an alternative to church

I intended to attend a student's first piano recital yesterday--because that's the kind of thing I like doing--so I took the morning off from church to walk the dogs and do a few errands. the walk itself felt wonderful--simply being in communion with outside and companions can feel like a holy act--and on the way home I passed the smashed fluorescent bulbs I'd mentioned friday, reminding me that I hadn't done what I said I would. I would do that before heading to the recital.

what I'd expected to take one hour and a single bag took two hours and six bags. it wasn't a mere dozen or so large bulbs but hundreds of smaller ones, some the size of pencils, that had been broken on the roadside and heaped. the piles lay inches thick over struggling grasses and worts that were a neon yellow when I uncovered them. I wore my elbow-length leather gloves and scooped the shards onto a snow shovel with a broom head. it took a lot of stooping and standing, and when I was finally finished and had hoisted the half-full bags, crunchy now with the sound of breaking glass, to the roadside, I could not drive to the cities but drank a beer on the deck and stared at the trees until I fell asleep.

it was a kind of reverse-communion, not an adding to but a removing from, that I felt a part of in bagging those shards. there will remain a trace of the chemicals and glass by the road because there was always a layer at the base of each pile so infused with dirt I couldn't remove it. but the plants can grow over it and in a month or so it'll be invisible. but the birds and the insects serenading me sounded good and the sweat on my brow felt right and if there is a shrivening effect to doing hard necessary work this qualified.

we are the Obama we're waiting for

"Imagine if during his State of the Union Address in 2010 Obama had embraced a New Bottom Line and said that institutions, social practices, corporations, and government policies should be judged rational, efficient, or productive not only to the extent that they maximize money or power, but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring, kindness and generosity, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and awe, wonder, and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of the universe! Imagine what could have happened had he insisted that we hold ourselves accountable to those values and told us that we should hold him accountable to those values: he could have excited Americans once again, helped them overcome the despair that he himself contributed to creating, and put the focus on movements rather than on what he himself might accomplish on his own."

this impassioned comment is from rabbi michael lerner, editor of tikkun magazine, in the current issue. it is a statement that implicates us who worked hard for obama's election and then stepped back. it is a statement that should shame us.

obama's campaign slogan that resonated most with me was "we are the people we've been waiting for." we managed it, an uphill battle to popularize and elect a staunchly left-leaning black american politician to the most powerful office in the united states. and then we said, "well, that's done, what's on tv?" ought we to be surprised then when he's the object of a backlash unlike any seen since the worst days of "travelgate" and jerry falwell-sold videotapes alleging bill clinton's personal involvement with murder? we've set him up and then stepped away and we shouldn't be surprised when someone else, someone not as committed to idealism and public good and change,comes along to prop him up.

lerner's indictment reminds us it's our responsibility when, as sarah palin puts it, that "hopey-changey stuff" doesn't work out the way we wanted. yesterday on our way to a funeral viewing in new richmond, jayne suddenly said, "oh, they did it." she had seen days earlier on the new richmond facebook page someone complaining about the walmart detritus--bags and cups and plastic--along the road south of town that'd been uncovered by the melting snow. someone else had posted "well, if it bugs you, why don't you do something about it?" then some other people started posting times they were available. what we passed yesterday was mile after mile of full garbage bags waiting to be picked up.

someone will likely point out that it won't really change anything. in another 3 month's time the garbage will be back there and the same people aren't likely willing to pick it up again. that's probably true. but that says more about the people spreading the garbage than about the people picking it up. and it says more about the people waiting for someone else to pick up the garbage.

what should you do? I haven't got a clue. there are hundreds of opportunities; take your pick. I do know this: about a mile northwest of my house, thus that much closer to the twin cities, someone took it on himself to smash at least a dozen flourescent lights along the side of the road rather than pay to have them recycled. it is a singularly nasty sight, piles of white powdery glass shards among the new buds. tomorrow I'll go over there with my leather gloves and put the piles in bags. it'll probably take me an hour.