Merry Christmas!

Here I am, at the in-laws' place in the Bay Area of California. I always enjoy making the trip out here, and I am constantly telling Tara how happy I am that she's not from North Dakota or some other fill-in-the-blank-bummer-state! (no offense N. Dakotans;-)

Tara and I had a funny little exchange on Facebook the other day (especially considering our current setup)...


Mistletoe? Psshh. HDTV! It's a groovy kind of love, people:)

The End of Suburbia.

I love movies (just had to get that out there). I love the motion-picture medium, I love transcendent acting, I love the special effects, I love the wide range of audioscapes, on and on. And yet, when I look at my Netflix queue and history, it’s completely dominated by DOCUMENTARIES. If that makes me a GEEK, well then give me the pocket-protector because the wedgie fits! Documentaries are rockin’. Oftentimes biased towards a particular viewpoint, yes, but a great source of new perspectives nonetheless.

Accordingly, I’ve experienced a number of impactful documentaries lately. One of which deserves a separate post (which I plan to give) and another that I’ll talk about now...

It’s called The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream. I watched it a few weeks ago and when it finished, I just sat silently... and thought... and worried (a little). Okay, I’m not gonna lie to you: it pretty much freaked me out for the evening. Yet given a few weeks to reflect on the topics, I’m not freaked out anymore, but instead I’ve been downgraded to simply “soberly concerned.” ;-)

The premise of the film centers upon the concept of Peak Oil (yes, despite the inherent downfalls of Wikipedia, this link offers some decent info on this concept). And while certain people interviewed come across as “alarmists” foretelling a Malthusian catastrophe, the science underlying their theories pretty much stands alone.

At Thunderbird, we were consistently guided to keep the concept of Risk Management in the forefront of our sights as business managers. And this film profoundly touched the risk management nerve in me. I’m increasingly convinced of the unavoidable problems of American suburbanism (both from a land-developer’s perspective and from a spiritual perspective). Obviously, this view is in direct opposition to what I currently do for a living, but the intricacies of that situation and my plans for the future aren't something I'm going to divulge on a public blog [but feel free to ask me about it all if we're ever hanging-out in person:-]. Anyway, without fleshing out anymore of the details of the film, how about I just pose some of the questions that have been rolling around my skull as a result?

- What if the suburban lifestyle (which America promotes and accelerates) that thrives on consumption, individualism, and driving becomes virtually unworkable in the not-too-distant future due to oil production issues?

- What will the economic & social transition period look like? How devastating will it be?

- Could the transition effectively eliminate the “middle class” (for some amount of time)?

- Is New-Urbanism the only solution? If not, then what else?

- America looks to be, hands-down, the most ill-prepared for this new world economy... could this “event” effectively end the six to seven decade reign of U.S. geopolitical dominance?

And more personally…

- What does this mean for my family?

- What sort of actions should I take right now to prepare/safeguard?

I really do have quite a bit of confidence in the entrepreneurial zeal and innovation that is a hallmark of American culture, but there’s definitely a rub here, in my mind. While my parents’ generation (the Baby-Boomers) will likely live almost their entire lives in a world that operates under U.S. hegemony, I feel fairly comfortable saying that my generation will see these circumstances unexpectedly change. And it’s kind of uncomfortable to think about: because, as Americans, we’re used to calling the shots in a lot of ways... we’re used to having numerous currencies pegged to our dollar... we’re used to countries importing our entertainment, our culture... we’re used to foreigners speaking “our” language in THEIR land rather vice versa. Even I, someone who dislikes many of these aspects of the U.S., am instinctively unnerved by the thought of living under a different regime.

So, there it is. Sorry for the wordy post... (why do my ramblings end up being so wordy??) I’ve formulated some responses to the above questions, but nothing of much worth. I’d be very interested to hear anybody else’s thoughts on these matters.

(And we haven’t even touched on the spiritual implications of all of this! Oy… must lie down:-)

*Photo Credit: SingInYourSleep

Serve God, Save the Planet (Part II)

My lovely wife recently finished this book and wrote out her resulting thoughts, and this reminded me that I never wrote the Part II of my review that would logically follow my Part I (uh, duh). So, in contrast to Part I which was mostly transcribed statistics, I’m going to throw out some more intangible thoughts that I’ve been rolling around as a result of this book lately.

Just to clarify, I never want to come across as claiming to be an expert in these matters. That’s certainly not the case (which is a notion that you should feel comfortable applying to pretty much anything I write about on this blog!:-). While I often enjoy getting into the science and tedious details of some of these complicated issues, I’m very certain that I’m only getting a glimpse of the larger realities, and thus I feel most comfortable simply talking about these matters from my perspective as a regular guy with a family in America who’s trying to pursue Jesus.

And it’s at this level of interaction where the author, J. Matthew Sleeth, connected with me. I don’t think everything he writes in this book is gold-plated truth or wisdom. But the framework that he proposes ideas within is what resonated with me. Instead of touting from a soapbox about how the sky is falling and that there’s a toasty place in hell for all of us who are contributing to the problems, Sleeth speaks plainly to our humanity... to the systemic mindsets that are manifested in problems of our physical world. Let me give you an example:

“The content mind is one of the greatest obstacles to a rich spiritual life. The content mind is a proud mind. It has nothing to learn; it has an answer to everything and no more questions to ask” (62).

The motivation of the book is not to persuade readers to be “treehuggers.” Rather, Sleeth is challenging all of us to strive for a proper sense-of-self... to view our actions within a global reality... to live radically and counter-culturally because this is what Jesus incited his followers to do. And when this is done, it just may end up looking treehugger-y... and it can be transforming & divinely beautiful.

While I’ve read some reviews from other folks who felt that Sleeth comes across as judgmental and preachy, I didn’t get that sense. While he does speak about some very specific lifestyle issues (e.g., electricity use, parenting, food, Sabbath observance, consumerism, etc.), I never perceived his statements as black-and-white declarations. I just took them as really challenging observations/propositions on his part. The fact that I felt stung a few times points only to my personal conviction, not a superiority complex of Sleeth. And that’s because, above all, he speaks to the condition of our hearts:

“It is not our possessions or our homes that will keep us out of heaven, but our unwillingness to set them aside in service of the Lord” (142).

So, yes, I highly recommend the book because it really stirs up some motivation to actually make some changes in my lifestyle (rather than just stirring up a bunch of head-nods and thoughtful “hmmms…”)

Hmmm.

Enough on that.

(I was now going to transition to talking about a film I recently viewed, but this is long enough... so come back in a couple days and I’ll post my film thoughts then. Thanks for reading!)

*Photo Credit: Forestgladesiwander

Bleh.

I was trying to talk myself into making a decent post tonight... but that's not going to happen. "Why?" you might ask. Because I have a head cold. And I'm a pansy. A pansy with a head cold.

So in lieu of a post of any substance, here's my upcoming blogging prospectus for those of you who are even remotely interested:

- Gonna wrap up my Serve God, Save the Planet review that I left open-ended (plus I'm gonna throw in a film review of a recent documentary that seriously caused me to pause.)

- Gonna get a few thoughts out on the concept of "population" and pose a few related questions that are rolling around in my head.

- Gonna get a series of posts going on the concept of "non-violence," which will likely included meanderings from Fight Club, to Jared Diamond, to my childhood fist-fights, to Darfur, to James Bond, to the Revolutionary War, to Jesus Christ, to Transformers, to Uganda, to the Forbidden City, to the Mennonite tradition. Yikes, how am I going to make sense of all that?? I have no idea... but tune in to find out!!:-)

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Okay, I'll leave you with a haiku (the beloved poetic form of my buddy, Justin;-)... because, really, what else would I leave you with??

Head Cold Pansy

Sinus explosion
Wishing for softer tissues
Snot... tremendous snot.