Hospitality for the Coming Age

discovering where we live

Krista Tippett’s interviews with Majora Carter and Calvin DeWitt offer hope and wisdom for those in the “environmental” movement. Listen to the whole thing, or check out gems on:

the role of academic experts in the environmental movement

How did we trick ourselves into thinking that we would NOT know (or be able to learn) how to be a vibrant part of our ecosystems, perhaps growing our own food or restoring native bird habitats, or building safer run-off systems?

the trouble with the word environment

I think this is a fascinating, and frightening, power of language. This is one reason why it’s encouraging that many communities of faith are using “creation care” language, understanding ourselves to be one more part of creation.

what we lose and what we gain when living in a sustainable community

Certainly we do lose things, especially in the short-term, when we are still accustomed to technology-driven lives and believe that modern conveniences actually make our lives easier. Perhaps the next cultural wave will hold values that love everything about sustainable living, and despise anything fast-food, individually-wrapped, overnight…but I’m not there yet!

what religion and the Netherlands have to offer

Why aren’t more people talking about this?! Didn’t 1 in 4 people see An Inconvenient Truth, and watch Florida disappear?!

Tags: action, bronx, calvin dewitt, care, class, creation, dunn, environment, environmentalism, krista tippett, land, majora carter, movement, poverty, religion, speaking of faith, sustainable, wisconsin

Art of Hosting Sketchbook, part 1

I can’t draw, so I’ll plug a visual representation of hosting important conversations on Dave Pollard’s blog. This is only a part of the image, so visit the site for the full sketchbook!

16 October 2008

samosas

Kelly, Aaron, Chris and I gathered over Indian food, celebrating the very non-local ingredients I ordered on Ebay. In my defense, I only ordered these ingredients online because the Co-op doesn’t carry them, and because I didn’t want to make an otherwise unnecessary trip to some city.

carrot and green chile stir-fry

We had samosas (I made the wrap with 1/2 whole wheat, 1/2 white flour and I skipped the rice flour), carrot and green chile stir-fry (too much lime juice, in my opinion, but otherwise lovely), cilantro peanut chutney

cilantro peanut chutney

(I used serrano peppers and didn’t take the seeds out, and it was SO SPICY, so I mixed it with 2 cups

coconut pistachio sweetmeat

of yogurt) and coconut pistachio sweetmeat. This is only the first page of the recipe, so let me know if you want the rest.  I didn’t follow it at all, so I ended up with pudding, that wasn’t a hit.

One member of the Richmond Church of the Brethren plants extra rows of corn each year to share with the congregation, who picks, husks, cooks and eats together, inviting the neighborhood for dinner.

Dan Ulrich’s October sermon “Faith, Fear and Finances” has already gotten plenty of attention in the blogosphere. I’m posting about it anyway, to highlight something that Dan added for his second preaching of this great sermon, at the Richmond Church of the Brethren.

“We need more than frugality - we need generosity,” said Dan on Sunday. Brethren have been known for our frugality. One of my favorite Brethren, Sister Julie Garber, plays a charicature of a Brethren woman, Anna Bap. (Playing on the Church of the Brethren’s Anabaptist roots.) Anna Bap is a simple-living, simple-speaking, simple-dressing, classic Brethren character. She feels a humble pride because she can live off of so little.

I grew up in an Anna Bap house, and feel that same humble pride that I will be able to live in a post-carbon world. I’ll even get a strange thrill out of finding new depths of reusing and going without. But the thrill will fade quickly when many of my neighbors run out of food or don’t know how to do laundry without running water, and drain our rain barrel and raid our pantry.

How can we share the bounties of our frugailty most effectively, in a way that can sustain the most people for the most time? How can we share the skills of frugality RIGHT NOW, before scarcity is a reality for all of us?

Tags: anabaptist, brethren, church, economic crisis, frugal, post-carbon, resources, sermon, share

What do you do when your guests make a mess?

Crumbs scattered on the couch, ground into the carpet, sweating beverages leaving marks on the coffeetable….

The kittens haven't learned to clean themselves yet.

Seems like the mature, honest thing to do would be to proactively discuss the matter with the messy guest. But for those of us who avoid confrontation and fear hurting people’s feelings, is there any way around a direct conversation?

Certainly relationships are more important than clean houses, but this doesn’t mean we can’t have some expectations for our guests’ respect, right?

Sed and Awk are certainly the messiest guests we’ve ever had. They poop in corners when they don’t see a litterbox nearby. They poop in the litterbox and then scoot their stinky, sticky butts accross the floor. They knock things over to enjoy the noise and the big reaction from the tall ones. They leave wet spots on the blankets they suck on for comfort. Continue Reading »

Tags: cat, communication, conflict, confrontation, guest, kitten, mess

21 September 2008

The Ritchies get lunch at the greeter gathering.

In September, a wonderful group of folks from the Richmond Church of the Brethren gathered to brainstorm about greeting. While the congregation is warm and gregarious, we have no official greeters on Sunday mornings, and sometimes visitors slip through the cracks.

Much of the work in these notes has been done, or is in the works. A greeter training with Church of the Brethren hospitality expert Fred Bernhard will be on Saturday, December 6 from 9-11am. All in the church family are welcome, even those who don’t plan to be official greeters. A welcoming church is a collective effort!

possible greeter duties before worship (possibly one set of greeter(s) at doors, one at sanctuary doors, one in library/back of sanctuary)

• start outside, even at cars

• open front door for everyone (not just visitors)

• give physical directions, and instructions

• show where nametags, bulletins, library are

• wear “greeter” nametags (purple or something)

• learn to hand-off a visitor to someone else (and get back to post) Continue Reading »

  Tags: church, family, gathering, greeter, lunch, visitors
  

18 October 2008

Chris, my mom Rachel, and I went to Earlham alum Stephani Danyi’s presentation about transition towns during Earlham’s homecoming festivities.

Transition towns are towns/cities/rural areas that are relocalizing in preparation for energy descent. With oil, gas, water use and other resources peaking, we know energy descent is around the corner! We get to decide if we prepare proactively, or are forced to descend once the resources are already gone.

Stephani shared the 12 steps of transition towns. Read the official guide, check out my notes:

1. form steering group and design its evolution from outset, 3-5 people

2. awareness raising

3. lay foundations – make sure community understands, collaborate and become practical, e.g. offer energy audits to local businesses, match landowners with wanna-be farmers

4. official unleashing of town as transition town

5. form working groups

6. use open space technology – coffee break style setting, record ideas on big paper

7. develop visible manifestations of the project, e.g. currency, transition tales

8. facilitate a great reskilling

9. build a bridge to local government

10. honor the elders

11. let it go where it wants to go

12. create an energy descent action plan, use backcasting: imagine being in the future – how did we get here?

or watch transition towns core thinker Rob Hopkins present them:

Melissa Hill

23 October 2008

Today Melissa Hill spoke at Bethany/ESR Peace Forum about third party politics.

Three-and-a-half years ago, Bill Kristol spoke at Earlham College.

Melissa is a volunteer coordinator for Ralph Nader/Matt Gonzalez in Indiana, and Florida, 2000 was bound to come up. When it did, tension filled the room and the decibels jumped. Quickly, the energy focused on the center of the room, on one person shouting at Melissa about Nader’s 2000 campaign.

Halfway through Bill Kristol’s speech, a student climbed onto the stage and threw a pie in his face, then ran out of the building. Bill (and Earlham president Doug Bennett) wiped the pie off his face and continued his speech, to a standing ovation.

I found the forementioned part of Peace Forum to be inhospitable. I found the pieing of Bill to be provocative. When I look at Bill’s experience at Earlham through the lens of Melissa’s presentation, I am humbled. If shouting and pointing fingers at a speaker feels inhospitable to me, how can throwing a pie at a speaker be anything else?

Sure, there are some key differences: Melissa is young, a woman, and not part of the seminary community hosting Peace Forum, while the person who shouted at her is older, male and has contextual status as a professor. And though he was sitting, he is much taller and larger than Melissa. Continue Reading »

Tags: aruge, bethany, bill, college, disagreement, earlham, esr, florida, guest, kristol, melissa hill, nader, peace forum, pie, pieing, politics

this summer's garden coming to an end

“Whatever we may have liked about the era of cheap, oil-based food, it is drawing to a close. Even if we were willing to continue paying the environmental or public-health price, we’re not going to have the cheap energy (or the water) needed to keep the system going, much less expand production. But as is so often the case, a crisis provides opportunity for reform, and the current food crisis presents opportunities that must be seized.”

Yesterday journalist Michael Pollan offered an extensive and insightful letter to our next president (he assumes Cynthia McKinney won’t come from behind and win!). Pollan connects food issues with energy, health, national sovereignty, pollution - basically he puts food in its rightful context, in the center of everything.

Pollan also offers some great reasons to hope. Is there any reason to believe that Obama or McCain will heed this advice? How are you resolarizing your life?

Read the full article below, and thanks to Andy for finding it!

Farmer In Chief

New York Times Magazine, The (NY) - October 12, 2008
Author: MICHAEL POLLAN

Dear Mr. President-Elect,

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration — the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.

Continue Reading »

I don’t own any stock, have retirement savings, or have a mortgage payment. Heck, most years, I don’t even have to file income taxes because I’ve made so little money. So when I think about the economic “crisis” we’re facing, I see a lot of opportunity:

• extra incentive to bike for transportation, getting exercise while doing something useful
• compelling time to grow more of our own food, and learn how to preserve it
• good chance to bring our neighborhoods together to brainstorm about the sustainability of our communities
• serious moments in which to reevaluate our priorities and excesses

NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu says it well, and with lots of cynical humor:

“…Without worries about money, without a job, and with extra space in the garage to grow food and invent, these people forgot about the stock market, stopped borrowing money, even forgot how to shop — in short they stopped being American. These un-Americans got their exercise raking the compost instead of circling the mall; they home-schooled their children and were never again embarrassed that their kids knew more than they did. Heck, they were in heaven, the place where the pursuit of happiness leads to when you stop pursuing it…”

Listen to the full commentary.