My great grandparents could never have imagined the kind of world in which I live. They could have never imagined the kind of ministry I would serve in. From the seeming miracle of liturgies streaming through a web browser to church meetings run around the glow of an HD projector to the stream of church news coming through text messages, nothing is as it was. How could the generation who bore their children in the midst of the most horrific war the globe had ever seen, imagine the life of people living at the turn of the following century?
However, it occurs to me that the same unpredictability existed in the lives of their own children, my grandparents. Could those who were infants during the Depression of 1893 imagine the deprivation of the Great Depression? Could the generation that witnessed the so-called Great War have foreseen the devastation of the Second World War? Could my great grandmother have possibly considered that her daughter would work outside the home for much of her adult life, let alone that her last assignment would be to inspect machine parts for a space-plane called “Columbia”?
Since the 1950’s the warning bells first sounded by M. King Hubbert’s theory of peak oil, echoing in the 1960’s through Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring and amplified by the oil embargo of the 1970’s, there have been voices crying out for future generations of unborn humanity. Why have we been so slow to respond? I think part of the problem is the long horizon we have been asked to consider. Warnings about the lives of our grandchildren or great-grandchildren are so far from our lived experience that we simply can’t figure out where to stand. As much as we want to act with compassion for these unknown generations, their very lives are a non sequitir to our own. Imagine my great grandparents trying to come up with a way to prevent the crimes of 9/11/2001, or seeing the road to credit perdition that would make the Great Recession of 2008 a reality.
As we have gone along more or less unmoved by our predicament we have undergone a period of foreshortening. We have gone from warnings about the lives of distant and unimagined people, to warnings that are about the lives of today’s grade-schoolers and even the present class of college students. Just as the warnings of peak resources, climate disasters and the corresponding financial collapse have become more urgent, the need for change has become more critical. Radical solutions for providing food, water and other basic needs will be necessary, not because they will save us from a massive social and economic transition, but because they will be the survival tools for that transition.
Even as the carbon-fuel infrastructure is both unsustainable and irreplaceable, the extent to which we bend the powers of this socio-economic machine to transition tasks will be the extent to which there is a degree of peace and happiness in the transition. We simply cannot wait to produce the alternative energy systems, the renewable modes of transport, the ecologically and economically sound localized communities until the peak pricing system has reached runaway proportions. We can’t waste another dollar or another barrel on wars to control this declining resource. There will be a day when the decline is a publicly traded fact. If military might rules the day at that point, the escalation to mutually assured destruction is a very real possibility.
I believe with all my heart that God has not abandoned us. I believe that God is working through countless people to make a path to life in this trying time. And I believe that God is calling the church to cease whimpering about attendance, worship wars, and cracks in the church steps. In the great collapse that followed the unwinding of the Roman Empire, the church remained as a remnant of the old culture into the dark ages. The monasteries of the Middle Ages provided beacons of light in a dark time, and preserved much of the culture that would be more broadly reclaimed in the Renaissance.
I hear God calling us again today. To be preservers of the sacred story. To be brave relinquishers of the status quo. To be a community of teaching, service and love. I believe God is calling us to lead. To bend every bit of carbon-energy we have to sustainable organic food production, localized community and renewable energy. In order that we might be both a witness and a lifeboat in the days to come. That the final petroleum generation would leave a legacy of life for their children’s grandchildren.
However, it occurs to me that the same unpredictability existed in the lives of their own children, my grandparents. Could those who were infants during the Depression of 1893 imagine the deprivation of the Great Depression? Could the generation that witnessed the so-called Great War have foreseen the devastation of the Second World War? Could my great grandmother have possibly considered that her daughter would work outside the home for much of her adult life, let alone that her last assignment would be to inspect machine parts for a space-plane called “Columbia”?
Since the 1950’s the warning bells first sounded by M. King Hubbert’s theory of peak oil, echoing in the 1960’s through Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring and amplified by the oil embargo of the 1970’s, there have been voices crying out for future generations of unborn humanity. Why have we been so slow to respond? I think part of the problem is the long horizon we have been asked to consider. Warnings about the lives of our grandchildren or great-grandchildren are so far from our lived experience that we simply can’t figure out where to stand. As much as we want to act with compassion for these unknown generations, their very lives are a non sequitir to our own. Imagine my great grandparents trying to come up with a way to prevent the crimes of 9/11/2001, or seeing the road to credit perdition that would make the Great Recession of 2008 a reality.
As we have gone along more or less unmoved by our predicament we have undergone a period of foreshortening. We have gone from warnings about the lives of distant and unimagined people, to warnings that are about the lives of today’s grade-schoolers and even the present class of college students. Just as the warnings of peak resources, climate disasters and the corresponding financial collapse have become more urgent, the need for change has become more critical. Radical solutions for providing food, water and other basic needs will be necessary, not because they will save us from a massive social and economic transition, but because they will be the survival tools for that transition.
Even as the carbon-fuel infrastructure is both unsustainable and irreplaceable, the extent to which we bend the powers of this socio-economic machine to transition tasks will be the extent to which there is a degree of peace and happiness in the transition. We simply cannot wait to produce the alternative energy systems, the renewable modes of transport, the ecologically and economically sound localized communities until the peak pricing system has reached runaway proportions. We can’t waste another dollar or another barrel on wars to control this declining resource. There will be a day when the decline is a publicly traded fact. If military might rules the day at that point, the escalation to mutually assured destruction is a very real possibility.
I believe with all my heart that God has not abandoned us. I believe that God is working through countless people to make a path to life in this trying time. And I believe that God is calling the church to cease whimpering about attendance, worship wars, and cracks in the church steps. In the great collapse that followed the unwinding of the Roman Empire, the church remained as a remnant of the old culture into the dark ages. The monasteries of the Middle Ages provided beacons of light in a dark time, and preserved much of the culture that would be more broadly reclaimed in the Renaissance.
I hear God calling us again today. To be preservers of the sacred story. To be brave relinquishers of the status quo. To be a community of teaching, service and love. I believe God is calling us to lead. To bend every bit of carbon-energy we have to sustainable organic food production, localized community and renewable energy. In order that we might be both a witness and a lifeboat in the days to come. That the final petroleum generation would leave a legacy of life for their children’s grandchildren.
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