The Chatelaine's Keys

Sharon March 25th, 2009

I don’t know what they have to say,
It makes no difference anyway,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I’m against it.Your proposition may be good,
But let’s have one thing understood,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
And even when you’ve changed it or condensed it,
I’m against it. I’m opposed to it,
On general principle, I’m opposed to it! – Groucho Marx

It is definitely my fault that Simon thinks he’s Groucho Marx.  First of all, we gave him the middle name “Julius” which was Groucho’s name.  And then we introduced the boys to the movies – in fact, right now as a reward for something, Simon, Isaiah and Asher are watching the Marx Brothers hornpiping to the song mentioned above in “Horsefeathers.”  Oh, and they are plotting their Halloween costumes for next year – guess who?   The all important and ongoing “who gets stuck with Zeppo” debate engulfs us, ultimately to be resolved by Mommy threatening to take away the fake mustache of the initiator.

I’m starting to channel Groucho too, at least when I listen to the range of presented solutions to our problems.  Like Groucho, I’m starting to think that the best possible answer to any of the solutions coming from Washington or from nearly anyone who has a half-assed grasp of the fact that we have problems, but isn’t willing to actually stop running madly in all directions long enough to look at the root causes of those problems or the connections between them, is simply comic nihilism. ”Whatever your moronic rescue plan is, I’m against it – now will you get your large congressional-style behind and whatever you are imagining you are stimulating out of my way so I can get this wheelbarrow through and grow some rutabagas?”

Here are some things I’m against, in no particular order:

1. The Fed.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m very sympathetic to their position - it must be very frustrating to be so very powerful (able to destroy the future of millions of Americans and their posterity in a single blow) and so very powerless (completely unable to do anything to change how totally screwed the rich folks are). I truly grieve for those who see the suffering of Wall Street companies and find themselves transfixed by the tragic misery of their executives.  But I think at this point, the only thing left to do is excavate the skeleton of Alexander Hamilton (who despite his limitations would be appalled, and who almost certainly could power a section of Washington with the energy produced by spinning in his grave) and replace Tim Geithner with Hamilton’s corpse.  This will save on staffing, and improve the quality of the initiatives coming out of it..  We can import some Zimbabwean immigrants to run the printing presses for further savings.

2. The Democratic party, the Republican Party, the Libertarian Party, the Working Family Party, the Lazy Family Party,  the Green Party, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Manichean Party, the Hemp Party, the Crystal Meth Party, the Party of the First Part…. 

3. The Media, especially the newspapers.  Ok, folks, you are on your way out of business in many cases.  You literally have nothing to lose if you tell the truth and do real, serious investigative journalism about the biggest story in American history – the destruction of a country that actually used to be worth something.  I do not mean the kind that most papers (there are a few important exceptions) are doing that show “Gasp, you mean the government knew about AIG’s situation and didn’t say…Shocked, I’m shocked and appalled…” but the kind that might actually help ordinary citizens (you know, those people you wrote for back before they became “consumers”) understand their future and prepare for it.  But we gotta keep Al’s Tuxedo Shop happy for one last ad, and Al doesn’t really like bad news.

4. Geoengineering as a solution to climate change.  Yes, for the very first time ever, engineers will produce solutions without any negative or unintended consequences.  The National Academy of Science’s solution to the problem of unintended consequences – “We’ve trained all our scientists never, ever to say “oh, holy fuck, I didn’t think it would do that!” out loud anymore.  They’ve also been warned they could be fired for uttering the word “oops” audibly.  That should take care of the problem.”

5. The word “biomass.”  The term you want is “forest”  And why be mealy mouthed about it – forests suck!  They aren’t even keeping the planet cool anymore, so what’s the point of all that unused potential cellulosic ethanol just looking pretty.  But yes, let’s transform all the organic material on the planet into fuel so we don’t have to stop driving our cars.   Or maybe we could turn it into electricity through the elegantly described “biomass co-generation” which really means “Who needs plant life, food or topsoil, when, after all, Steve needs his beer to be really, properly cold before he puts a redwood in his riding mower.”

6. People who are slowing down the apocalypse.  Like these folks I think most Americans are lazy slobs who simply aren’t doing their share to bring about the end of the world as we know it. 

A Department of the Interior report released Wednesday stated that there are 6 trillion such instances that could not possibly go any slower if they tried, some of which include budget meetings, shaving, the act of waiting, upward mobility, microwaving that lasagna, settling down and starting a family, walking from one place to another, searching for a misplaced item, returning to the place you initially walked from, air travel, 2009, and the time it takes for a sent e-mail to arrive in someone’s inbox.

There are thousands of us waiting here impatiently to actually need to eat our stored rice, fend off zombies and start really wiping their butts with that cloth toilet pape by necessity, and that doesn’t seem like the circumstances making this necessary will be in place before early May.  We’re Americans – we can do better than that!

7. Gay marriage. As they celebrate their 30th anniversary together, surrounded by their daughters, sons in law and grandchildren, I’d like express my anger at my mother and step-mother for modelling a lasting, family centered, loving, happy, religiously grounded marriage for my sisters and I, and virtually forcing us into similar relationships with our husbands. Not only are my mother and step-mother personally eroding family values left and right in their neighborhood (that guy around the corner from them who got divorced named them specifically, and their chickens,  as the root cause of his whoring and Jagermeister addiction), but my husband has informed me that because his values have been undermined by my lesbian parents, after we’ve been married 80 years, he expects to be permitted to date other people.  All I will be able to do is what any 105 year old being dumped for a 98 year old girlfriend would do – blame Mom.

8. The National Debt.  Who cares that we’re now well on our way towards third world country status, unable to dig our way out of our hole by oppressive repayment schedules that won’t end in anyone’s lifetime?  That’s not the problem – who can imagine that we’ll ever care about debt?  My objection is that I can’t get a longer than 30 year mortgage, but the government can get a home equity loan on my country that doesn’t have to be paid off until 2290?  I’m planning on using the US as a model and refinancing my home under the new “hundred year mortgage” plan, so that by the end of the loan period, I, my children, grandchildren and their  heirs and assigns have had the chance to pay 1.7 million dollars for my 80K mortgage.  If the country can afford it, so can I.

9. China – I’m deeply opposed to their plan to stop buying our treasuries and maybe even establish a non-dollar currency for trading useful things like oil, food and wool socks.  Don’t they realize they owe us – we bought their plastic crap for them.  We did it purely out of the goodness of our hearts – most of us felt that we really didn’t need a new “entertainment center,” vaginal freshening spray or “Hora dancing Elmo” but we knew that our brothers and sisters in China needed our help, so we bought them anyway.  Now it is China’s turn to help us in our time of need, by buying our increasingly worthless treasuries.  It is only fair.

10. Methane.  I’m deeply opposed to methane, and would like to suggest a resolution that respectfully requests the permafrost to stop melting, cows and congress to stop farting and Starbucks to recycle 4.3% of its coffee grounds.  After all, never let it be said that I don’t have anything positive to contribute.  I’m definitely against negativity.

That’s it – I’m against them all.  Those are my principles, and as Groucho once said, “If you don’t like them…I’ve got others.” 

 Sharon

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Sharon March 24th, 2009

One of the things we point out in _A Nation of Farmers_ is how deeply similar the problems of inner city and rural cultures are.  In both cases, there is often a great deal of poverty.  In both cases, there is often inadequate access to decent food, since rural areas have lost much of their garden culture, and supermarkets are often far away for both populations.  In both cases, there are inadequate jobs for younger people, and often high levels of unemployment for those committed to staying either in the neighborhood or the country.  The ability to stay there, and transmit a local culture is thus very low.  Urban dwellers become completely disconnected from subsistence culture, while rural dwellers are brought to believe, often, in the superiority of urban life, and urban culture, and strive to mimic it in destructive ways.  Rural areas are colonized by industrial agriculture, polluting the area and reducing their ability to feed people in the long term, while urban areas are colonized by industrial business, and polluted and their environment degraded.

Nearly every society struggles, in some measure, with the disconnect between urban and rural life, but most societies have had more contiguity between the two than our own does.  Having a local future, and enduring local foodshed requires that we start rebuilding connections between urban and rural cultures – because in many ways, the difficulties that both have could be partly ameliorated by closer ties – economic ones, of course, but not just economic.

Many cultures have traditionally had much closer ties between urban and rural populations.  For example, in Russia, people often had small summer cottages that they retreated to, not just for pleasure, but to garden and forage in the woods. In parts of southern and central Africa, people have ties to the cattlelands, and even city people often keep a few cattle, usually tended by an extended family member, and return to the land for portions of the agricultural season. Northern native populations have fish or hunting camps, while even low income urban Londoners at the turn of the century would spend their summer vacations harvesting crops – hops or something else.  This has evolved into the bucolic summer tourist vacation, the vacation home or the hunting camp, most of which have little to do with subsistence activities (some urban hunters that we see hunt for food, but many do not).

While it isn’t that hard to figure out what rural people might get from a trip into a city – better shopping and trade, cultural events, etc… The fact that trips out to the land have been part of the culture help keep this from being a one-way colonial event. When urban people come out to rural areas to participate in food production and rural life, they are implicity suggesting that rural culture has something to offer other than a tribute of food to be delivered.  There is a reciprocity between the two cultures, a chance for people on both sides to begin to see the impact that they have on one another, to consider it, and most importantly, to build relationships.  Tourism does not do this – instead of introducing rural people to real urban life, or urban people to the realities of rural practice, one gets a sanitized and processed and fundamentally artificial version of life, for the most part. Agritourism is a growing industry, for example, but it transforms farms (usually by economic necessity) into carnival rides or sites of nostalgia, rather than sites in a cultural foodshed.

CSAs and farmer’s markets have had a powerful role in connecting city and country, farmer and eater, but they are only a beginning.   In order to, say, decide not to develop remaining agricultural land near a large city, or to understand the conflicts between watershed pressures in agriculture and city life, urban and rural dwellers have to understand each other well enough, and be invested in one another deeply enough to resolve their conflicts.  Large chunks of both urban and rural populations truly have no idea how the other half lives. 

Moreover, they really have no idea how they might improve one another’s lives.  The chronic problem of access to food, for example, might be solved by creating markets that help low income rural dwellers take a piece of the 300+ million dollars even the poorest neighborhoods pour into the economy each year.  Most of that goes to industrial corporations, and provides crappy jobs.  What if rural poor people, who, after all, buy clothes and toys for their kids and tools for their garden could find ones that are manufactured in their local cities?

More importantly, what if we were invested in each other’s lives – that is, if people realized that they depend on their food shed and the people who support it – both economically in the cities and physically in the country.  What if it were possible to make a decent living in both places?  But to do this, we must increase the connection between the two.

 I don’t have a full set of magical solutions for this, but one thing that occurs to me is that we’re going to have to find new ways to spend some time on each other’s ground, getting to know our food, water and economy-shed.

 Sharon

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Sharon March 24th, 2009

This weekend my family went to see a local showing of the film _Ancient Futures_ based on Helena Norberg-Hodge’s book of the same title.  For those of you who haven’t seen it, part of itit is available on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPT3ILCYGfk and here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwT1H0cX100 and here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O811tWg7bYQ.

In the film (and the superb book which I’d recommend to everyone), Norberg-Hodge explores the realities of an indigenous culture, which due to isolation created something imperfect, but sustainable, and the loss of sustainability caused by the importation of western modern culture. 

As a homeschool exercise, we went home and looked at other cultures that are, if not fully sustainable, generally dramatically lower users of resources than we are.  We talked about various indigenous cultures, about the stories Edna Lewis tells about life in Freetown, about our local Amish communities, about Green Belt work in Kenya,  and about peasant cultures around the world.  I gave my kids a child-aged summary of Wes Jackson’s superb book _Becoming Native To This Place_ and talked a little about this question of how we might live like that.  The idea is not to test them for pure sustainability, or a perfect life we’d like to emulate, but to talk about what they have in common, and how places that have lost idigenous traditions are reclaiming them.  

It is easy to imagine the goals of Adapting-in-Place are mostly goals of survival and getting through hard times.  I don’t think this is true, actually.  I think that the real goal is not so much to live through it (although that’s good too) it is to come out the other end of each experience with the ability to spare the next generation some of this suffering, and a way of life that offers something more than bare survival. 

I call the project “Indigeny” – that is, becoming local to your place, creating a culture that can go on, not just ’a bit after the fossil fuels run out” but for generations, and one that results in a life worth having.  Without this, we are merely minimizing losses – and all of us need more than that.

My next post is a meditation on what it would take to make my family more indigenous to our particular place.  But here’s our list. \

1. People mostly stay in one place for generations, and there is a pass down economy.  That is, in Ladakh, 90% of the population owns land – but no one buys it.  At one point, one man observes that he (now elderly) has seen 7 generations live in his house.  Because people stay, they can’t afford to degrade the region, nor can they afford to radically overpopulate it, unless there are available ecological niches being created.

2. People live in extended families, rather than nuclear ones.  This was the first thing the kids noticed about the Ladakh film – and the thing that Isaiah said he liked best, that the kids all lived with their grandparents.  There are many hands around to do the work.

3. The technologies the culture evolves are low input, and simple.  If the culture survives into the modern era, they must evolve powerful prohibitions against using other technologies.  These prohibitions must be part of the cultural identity of the group.

4. The identity of the group is both positive and negative.  That is, they must teach their children compelling stories about who they are and why it is good to be part of that culture.  They also must describe themselves against people who are not part of that culture – that doesn’t have to be a hostile definition, but “We don’t watch television because we don’t believe it is good for us” or “We don’t do this because it is part of our faith” must be part of it.  A purely affirmative self-definition that doesn’t say “no” to things seems not to be sufficient.

5. Children spend much of their time in their community and integrated into it – which some places do a lot of schooling and some a little, no successful indigenous culture sends its kids away from them all day.  Nor do they primarily educate their children to do jobs not needed in the truly local economy.  Immersion is the name of the game.

6. The local economy serves most subsistence needs.  That doesn’t mean trade or money don’t exist, but the more one moves primarily into the formal economy, the harder it is to keep up.  A portion, probably the largest portion of each household’s human resources are dedicated to subsistence activities.  This means that the people doing subsistence work are not alone in it, and the subsistence work is viewed as primary, rather than relegated to the inferior territory of household labor.

7. There is a high value placed on getting along, accomodating others, working together, sharing and resolving conflicts.  Traditions are built around these customs of sharing, and evolve for the management of common resources (despite the constant iteration of the “Tragedy of the Commons” commons are often extremely well managed).

8. People eat a truly local diet as their primary foodstuffs.  They eat what grows well and naturally in their regions, including foraging wild foods and growing in ways that do not deplete the soil.  Their crops and animals are not generally optimized – ie, they aren’t necessarily the biggest or best, but the best adapted to their particular circumstances.

9. It isn’t just food that is localized – architecture responds to local conditions, community practices respond to local conditions, and to evolving local conditions.  One of the reasons most indigenous cultures are so often thought to be “backwards” is that when confronted with modernity, their carefully evolved structures don’t work very well.  What serves beautifully in a harsh environment where little imported food is available looks scant and strange in a culture where the markets are full.  What keeps one warmer than average in a cold climate with only a small fire for heat seems drafty and weird when you can just turn the thermostat to 70.  As we evolve back from modernity, and deal with climate change, our local will change – what we need is broad resilience.

10. The culture creates minimal waste, and focuses much of it resources on making full use of what comes easily – rather than forcing what doesn’t come easily into a mold that doesn’t work.  Waste is shocking and disturbing to people. 

11. The culture has a long tradition of music, art, literature/storytelling and spiritual/religious production, as well as other projects that bring beauty and joy.  That is, it isn’t just focused on subsistence activities, but has pleasures that are available to all, that are participatory and fulfill human needs for good stories, song, beauty, uplift and a sense of connection to something greater.

 12. Having contiguity with your past is considered desirable, not bad.  Modernity reduces the past to a few heroic tales, and makes the past literally uninhabitable to the present.  Thus, those who came before us know nothing of value, and the ways of the past are archaic and foolish.  Sustainable cultures on the other hand, focus on the ways that the present future and past are linked to one another.

Now not every culture does these things perfectly – but we thought that some of these characteristics might provide a set of guidelines for the project of indigeny – and of creating a collection of indigenous cultures that can compete with the bright lights of modernity.

 Sharon

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Sharon March 19th, 2009

My husband goes back and forth on whether to wear a kippah (yarmulke) full time or not, for reasons that are mostly too boring and arcane to discuss here .  But one of the fascinating things we’ve noticed when he is doing it, or when we are wearing kippot, is that we almost never get any comments on my husband’s weirdo head thingie from other religious people.  Out in rural areas like mine, where there are almost no Jews and no one wears a beanie, nobody says anything.  And part of the reason is that a lot of my neighbors do things for religious reasons that look strange to a lot of people – they don’t let their kids trick or treat, they homeschool, they wear funny bonnets themselves or plain clothes, they have ashes on their face once a year…  So while we stick out (not a lot of Jews out here), we also oddly, fit in.  I find this remarkably heartening.

On the other hand, when we go to Boston or New York City, my husband inevitably gets scores of comments.   A lot of them come from secular Jews, who can’t resist explaining why they aren’t religious, and others from people who want to know what kind of religious weirdos we actually are, or have an opinion on religion in general.  Since Eric doesn’t visually fit in with the obvious kippah cues (ie, we are not Chasidic),   I find it fascinating that in our neighborhood, where we are something of odd ducks, we fit in better than in a city full of odd ducks – but mostly secular ones.  Being visibly part of a religious community is not that unusual in Manhattan, of course, but the public wearing of religious communal identity is generally considered to be MAKING A STATEMENT. (The actual statement that underlies this is “It is just easier to wear the headcovering all the time, since we pray each time we eat and several other times a day, and are obligated to cover our heads when doing so, so why keep taking the thing on and off all the time?”) 

In recounting this story, I do not mean to say that New York’s attitude towards religion is bad and my rural one good, or that I’m necessarily better off with fewer Jewish people .  But I do think that the culture of religion – despite deep differences in theology – can offer some interesting common ground for believers of many faiths.  Underlying our faiths (and sometimes far, far underlying it, in the case of many religious cultures) is often a critique of the idea that materialism is what matters.  It can be hard to find this critique in many churches and shuls that I’ve been to – but it is there, and in Pagan, Hindu, Buddhist and Moslem texts as well, some closer to the surface, some further down.

I find myself wondering, then, as official representative of “visible religious weirdos” (I’m actually in a competition to see how many different kinds of weirdo I can be…ecological, economic…religious…political… I think I’m winning ) what the future of religion and religious identity will be in the US as things change, as we get poorer and our lives are disrupted in a host of ways.  Will we get more religious?  Less?  If we do get more or less religious, what kind of religion will dominate?  What will be its role? Can we get from the hidden critiques of our consumptive culture to some kind of coherent, cross-faith narrative that enables more of us to live well in the coming times? These are mostly abstract questions, and I’m not sure of the answers, or how much of my opinions is mixed up in what I’d like to see and what I expect to see.

But what I am fairly certain of is that religious communities are going to have a large and powerful role in the future – one that ideally, we’d begin shaping and preparing for today.  This is one of the reasons I’m never so delighted as when I’m asked to talk to religious communities – because in many ways, I think that they provide an existing infrastructure that is potentially powerfully adaptable to the life we will be living.  The whole project of Adapting-In-Place involves using what you’ve already got – and one of the tools we have is religious infrastructure, which provides things that few other institutions in our society do.  These are things I think we will need.

AI don’t think most people doing activist work have really tapped into churches, synagogues, mosques, covens and temples as ways both of getting messages across and also of creating resilient infrastructure.  While I know a lot of individuals working with their churches and local communities to raise awareness, start gardens, etc… I’ve seen few larger uses of the infrastructure of faith, whether interfaith (the fact that there’s no interfaith peak oil group at this point is actually largely my fault – I once asked Bob Waldrop if we should start one, he said “sure” and then I never did anything ), or within the larger infrastructure of any given particular religious community.  There are signs of hope here, but I’d like to see this progress faster, simply because I think as time gets harder, the functions of religious communities will become more important.

There’s a growing tendency to believe that religion is the root cause of a lot of our problems, and that we’d all be better off without it. Not coming from a religious faith that does recruiting, I’m really not that worried about other people’s religous and spiritual beliefs, or lack thereof.  I do think that the growing tide of books on the merits of athiesm tend to make some silly overstatements about the problems of faith, but that’s fine – the hostility to athiesm that our society has had has always been rather overstated too.  I tend to agree with Rabbi Steve Greenberg that athiesm is a useful and necessary corrective to people of faith, and that it is, as Eric’s grandmother used to say, “no reason to get your knickers in a twist.”  Thus, in some senses, despite the fact that I’m a religious person, and care very much about theological distinctions and beliefs, this isn’t the subject of this post, and I’m ok with divorcing them for this purpose.

I realize that there’s something a bit strange about concentrating on the practical merits of religious communities instead of their precise theologies, or the ways they can connect them that want it to their chosen Diety, and I’m not sure there’s any good way to write this without my seeming like I’m erasing the primary work of religious communities – worship.  All I can say about that is that even churches and other religious institutions admit implicitly that the value of worship is something that many people have to come to after they experience the *functional* value of religious institutions.  That is, one of the classic sayings in synagogues is that they have several “chances” at you – one of them is when you have children, and are forced to confront questions about what you believe and want for your children in terms of religion, another is when people lose their parents, and their worlds are shaken. 

In both cases, people aren’t coming to synagogue because they have suddenly seen the value of not sleeping in on Saturday morning or going out for beer on Friday night, they are coming for those practical and formal structures of their religious institution – they are coming because the synagogue provides Hebrew school and other Jewish kids for their children, or because they provide a funeral, a kaddish minyan and emotional support after a loss.   That is, those religious communities know that the hope of getting people in the door, the hope of getting them to stay long enough to find other value, begins with these more pragmatic functions.

And the reality is that there are few secular institutions that are prepared to fill the needs that people have at moments of crisis – this is what religious communities tend to do very well – they offer people access to familiar, structural ways to deal with events that change your world.  That is, they are there when you have a baby, and provide some ritual for welcoming that child.  They provide a kind of education in faith, even if the parents haven’t figured out all that they believe – they can pass it off (I’m a religous person who thinks that faith starts at home, and I don’t love parents who do pass off the big questions to Sunday school or whatever, but I recognize that religious institutions are used this way, and in general, I think some exposure is better than none, though perhaps not much better), they provide ways of dealing with death, places for people with no place, support for the aging, ways to incorporate new family members through marriage.  They may be the only place most people get sit down meals with other people who aren’t related to them.  They may be the only place where people who are socially inept can go and find some kind of community that will tolerate and support them because that is part of their mission.  Many communities provide volunteer services for the poor – they run the food pantries, the shelters, the relief organizations.  They get people in transitional and crisis moments and they offer formal structures to aid them- and those services get people in the door.  That’s not why we do it – or all of why we do it, but it is worth asking – what secular institutions can meet the same needs?

There are some that try.  Food Not Bombs does a great job of providing food to the hungry.  There are humanist and secular organizations, funeral homes and other groups.  But few of them do so many things, so cohesively.  And this is one of the things that sometimes drives me crazy about the hostility people have to religion.  I’ve no objection to people thinking my faith is a fairy tale – that’s fine.  But when people begin ranting about the evils of religion, but wonder why so many adhere, I ask them – ok, fair enough.  But are you burying the dead?  Where are the organizations to provide secular burial and rituals for the grieving?  Where is your rationale for loving even the really annoying people in our society who still need people who will talk to them and care for them?  Are you out there at the secular food pantry?  The secular shelter? The justice work, the fundraising for the poor?  Where do you provide free counseling for those dealing with personal trauma, help people wed and welcome babies into the world?  I’ve no objection to strong secular institutions these things arising – I would welcome them.  But I don’t see them, and I don’t think they will come rapidly into place before the hard times hit – since that would be now.

Like it or not, the existing structures many of us have for all these things, and also basic community building are religious.  That doesn’t mean that people willing to work at it can’t locate or build secular communities – they can.  But the easy access that is already in place is often in religious communities, particularly in rural and suburban areas.

And in the future, there are likely to be a lot more people needing food pantries, a lot more people in crisis needing support, a lot more isolated and traumatized people needing counselling, and a lot more people who can’t afford pricey privatized secular substitutes (this is not to say that all secular substitutes are pricey, but that much of what has emerged has had commercial implications) for what religious communities have provided comparatively cheaply (ie, the fancy “event hall” for a wedding, christening or bris rather than the church basement or shul event room, the expensive graveyard rather than the subsidized plot, catering by the volunteer committee vs. catering by Fritz…etc…).

There is also likely to be a retreat to the familiar, the comforting and the ritualized, and the need for community structures.  Many of the changes in our economic, energy and ecologic life demand that people reconsider what they’ve assumed and believed.  For better or worse (and what kind of faith we retreat to will depend on which one this is),   For many of us, after we leave school, work provides our social and communal structures – we socialize with coworkers, work organizes our lives.  But when jobs are lost or transient, it becomes harder to rely on that for community.  Where do we find social supports, people to talk to, common values?  Again, for many of us, this is our religious community.

 This, of course, presents a dilemma for people who are not religious, or who belong to a religious denomination not represented.  Do you join a group with which you do not share all your beliefs, or any?  What happens when church is how social life is conducted, and you aren’t religious?

 I think the answer depends on your faith and your relationship to it – I think someone who believes that faith is fundamentally false should probably work on establishing useful secular institutions that do what religious ones do.  I think someone with fairly minor theological differences, or a mild case of agnosticism should find the most compatible possibilities, if they want to work with a religious community, and then ask that community’s leader whether it would be ok for them to participate. My guess is that you’ll find more difference in individual believers in most communities than you think.  It really depends on the community though – for some people there are basic statements of faith you must make to participate, in other cases, some groups are open to people they believe may sincerely evolve in their commitment.  Some places won’t ask you what you believe at all.  Some religious communities may have evolved roles for those who cannot fully adhere but are supportive – high rates of Jewish intermarriage, for example, have forced many Jewish communities to evolve places for non-Jewish spouses, and many religous communities with high bars to participation (say, celibacy) have committed supporters who cannot be full members. 

And the question of open participation is likely to arise quickly – if things get hard enough, religious communities are likely to be first responders.  More and more people are likely to seek them out for support, and the question becomes – how do those of us who are religious balance the desire for doctrinal accordance with this greater need – that is, how far do we open ourselves to people who need comfort, need help, need somewhere to enact their rituals – these of course are central questions for every faith, and every faith is to some degree defined by them.  Do we marry anyone, even people who don’t adhere to our basic principles?  Do we want to include children whose parents don’t teach our faith, because at least we’ve offered them something?  Do we bury anyone?  How much are we here for those who adhere, and how much are we here for those who have needs who may not adhere.  And different religious communities handle the balance of faithful participation and openness in different ways. 

But however it works out – whether our community is only for those who adhere entirely to its rules and beliefs, or whether its doors are wide (and IMHO, there’s a necessary role for both – I’m biased towards greater observance, but I see the merits of the open tent as well) – preparing for difficult times needs to be a priority.  We face being overwhelmed by people in need, as donations dry up and costs rise.  Understanding what is going on, making education and the care of one’s own people (however defined – I include here the groups of the vulnerable we come to think of as “ours”) is going to be a central project for religious communities.    We will do things better if we understand fully what we are preparing for. 

And in the founding texts and deep in the culture of most religions (and not so deep in others – forms of Buddhism, Amish and Plain Quaker culture and plenty of others have managed to keep this right up at the top) are ties to a past of far less plenty, and narratives that may well enable us to live with much less, may enable those inclined towards belief to find a story to tell themselves about the future that helps them see not loss, but gain.  The good thing about welcoming those who we can welcome is that the primary religious texts that we rely on never did tell us that affluence and consumption were important – we may have forgotten this (while swearing, of course, that we never really cared that much about them), but it won’t stay forgotten, and perhaps, for some who come for the practical tools of religious communities, this part will stay, and bring them back to worship.

 Sharon

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Sharon March 19th, 2009

This week we’re talking about community and connections, and I’d like to suggest that those of you who don’t feel they have a strong local community should consider starting by throwing a party!  The best way to get to know your neighbors is to meet them in a social setting – you don’t have to have a “the zombies are coming, run but have a beer first” theme – that is, you don’t actually have to talk the coming changes at all.  This is mostly for getting to know people.

We’ve done this a number of times, but have fallen down on the job of running them – this summer I’m hoping to do two, one perhaps for my shul and local Jewish community in the hope of getting more people connected to the farm and maybe a rural minyan up and really running regularly, and the other for my neighbors, complete with tomato tastings, corn on the grill, meet the cute baby goats, etc… etc…

 You don’t have to do it alone – you can get other people helping. You don’t have to do it at your house if you can’t – there are often public spaces you can make use of – parks, yards, etc… It can be potluck, show off local food, show off your garden, show off nothing but your willingness to meet people.

You can have a theme – what about a clothing or toy swap? What about a cheap living party?  Garden swap – bring extra seeds and divisions of your plants.  What about a work day sprucing up the neighborhood, helping out an elderly neighbor or building something that will be resource for your whole community?  What about ice skating, caroling, softball?  Or maybe you do want to talk about preparedness issues – about local food issues, about how tough it is to keep the food in budget, about hurricanes or earthquakes or what to do if there’s another ice storm.  Remember, the point is that you are together, but not that everyone believes everything you do. 

Remember, everything goes better with music, food, beer, laughter, kids running around and playing games, adults talking to one another instead of just waving as they drive past.  Make a mix CD (my long emergency mix is probably not party material, but you can have it anyway ), bring out some food and drink (simple and cheap is fine – iced tea and brownies will do if you don’t have the time/money/energy and start putting up flyers and stuffing mailboxes.  But have the party – the more parties we get started, the better!

Sharon

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