Category Archives: Ecology, religion, justice

NOFA winter conference

Carol and I drove out to Worcester today for the winter conference of the Northeast Organic Farmers’ Association (NOFA). Carol was on the NOFA/Massachusetts board fifteen years ago, and wanted to go to some presentations on permaculture; I went along for the ride.

Sections in this post:

  • “Organic growing 101
  • Phytoremediation through urban gardens
  • Lunch conversations
  • “Husbandry was once a sacred art
  • Bees

“Organic Growing 101”

We started out with “Organic Growing 101,” presented by Frank Albani, who works two and a half acres at the Soule Homestead in Middleboro. I was particularly interested in what he had to say, because he started with a 30′ by 50′ garden, and in addition to his two and a half acres he still works a 50′ by 100′ garden. Market growing on that size plot (about an eighth of an acre) would be adaptable to urban settings. Albani works the 50′ by 100′ plot by hand, having built up the soil to the point where he no longer needs to use a power tiller. He grows much of his lettuce on this smaller plot, but because the plot is in full sun he has to partially shade it (which implies that partial shading on an urban plot could be used to advantage).

Albani went into many specific techniquess of market growing. He makes extensive use of row cover material like Remay: row cover will keep marauding insects of crops like cukes and squash; it keeps deer at bay; it will keep crops warmer in cool weather. Albani advocated drip irrigation if the grower has access to filtered water but unfiltered water will clog the drippers; he pumps unfiltered water from a nearby stream using a Honda 5 hp pump (he advises, don’t skimp on pumps but get a good one), and says it takes a good eight hours a week to irrigate his land if there’s no rain. His seeding is done with an Earthway seeder, which he finds greatly improves efficiency with such tiny seeds as carrots. Most important, Albani said: “Organic growing is all about feeding the soil” and about “promoting soil health”; good food is simply a byproduct of doing sustainable agriculture.

Phytoremediation in an urban setting

The second workshop we attended was the one I was most interested in. A small non-profit called Worcester Roots Project did a presentation on using plants to remove toxic substances from soils, a process known as “phytoremediation.” They are mostly interested in lead (from lead-based paints) in soils around urban housing. One of the dominant pathways that lead gets into children is by playing outdoors and ingesting lead. Worcester Roots Project has experimented with a couple of soil remediation techniques that are low-tech, inexpensive, and that can be implemented by ordinary citizens.

First, and most obvious, is to grow a good groundcover over affected soils. But before planting the groundcover, they discovered that research shows that adding a one inch layer of compost reduces the bioavailability of soil lead (“bioavailability” refers to the ease with which ingested lead can enter the blood). A study in Baltimore showed that tilling the soil, covering with 6 to 8 inches of biosolids (e.g., compost), and seeding with a turfgrass groundcover led to a 57% reduction in soil lead after one year. Apparently, compost application reduces plant uptake of lead, as well as supporting healthy groundcover growth; additionally, a phophate soil ammendment reduces bioavilability by putting the lead into a different chemical form. Worcester Roots Project has also had success planting scented geranuims in soil with high lead levels; the geraniums take up about 2-% of the soil lead per year, storing the lead it their leaves and shoots. They dispose of the geraniums in a lined landfill.

Lunch conversations

In true NOFA style, lunch was a potluck affair, and with thee hundred people bringing potluck we had lots of good food to choose from. We wound up sitting at a table with Josh from D-Acres in Dorchester, New Hampshire, and Jonno, a biologist and permaculture teacher from Leverett, Mass. Once they learned that Carol had co-authored The Composting Toilet Systems Handbook, Josh, and Jonno immediately engaged her in technical conversations about waste water treatment. A young woman named Anne also sat at our table, but she and I didn’t get a chance to say much; I mostly asked a few questions and sat back and listened with interest.

Josh found out that Carol had written Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants. He looked impressed, and said all his interns loved the book. It’s always fun to see that in certain (very small) circles, Carol is well-known.

“Husbandry was once a sacred art…”

The keynote speaker, Brian Donohue, started off his talk by quoting Henry Thoreau: “…husbandry was once a sacred art.” Donohue, the author of The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord is an organic-farmer-turned-professor who has become interested in the cultural roots of a land ethic. “Where do we look for inspiration” for a sustainable way of life?

“The story we tell ourselves today in the environmental movement,” said Donohue, “is that the best thing we can do with Nature is to leave it alone.” He said for New Englanders, that attitude is based on the story we tell ourselves about how New England was settled. “The story goes like this,” he said: first were the Native peoples living in harmony with the land; then the English settlers arrived, displaced the Natives, and deformed the landscape; then around a hundred years ago the farmer went away, moving out to the Midwest, leaving us with a reforested and “re-wilded” landscape. Therefore, the landscape we have today should be left alone as much as possible.

But in Donohue’s view, that story is not quite right. The story we tell ourselves now says that there are only two options: pristine wilderness, and Native harmony with the landscape. Donohue wants to add a third environmentally acceptable option: a pastoral landscape where humans interact sustainably with the land through husbandry (as opposed to agri-business).

So Donohue likes to tell a new story of how New England was settled. He starts with Native harmony with the landscape. But his research shows that when the English settlers arrived, they managed to live sustainably in the New England landscape by adapting the European tradition of mixed husbandry (i.e., farms that combine tilled soil, pasture lands, orchards, wetland meadows for hay). This sustainable lifestyle ended at the end of the 18th C., as farmers increasingly grew for the marketplace and a cash economy. That meant land wasn’t seen as something to husband, but just something to exploit for cash. Then in the early 20th C., most farming died out in New England, leaving a forested landscape — a landscape which is now being eaten up by suburban sprawl. Donohue suggest that we go back to the husbandry attitudes of the 17th and 18th C., and “resist letting the market decide how we relate to the land.”

Working with others at Harvard Forestry, Donohue has come up with a specific proposal for Massachusetts. He says we should set a goal that 50% of the state be protected as forested land. Of that land, 90% would be managed sustainably as woodlands, and the other 10% would be protected as wildlands. His current work is to include farmlands in that proposal.

In short, Donohue wants to change the economic model so that an engaged citizenry supports sustainable farming and farmers. This, he said, would return to making husbandry a “sacred art” once more — instead of just setting land aside untouched.

Bees

For the last workshop, I went to a presentation on bees and beekeeping. I’ve been thinking about urban beekeeping as a possibility. But the presentation was really about the kinds of plants bees prefer, and I sort of dozed off. The samples of honey were good, though.

This blog is dark green

On the reading list today is Ecological Ethics: An Introduction, by Patrick Curry. Curry divides environmental ethics into three schools: “light green” or “shallow” environmental ethics, which maintains an anthropocentric bias and includes “lifeboat ethics” and stewardship; “mid-green” environmental ethics, which still assigns a higher value to humans and includes animal rights and biocentrism; and “dark green” environmental ethics which does not privilege human beings above other beings and includes Aldo Leopold’s “Land Ethic,” the Gaia Theory, Deep Ecology, the Earth Manifesto, Left Biocentrism, etc.

Curry includes this interesting statement in his account of Left Biocentrism:

The Left Bio movement is also well place, by virtue of its dual ancestry [i.e., left political thought and ecological thought], to put ecology onto the progressive political agenda, where it is now glaringly absent. Extraordinary as it may seem, feminists, anti-racists, and socialists are almost as likely as those on the neo-liberal and anti-democratic right to ignore the claims of even mid-range ecological ethics (e.g., animals), let alone ecocentric ethics. This fact is sadly evident in the programmes of nearly all of today’s so-called green parties, where the green values are strictly shallow, that is, advocated insofar as they further human interests, and not when they exceed them, let alone conflict.

Of course, politics in the United States is even “shallower,” ecologically speaking, than in Curry’s native England. I cannot imagine any political figure in the United States advocating for non-human interests over human interests; and something like ecofeminism and ecojustice are at best obscure academic notions that have no place in the public discourse.

In the realm of liberal religious theology, the situation is probably worse: if you can find any ecological theology at all, it will almost certainly be a “light-green” Christian ecological theology emphasizing stewardship, and probably based on Genesis 1.24 and 2.15 (a human-centered garden metaphor). That’s a problem for people like me who are “dark green.” My own denomination, Unitarian Universalism, is probably mostly in the light-green end of the spectrum, albeit with a “theology” grounded more in a secular ethic than a religious ethic. Yet while liberal religionists are mostly light green, there are high-profile exceptions like Rosemary Radford Ruether to show us dark green folks other possibilities.

Eco-theology research

I’ve been re-reading John Mbiti’s African Religions and Philosophy (Praeger, 1969), looking at Mbiti’s section on “The Concept of Time as a Key to the Understanding and Interpretation of African Religion and Philosophy.” This was hot stuff when I first read it as an undergrad philosophy major back in 1983, as multiculturalism crept slowly into the philosophy curriculum.

I got interested in the African notions of time due to my growing interest in ecological theology, specifically eco-theological critiques of Christian notions of end-time; especially where such notions are used to justify exploitation of human beings and non-human beings. If Mbiti’s account is accurate, traditional African notions of time could provide an alternate view that might lead to more nuanced understandings of Christian notions of linear time. In particular, this also raises interesting questions regarding the persistence of African thought in North America, and North Americans’ cultural access to alternative understandings of time.

However, in the past few years Mbiti has been critiqued for bringing a colonialist/Christian viewpoint to his work. So now I’m looking for other, more recent, studies on traditional African religion; yet in my limited search of relevant literature I’m not finding another book that addresses the issue of time (and of course part of my problem is that I don’t have access to an academic library…). If any of my readers happen to know of such books, please do let me know.

Of course, all this may lead nowhere. But it sure is proving to be a fascinating path to follow. And I’ll let you know if I ever get anywhere with this….

Stuck indoors

A half hour before I was going to walk home for lunch, it started to pour. When lunchtime rolled around, I pulled on my trench coat, jammed my hat low over my eyes, and put up my umbrella. The wind came whipping around the corners of the buildings downtown and pulled at my umbrella; swirling around buildings it blew the rain at me now from the north, now from the west, now from the east. My trousers got soaked from the bottom of the trench coat to my shoes.

On the walk back, I put on full rain gear: hat, slicker, rain pants. It was raining and blowing even harder, and rain blew up my sleeves and into my face. I got back in the office and stripped off the rain gear. My shoes were soaked, so all afternoon I walked around the office in sock feet.

By sunset, the rain had stopped, but by then it was too late to take a walk. There are days when I just can’t get outside. I’ve had other jobs where it didn’t matter so much if I got soaking wet. When I worked for the carpenter, we had to be outside in all kinds of weather, and no one cared if we got wet. But ministers aren’t supposed to walk around the church in sock feet.

Working outside in bad weather can be uncomfortable and even draining, but it has advantages over being trapped inside — trapped by the clothes you wear and the conventions you have to follow. Not that I approve of “casual Friday,” where corporations allow their employees to come to work without a tie, or wearing sneakers. But for me as a minister, one barrier to living out ecological theology is this insistence in our society that we stay indoors; and this insistence is enforced in many subtle ways.

Tomorrow is supposed to be pleasant: temperatures unseasonably warm, windy but nice and sunny. My work will keep me stuck indoors most of the daylight hours. I love my job, but ecotheology leaves me vaguely troubled by the insistence that mine is an indoors job.

Lizards and Einstein

I’ve been reading Down the River, by novelist and environmental writer Edward Abbey. In the essay titled “Watching the Birds: The Windhover,” Abbey makes what I take to be a theological statement:

The naming of things is a useful mnemonic device, enabling us to distinguish and utilize and remember what otherwise might remain an undifferentiated sensory blur, but I don’t think names tell us much of character, essence, meaning.

Apply that to the old book of Genesis: God lets the first humans name things, not because God thinks humans are specially suited to naming things, but simply so humans can function in the world without things and events turning into a sensory blur. Puts a different spin on things, doesn’t it? Humans are not quite so remarkably unique as it seems at first. Not even Einstein:

Einstein thought that the most mysterious aspect of the universe (if it is, indeed, a uni-verse, not a pluri-verse) is what he called its “comprehensibility.” Being primarily a mathematician and only secondarily a violinist, Einstein saw the world as comprehensible because so many of its properties and so much of its behavior can be described through mathematical formulas. The atomic bomb and Hiroshima make a convincing argument for his point of view…

Take that, Einstein — you’re not quite the perfect scientist-hero that some say you are, and your (human) view of the world was limited….

The lizard sunning itself on a stone would no doubt tell us that time, space, sun, and earth exist to serve the lizard’s interests; the lizard, too, must see the world as perfectly comprehensible, reducible to a rational formula. Relative to the context, the lizard’s metaphysical system seems as complete as Einstein’s.

Neither science nor traditional religion offers a convincing explanation for the world as it truly is; both are ultimately too narrow. As is Edward Abbey when you come down to it– narrow, I mean — but at least he tells you so.

Thinking out loud

Still working on this week’s sermon, even though in general Friday serves as a my sabbath day. The title this week is “The Garden.” One of the texts is Genesis 1.27-28: “[27] So God created humankind in his image,/ in the image of God he created them;/ male and female he created them. [28] God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.'” And my topic, as you might have guessed, is ecotheology.

One of the theologians I have been consulting on this topic is Rosemary Radford Reuther, in her book Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing. She writes [my reading notes in square brackets]:

…I assume that there is no ready-made ecological spirituality and ethic in past traditions. The ecological crisis is new to human experience. [I.e., Ruether appears to admit the necessity of allowing ongoing revelation to humanity.] This does not mean that humans have not devestated their environment before. But as long as populations remained small and human technology weak, these devestations were remediable by migration, retreat from to-heavy urban centers, or adaptation of new techniques. [This challenges God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply” in gen. 1.28.] Nature appeared a huge inexhaustible source of life, and humans small…. The radical nature of this new face of ecological devestation means that all past human traditions are inadequate in the face of it. Whatever useful elements may exist in, for example, Native American or Taoist thought, must be reinterpreted to make them usable in the face of both scientific knowledge and the destructive power of the technology it has made possible.

So one of the challenges of an ecotheology is that we’re going to have to completely rework religious traditions. I’d say this is a task that we Unitarian Universalists should be able to handle, as a non-creedal people who have been pretty willing to rework religious tradition (at least in small ways). Ruether goes on:

…Each tradition is best explored by those who claim community in that tradition [and she means “tradition” more broadly than the narrow confines of, say, Unitarian Universalism]. This does not preclude conversions into other traditions or communication between them…. But the plumbing of each tradition, and its reinterpretation for today’s crises, is a profound task that needs to begin in the context of communities of accountability. Those people for whom Taoism or Pueblo Indian spirituality are their native traditions are those best suited to dig those roots and offer their fruits to the rest of us. Those without these roots should be cautious in claiming plants not our own, respectful of those who speak from within.

So which tradition does Unitarian Universalism belong to? –and no, we aren’t deep or rich enough to claim to be our own tradition. It’s probably best to say we’re a post-Christian tradition, and while we might be post-Christian, we are post-Christian. But although Christianity is often equated with Western religion, that’s not at all true: we can’t forget the Jews; the neo-pagans have been helping us find the remnants of indigenous European traditions; there’s also a small but important secularist tradition that has to be included. Obviously most of our spiritual root system is in Protestant Christianity. But as a post-Christian spirituality, with individual members who are deeply embedded in Christian, Jewish, neo-pagan, and humanist spiritualities, we’re willing to acknowledge that our root system spreads a little more widely. We might be well-placed to mediate the conversation that will inevitably ensue between the different reinterpretations of Western spirituality.

I still don’t have a sermon, though, so I guess I better go back to Genesis 1.27-28 and see what I can do with it.

Gandhi and prayer services

From Book of Prayers by Mohandas K. Gandhi, ed. John Strohmeier (Berkeley Hills Books, 1999), this passage in the introduction discusses why Gandhi took the time for daily worship:

Why, one might wonder, take the time to do all this [daily prayer services] in the middle of a revolution? Gandhi was not one to cling to empty forms. An answer may be found in the testimony of someone who observed Gandhi during one of those evening prayers. As you read it, bear in mind that the nineteen verses of the second chapter of the [Bhagavad] Gita, the description of the illumined man [sic], is widely regarded as the Sermon on the Mount of Hinduism:

“The sun had set when we got back [from his regular evening walk]. Hurricane lanterns were lit; Gandhi settled down at the base of a neem tree as ashramites and the rest of us huddled in Some hymns were sung, then Gandhi’s secretary began reciting the second chapter of the… Bhagavad Gita. Then it happened.

“Not that I can describe it very easily. Gandhi’s eyes closed; his body went stock still; it seemed as though centuries had rolled away and I was seeing the Buddha in a living person. I was what we had almost forgotten was possible in the modern world: a man who had conquered himself to the extent that some force greater than a human being… moved through him and affected everyone.”

…Gandhi had the power to shake India, in part, because he drew on resources within himself that are not normally accessible. And that access happened, among other occasions, at the high point of these prayer meetings….

There is a tendency to think that meditation and action are opposties, that one chooses between one way of life or the other. But as the Bhagavad Gita insists, meditation and selfless action are inseparable. They are opposite sides of the same coin, as complementary as breathing in and breathing out….” [pp. 14-15]

While of course we might phrase this differently to fit the context of our Western religious tradition, it is still true that worship services in our tradition are not escapes from the world, but a way for us to change the world. Worship unleashes powers that can heal us and heal the world; and it is probably dangerous for us to ignore this point.

Invasion

Back on December 16, the “Invasive Species Weblog” reported on the ban of 140 non-native plant species from the state. I was walking around the Slocum’s River Reserve in Dartmouth yesterday, looking at the bittersweet and phragmites that are choking out native species while contributing little to the overall ecosystem. (And in addition the invasive plants, there were the sixty or so Mute Swans on Slocum’s River yesterday — talk about agressive non-native species competing with and overwhelming native species!) So I’m glad that once again Massachusetts is at the forefront of ecological action.

Christmas gifts

It’s “Holiday Shops Days” in downtown New Bedford this weekend, with an antique fire engine carrying Santa Claus, rides in horse-drawn carriage, tree-lighting in front of the Public Library, people singing carols outside our building, marching bands going up and down the downtown streets, sleigh bells jingling.

I’ve been sitting here in our apartment enjoying the festive sounds outside our windoww while I’m paying bills. I just opened up the year-end appeal from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and found the enclosed:

Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act of 2005

As a point of information to donors considering philanthropic gifts to humanitarian agencies and other organizations… you may be interested in knowing about a recent tax relief act that affects philanthropic giving.

President Bush has signed into law a measure that allows donors to deduct qualified charitable gifts in amounts up to 100% of their Adjusted Gross Income. This temporarily suspends the current limitation of 50% of Adjusted Gross Income….

OK, I doubt that many readers of this blog are able to donate 100% of their adjusted gross income to charities providing services to Gulf Coast relief. But if there are such people reading this blog, I just wanted to let you know that you might want to talk with your financial advisors about whether you’re able to benefit from increased giving this year. There is still a great need for Gulf Coast Relief. Remember, too, that if you want to donate to the Gulf Coast Relief Fund of the Unitarian Universalist Association, a minimum of 95% of those donations will go directly to services (i.e., the fund has very low administrative costs).

Even those of us who can’t give 100% of your adjusted gross income in charitable donations should consider giving a gift to Gulf Coast Relief. There are lots of people along the Gulf Coast who could still use that kind of Christmas gift. Carol and I are planning our year-end giving right now, and we plan to give generously to Gulf Coast Relief.