A few things right now in the life of my family are coming together for me in the form of a new obsession or I guess it could be obsessions. I am currently reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, her husband Steven Hopp and her daughter Camille. We also spent a few days last week at the Presbytery’s annual youth camp. The keynote speaker for the 4 day camp was David LaMotte . These two sources of information and inspiration have motivated me to make a few changes in my life. Both talk of changing the world little bits at a time – biting off chewable pieces (and in Barbara’s case very tasty organic homegrown pieces.)

Barbara is talking about eating really good food that comes from as close to home and as organic as possible and at a fair price as a way to change the way the world works. Reducing the number of calories spent moving an edible calorie of from one place to another reduces the nations reliance on fossil fuels, provides better tasting and healthier food to a greater portion of the population, and provides income to local family farms that have been seriously struggling over the past twenty years due to the rise of the mega-monocrop farms that put us one disease strain away from total agricultural destruction.

David on the other hand talks of changing the world through social justice, education and direct aid – each individual doing what they can to change the world a little bit at a time. Taking the time to listen to the folks around you and hear their stories of poverty and living life as a person on the margins of society. I, like David, was lucky enough to be born in the United States, white, and male. Like it or not, that puts me in a position of power. As David says, that means that we need to be aware of what our decisions and actions promote and propagate. He talks of the churches that were burned down in the southern portion of the country back in the 1990′s and how it only took one person to do the destruction, but the more important point was the many people – black and white – that showed up after the fires were out to rebuild those churches and show the kind of love for another human being that gives me hope.

So, Does one walk into Wal*Mart and buy really cheap products that were made by people that make cents a day for really tedious and dangerous work, or do we insist that our products are organic, fair trade, local, in season, “sweat-free” and/or second hand. Should we stand by and and watch as our country consumes massive quantities fossil fuels to power our huge cars and trucks and the economy of consumerism based on disposable products  – always taking a much larger portion of the global pie than is equitable with the rest of the world’s inhabitants?

Well, I guess this brings me to my point for this blog. I am striving to obtain as much of our family’s needs as we possibly can and still meet the above criteria. I am looking into the feasibility of having a backyard chicken flock for both eggs and meat, and also looking into building a little greenhouse in the back to grow some of the foods we love, but that are out of season much of the year. Greens can be grown all year long in a greenhouse, as well as at least starting peppers and tomatoes really early for spring planting (I think I will try winter growing too, but I’m not so sure that will actually work out – we will see though.) I don’t have a farm to use – unlike Barbara – but I am going to try and do the best I can with what resources are available to me. This means more Red Radish shopping and fair trade shopping on the internet. It means driving less.  It also means that I will most likely go back to Mississippi with the church to help with the relief from Katrina.

Small steps, but we keep looking to see how we can make less of a negative impact on this planet and its inhabitants, and more of a positive one.

David has a song on one of his albums called “Middletown Mall.” The other day Meg and I were listening to this song, and I asked “Do you know what the mall is?” And she looked at me straight faced and said “the what?”  I call that progress!