blogland favorites 27.March.2008

I haven’t been overly generous in publicizing the blogs I read, so here’s a special post to recognize my favorite blogs created by people I’ve never met.  (If you’re interested in reading my friends’ blogs, check my comments.  I figure they’ll provide a link if they want to be found.)

1. the ashram

Oh, how I love this blog.  It is written by members of a Christian community in Lexington, Kentucky.  It is brimming with examples of how to communally live in the fullness of Christ.  These people have creativity, passion for living holy lives, concern for the environment, intentionality in creating meaningful relationships.  The bloggers publish thoughtful poetry, powerful quotations, important and timely web links, and compelling photography.  I just wish Lexington, Kentucky were a little closer to Dallas.

2. Owlhaven

This is my favorite adoption blog, to date.  I think Mary, the author of Owlhaven, may well be a superwoman.  She shares a lot about the goings-on of her ten children (a mix of biological and adopted kids), and throws in some adoption advice and helpful house-running tips along the way.

3. zenhabits

This popular and highly successful blog is well-organized, topically focused, and inspiring.  I don’t visit it often, but I know it’s there as a great resource on how to live simply and minimalistically. (Is that redundant?)

4. walk slowly, live wildly

Hands down, my favorite blog right now.  This girl is my hero.  How can one person be so spiritually focused, creative, interesting, unafraid, and green all at the same time?  She loves books, has dreads, and tours the the country in an RV that runs on veggie oil.  She has another blog, happy foody, where she sings the praises of eating raw (a little too brave for me), but walk slowly, live wildly is where I hang my hat.

5. The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks

Okay, I’ll admit, this one is getting a little old, but some of the posts are a lot of fun.  The blog’s sole purpose is to publish pictures of signs that use quotation marks unnecessarily, which, obviously, is right up my “alley.”

6. The Pioneer Woman Cooks!

I stayed up way too late last night reading this blog for the first time.  This is the secondary site of Pioneer Woman Ree.  Her other site is undergoing a facelift, but I think it’s almost done.  I was overwhelmed with all the pictures when I read the first post, but Ree is so funny in her cooking banter that she drew me in.  Her recipes are not fancy or health-conscious, but they sound yummy (and the pictures are pretty!). 

an announcement, of sorts 27.March.2008

I dream of Ethiopia, where in a city near Addis Ababa, a woman’s abdomen swells with the life inside her.  She wrestles with the attachment she has to the small, kicking being.  It’s too late now.  She never wanted to be attached, knowing motherhood will be torn from her.  But she gave away her heart long ago.  She hates the trials that will steal her dreams.  Even in sickness and poverty, she tries to keep dreaming… of hope and a future.

I will carry her baby in my arms.  I will be the one to soothe its cries, to watch it grow.  Her baby will learn to speak… not Amharic, but English.  I doubt the woman’s baby will grow up knowing what poverty and war and fear of illness feel like.  But I pray for strength to teach it what it needs to know of love, of hunger for justice, of God, and of its birth mother.

 All the days of her life, she will remember her child.  The questions and the pain and the attachment will not end as she hands over her baby.

 And I resolve not to forget her either.

*          *          * 

“45 million orphans:  I find the numbers utterly numbing.  Some 25 million Africans are infected with HIV, and only a tiny fraction has access to the expensive, lifesaving medicines.  When you add AIDS orphans to those left parentless by TB, malaria, malnourishment, drouoght, and war, the result is 45 million orphans.

“Wealthy countries must try to solve the AIDS orphan crisis with aid, fair trade, and debt relief.  Simply put: The world has to keep parents alive to stop orphaning kids.

“Adoption is not the solution.  It affects less than 1000th of 1 percent of African orphans.  But it is truly a miracle in the life of one child, and a marvelous way for a family to grow….” -Melissa Fay Greene

turning green 14.March.2008

I’ve been wondering what it takes to be green.  When I used look at environmentalism from the outside, people who chose to live with an ecological conscience seemed to be on the other side of the fence.  A little weird, a little over the top.  They were green; I was… yellow (or whatever color ungreen is).  But people like Jim Wallis, Barbara Kingsolver, and Michael Pollan have convinced me through their books on politics (Wallis) and food (Kingsolver and Pollan) that to live green is to live with justice.  I am beginning to see waste as a demonstration of rebellion, at least once one understands the impact of her actions.  America’s consumer culture has come so far as to represent slothfulness and greed to me, and it’s hard not to become cynical about it.

So, while the treehuggers used to look like they were on the other side of the fence, I’ve come to realize that turning green is more of a journey than a jump.  Living in a society that is drenched in its own waste makes it very difficult to just flip the switch, if you will, and immediately start living greenly.  It’s hard.  You have to think constantly about what you buy, when to drive, what you throw away.  But I’ve begun the journey, or at least continued on my journey in a significant way.

My recent green choices:

1. Recycling.  This one isn’t new.  I probably started recycling in earnest a year or two ago.  Now that we recycle, we have an average of one medium-sized bag of trash per week.

2. Cloth diapers.  This was a hard one for me.  I tried a cloth diaper once when Isaiah was a newborn.  When I smelled the first urine-saturated diaper, I said, “No way.”  And with that, I switched to disposable.  However, something about getting used to baby stenches and seeing just how many diapers can fill up the trash in a week made me rethink my decision.  I bought Gerber cloth diapers with vinyl pants to hold in the wetness.  They cost about as much as one box of disposable diapers.  They’re a lot of work.  They bring you closer to the earthy, non-sanitary reality of life (especially when you are throwing out into the yard a bucket of Borax-pee-water in which the diapers were soaking, and your bad aim causes the pee-water to shower all over your head).  But they have already rescued scores of disposable diapers from the landfill already, so I can’t begin to imagine the long-term wisdom of this choice.

3. Cloth grocery bags.  For my birthday, I cashed in a Target gift card for two beautiful cloth grocery bags.  I love them.

4. My patio garden.  Local produce not only tastes better than store-bought produce, but it also cuts down hugely on the amount of fossil fuels used to get the food to your house.  I hope to discover some new farmer’s markets this summer, but in the meantime, I’m growing tomatoes, bell peppers, cayenne peppers, jalepeno peppers, yellow onions, green onions, cilantro, lettuce, spinach, zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumbers in containers on my patio!

5. Limiting electricity and water use.  We’ve been doing this for a while, too.  Short showers, limited toilet flushing (I think wastefulness is grosser than pee.), using the short cycle on the dishwasher — these can all help cut down on water use.  I also bought two laundry drying racks, so I don’t have to use my dryer as often.

6. Earth-friendly detergents.  I’ve started making my own laundry and dishwasher detergent.  First of all, it’s dirt cheap compared to store-bought detergents.  And apparently, most detergents are pretty bad on the earth.  (My dishwasher detergent is 100% natural; my laundry detergent is slightly toxic but still much better than store-bought detergents.)

7. Walking.  Isaiah and I are enjoying the Spring weather on our jaunts to the park, the library, and the grocery store.  I’m getting some great exercise, and I get to save my gas for a rainy day.

So, you decide.  Am I officially green now?  I don’t feel like it.  I still see all that could be better if our society planned its future more responsibly, with something besides monetary profit as its motivation.  I have to remind myself of my motivation as well.  I want a more healthy world for my children.  I want to be able to stand before God without guilt over how I stewarded his land.

It’s still hard to do the things I’ve committed to doing.  Yesterday, I returned something at Target in a Target bag.  I bought some more things while I was there, and I took my used bag to the clerk and told him he could put my purchases in it.  “No,” he smiled.  “I’ll give you a new bag.”  Friendly guy, eh?  But, but… I was stuttering my head.  That’s not how I wanted it!  But I didn’t want to cause a stir, so I didn’t say anything.  And my reusable bag ended up in his trash can, and I walked home with not one, but two new bags.  Maybe I’m still a little bit yellow.