By Tracey Bianchi
[Ed. note: this article is part of our series of weekly reflections called Deep Down Things, published on Wednesdays]
You can stay put sustainably.
Last year I borrowed a copy of Doug Fine’s book Farewell My Subaru: An Epic Adventure In Local Living. It’s the story of Fine’s decision to live on a ranch in New Mexico without an automobile. A humorous vignette that, it just so happens, I listened to on audiobook . . . in my car.
I cruised around, learning about the harsh realities of our national oil addiction while idling at traffic lights and filling up at the gas pump. It was more than a little ironic. Great as Fine’s story was, it was also so far removed from any lifestyle I might actually experience that I had a difficult time making sense of what to do with his journey.
I had a similar struggle with Barbara Kingsolver. Her writing is one of the great treasures of my heart, and who has not had their view of life changed by Animal, Vegetable, Miracle? It remains, to this day, one of the first books I recommend to just about anyone I know.
That said, as I sifted through her story of life in southern Appalachia, I could not help but wonder how I might pull off the local eating feats she so wisely managed. I kept asking myself, “How can I live this way and not have to move?” Where I live, I can’t find a forest with succulent morels within fifty miles. Or, for that matter, due to a city ban, even raise chickens in my backyard.
So, whether it is saying farewell to an automobile or plotting a garden in rural Appalachia, I keep stumbling over a recurring theme I’m not sure I agree with: Living a more sustainable life means moving. Or I encounter many folks who are so rooted in their type of community that they find those who live in any other kind of community impossibly un-sustainable.
For example, I know huffy urbanites who believe that anyone outside the city limits has clearly missed a chance to engage with different races, cultures, and socioeconomic classes. They equate suburban living with a lobotomy. They loathe anyone who cannot deftly navigate a public transit system.
I know suburbanites who have nestled smugly into their inner-ring, architecturally swanky suburbs only to scoff at those farther out on the crashing waves of urban sprawl. Track housing is to blame for the loss of landscape, they quip.
Then there are rural adolescents who graduate from high school and dash off to big cities, never to return. On the flip side, some urban and suburban kids drift West to camp out in mountain towns, craving open space and often mocking the trappings of the densely populated life they’ve always known.
In all of this gazing around, I have to ask if it is actually possible for a person live wisely where he or she already is? In Psalm 90:12 (The Message), a prayer by Moses urges us to “live wisely and well.” Our days are numbered, the Psalm reminds us, so we must live them with grace and wisdom.
So what does wise living entail when it comes to conversations about sustainability, environmental stewardship and social justice? Are the only options either distrusting those in those “other” places, or heading to “greener pastures” ourselves?
Perhaps one of the wisest moves we can make is to look at the life we currently live, in the community where we live it out, and start making smarter choices from that center. Rather than snub our noses at those living elsewhere, or sell our cars and head to the farm, maybe we can just begin a bit closer. Say, by connecting with our neighbors.
Wise living might mean reaching out to those in our community so that we can be proactive in bringing bicycle lanes, hiking trails, public transportation, or sidewalks to the unreachable parts of our towns. It can mean taking the time to get to know our neighbors well enough to curb our air pollution by carpooling, running errands together, or walking with our children. It can mean starting or enhancing community recycling, composting, or gardening programs. Or perhaps we can nudge local libraries to include books and resources that move people toward more socially and globally conscious lives. Maybe it means championing hot lunch programs for under-served families.
The wise living Moses points to might mean staying put and, as the cliché goes, blooming where we are planted. For if we all pack up and take our growing, increasingly thoughtful lives with us, who will remain to transform the very communities we’ve left?
If we are blessed to have thought through the issues deep enough to know that change is desperately needed where we live, then perhaps one of the most God-honoring decisions we can make is to simply stay put and help bring about that change; to live more wisely right down the street, rather than in some greener pasture.
Tracey Bianchi is a wife, mother, writer and speaker living in the heart of the Chicago suburbs. She wrote Green Mama: The Guilt-Free Guide to Helping You and Your Kids Save the Planet (Zondervan 2010) and blogs at The Green Mama.
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Thank you Tracey for helping us think through the tensions of do-able sustainability! So true that no place or people should be abandoned; if the community is unsustainable, polluted, polluting, dangerous, etc, we are not helping by moving away. A great call to mindfully be a good neighbor. Thanks for the hands on suggestions.
I think it is so hard to resist the urge to leave what we disagree with behind rather than fighting to change it. I think, possibly, this could be a contributing factor in how transient Americans are. Seems like everyone is on the move, all the time. If we dislike the school district or the proximity of the freeway, the weather or the neighbors, we hit the road. Staying put offers us the opportunity to change things that we normally would just move away and forget about. Joanna is so right, NO place or people should be abandoned.
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