95 posts tagged with "discourse"

The serious nature of air pollution did not truly hit me until a family wedding in Austin, Texas in the late 90's. That year the pollution was so severe that older family members were warned by their doctors not to attend. As a kid from the suburbs, I didn't have to deal with the reality of "bad air" that millions of people in the urban cores breath day in, day out. As a person of faith, I began to awaken to the manifest injustice of suburban commuters contributing more than their fair share to pollution, from the tailpipe and the power plant. What had been a mere academic awareness suddenly turned visceral.

Great stories moves us. They do not only move us: indded, they instill the desire to move. But it is we, the reader or audience, who choose where to go, and what to do.

Moving stories comes in so many packages, though one man's great may be another woman's banal. Tonight I watched an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that fulfilled all of the promise of social commentary through science fiction. This was in your face; the banal was banished; my comfort and ease were disturbed; and yet I was left with hope by the end.

Back in the '90s, I remember my parents saying that it was less expensive to inspect their cars in Plano, in Collin County, than a few miles further south in Dallas County - because of the additional emissions inspections required in the latter. I never would have imagined that 20 years later, ten DFW counties are now in non-attainment for smog-producing ozone pollution - and we still have no plan to solve the problem.

Just looking at the smog, we all know it can't be good for any of us. The American Lung Association has a good article on the health effects of ozone pollution. Moreover, studies have shown that air pollution in general has a disproportionate impact on Latino and African-American communities.

More than twenty years ago, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baháís of the United States published a statement declaring that "[r]acism is the most challenging issue confronting America" (The Vision of Race Unity). This past year has reinforced the public awareness of this truth: 59% of the nation's population believes that "our country needs to continue making changes to give blacks equal rights with whites", compared to only 46% about a year ago (Pew Research Center). I grieve to wonder how many of the remaining 41% recognize the systemic challenges faced by African Americans, and either don't care or, worse yet, are satisfied with them.

A social media challenge was posed, #PlasticFreeJuly: try to avoid plastic in the month of July. Taken literally, many of us would be unable to read the challenge, without the plastic of our corrective lenses. Perhaps someone, somewhere, still makes glasses from melted, ground, sand. I shudder to think of the weight required to correct my own poor vision this way.

But there is a deeper truth: the gauntlet was delivered through a medium whose human-tangible representation beamed out through melted sand, encased in plastic, with circuits embedded in plastic. Perhaps someone, somewhere, manufactures computers using naught but metals, sand, and rubber insulation. With vacuum tubes.

This past Friday I finally completed the "public expression" portion of the eco-theology project for the GreenFaith Fellowship. The presentation is accessible at GreenBahai.com. It addresses the following topics from an multi-faith perspective:

• Highlight key themes in religious responses to climate change:
  • Love of Creation
  • Urgency
  • Love and Compassion
  • Justice
  • Oneness and Interdependence
• Call to Action — statements and declarations
  • Prevention
  • International Action
  • Awareness and Advocacy
  • Taking Action

I've spent the weekend preparing a presentation on the Call to Action on Climate Change, which I'll be giving at the Bahá'í Center of Irving on this coming Friday evening.

Joining so many others in the worldwide faith communities, I am overjoyed at the Pope's encyclical Laudato Si, which came out officially just a few days ago. Although I will not be saying much about it, it is a large part of the inspiration for the up-coming presentation. And I would like to share the heart-achingly beautiful second paragraph:

This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she "groans in travail" (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.

A disturbing thing happened at Earth Day Texas - racists and nativists showed up masquerading as environmentalists. A tweet from the Southern Poverty Law Center alerted me that anti-immigrant groups with white supremacist ties would be out at Earth Day Texas. Seeing one of their (unmanned) booths was, therefore, not a surprise. But being verbally accosted at my own booth was.

"Fragmentation" often describes our personal lives. Through accident or design, we carve out separate spheres of being: family, work, school, sport, public policy, and so on. When we are healthy, we work toward unifying these through consistent expression of our values. The other extreme becomes hypocrisy.

The long-term tension between science and religion often reinforces that tendency toward fragmentation. Practicing and acting on a traditional Western mechanistic worldview while espousing divinely-grounded spiritual values is not intrinsically hypocritical. But, for me, it is a very limiting experience. In the integration of these two worldviews we find them strengthening each other. Spiritual principles can shape our research methods (viz animal experimentation), and scientific research can shape our application of justice and equality (seeking climate justice, for example).

A small group gathered at the Bahá'í­ Center of Irving last night in our second meeting on the discourses of society, reflecting on climate change. The first meeting in the series was too much of a slide-based lecture, so for this second one we chose two videos and facilitated an open discussion. The conversation was robust, heartfelt, and meaningful — yet in reflection, it raises some key questions about how to have a productive, spiritually-oriented conversation.