A Matter of Convenience

A commercial crackles over the radio...it is presenting the idea that a man proposes over the phone and then his cell phone cuts out so he does not get his intends response, thus destroying the engagement.  The commercial makes clear that life will only be good if one has the right cell phone service.  In fact a myriad of ads tell Americans on a daily basis that our lives will only be good and "right" if we have convenience, if it is easy.  The message line over and over again is our lives are supposed to be easy.

Right now the globe requires of all people living in first world countries that we live less energy intensive lives which means less convenient lives.  Several years ago my family peace group decided as a group that we needed to stop using plastic bags in stores because they are made of petroleum.  This meant needing to own and bring to the store our own bags.  Now that sounds SO simple right?  Wrong.  I discovered keeping them in the car was easy, but time and time again I would get in the store to realize I left them in the car.  If I was not all the way in the checkout line I would make myself go back out and get them which eventually ingrained habit. 

But I was amazed how hard I found the habit to make.  I realized I had been RAISED to never have to prepare for going to the store - to just have what I needed there.  It is the same with using real products over paper plates, cups, plastic silverware and paper napkins or paper towels.  All these things waste resources and can easily be replaced with real items....All it requires is preplanning and the willingness to clean the items afterwards.

My favorite example of this engrained American way of thinking is a friend of mine decided she was going to start a campaign to get people to bring their own mugs to coffee shops.  She went to her favorite coffee shop to ask them something about how much the cups cost them and while she was there ordered a coffee. She then looked down and realized she was drinking out of a paper cup that the coffee she had just ordered was put in!

In a support group I later joined to look at Climate Change issues a friend joked:   "Hi my name is Rick and I'm a carbon addict"  at first we laughed at this 12-step parody.  But very quickly we began to realize it is NO joke!  We are addicted and it actually requires focused attention and support to change the life time American habit of believing we are entitled to convenience.  In that group I struggled to reduce my driving by riding a bike more.  (I have mainly failed.)  It is so hard for me to decide that it is ok to spend more time getting around because it is so much quicker and thus convenient to dash somewhere in my car.  Opps I forgot an ingredient for dinner and now it is half cooked and almost dinner time; just jump in the car and go get that ingredient.  A 10 block drive each direction for a can of one item.   We do this sort of thing all the time, doe it really make sense? Do I want the planet melted for a quick can of beans, or for the right to throw away my napkin?

Several years after my peace group decided to switch to carrying our own bags,  (I now have a nylon one folded up the size of a wallet in my purse at all times) my city first had a referendum to abolish plastic bags.  The petroleum industry actually spent X number of  dollars to defeat the referendum claiming it disadvantaged the poor.  A few years later the city council, not to be as easily bought, passed a law outlawing plastic bags after July lst.

The second week of July I encountered an old woman running through the parking lot back to the check out line with her plastic bags in hand:  “Not yet a habit” she cheerfully called out.  I asked the cashier how this was going.  He said: “Some people are fine and some are really mad”. At Christmas I got to witness a grown man having a tantrum in the store because the cashier could not give him a bag.  American addiction to convenience is not always pretty!  What will we have to feel if life is not always easy?

Most recently my sweetheart has challenged me to look at being completely vegetarian.  I was completely vegetarian for 10 years and partially vegetarian for some two decades more.  I added fish back in as a matter of convenience.  I was driving three times a week along a hwy where I had to purchase my dinner and it was littered with only fast food restaurants.  After a year of bean burritos three times a week I could not look at one without feeling slightly sick, so I added fish back in.  For years and years I ate meat only outside of my home in restaurants because it was hard (read inconvenient) to find restaurants with vegetarian options.  (In foreign cities it often requires careful internet research ahead of time.)  However eating no meat is the carbon equivalent to going from a gas guzzler to a Prius. I must once again look at this peculiar American obsession and feeling of entitlement to convenience. Eating no meat is the greatest reduction in carbon most Americans could make.  Since I have been in the business for the last few years of encouraging Americans to reduce their carbon foot print, it certainly makes my witness more integral.  So for New Years I will eat a ceremonious last fish and then stop eating all meat.

 "How inconvenient."  Good thing Al Gore named it an inconvenient truth that our planet is melting.  Which thing is ultimately more inconvenient?

Holy Obedience?

Recently in a lesson on Quakerism, Friends in my Meeting reacted with surprise to the fact that in 1660 Charles the II released some 700 Quakers from prison and in 1661 4,000 were arrested as the 5th Monarchy uprising was suppressed.  My guess is if we knew the total population of England and the total number of Quakers at the time this indeed would be a significant proportion of both populations.  We know early Friends were imprisoned for refusing to doff their hats and for simply practicing their religion, but it is hard to comprehend how deeply a part of early Quaker experience this was!

Certainly over the centuries Quakers have also gone to jail/prison for the suffragette movement (some being force fed), for refusing conscription in any number of wars, and for various individual acts of non-violence.  But basically at this point in our history it is fairly rare; in fact most Meetings no longer have funds for suffering: the funds Meetings traditionally set aside to help provide for the individual and their family who were suffering for conscience sake, who were carrying forth the Quaker witness.

It is not that there are not things happening that contradict our basic testimonies: 50-60% of our taxes going to war and preparations for war (not to mention interest on war), the refusal to marry Gays & Lesbians in most states violates our testimony on equality, the basic American lifestyle violates our testimony on simplicity, all kinds of human rights violations take place inside American corporations everyday, and many would say we have a new testimony on the environment which every one of us lives in violation of every day.  So how do we square our love of Friendly heroes like John Woolman who traveled the country appealing to Friends to release their slaves with those of us who burn carbon to do our work for us at the cost of  a livable planet for our children?  How do we square our love of Lucrettia Mott's work in prisons and behalf of the poor, with the current blight of racism that fills our prisons with the new workings of Jim Crow disenfranchising and imprisoning more black men than there were slaves in the South?

Our testimonies are testimonies and not creeds because we say that truth is known experimentally, that these are testimonies to what we know to be true so far.  Are we still listening?  Some would say that we are not doing more because of a lack of creativity to create effect campaigns on these issues.  Others would say it is a result of a graying Quaker populations (but what comes first the chicken or the egg?  Are youth attracted to a group that does not lead the way?),  Some would say we have sat in American luxury too long and become complacent and lost our courage.   I would say "Are we still listening to the still small voice within on these issues?

Recently, I went to the opening night of the "Do the Math" tour by Bill McKibben and 350.org.  This organization that has sounded the alarm on climate change for over a decade is now calling people nationally to divest from all fossil fuel companies, and to commit civil disobedience as needed at their stockholder meetings.  We have already experience 1 degree of warming and are on our way quickly to 2 degrees.  The horrors of two degrees are were we get sea rise from the melting of Greenland, and droughts and crop failure and species extinction.  The fossil fuel companies have 5x the amount of fuel still under the earth than can be burned and not take us to 2 degree warming and beyond.  The idea is to put pressure on them to change their business plan to alternative energies or risk loosing their profits. 

This will require thousands and thousands to take a stand with their pensions and their investments and thousands more to be arrested.  In the dark theater Bill McKibben asked people who had already been arrested opposing the Exel pipeline to stand, and then he asked who would be willing to "consider" being arrested in Texas in the Spring at the Texaco stockholder meeting, and who would be willing to consider being arrested in the spring in San Francisco at the Chevron meeting, and slowly more and more people stood until at last he said who would be willing to read his email about the campaign and 2400 people were standing.   You could not be there and avoid the internal question:  "What are you willing to do to stop the madness?"  This is a question that I think all Quakers need to be sitting with in the silence and asking themselves?  What does The Creator require of us at this critical moment in the history of Creation?  Are we still listening to that "life and power" that can move us at great personal cost into the path of righteousness?