horrible story with such an unhappy ending every year?

The Palm Sunday drama reminds us, especially Christians, the woeful side of human community. We might embrace the idea of something new at first, but when we find out it is not what we assumed it to be, we reject it.

For example, we like the idea that “All men are created equal.”  It is written in the Declaration of Independence of the United States. But for some, if this means giving up, or sharing what we have, then this idea doesn't seem so great, so we create a system that says some are more equaled that others. For 235 years, people in the United States have been struggling in the tension between those who wanted to realize the true-living-out of this phrase and those who rejected it out of fear. From the various amendments to the Constitution (e.g. 14^th Amendment, 15^th Amendment, 19^th Amendment) to last week’s debate over the federal budget and the possibility of a government shutdown, these struggles are all part of the drama of living up to the new idea that all people should be equal. As Christians move toward Palm Sunday, let the drama of Jesus and his friends and betrayers remind us of how we are to act.  Do we act out of our fear or do we act out of the conviction of our vision? We have a choice in how this drama unfolds.

At the end of the Palm Sunday worship, we are left with Jesus dead in the tomb, hopeless. But this is not the end of the story. The story will continue. It has to continue. 

The Lord GOD has given me
the tongue of a teacher,
that I may know how to sustain
the weary with a word.
Morning by morning God wakens–
wakens my ear
to listen as those who are taught. (Isaiah 50:4)

A sustainist takes a wholistic/inclusive view of the events in our lives. Speaking and listening are parts of the same experience. Teaching and being taught are parts of the same happening. Winter and spring are parts of the seasons. Night and day, sleep and wake, darkness and light, are part of the rhythm of life. “Turning the other cheek” is part of confronting your enemy by connecting with him/her as a fellow human being. Non-violent protest that is met with violent retaliation is part of a process that exposes the injustice and oppression of our system. Death and resurrection are parts of the cycle of living. Our human instinct is to avoid the hurt, the betrayal, and the unknown. But the sustainist embraces the darkness for now.  And we wait knowing the cycle will come around and there will be light. While we wait, we listen to each other with awakened ears. While we wait, we speak the words that sustain each other.  

Invite people in your community to consciously do the following wherever they are with others this week – family, workplace, classroom, community groups, etc.: 1. Truly listen to the others, especially their concerns and struggles. The goal is to achieve understanding, not agreement. So, hold back from speaking while the other is speaking and don’t debate. 2. After listening, share something that will sustain the other. For example, a word of encouragement, propose something that you can do together or simply feedback for the other showing that you have listened and understood. Gather the community a week later and invite people to share their learning. .

 

Reflection Questions for Palm Sunday (Year A): Mathew 21:1:11 What are the things that we welcome enthusiastically at first but reject later? Why? Isaiah 50:4-9b How do we sustain each other in time of adversity? Philippians 2:5-11 What does it mean to have the mind of Christ?

Eric H. F. Law
Kaleidoscope Institute
For competent leadership in a diverse changing world
www.kscopeinstitute.org

Facilitate Like Water

Last weekend, I was driving to Santa Maria to facilitate a workshop called Emerging Grace: Missional Ministries in the Grace Margin (http://www.kscopeinstitute.org/east.html) for two Episcopal Churches.  As I turned from the tranquil view of the Pacific Ocean and drove inland, I noticed something different: the mountains were green! The mountains of southern California are usually golden yellow -- one of the reasons why the early Chinese immigrants called California “Gold Mountain.”  The mountains are green because Southern California has been getting a lot rain this winter/spring.  What miracle water can perform – it can turn a whole mountain green.

As I beheld this unusual sight, I recalled an incident where I was viewing various kinds of trees in a garden nursery, trying to decide on ones I should plant for my garden. I was fascinated by the Japanese maple trees with their intricate leaves of red, yellow, and different shades of green. I had no idea how to take care of such beautiful plants.  So I asked the owner of the nursery, “How do I take care of them?”  He smiled and said, “Easy, just add water.”

It’s that simple!  Just add water and these beautiful plants will grow!

Just add water and the mountains turn green too!

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. (Isaiah 50:10-11)

This 2500+ year old quote from the Hebrew Scriptures reminds us of the miracle that water performs. Water interacts with other elements – the seeds, the fertile ground, the sun – and the plant sprouts from the seed, stems emerge, leaves open, buds form, flowers blossom, fruits grow. Yet, water retains its property and it returns to “heaven” to be recycled for the next rain. This Hebrew text also invites us to think of God’s Word as water. Like water, God’s Commandments interact with the gifts in the community creating new growth and hopes.  The human community is revitalized as the Word flows through it.

The Bible is full of miracles about transformation from death to life. As Christians move toward Easter, we are reading Scriptures that deal with death and resurrection, dying and rising. We often wonder how these seemingly impossible things can happen in our lives and communities today. Living in this so-called economic hard time is like living in a dried-up barren land. Many organizations and communities I work with are struggling. Money is not flowing; resources are not moving. Everywhere we look, funding is being cut. People are afraid to lose their jobs, their homes, their livelihoods. When resources are not flowing in our communities, we are like dry-bones in the valley, cut-off, disconnected – unsustainable. Yes, we wonder how the miracle of resurrection can happen today, and what our role is in facilitating these miracles.

Just add water and things will grow. Just add water and the barren ground can turn into a food-yielding field. Just add water and the dry-yellow California mountains turn into lush green landscape. The miracle from death to resurrection is all around us if we only open our eyes and see. And our roles in making miracles happen can be as simple as “just add water.”

Sustainist leaders think of their leadership role as water. Sustainists use their skills, knowledge, experiences, and disciplines to “flow” through a community, interacting and connecting different people/groups/gifts, and causing new things to happen. What’s more, sustainist leaders don’t get drained. Like water, what they put out returns to them, and they can recirculate their energy to start a new cycle of regeneration, which in turn, flows through the community again and creates new hope, new life, new energy, new fruits, new resources. In the desolate landscape of our world today, community leaders need to learn and practice sustainist skills and processes to reconnect and re-source a seemingly barren community by flowing through with their rejuvenating spirituality, creating a time and place of life and growth.

Through this weekly blog, I will attempt to describe different aspects of this rejuvenating flowing—through sustainist spirituality. For this week, I begin with a very basic sustainist skill that I teach called Mutual Invitation (see instructions in the box). You can use this technique for a group of 5 to 12 people. This skill includes everyone in the group.  Your role as a leader is simply to uphold the process. For best results:

1. Post a topic for sharing
2. Give people time to ponder (or write their thoughts down)
3. Explain Mutual Invitation clearly
4. Start the sharing yourself and then invite someone to speak, which starts the Mutual Invitation process.

This process—Mutual Invitation—is like water. When a leader uses it effectively, we are essentially adding this water to the group. This “water” invites everyone in the group to share his/her ideas, gifts and experiences authentically. This “water” invites everyone to listen and connect, thus building relationships. In the invitation process, energy and power are flowing and shared through each person.   Whenever I used this process, whether it was facilitating a Bible study or helping a group to explore an important topic, I always got more than I started with in terms of knowledge, understanding, energy and discovering resources. In other words, I felt sustained as a leader and I believe the participants also felt the same. Try it.

Mutual Invitation (Instructions) In order to ensure that everyone who wants to share has the opportunity to speak, we will proceed in the following way: The leader or a designated person will share first. After that person has spoken, he or she then invites another to share. Who you invite does not need to be the person next to you. After the next person has spoken, that person is given the privilege to invite another to share. If you have something to say but are not ready yet, say “pass for now” and then invite another to share. You will be invited again later. If you don't want to say anything, simply say "pass" and proceed to invite another to share. We will do this until everyone has been invited. We invite you to listen and not respond to someone’s sharing immediately. There will be time to respond and to ask clarifying questions after everyone has had an opportunity to share. From The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb by Eric H. F. Law, Chalice Press, 1992

 

Reflection Questions for the 5th Sunday in Lent: Ezekiel 37:1-14 What are the “dry bones” in your community that need life breathed into them? Romans 8:6-11 What does it mean for you to have the Spirit dwell in you? John 11:1-45 What in you and/or your community needs unbinding?