BY CHRISTINE ROBINSON, MINISTER, FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO
I know that I don’t need to convince you that ecology is important, that global warming is real, that other species are important both to us, and for their own precious sakes, and that the answer to “Sustainability, Do We Have To?” is, “Yes. We Have To.” So instead of being convincing, I’m going to remind you of a story.
It’s a Winnie-the-Pooh story, by A.A. Milne. Pooh has gone to visit Rabbit and squeezed his rotund figure into Rabbit’s round front door. He has made a bit of a pig of himself and eaten so much of Rabbit’s honey that he can only squeeze halfway out of Rabbit’s hole, and gets stuck there. Christopher Robin is summoned to this emergency. After pushing and pulling, he proclaims that Pooh is Stuck, and that it will take a week’s fasting to cure the problem. Pooh is distraught, but Christopher Robin says that he will read to his friend to pass the time. Pooh sighs, a tear rolls down his cheek, and he says, “Then would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would help and comfort a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?”
When it comes to the issue of sustainability, I feel a bit like a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness; a bear who has made a bit of a pig of herself while enjoying all that my host had to offer, and now things are feeling tight, and I can’t seem to find my way out of this fix. I wonder if you might feel that way, too.
I have cared about the environment and tried to live lightly on the earth my whole adult life. I recycle and wear sweaters in the winter and bought a house from which I can walk to the grocery, pharmacy, dry cleaners, and restaurants. We hang out a load of laundry most weeks, garden in the summer, and go out of our way to combine trips in the car. By virtue of living with a husband even greener than I, my household has a compost pile, every kind of water saving device made, modest sized cars and well-used bicycles. We pay extra money for high efficiency appliances, use them carefully, wear them out, and fuel them with wind-generated electricity for which we also pay extra. I’m sure that many of you do the same things…some of you even more.
So…perhaps instead of contributing five times more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than the average human being on earth, as most Americans do, I only contribute three times as much. Perhaps the greenest of you do better.
It’s probably not enough, all those things I do, but it’s hard to live in this gluttonous society and be a radical environmentalist. I’d be willing to drive a tiny, light car, but it’s just not a safe option when so many other people have chosen to drive tanks. I’d walk to the bank more often, if crossing against six lanes of traffic which is often going 50 MPH weren’t so difficult and unpleasant. It’s hard to make the sacrifices of time it takes to hang out laundry or buy minimal packaging when our workaholic society is not set up to give us that kind of time. I know I’m living way beyond sustainability, that the lifestyle to which we of the developed nations have become accustomed, especially in its extremely piggy American version, can’t go on. I know I’m stuck.
If I could wave my magic wand, I’d put some areas of the world on a population-growth diet and others on a resource-use diet and we’d all tough out the fast together, forced to live in a sustainable way, and all in it together, working our way out of our Stuckness. In the absence of magic wands, I’m afraid that our world is in for some generations of Great Tightness, turmoil, and suffering. Adolescent humanity is going to have to grow up or die in the trying. It will have to grow out of its gluttonous bear and fertile rabbit stage, endure the consequences of its foolishness, and find a way to live sustainably on the earth. Do we have to? Yes, we have to. What will it mean? I’m afraid my crystal ball is as useless as my magic wand. I just feel the Great Tightness.
I’m not a big fan of fasting. I like my central heating, my water guzzling cooler, and the incredibly fuel inefficient airplanes that carry me to vacations, meetings and family. The bus is not a convenient way to get around the city. The dryer my mother bought us when she discovered that we had planned to raise a baby on air dried diapers turned out to be a lifesaver. I’m stuck. I admit it. Stuck and ready for that sustaining book.
Sustainability, sustain, sustenance are big, deep words. “Sustenance,” when applied to food, means more than just vitamins and calories. Sustenance implies food that maintains not just our physical lives but our whole lives: food that tastes good, that was cooked and served with love, that is eaten in community. Mere calories do not sustain. Even piggy old Pooh understands this in the end. It is not honey that is the meaning of life. It is having a friend who will read to you while you recover from your Stuckness, and who will read the kind of sustaining book that will remind you of what really gives you life.
What does a stuck bear do? He fasts… and the more thoroughly he fasts the sooner he is out of his predicament. If that predicament is a matter of gluttonous use of the world’s resources, the fasting is a broader matter. You know the drill: the smallest car that will work for you, the dressing for the weather rather than playing with the thermostat, the water-wise yard and energy-saving appliances, the habits of frugality—eating the leftovers, combining the trips, turning off the lights, hanging out the laundry. We all make our own choices about what will work for us. Because nothing we do will likely be enough, the most important thing, it seems to me, is to keep doing them—to live frugally and simply into a future in which these things will be required of us. The stuck bear will no doubt scrabble a bit at the hole he is stuck in…. Who could resist trying to make the hole bigger rather than the tummy smaller? We’ll come up with more energy efficient products to make us comfortable. When we buy the most efficient appliances we’re not only being frugal, we’re also using our economic power to shape the market. These things may not be the ultimate answer, but they are a part of the answer. They are a part of the answer that is especially important to those of us who are addicted to our comforts. In our future and in the future of the human race, comfort is going to be more expensive. We live into that future by supporting the new technology, even if we pay a premium in the price.
But the stuck bear will also have to learn to enjoy the things that really sustain him…and honey isn’t one of them. Education, spiritual growth, love, and community—those infinite-sum games—become important, even vital. If it becomes impossibly expensive to drive across town, one falls back on the truly sustaining pastimes of conversation, learning, meditation and caring for and about those who are close by. If we can no longer visit all of our friends and relations whenever we wish, we will relearn the art of letter writing…though it will probably be e-letter writing. Cherishing sustaining values is not only what will drive the development of more efficient technology, it is what will keep us human and humane.
There’s no getting around it. There’s going to be a crisis. It’s already started and people are already suffering. Some nations are nearly under water, people suffer from cancer, wells dry up, new and terrible diseases take advantage of weakened populations, and livelihoods are challenged by high gas prices. There’s no question, after all, that the human race must live in a sustainable way. “Yes, we have to.”
One of my sustaining family stories goes like this. My grandfather was a truck driver. During the international crisis known as the Great Depression, the amount of work dropped off. The management gathered the drivers and outlined the problem. There was simply not enough work for everyone, and it might get worse. The management asked, “Would the drivers prefer that some…the younger, newer, or less skilled, be laid off or would the drivers prefer that every driver go to part time?”
According to the story told in my family, the drivers voted for the latter. My mother remembered the family belt-tightening. It was not an easy time, and it wasn’t clear whether society would survive or prosperity would ever return. But that story was told with pride. The drivers chose to stick together and share the sacrifice of those hard times. They felt good about their choice. The event, the choice, the story, gave meaning to their lives. It’s one of the stories that make me who I am. It is, for me, a Sustaining Story. And I suppose that that story is one of the reasons that I think that the human race, advanced civilization, and love, joy, and learning will make it through the crisis we’re facing, for all the denial, the chaos, the suffering, and the devil-take-the-hindmost moral thinking that will also be a part of the picture. I believe that in the face of the need for a fast, we’ll lose some weight, make the hole a bit bigger, and discover what really sustains our lives.
