Green shopping tip: St. Louis Freecycle
Admittedly, I have a thing for shopping. I can shop for houses, cars, furniture, or clothes with equal passion and delight. I can spend money or not and have just as much fun. Luckily for me, the acquisition is not my hook. It’s the hunt for the perfect bargain that I enjoy. Having found the bargain, I don’t need to buy it… though all too often I am tempted.
Unfortunately my penchant for shopping runs counter to a couple of my values. Fairtrade is one value that interrupts my shopping, though I have enjoyed scouting my way around that with shopping sites like “GreaterGood.com” and the “Worldstock” window at Overstock.com.
But even the suggestion that a consumer is ready to bite the bait keeps the production lines moving. Perhaps I can rationalize the economic value of stimulus spending and chalk it up to patriotism, but when you use your new Facebook connection to join the “Bring Ikea to St. Louis” group you know that you enjoy shopping too much.
My current favorite shopping site, however, is green. Craigslist is an eco-friendly shopoholic paradise. An endless supply of treasures that are not only decorating my home at bargain prices but simultaneously being saved from the landfill. Admittedly I can lose many happy hours exploring the discarded treasures of anonymous St. Louisans.
I tried to take healthy shopping a step further as I joined the St. Louis Freecycle yahoo group. It’s a great concept, buying and selling without any exchange of cash. Because my trash might be your treasure, endeavors like Freecycle are incredibly effective for keeping stuff in circulation and out of landfills. But as much as I applaud the effort and enjoy the forum, Freecycle doesn’t deliver the same adrenalin rush.
Or maybe I just haven’t perfected the skill. Occasionally I’ll find a gem, but thus far my discoveries have always been preceded with the word “taken”. Each entry is preceded with one of three words: wanted, offered, or taken. An adrenaline rush accompanied with the word ‘taken’ is a defeat. In order to complete the high, I must experience the rush after the ‘offered’ and before the ‘taken’. Only then will I score. I’ve yet to experience that euphoria. Most probably when I do, I’ll be hooked.
In the meantime, I lurk with my buddy Craig, think in $20 increments, and pride myself on being green. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to go to a meeting.
admission of powerlessness
It’s Friday morning and I’m at home waiting for the plumber.
Last Friday night I was at Home Depot buying plumbing supplies. Sunday I bought an auger. Monday I talked with my landlord. Thursday I bought plumbers acid. Today I’m waiting for the plumber, with the checkbook in hand.
I would like to point out that, lease fine print aside, this plumbing problem isn’t mine. In the brief time I’ve lived in this house the kitchen sink has back up twice and the laundry room drain once. Clearly there is a problem larger than my bad habits at play. But undeniably, I am the one who put the pork roast in the garbage disposal which ignited this last round of drama.
I would also like to point out my independence and make-do attitude. I am a veteran with sink drains and I’m pretty handy with the auger. So my first response, after notifying the landlord, was to fix the problem myself. Undaunted when the problem was beyond the trap, I went to Home Depot for a lesson in home maintenance. But three trips and twice as many days later, the slow dribble has turned into a total standstill and so the plumber has been summoned.
If I had called the plumber last Friday, I would have saved three trips (and charges) to Home Depot and countless hours. Too I would have saved the environment another dose of unwelcome chemicals. Of course, I wouldn’t have my new auger which is a fun toy but apparently useless. Why didn’t I call the plumber sooner? Because I thought I could find a softer easier way.
In terms of sink drains, the cost of my stubbornness is monetary and inconvenience. But the cost of my stubbornness in the rest of life? Priceless. And not in a good way.
the hands we hold
Although Kevin Johnson, Cookie Thorton, and James von Brunn have apparently nothing in common, all three are native sons of St. Louis. Most tragically, all three will be remembered for racially charged murderous rampages.
While von Brunn is hospitalized in critical condition, the details of his story are just beginning to emerge. Being both smart and privileged enough to graduate from Washington University does not translate into good mental health or racial tolerance.
We are tempted to buy the reassuring headlines that von Brunn acted alone, as did Thorton, as did Johnson. And perhaps he did. But none of us acts in a vacuum, and it is the context that breeds the violence that we must face if we are to quell the tide.
Perhaps I am particularly sensitive to the von Brunn’s rampage at the Holocaust because my 17-year-old daughter is in route to the scene of the tragedy. She is traveling with a fascinating group of young people in a program called Cultural Leadership. Founded with the vision and passion of Karen Kalish, this St. Louis program aims to immerse teens into the history and possibility of cultural transformation for tolerance and justice. The year long immersion program invites 30 area teens, one half black and the other half Jewish to learn about each other’s history and perspectives in order to build bridges for active involvement in social change. My daughter is one of three (token) white Christians included in an otherwise Black/Jewish dialogue and she is experiencing the new role of minority. Having spent the winter and spring building relationships and learning history, the group is now on a whirlwind tour, which began with a flight from St. Louis’ Lambert field to New York’s LaGuardia (with scheduled tours of Harlem, Crown Heights, and Ellis Island). The group will head to Washington DC later this week before going to Atlanta, Little Rock, and Memphis. After 24 days and six dozen speakers (not counting museums!), the exhausted teens will return home in time to celebrate “Independence Day” in St. Louis.
Later this week, with the blood stains still fresh, my firstborn daughter will walk across the threshold of the Holocaust Museum. A white Christian, she’ll be walking hand in hand with Black Christians and white Jews. This is a different kind of St. Louis experience, one rooted in the belief that we can be allies if we take the time to listen and learn.
The hands that we choose to hold form the context for our choices. Too often the hands that we hold look and sound and feel familiar in a world that feels unfamiliar. As we grip the familiar in search of strength to face that which isn’t, the seeds of foment are watered.
As we surrender James von Brunn to the medical and law enforcement authorities, I find hope in my daughter’s journey and visions like that of Cultural Leadership. Although the futures of these 30 youth are still wide open, the relationships forged will disable the instinct for racial stereotyping that is all too common in St. Louis.
For today, I will hold on to this vision of transformation.
sanctuary through education
A sanctuary is a space which is set aside, a place where we encounter the sacred. Sanctuary is safe space, a refuge, and a place of asylum. When he was executed on Sunday morning, George Tiller stood at the threshold of sanctuary, in the doorway, welcoming the stranger.
I don’t know Tiller, the usher at Reformation Lutheran Church (Wichita, KS). I don’t know Scott Roeder, the stranger. I cannot begin to speak to their hearts or their motives. All that is clear to me, and shockingly so, is that Tiller was standing at the threshold of sanctuary when Roeder gunned him down in the name of life.
To be sure the sensible and faithful voices that surround the abortion debate in our community share in the outrage. Divided though we may be on the definition of life’s inception and the implications therein, we are clear that this Sunday morning bloodshed is sin.
What haunts us, and rightfully so, is the wonderment of how we got to this place of undisputed tragedy. Some of us are quick to blame Bill O’Reilly’s rant against Tiller. Some of us would prefer to blame Tiller’s choice of profession. Though condemning Roeder’s action as ‘cowardly’, Operation Rescue’s Terry Randal continued to fuel the public furor by referring to Dr. Tiller as a “mass murder with blood on his hands.” The crazed religious fervor that fueled Roeder’s violence is certainly fair game for blame. Surely too at some point we will wonder at the prevalence of guns in our community that can transform a rage into a killing field.
It seems to me no coincidence that the issues that incite our culture wars are related to our gender, reproduction, and sexuality. Gay marriage and abortion almost single handedly gave us eight years of President George W. Now President Obama’s invitation to speak at Notre Dame’s commencement was questioned by former Archbishop Raymond Burke (long gone from St. Louis but still in the spot light!) because of Obama’s ambivalent stance on abortion. And though Obama’s words about ending pregnancy have been notoriously ‘nuanced’, federal funds for sex education have been earmarked for programs that advocate abstinence in lieu of teaching about pregnancy prevention.
Unplanned pregnancies make up fully half of all pregnancies. In 2001, 6.4 million children were conceived in the United States, but only half were intentional. Although only 3 million babies were planned, 4 million babies were born. Of the 2 million pregnancies that ended before childbirth, half were planned (abortion) and half spontaneous (miscarriage). Playing the numbers game, one could focus on the astounding number of abortions, the tragic number of miscarriages, or the truly depressing reality that fully 25% of the children born today are ‘accidents’. (Statistics) Although I adore babies and cherish life, I know the stress that even a long awaited baby can add to a stable home. An unexpected child in a family already struggling can be disastrous.
Abortions are the painful choice to end a pregnancy that has gone terribly wrong, physically and/or emotionally. The best way to prevent abortions is to prevent pregnancy. Although masturbation and same-gender sex are baby-free sexual expressions and abstinence is always an option, reasonable people know that sex between young men and young women happens, ready or not. And to be ready, young people need to have access to knowledge and tools. If Roeder’s goal was to reduce abortions, he would have been more effective by handing out condoms.
My own teenage children have learned about sex both in our home, on our television, at our church and in their public school. Imagine my surprise to discover that at our local public school, both of my children had been learned that condoms do not protect against STD’s! It turns out that a religious organization (Thrive) is contracted to provide sex education, or mis-education as the case may be. I can only hope the presentation was more nuanced than my children’s report, but given that both kids heard the same thing (at different times) I am suspicious. Luckily we watch “Boston Legal” as a family and have discussed the benefits of condoms and the liabilities of abstinence only education. My prayer is that when my children choose to be sexually active, they will be ready. One million unwanted babies born each year is more than enough already.
While it is too late to save either George Tiller or Scott Roeder, it is not too late to begin to practice common sense in our classrooms and in our churches. Only God knows when and how life begins and when we come into a space dedicated to the experience of God, we ought leave our weapons of judgment at the door and open our eyes and ears. When we enter sacred space armed with preconceptions, we cannot hear the still small voice that beckons. In a place that is sacred, we need to practice compassion for those whose perspectives differ from our own. Ghandi’s modest proposal for peace still stands, “let the Christians of the world quit killing each other”.
