Jonah 03 – Not one, but two second chances

 ⁴ Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” ⁵ The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.

⁶ When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. ⁷ (Read the rest of the chapter, here.)

Nineveh’s Second Chance: A Metaphor for Climate Change

Let’s start with the second second chance of this chapter: In a rare instance of power listening to prophets before calamity strikes, the Ninevites take Jonah’s message of impending doom to heart and institute a citywide act of repentance. Everyone puts on sackcloth, fasts, and even causes their livestock to fast. God takes notice of their contrition, and has compassion on them.

I think the story of the Ninevites is an excellent metaphor for how we, collectively, should be reacting to climate change. The prophets have been warning us of impending doom for some time now. Warning signs – melting ice caps, wilder hurricane seasons, even migrating trees – have been shown to us as well. What if, like the Ninevites, we actually listened? And not only listened, but did something about it? And what if our politicians listened to us, like the Ninevite king did to his people? What if we instituted an official policy of reducing our footprint on the earth and not just giving lip-service to that idea? Like the king of Nineveh I say, “Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn Xyr fierce anger so that we will not perish.”

Good on you if you bike to work, eat local, and have solar panels on your roof. I really do think that’s great. But to be perfectly frank, our personal actions only account for part of the equation: They help create a culture of eco-awareness. But in order to effect real change, we need to see things done on a national and even global scale, instituting a policy of eco-awareness.

I’ll use an example with my personal eco-bugaboo: food waste. If food waste was a country, it would be third in the list of greenhouse gas emitters after the US and China. If we reduced food waste, we not only would reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted by rotting food, but also the amount of water, land, and other resources used to grow or create something destined to just be thrown away. We can create a culture of combating food waste at home by buying responsibly, making just enough and eating it all, and composting what we don’t or can’t eat (like egg shells or banana peels). But this does nothing to address the institutional food waste of grocery stores, large cafeterias, or the entire prepared food industry. And while our consumer choices certainly can influence how those places view food waste, their participation in reducing food waste remains entirely optional at a time when we need it to be mandatory. A little encouraging aside: The Food Recovery Act tackles food waste, and has already been introduced in Congress. But it has languished in the Health subcommittee since 2017. Now that we have a new administration coming in and a COVID vaccine on the horizon, perhaps this is the time to call your representatives to let them know you want to see this bill passed in the new year, making it policy to reduce food waste.

Back to those solar panels and other potential solutions to climate change: We could make renewable energy a reality. And make plug-in cars ubiquitous. And focus on keeping our food systems as local as possible. And reduce our reliance on plastic packaging. The list goes on. If plug-in cars replaced gas-powered vehicles, and solar/wind/hydro- power replaced coal and fossil fuel plants, we would keep millions of tons of greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere annually. If we focus on (and provide the support for) people to eat local, we reduce the resources needed to distribute said food. If we tax plastic bags their usage (and environmental impact) goes down 40-90%, depending upon the area being surveyed. But in order for any of this to happen we need it to be policy. Culture alone will not do it. Civil rights were not protected until the Civil Rights Act (and there’s still work to be done, but it was a start). Same with the right to vote. Same with child labor laws. Same with the ADA, the protection of endangered species, access to affordable housing, and so on and so forth: Trailblazers worked within a culture of caring and passion, bringing attention to the wrongs of everything from eagles to wheelchair access. But change isn’t fully actualized until it becomes policy.

So once again, with a new administration coming in and COVID (hopefully) becoming less of a concern in 2021, we can all call our representatives to tell them we want action on climate change. Those of us who are able can donate to Citizen’s Climate Lobby, Idle No More, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. We can urge the companies we work for and shop from to do the same thing. We can protest in the streets. Whatever it takes to make action on climate change the dominant policy. With God’s help and good grace, I firmly believe it is never too late for us to start instituting real change.

Jonah’s second chance and God’s never-ending patience

And just who is responsible for leading that change? If a culture of eco-awareness (or any other sort of awareness) isn’t enough, it is easy for us to give up and let ourselves off the hook. And that’s not very different from some of the prophets of the Old Testament. Jonah runs away from his charge to warn Nineveh. Moses, arguably the most important of prophets in the Old Testament, hems and haws and argues and bargains with God at length before going back to Egypt. Jeremiah and Gideon were also reluctant. But God is patient, and listens to all their fuss and bluster – and even lets them run away a bit – before gently insisting on Xyr ways, reminding each of these prophets, “I will be with you.”

I find this reassuring. It is easy to be distracted from what God is calling us to do. We can even convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing in running away. We are not “the right ones” for the job, no one will listen to us, we don’t have the right experience, the time, the money, the influence, and so on. And there are always other important things that need to be done, right? I, for one, am a champion procrasti-cleaner. Because really, how am I to be expected to do anything important when there’s five loads of laundry to be done and there are dishes in the sink and the downstairs hasn’t been swept in a week? And yes, those things need to be done, too, but the house doesn’t have to be perfect before I take a moment to call my representatives, before I work on the employee handbook for a new responsible-farming apprenticeship program we’re forming on the farm, or before I keep speaking my truth over here on my little corner of the internet.

The time is always right, and we are always the right person when it comes to making the world a better, more just, more green, and more sacred space. If there’s one final message I want you to take away this week, it is that we all have our part, however small it may seem, and that we don’t need to go it alone. First and foremost, God is with us, and that alone is a big thing. We might make mistakes along the way (Remember tires-in-the-ocean-to-make-reefs intitiative? Ooof!), but we should keep going. Keep speaking up, keep encouraging others, keep the myriad injustices of this world from being swept out of sight. The more we speak, the more others will see, and the more actions will be taken. Whether it’s racial, environmental, gender, workplace, or some other sort of justice – listen to what God is calling you to do, and then go do it! We always have a second chance to act in God, and we should use it to the fullest potential whenever we come across it.

Luke 04 – Writer’s Block

At daybreak, Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them. ⁴³ But he said, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.” ⁴⁴ And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea. (Read the rest of the chapter, here.)

I love this little Jesus utterance at the end of the chapter. It sounds a bit wistful, like a divine version of “I really want to have another drink with you guys, but my Dad needs my help at the shop in the morning.” Think about it: Jesus has just been tempted by the devil and then driven out of Nazareth by an angry crowd. In Capernaum, he is able to perform miracles and save people’s lives – something I’ve never done myself but it sounds like a pretty nice high – and people actually like him for it. They liked him so much they tried to keep him from leaving. Even if he never had any intention of staying there forever, I bet that the idea of setting down roots in such receptive soil appealed to Jesus, even as just a passing fantasy.

I’m not Jesus, but I do feel compelled to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God. The problem is, I seem to be suffering lately from a bit of writer’s block, my friends. I feel like I am just…waiting. That whatever this time is in my personal life, it is a period that must just be lived through, because living into it is too overwhelming. I am eager to get on with my work, but maybe it’s not quite time to do so, yet.

At thirty-four I like to think of myself as still young – very young, hopefully, with many, many productive decades ahead. I have to remind myself often that this (“this” being the blog, parenting, marriage, life…) is not a race. In yet another instance of when I felt like Alice Walker was writing just for me, she dedicates a whole poem to “young writers who itch, usually before they are ready, to say the words that will correct the world.” (I encourage you to look up the poem, entitled Reassurance, which is in both In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens and Revolutionary Petunias.) Maybe I’m just not ready yet, and this is God’s way of slowing me down until I am.

Maybe right now I need to take my cue from the earlier part of this chapter. Jesus had his patience tried by the devil and by man before pushing through to Capernaum. I’m not saying roll over and take abuse, but patiently enduring less-than-desirable situations is part of the journey. Indeed, waiting can be every bit as important as doing. It is – or at least, does not have to be – wasted time. In another one of my favorite books, God of Earth, Kristin Swenson dedicates a whole chapter to the idea of waiting on God. “Waiting is different than resting,” she says, “waiting has an energy of its own. It presumes attendance and attention. It’s a kind of action, even as it is a forced inaction.” In other words, when it comes to our relationship with God, there is an action implied in waiting, an active listening, if you will. So even when it feels like God isn’t with us, like we’re waiting on God to return to us, God is there. No one likes to be told to wait, no one wants to be uncomfortable or unsure, but I feel I must grudgingly admit to myself that sometimes you’ve just got to push through, endure, and patiently wait. If it was necessary for Jesus, then it is probably necessary for me, and for you.

So for now, I’m going to pray, and endure. And would you look at that? By pushing through, I’ve managed to write 700 words. It’s not my best entry, and no where near my longest. It took a false start on a different chapter, eight different revisions, but here I am, still proclaiming the Good News even when I don’t know what to say. Know that God is with you, no matter what. I pray that your way may be made clear, as well.

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Romans 09 – Cold Comfort

¹⁹ One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” ²⁰ But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” ²¹ Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use? (Read the rest of the chapter here.)

Now we get to the question at the base of it all, the unanswerable question, the one that we’ve all asked ourselves at one point or another: “But why?”

Paul both asks and addresses this pervasive question in this section of his letter. First, he bemoans the lack of universal faith in Jesus within the Jewish community. “Why have a chosen people,” he’s essentially asking, “if they do not receive their Messiah, what was the point in choosing them to begin with?”  And then, “why fulfill a promise to Abraham, even after he has had a son?  Why invert the natural order of Rebekah’s children?” These were not idle questions, but truly perplexing as they challenged the very workings of a patriarchal society.  Paul goes on to wonder with his readers, “why does God harden some hearts but make different ones – ones you might not expect – open to Xyr message?”  Why does God appear so irrational, and quite honestly, sometimes very cruel?

The frustrating truth is we don’t know.  I wish I could share some earth-shattering insight with you here, but I have none.  I only have this cold comfort: We can’t see the big picture.  At the risk of sounding trite in the face of so many anguished “why’s,” let me use this parenting story:

I was getting ready to take the kids to see their grandparents.  I hadn’t said anything to them yet because I needed to get things done before I had two excited little humans swirling around my ankles like rabid ferrets.  I was almost there – we were fifteen minutes away from starting the whole get dressed/go potty/get in the car routine.  My youngest comes up and asks if they can watch a movie.  Normally the answer would be yes in that situation, but like I said, we were so close to leaving, I just didn’t want them to know yet.  So the answer was no, and I got to deal with a pissy two year old which is probably just as bad as a hyped-up two year old, but that’s beside the point.  The point is, my irrational answer was actually very rational and pointed to a larger joy (going to Ninga and Grandpapa’s) than the small enjoyment of Madagascar 3. Betty just didn’t know the whole story, couldn’t see the big picture.  I believe the same principles are at work on a much, much larger scale with God.

That doesn’t mean we should just throw up our hands and say that every bad thing that happens is “God’s will” so why intervene at all.  Another parenting analogy for you: I’m watching very closely when the girls start getting testy with each other, but I try very hard not to swoop in and solve their problems for them every time (Chris still says I intervene too early, but that’s another story).  Allowing them to sort it out for themselves gives them a chance to mature emotionally.  Again, I realize this sounds trite to compare a siblings’ spat over crayons to an international war that kills thousands, but it’s the best I have.  I did say this was cold comfort.

I do believe there is a larger picture – I do believe that this life is just one chapter of our existence.  That makes it easier to believe in God’s existence and God’s goodness.  I do believe God loves us as a mother loves a child, and as such I have to believe that there is a reason that God acts in the way Xe does.  I doubt a lot of atheists are reading this blog, but if they are, this is probably where they roll their eyes at my desperate self-delusions.  I have no answer for them.  I wish that I had some clever words to change their minds, but I don’t.  I wish I had more comfort for the questioning believer, but I don’t.  What I do have is hope, hope that God will reveal Xyr larger purposes in due time.  And that will have to suffice for now.

***

I wrote this post before the death of Kobe Bryant, pausing, as usual, for a bit before coming back to it with fresh eyes for editing.  It now seems harsh, yet even more relevant in the loss of such a beloved public figure.  It painfully highlights the fact that we truly do not know God’s full workings.  My prayers are with his family and the families of the other passengers: may they find comfort in each other, love from the larger community, and may time to pass quickly, as it seems to be the only thing that truly heals in tragedies such as these.  May God hold them in xyr hands.