Serve God, Save the Planet (Part I)

Tara recently got me reading a book that we picked up for her birthday titled, Serve God, Save the Planet by J. Matthew Sleeth, MD. You may recall back in this post where I began describing some of our journey towards intentionally respecting the earth that God so amazingly created. Seeing that today is Blog Action Day, I thought I'd pass on some ecological/lifestyle stats from Sleeth's book that jumped out at me. I've decided not to comment on them much at this point because they paint a fascinating & jolting picture all in their own right:

• Rate of forest destruction worldwide = 1 acre per second


• Number of species going extinct = more than 100 per day


• The U.S. uses more natural resources than any country in history

• In the next ten years, 20 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer (1 out of every 15)

• Currently, more than 700 man-made toxins can be found in human tissues

• If every household changed its five most used light bulbs to compact fluorescents, the country could take 21 coal-fired power plants off-line tomorrow
• "This would keep one trillion pounds of poisonous gases and soot out of the air we breathe and would have the same beneficial impact as taking eight million cars off the road" (Sleeth 66).
  

• Approximately 64,000 Americans die annually as a result of soot in the air

• One power plant in Massachusetts was alone found to cause 1,200 ER visits, 3,000 asthma attacks, 110 deaths annually

• The average American watches 1,700 hours of television annually
• The average school-age child attends 900 hours of classes a year

• By the time a typical American reaches age 71, they will have spent a solid 10 waking years in front of a TV

• There are 300 million television sets in America, which consume five times more energy than is produced by all the geothermal, biomass, solar, & wind sources in the U.S. combined

• Ten times more energy, water, & grain is needed to produce a pound of beef or pork than to produce a pound of milk or cheese

• The loss of rain forests in South America means that the clouds they once made no longer blow across the Atlantic to drop their water on Africa
• As a result the Sahara grows by thousands of acres per year

• Nearly a billion people live in chronic hunger

• Every 10 days, a quarter of a million people die from starvation (25,000 every day)

• Haiti's forests have been cut down and shipped to the U.S. As a result, Haiti has lost 90% of its topsoil

• In America, junk mail fills 340,000 garbage trucks per year all bound for landfills
• 4 out of 5 pieces of junk mail aren't recycled

• About 70% of U.S. electricity is generated by fossil fuels, 20% nuclear, 9% hydropower
• Solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and methane combine for the remaining 1%
• We have been developing these alternative sources for three decades

This is a lot to take in at once, but my goal in relaying this info is to drive at a major theme: an element of interconnectedness defines these statistics. Nearly ALL of us in America play a role in the problems, and ALL of us have the option sitting right in front of us to play a role in the solutions...


*Note: While I haven't taken the time to research and provide cited references, I have a reasonably high degree of confidence in validity of each of the above statistics. Of course, I'm completely willing to be persuaded otherwise if contradictory data is out there... but I haven't seen any.

We Feel Fine.

Those that are close to me know that one of my favorite web destinations is the TED site (especially since they started posting videos of the various presentations over a year ago). I think I originally learned about TED a few years ago via John Chandler's stellar blogging and have admired it ever since.

Anyway, the latest presentation** that I viewed was given by Jonathan Harris on his project titled We Feel Fine. This melding of art + digital programming + humanity really captured me. I found the thought-process behind it all and the dynamic results simply beautiful (...not to mention Harris's incredible knack for minimalist asthetic).

This from the Mission of the project:

Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.).

Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved. The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions like: do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel?...

Since starting in 2005, they've collected nearly 9,000,000 feelings from almost 2,000,000 unique individuals all over the globe. I encourage you to check it out, and spend some time rolling around with other peoples' emotions. It effectively erases physical and social barriers, and I think there's great value in that.

Ok, so let's see if I can get my feelings pulled into the We Feel Fine project:

I am feeling a lot of tension when I think about how to follow the ways of Jesus in the American suburbs (but that's a subject for a separate post...).

**If you have a spare 17 minutes, below is the Harris presentation (he explains his projects far more interestingly than I have...):


.

Head of Radio...

I overfloweth with great anticipation!

Radiohead has just made their new studio album, In Rainbows, available for pre-order.

In true Radiohead-curveball fashion: you name your own price when you pre-order the album download.
Seriously.
No, really.
I just did it. Just fill in the blanks.
Welcome to Radiohead in their post-EMI contract world.


(Sidenote: I think this is really a fantastic experiment, but if you're a Radiohead fan, I think that you should pay what you deem their art to be worth... rather than see how little you can pay to consume... just my two pence.)

I'll plan to post my thoughts on the album after I am able to download it on October 10th...

::anticipatory grin::

*Photo credit: Dead Air Space

Rite of Passage

A couple nights ago, I was watching a recent episode of the Charlie Rose Show (I highly recommend this talk show) in which Sean Penn and Eddie Vedder were interviewed regarding Penn's latest movie as writer/director & Vedder as score composer/performer, Into the Wild.* The film is based off of John Krakauer's book of the same name and details the true story of Christopher McCandless's adventures & ultimate tragedy in the early 1990s. I thought the interview with Penn and Vedder was mostly interesting, but the subject matter surrounding McCandless's journey was what really captured me.

Here's a synopsis of the closing years of McCandless's life from Publisher's Weekly:

After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he went to live in the wilderness. Four months later, he turned up dead. His diary, letters and two notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive, apparently stranded by an injury and slowly starving. They also reflect the posturing of a confused young man, raised in affluent Annandale, Va., who self-consciously adopted a Tolstoyan renunciation of wealth and return to nature.

In the Charlie Rose interview, Sean Penn explored the notion of a "rite of passage" that McCandless seemed to impose on himself:

"I think in a societal, organic sense [a rite of passage] almost doesn’t exist anymore in terms of something that presents itself to you (whether you choose it or not) it’s something for your survival and it’s mandatory. That exists very seldomly, particularly in our culture here in the U.S. Increasingly, I think that men and women are recognizing that this is not a human luxury, but a human need: to test one’s self, to find one’s self, and most importantly to return to one’s self..."

These ideas got me musing on the effects that modern American society and technological advances have had on our development as individuals (and consequently, as a nation). When I look into the direction taken by Christopher McCandless, it's sobering to see how certain decisions led to his death, yet I can't help but sense that he was on to something.

Is it possible that our "advanced" culture is gradually drawing us away from the necessity of interacting and grappling with the physical world?... away from the raw process of maturity? I think many of us, at some point, endure a disruptive event that forces us to either shrink back or grow up; but in 21st century America it seems that these events tend to be trite, virtual, or contrived for those with excess. Being human seems to require an almost primal simplicity at times, and I think our material crap can really get in the way. (It does for me anyway)

Well, enough rambling about that. I'm really looking forward to seeing this film at some point (and hopefully read the book ahead of time). In my mind, all of these thoughts keep tying into the concept of degrees of separation that I still want to write about sometime soon. Until then... adieu.


* You can view this particular interview here.
Photo Credit - www.intothewild.com

Commemorating an Uncle...

Tad S. Taylor (2.22.1950 - 9.7.2007)

My uncle died last week at 57 years of age. Tad Taylor (my mom's younger brother and a very well-liked man) had an infectious, rhythmic laugh, an ever-present sense of humor, a trademark bald head, and scores of friends and family members who are heavy with pain at his unexpected & abrupt departure. Tad was an incredible fisherman who taught me how to fly fish on the Madison River in Montana and gave me my first fly rod years ago. He was the kind of fun-lovin' uncle that seemed to always have a different nickname for me (although he generally referred to me as "turkey-lips":-), and wouldn't hesitate to hop on the Xbox with my brother & me for a quick game of Halo when visiting from Texas for Thanksgiving. While the burden of his death is heaviest on people such as his wife, his children, and my mom, I'm also going to miss him as I find myself wishing that I had valued our relationship more while he was still around.

Death confuses me. It is an incredibly disruptive force. It raises so many questions, and yet, for those of us who remain it also brings certain aspects of our lives sharply into focus.

Death is certain... unavoidable... unpredictable.

I felt the gravity of this fact as I rocked my baby in my arms during Tad's funeral. Shea's eyes shine with wonder as she experiences all sorts of "firsts" each day, while at the same time we found ourselves contemplating how Tad's journey has drawn to a close. This is a finite journey that we're all experiencing. (Of course many of us have faith in a larger reality, but my thoughts here are limited to our experiences that are constrained by time) All of us, including my daughter, are facing a quantifiable number of days on this earth... and this is a sobering thought for me. And what's more, as I transition fully into adulthood, the departure of those near to me will only increase in frequency as time progresses. I don't like that... but I can't hide from it either.

Accordingly, I don't think I give death enough thought, especially for something that is such a huge component of being a member of the human race. It seems that we should strive to maintain some sort of balance in our living when it comes to these realizations: embracing our mortality, and the mortality of those around us, to a degree that helps us appreciate and optimize the present without being scared of the future. I need to work on this.

As was said at Tad's funeral, "What love leaves behind far exceeds what death can take away."

Decisions While Standing at a Crossroad...

Welp, it's an important time in history to be a human being (some may say). From the range of views pumping out of pop culture/the mass media, I hear one side claiming that this generation (OUR generation) is staring global problems AND global solutions in the face like no people group to come before us. On the other side, I sometimes hear voices saying that to agree with this notion that we are a "generation standing at a crossroad" is incredibly self-absorbed, and that to fill our heads with these shallow, bandwagon-joining ideas of "saving the world" is little more than idyllic fantasy. I think I see where each side is coming from, but I definitely tend to side much more with the former than the latter.

Never before in history has so much wealth existed on this earth... so much mass production of goods... so much excess. Never before has digital information touched every country on the globe... tools of empowerment becoming so readily available. Technology continues to plow forward with innovation, systematically uncovering information and solutions to long-standing problems. And yet the problems are of unprecedented proportions as well: never before has humanity seen so much material disparity between haves and have-nots, such massive and multiplying populations, such uncontrollable pandemics, such irreparable damage to our environment, etc.

These circumstances demand intervention on a grand scale, and human intervention can always be simplified to one origin: individual decisions to act. If we sympathize with the dying poor in the developing world, yet our sympathy ends at sentimentality... the poor still needlessly die. If we are concerned about the increasing pollution in our cities and with the mounting data that points to human-caused climate change, yet our frustration isn't powerful enough to change our very lifestyle which is contributing to the problems... then how can we characterize certain decisions we make as anything other than selfish or lazy?

These are realizations that I've been rolling around in recent months, and I think they apply to so many aspects of our daily lives. The challenge is finding the proper balance of learning, realizing, taking action, and being realistic.

Along these lines, there's a "green" movement gaining momentum in our country and among pursuers of Jesus who are trying to build God's Kingdom on this earth. Tara and I are trying to learn more about what we can do to reduce our impact and embark on some new lifestyle adventures along the way. We've got a looooong way to go, but the path certainly looks intriguing. Tara's really been guiding us in new directions at home, and I've recently had some exciting ideas come along in this realm as well, but this post is now far too long... so I'll save the idea-sharing for another post:-)

*Photo Credit - "Marc:" on Flickr

Thank you, Vusi Mahlasela.

My wife tells me that I don't post enough (and I agree). She says that I shouldn't be afraid to just post random things because that's what blogging's all about: giving people a window into what's happening in your realm (and I agree... I like to agree with her because she's smart and good lookin' with a capital "GOOD LOOKIN'"). So rather than posting wordy, in-depth commentaries about the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the spiritual application of the concept regarding "degrees of separation," or my musings about my medium-term plans for what to do with myself and my family [all of which are dominating my mind these days], instead I'm going to succinctly thank a musician that I just discovered: Vusi Mahlasela.

South African singer-songwriter Vusi Mahlasela was a crucial artistic voice during the fight against apartheid, and now in the new modern-day nation. Blending traditional African music with soul and blues, his music showcases powerful vocals and poetic lyrics.

As someone who used to spend a lot of time playing guitar, I love the tone that he produces with his fleshy-fingerstyle. But beyond that, as I watched him play and sing for the first time, I was reminded of why I originally fell head-over-heels in love with music when I was 17 (wittingly or not): There are times when I experience a profoundly intimate connection with someone's creativity in sound... just me and the notes, the words, the melody. And it rings throughout my humanity... sweeps me into the reality of what beautiful is, that God made this, and that there's hope for this messy world because a God that can create such nuanced wonder most certainly has a plan for His people going forward. [That probably doesn't really make sense, but it does for me;-]

Anyway, I hope Vusi's music, his creativity, grabs you as it does me...

Whew! Transition to dénouement...

dé|noue|ment [noun] - the final part of a narrative in which the strands of a plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.

Looking back over the recent months, there have definitely been a lot of strands thickening the plot lately. And yet, within in a matter of a few weeks, our own personal dénouement seems to have taken place (and not a moment too soon) after nearly two years of intense rising action. Seeing that my last post here was in December of last year (good grief), I'll do a quick rundown of the most noteworthy recent events:

I became a daddy.
My little girl, Shea Marin, was born on April 29th, and wow... what an incredible experience that was! The weight of the implications surrounding the birth of my daughter is oftentimes more than I can manage in my mind (much less describe in a blog post), so I'll not even try to convey all of those thoughts at the moment. Here are some internal snapshots from the journey thus far:
- I am SO in love with this little person...
- Having an infant reveals my selfishness and weakness...
- It is amazing, regardless of how much I internalized it beforehand, how one tiny baby can rock your entire reality and worldview...

I finished grad school for now (pretty much:).
On May 4th, I walked across the platform to receive my MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, and it has never felt so good to come home from the office and wind-down as opposed to ramp-up for conference calls, case-reading, and various other forms of self-inflicted torment. After 20 non-stop months of being in class, three continents visited, 20 ridiculous professors, and many classmates-turned-friends, I count the grueling experience well worth the sacrifice (although, one that I will not soon replicate:) I wrote "pretty much" in the header because Shea was born the morning that I was supposed to be in Glendale for the final week of lectures, so I'll be making that up in August and THEN I'll get my diploma... [kinda like the time I couldn't get my diploma from Wheaton until I paid $150 in past-due parking tickets... insufferable Public Safety officers!!!]

I went to China.
As part of my Thunderbird study of the Asian business environment, we spent a long week in Beijing in January earlier this year. Entirely fascinating land that I hope to revisit someday with my family. Journeying through the Forbidden City and hanging out in modern-day Tiananmen Square creates quite a background and framework for the present paradox that is China today. I got this very intangible vibe from the culture that I think stems from the rub of free-market forces marching out of step of the Communist Party.

And as I witnessed the Party guard lower the PRC flag in Tiananmen Square as the sun went down over the polluted urban sky, a sobering reality came over me that I was experiencing perhaps the early markings of a burdgeoning world military power to be reckoned with in the not-too-distant future... time will tell.

My bros came to visit.
In February, four of my closest friends from my Wheaton days popped down to the desert to see me one last time before I became a boring father;-) Man, did I make some poor choices when it came to college buddies!! (ha, I jest) No, honestly, it was such a great time to have the five of us in one place again... a tradition that we plan to execute for years to come. Whoever said that many of our closest friends are made in college knew what they were talking about.

Still working on finding rhythm...
Zach Lind titles his blog "Finding Rhythm," and I really resonate with those words. As Tara and I (& Shea) progress on our journey through life together, we find ourselves increasingly pushing to discover some of the sacred life "rhythms" that Jesus has in mind for his followers. Stay tuned as I continue to stumble along this path in community and share some thoughts along the way...

Indifference: absence of love

A while ago, I came across a quote on Troy Anderson's blog, Seek Justice, that really resonated with me. I'd like to pass it along here:

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.

-Elie Wiesel (b. 1928), from his Millenium Lecture series speech at the White House, April 12, 1999

I'm going to be a daddy!

Well folks, it's official... the stork should be paying us a visit next spring. Tara is currently around 8.5 weeks along, which makes the baby due around May 1st (a seemingly popular time of year among our family). We had our first doctor's appointment last Monday where they performed an ultra-sound, and baby Bam decided to make a cameo appearance for us, playing the nebulous-yet-articulate role of "blob with a heartbeat":)

Needless to say, we're beyond excited! Although now, no matter what I cook for dinner, Tara holes-up in the bedroom with the door closed to keep away from the smell (which isn't that different than before the pregnancy, actually!).

Laying the Foundation

Many months ago, I began reading Jeffrey Sachs's latest book, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. In the mix of grad school and work, it has taken me much longer to get through this book than I would have liked, but I've gained some amazing insights from the experiences of Sachs nonetheless. After I read the intro to the book (last year...geez), I wrote a proclamation of sorts that I'll post below. These words are mostly directed at myself as I attempt to stay focused on the issues that truly matter to me, and re-reading this has often times drawn me back to the basics.

The goal is simple: emanate love in action. The task is monumentally complicated: eradicate extreme poverty around the globe by 2025. As we begin this journey, I often feel the strength of the disease in my stomach; the evil that has dragged cultures, countries, and continents by their hair to these wastelands of despair. This evil is manifested in the corrupt developing-world governments, in the child sex-slave owners, in the AIDS pandemic…but perhaps this evil is most horrifically displayed in the developed world, where we look deep in the eyes of a suffering child and, in good conscience, look away with indifference.

I am resolved to not look away anymore. I want to be used for the greater-good. I want to learn how to be commandingly effective for love & justice. It is my prayer that no matter how impossible future situations may feel, that somehow we will be able to lean back on the simple truth that the Creator is more than able to accomplish His design. I understand that His will may not look exactly like our goal, but I am certain that it does not look like the world does today. Soli Deo Gloria.

interesting, Smithers....

I came across this earlier today and found it to be interestingly funny. I'm not sure about the scientific truth involved or the study at Cambridge, but I could definitely read it without much problem...how 'bout you?


Cna yuo raed tihs?

*i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

Europe is nice.

Hey hey...props to all my [1.5] readers (love you, honey)!

I've been home from my trip to Switzerland for over a week now, but I'm still trying to get back in the groove with school, work, life, etc. Anyhow, enjoy the photos on my Flickr.

...it doesn't mean that we too can't not die in a freak gasoline fight accident!

True to form, I really don't have much to post about...so...I might as well introduce you to our dog.

This is Charlie...sleeping...




This is Charlie helping me install a new diswasher...while sleeping...
[yes I have enormous feet, thanks]



This is Charlie about to go clubbin'.
[word.]