Loving and serving all three

It is a sad day in the Campbell household.

My family turned on the air conditioning today. I'm so cold. It is 84 degrees outside, and I am freezing. I'm only wearing a pair of shorts currently, so I should be quite comfortable, if the windows were open and the ceiling fan was on. But the windows are closed, alas. And the fan is off. I am living in a refrigerator.

Do you have any idea how many strip mines are being created (completely and totally raping the earth) to extract enough coal to make enough electricity for the four of us to be living in a refrigerator? I don't know that much about Puron, but any chemical coolant will probably have some damaging effect. Our poor atmosphere is currently undergoing an accelerating bout of destruction by CFCs. Because of busted up air conditioners from the last half century. The euphemistically named Freon wasn't good anymore because the public had been educated about it. So they named a different chemical Puron. Free and pure. Right. You may have solved one specific part of the problem but by no means have we taken on the whole spectrum of ways that we are shooting ourselves in the foot. What do we need for survival? Air, food, water, and shelter. We are using these vital resources at an exponentially unsustainable rate. Sure, we don't see it. We live in America. The home of the brave "tamers" of the wild and the land of the free-for-all.

As a blue collar worker, I have just plugged myself into the system that builds and maintains the infrastructures that support our capitalist nation and world. Capitalism is the benefiting financially from the shortchanging of someone somewhere else who you probably can't see. The one biggest thing shortchanged (because it has absolutely no voice of its own to speak out for itself) is the earth. It can't go on strike for unbearable working conditions. Eventually, it will just drop dead. And the systems and infrastructures I have now taken a part in prolonging will be null. We will be dead.

Shit.


I'm being dramatic, but it is that serious. Wake up and smell the carnage. Our lives need to change. Drastically. Would you rather have a car or clean air to breathe? Highways, streets, garages, and parking lots (with which to use those cars)- or real food to eat? Electronics, plastics, and anything made with manufactured chemicals- or water to drink? A pay check- or your lives?

That's a lot to sacrifice, either way you look at it. In the end, I'll take the air, food, and water, thanks. Please join me. And live.

Someone told me at my graduation party that if I plan on getting married, raising a family, I'll need to have a job by which I make money. And for a while, I agreed with him (this job is really brainwashing me). How could money ever be considered the prerequisite for the building of a family? Of course, practically, money is very important in considering the health of families in our society. But that is such a sad state of affairs. Somehow, some way, love needs to become the only factor in the planning of one's family. Of my family.

So much is so wrong in our society. We are so selfish. So self-centered. We are isolated and we isolate other people. We create our own sad world to live in alone and we are angry because of it. I feel like crying. We (Sara and I) saw the movie Crash last night. It depicts the very real and very sad state of humanity hating itself for the fact that not everyone is the same. Skin color isn't even the main cause- that's just used as the overshadowing stereotype. It's the cultural differences that develop within the separated melanin groups that cause so much friction. Or rather, it is the intolerance of such differences.

I am intolerant of intolerance. That is why I can relate better to some atheists than some religious rights. At least the atheist isn't a hypocrit. I may not know how he ticks, how he can survive without hope, but he acts on what he "believes." Fundamentalist christians love God. That is very good and I respect them for that. I do. But the "love" that they have for their neighbor, the love that is supposed to spring from their ardent love of God, consists in trying to purge those neighbors of all differences and fit them nicely into their church. People are different. Love them. Not in spite of differences. Not because of their differences. Just love them. Love is our only hope- for humanity, for the earth, for us.

So start living a life of love. We've all heard this before. God loves you unconditionally. If you are Christian, then you also believe that God became one of us and died to show us, teach us, release that unconditional love on us. Well, we're certainly doing a heck of a job of imitating that example. What would Jesus do? I'll tell you what he would do. He would live in a community of love, with a few shared possessions, travelling around to love as many people as possible. And not any people- the people with the greatest degree of difference from himself. He would not only tolerate them, he would embrace them, share his life with them, love them. He would NOT have a job. He would NOT need such distractions as toys, entertainment, or coffee to have a good time. He would only need the presence of another human to rejoice in to have a good time. He would have a complete faith in God, that he mustn't worry about such things as food or clothes. He would have faith in humans, that there is good in everyone, that anyone he meets would have it within them to share in the love he already has for them. He would not fret about the past or the future. He would live with you in the moment, fully enjoying the life God gave him. I want to imitate that man.

How am I doing that in this moment? Frankly, I'm not. I'm working all day to make money, and "learning valuable skills," to go towards my college education. At some point, you have to say that you've learned enough to go out into the "real world" and start living. Considering the whole world, I am already immensly more educated than the majority. And that's not cocky; it's just the truth. But that doesn't mean I can grow fields upon fields of food for a village to eat. Not yet. I have studied books and ideas. I'm going on to a very expensive education of more books and ideas. I can't spend my life in books and ideas. I need to experience the world, not analyze it. I have never really had to deal with racial issues. I've basically migrated towards people that are very similar to me (some of them are very different from each other, but they are similar to different parts of me) and loved them. And I do love them. But what about everyone else? For two hours out of 168 hours in one week, I reach out in some small way to people that are pretty different from me. That is not a very high percentage (just over 1%).

Aunt Annie, I will take your advice. I have an opportunity to reach out in some small way to people that are very different from me 8 hours out of every day, and I will take advantage of that opportunity.

And I will continue to grow in love with the people I am already close to. Because that's just too much fun. That's the kind of thing that makes life unbelievably, incredibly good. It's the kind of thing that can inspire me to love people that aren't so similar. And I thank you for that.

Somehow, I was able to capture the purpose of my life in that little blurb on the upper right of this blog. I appreciate the simplicity: Love God, love the earth, love humans. That's it.

Amen.