Karen’s Earth Day September 4, 2007

Hello everyone! I’m back from my mountain escape, and I apologize my long summer silence. For my first post back, I’m going to use someone else’s words. One year ago this August my dear sister Karen watched An Inconvenient Truth for the first time, and it truly changed her life. Over the last year I’ve seen how her internal, even spiritual, shift in her relationship to the planet has manifested as a real commitment to greener living – under circumstances much more stressful than my own. Karen recently posted on her blog a tribute to the changes and challenges brought by seeing the film. Below, a few excerpts for your enjoyment; or pop over to needsnewbatteries.blogspot.com.

“My daily grind, my environmental discipline these days, reminds me of a spiritual commitment, to tithe, to pray, to meditate, to fast, to forgo, to sacrifice. One does these things solely for a benefit that can’t be held in one’ s hand. Learning to clean with vinegar and baking soda proved to be both easy and incredibly money saving. Giving up paper towels, very much harder to do, and let us not discuss diapers here. I. just. can’t. But, I might in the future…I just might.

This is a not abnormal scene in my life: baby needs Motrin for teeth. Oh, we need a new bottle, nothing in this one. Okay, rinse it out in bathroom sink. Check the bottom of the bottle: it’s a 2, 2s go downstairs. Put bottle on bathroom counter. Okay, open new bottle. It’s in a small cardboard box. Thin filmy plastic surrounds it. Deep breath. I cannot recycle this plastic here, yet. Deep breath. It goes in the trashcan in the bathroom. Small cardboard box – small ray of light, I can recycle this. It has to go downstairs to recycling. Open Motrin. Dose fussy baby who then requires nap. Return to bathroom, retrieve recycling from sink and take downstairs…

…The chores have become for me an exercise in mindfulness, of doing the steps, each in its turn, aware the result is bigger than the steps. I bring to this process a history of silent prayer, a little yoga practice and the mindfulness training that one teaches oneself for natural childbirth. Becoming part of the process, knowing the result is bigger than me and my tiny actions: a Motrin bottle chucked on a pile of beer bottles, the tending of green things, the delicate balance of shopping bags, paper recycling, vinegar rinse in the sink, three boys squashed together in a tub, in a car, laughing, loving, bickering, squawking, looking hopefully ahead to a planet with glaciers, mountains, rain forests, desserts, birds, fish, and trees.”