4,668 Mile Electric Car Road Trip

4,668 Mile Electric Car Road Trip – Fall, 2024

For three weeks this Fall, my wife and I took our Nissan Ariya (estimated range 300 miles) on an extended road trip: Colorado to Lancaster, PA – south to the eastern shore of Maryland – on to the Asheville, NC area – then to St. Louis – then to Chicago – and finally back to Colorado. In search of lower carbon ways to travel, we decided it was time to test our car. It’s the longest trip we have taken with any car and I thought it might be interesting to some people to hear about the joys and challenges of adapting to electric car journeys. I know many electric car owners are hesitant to travel long distances due to concerns about charging times, charger locations and anxiety about range. There is also fear that travel will be a lot slower, that the cars catch fire (percentage wise gas cars are actually more apt to catch fire with 25 fires per 100,000 electric vehicles sold compared to roughly 1,530 fires per 100,000 gasoline), or that it’s still too expensive. I hope I can put some of these fear to rest and share my enthusiasm for driving an electric car. 

Here are some reflections:

First of all, there is definitely a need to adjust to a new rhythm of a road trip with a switch from our gas cars. One can no longer just put your head down and drive forever with quick stops for fill ups at readily available gas stations. Charging requires planning, use of apps to locate chargers (see recommendations at bottom), more time spent charging before getting back on the road and careful thought about where to stay (preferably with chargers where you can charge overnight). It definitely slows down the trip, but we found as we relaxed into the new rhythm that it was possible to go wherever we wanted. We adapted. Technical knowledge and ability definitely helps as one uses phone apps to identify chargers and plan the trip. I am fortunate that my wife is very technically proficient and used the apps (good to have a variety downloaded) affectively. One can see ahead where the chargers are and tell which ones are working and even which ones are in use. It’s a new way of thinking for people who have driven only gas cars all. I must tell you that I love the new rhythm. My back and leg muscles, that give me trouble on long drives as I get older, benefit from the more frequent stops and longer breaks. It can take 15 – 45 minutes or so to charge, depending on how low the charge has gotten, how far you need to go to the next charger and what kind of car you have. I have found I enjoy the breaks, walking around a new town I’d never have stopped to see, or taking a longer walk a round a neighborhood, or just in Walmart (where many of the Electrify America chargers are located). We would nap, or go find a coffee shop, or do a quick errand or look for snacks in the surrounding stores. My back and legs gave me zero trouble despite driving almost 5,000 miles. In one small town, the city council had installed some new, fast chargers next to the Post Office and City Hall. We happily plugged in but there were no businesses near by, indeed, almost nothing in the town. We needed a bathroom so we took a walk to the local library my wife identified on the map. A pleasant walk brought us to a beautiful new library and cheerful librarians with whom we chatted happily until our car was charged. It is a town and place we would never have known existed except our charging needs necessitated the stop.

One unexpected benefit was the camaraderie we found with other electric car drivers at the charging stations. At almost every stop we ended up have long or short conversations with other drivers if they were present. It must be noted that I sometimes initiated these exchanges, being a social person – but fellow drivers find themselves naturally sharing information about how to work the chargers, which apps will help, the location of chargers further along the trip (if going in opposite directions, for example) and comparing notes about the quality of their cars. In one instance, we pulled up as a young woman with a brand new Ariya was having trouble disconnecting the car from the charger. She was getting quite worried and we showed her the trick of locking and unlocking the car, enabling the charger plug to disengage. Her gratitude precipitated immediate friendship. Sometimes non-electric car owners would approach seeking information about electric cars and our trip. There is a lot of curiosity out there about electric cars (most of it positive, but not always) and I found myself evangelizing for electric car trips and I will say that all the conversations ended up as positive interactions. 

There are places that have fewer chargers, as you might expect and not all chargers are created equal. Getting across Kansas, Tennessee and Iowa was a bit more challenging than Colorado, Pennsylvania or Virginia, for example.  But Electrify America and their chargers (mostly at Walmart’s) have been a huge boon to electric car travel. Generally near major highways, Electrify America chargers are well maintained and we never encountered a place where none of the chargers worked. Hotels increasingly have chargers, many of which are free and are almost always level 2 chargers (slow). With careful planning and research on hotel websites you can almost always find a slow charger at or near a hotel where you can plug in overnight. I have to admit that until the infrastructure for electric car charging improves in America there will continue to be moments of anxiety. It’s still more complicated to drive “blue” roads (smaller roads off highways) due to lack of chargers, for example. A strong headwind in Kansas knocked down our charge much faster than we had planned for and we rolled into a charger in Hays, Kansas with only 4% left on the battery. This was definitely worrisome and after that we solved our anxiety problem by charging more often for shorter periods. Though as someone who has run out of gas (or came close) quite a few times in my life, driving with an electric car is mostly just a different learning curve than driving with fossil fuels. I remember well the time in Nebraskan on I-80 that I ran out of gas and pushed my car for about a mile with my daughter steering to get to a gas station. I must also confess that the nearly zero need for maintenance with electric cars did come to mind every time I passed a gas car on the highway with their hood up. Overall, charging is getting better all the time as businesses and small towns realize they can make money by installing chargers. This trip made me hopeful that the infrastructure is catching up.

I do want to note that I find driving an electric car to be just more fun. The acceleration is much more efficient and easily out distances even the hottest gas muscle car. Getting on highway ramps can be nerve racking in a slower car, but an electric car’s acceleration makes it simple to slide into the busiest highway. It is quiet, of course, which eases one’s nerves on any drive, and the almost complete lack of maintenance removes that worry, not to mention expense. You may be familiar with the much quoted estimate that whereas as an internal combustion car has 2,200 moving parts, and electric car has about 22. Charging is also cheaper than buying gas. Our charges for slow (level 2) charges never exceeded $5.00 and the more expensive fast (level 3) chargers were never more than $40.00 for a fill up. And remember that most of our overnight chargers were free, charging to 100% full. Definitely the cheapest road trip ever. In addition, electric cars are fairly heavy and this makes them feel very stable. In high school my friends and I referred to the old 1960’s, wide cars (like the Pontiac Bonneville I had) as “cornering on rails” and electric cars tend to have that same feeling on turns. I can honestly say that this Nissan Ariya is the best car I’ve ever had, hands down! 

In final analysis, my wife and I feel our road trip was a great success and we have faced the learning curve of electric car road trips and adapted. There is still a way to go to bring the charging infrastructure up to speed and the range of electric cars improved further. We did have moments of range anxiety, however, compared to the enormity of the climate crisis facing us, and the mostly unknown challenges it will present, the challenge of adapting to electric cars seems a small inconvenience. In final analysis, I can now honestly say that an the electric car road trip is now a viable low carbon option for our family’s travel plans

EV apps we used:

 ABRP – A Better Road Planner.   We used this to plan our day.  You set the app up with your cars info and then tell it your starting charge and desired end of day charge.  It hooks up to your car and gives your directions on your car screen as well.   We found it helpful to add a buffer by setting our end of day charge at 20% 

Plugshare – this app is useful for finding hotels with chargers and looking at reviews of chargers.

Charging Network apps – common ones are Electrify America, ChargePoint and Blink.   

Third Act Colorado, A Testimonial 9/23/24

Third Act  – A Testimonial  9/16/24

It’s been awhile since I wrote anything. I’ve been overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problems facing this country lately. The post pandemic lag in volunteers (noticeable in the garden non-profit I work with and in our church), the Trump phenomena and the ever-present climate crisis had left me without inspiration to write much of anything. Lately, however, I have been re-energized by joining Third Act Colorado (TACO) http://thirdact.org/colorado/ and I want to tell you about it.

I had been reading Bill McKibben’s stuff for awhile and connected to 350.org and then the national Third Act movement. Last winter I received an invitation to attend a zoom whose intention was to start a state wide Third Act group in Colorado. Other states are simultaneously forming groups as well. So I attended the zoom and agreed to be the “notetaker” for the Coordinating Committee of TACO, which has led to deeper involvement in what this movement is doing. I was intrigued with the idea that folks of my age group were ready for our “third act”. The “first act” being the activism and idealism of the 1960’s and 70’s when I came of age. The “second act” was when the boomers settled into careers, work, families and life in our middle age. And the “third act’ is now that we are aging, retired or perhaps getting ready to retire, and we are ready for third act: saving the planet for the next generations. As the Third Act Colorado website reads: “Third Act Colorado is a dedicated group of over 60’s folks joining together in creative actions as we work to protect our democracy and save our precious planet.”

I guess this idea originated with Bill McKibben, but whoever thought of it, it’s brilliant. I captures perfectly action I need at this point in my life. I’ve written in this blog and told many people that when I retired I took to heart the thought of Thomas Berry (church historian and theologian) that the climate emergency and environmental work is the “Great Work” of our time. I have tried to be involved in environmental work through Greenfaith International, 350.org and local environmental and regenerative agricultural efforts. With two grandchildren and one more on the way I feel deeply convicted that we owe the next generations this effort to save what we can of the natural world and work to do what we can to clean up the mess we are leaving them. Not that my generation totally caused this mess, but we certainly participated in adding to it, and now that we know better we must do what we can to help. 

The genius of Third Act is bringing together people of similar age who share much in common. The people I have met through TACO were mostly activists of some sort of another back in the day. All have contributed to the common good in their lives and careers. Some are frankly outstanding in their organizational and creative skills they used in their careers and now bring to Third Act.  It’s been fun to get to know them and I look forward to deepening this social and community aspect of Third Act. It works because everyone seems to be in kind of the same place. We have lots of other things going on in our lives with retirement projects and family commitments, but are all looking for a way to do something positive about the climate crisis. Many Third Actors are part of other environmental groups and Third Act functions sometimes to connect the diverse actions that are being done by Citizen’s Climate Lobby, 350.org, Sierra Club, Climate Reality Project, Greenfaith International and others.

Retirement can be surprisingly busy but Third Act Colorado isn’t trying to be the center of anyone’s life or focus, so I don’t feel guilty if it isn’t the center of mine. I can show up as I am able and go the protests, tabling and activities I have time for. Right now just about everyone’s focus is on the election of 2024 and so Third Act Colorado has taken up that work and has put most other things aside for now. I have found it to be a sensible organization, knowing it’s limits and yet pushing itself to do a little more than we were doing on our own. Perhaps this sensible work load is based in the wisdom its members have accumulated over our lives. Unlike our younger selves (I should speak primarily for myself) who perhaps unwisely jumped in with both feet and guns blazing to the movements our our youth, we are now a little more tired and (I hope) a little wiser and a little more careful with what we can commit to. 

Finally, the other thing Third Act supplies to seniors (at least this senior) is treatment for anxiety. This is an anxious, stressful time. There is the election, of course, climate crisis, climate grief, the extinction crisis, Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan to name the main ones that come to mind. It’s easy to get depressed and overwhelmed. The podcasts like “Climate One” that I listen to all recommend a similar solution: doing something. A long time ago (1983 or so) a family got up in the church I was attending, University Church in Chicago, and shared that their oldest child, a young man of about 11 had been having nightmares about nuclear destruction of the Earth. They decided as a family to get active. They wrote letters to Congresspeople and started going to anti-nuclear protests and joined the “Nuclear-Free Chicago” campaign. The nightmares stopped. They were standing up to witness to this experience and to urge others to join them in action. For many people, this works. Dealing with the anxieties of our time can be helped by taking action. 

If you are of my generation, I recommend looking into Third Act. If you have friends and family in my generation, tell them about it. We Third Actors have unique story to tell and I think have something unique to contribute to environmental activism. Though we are in the last chapter of our lives, we still represent a significant part of the population. Many of us have resources to contribute: from money to experience to creativity and to the wisdom that are needed in this movement. Please seriously consider engaging in this “third act” of your life.

Our local disposal company quit taking compostable, plant based products, what do I do now?

I struggle a lot with reducing plastic in my life. Most of us know that plastics made from fossil fuel are a major part of the mess humans have made of the Earth. They take a long time to break down (statistics I have read range from 1,000 years to 30,000 years and longer), they harm animal life in our oceans and on land, they break down into micro-plastics that are ending up everywhere, they are made from petroleum products that are a disaster to extract and to refine (and must be reduced) and are so cheap to produce now that they are ubiquitous in every part of life. Preparing for this article I found many examples of people reducing and even eliminating plastic from their lives, but in every case it is a great deal of work. This has been my experience as well.

I am still determined to reduce my use of plastics, but as anyone knows who has tried, it’s complicated. Further complicating my quest lately is the fact that our garbage  company has recently quit accepting compostable products such as plates, cups, spoons and such. By doing this they are joining the majority of disposal companies in the USA who do not accept these materials. You can’t blame them, for if they are to receive these materials they have to have an expensive industrial composting system. And even if they have industrial composting as part of their operation, composable materials require very high temperature to decompose, come in different forms (which require different types of decomposition conditions) and are hard to sort. Some of the materials of composable products are decomposable in backyard compost, but it takes a long time. 

I liked the option of using compostable products for such things as takeout during the pandemic and large family or social events where washing the dishes is onerous. Our church has been trying to reduce and reach net zero consumption and embraced compostables as a great solution to church dinners and coffee hour where no one wants to wash dishes anymore. This brings up another part of the problem: that paper and plastic single use containers have spoiled us and made us addicted to the ease of their disposal, but that’s another topic. My friend who works at a university’s Environmental Center is struggling as well because college events and dining halls are also trying to reduce their carbon footprint with compostables. The decision of our disposal company is upsetting many people in our community.

In researching this issue I learned that there are just a few basic forms of compostable dishware. Basgasse is sourced from the fibrous residue of sugar cane when made into sugar. It is made into paper with minimal  processing. Bamboo compostables are made from the sheaths that fall off bamboo plants in the natural growth of the plant. Bamboo is strong and quick growing and doesn’t need lots of fertilizer or pesticides. Palm leaves for compostable paper are environmentally friendly and collecting them helps local workers gain income in some places. Vegetable starches from various vegetables, (usually corn or potatoes), can be used to make compostable plastic (PLA, polylactic acid). These plastics are non-toxic and able to decompose into carbon dioxide, water and biomass in industrial facilities. They still break down slowly into micro plastics, however, when left outside or drifting in the ocean. The other problem with PLA that many people have noted lately is that PLA requires air to decompose and landfills are usually anaerobic. In these conditions one study found that the decomposition of PLA releases methane which is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Therefore, throwing our compostables in the landfill is not ideal. Some experts think it’s actually worse than plastic because of the methane it may releases. Another study found that PLA doesn’t break down at all in a landfill, just sits there, which would actually be a better option. One good piece of news I learned is that compostable plastics don’t release chemicals when they are incinerated (because they are made from plant based materials).

So what to do? Purists (some of whom I know) would tell us that we need to quit using compostables, just as we need to get away from plastic as much as possible. Some see the compostables as just another way our disposable culture picks the lazy way out and using them just adds to our addiction to convenience. There’s much to be said for this argument and certainly we need to get back to washing dishes and not getting takeout in plastic or compostable materials. These options are always the right answer when possible. However, at least one article in Treehugger that I read thinks it is still better to use compostable products even if they end up in a landfill or recycling because it is so important to shift people from using plastic that we can afford the difficulties that are resulting in the transition. Also in their favor is the fact that compostables are made with much more environmentally friendly materials that help reduce the use of fossil fuels. Though they use lots of water, in some cases, and often use fossil fuel in production, they are still desirable in our efforts to reduce fossil fuel use and plastic production overall.  As the demand for these products increases, this argument continues, we will see improvements in waste management that deal with the compostable waste with industrial facilities. 

I am inclined to agree with this more hopeful approach. I don’t think we are going to change our society’s habit of convenience and disposal very soon and we do need a compostable solution. It’s not realistic, in my opinion, to expect people to go back to minimal use of convenience products. The majority of people aren’t going to make their own cosmetics, always bring their own utensils and cups and wash all their dishes. My family would tell you that I am a bit obsessed with reducing plastic and yet I am far from perfect in my attempts. It’s unrealistic to expect that the majority of people in the world will change? Compostable products is one way we making progress toward reducing the use of fossil fuels and so I say let’s keep encouraging their use and working toward better compost management.

One thing I have learned in researching this is that it was unusual that I had a disposal company willing to do industrial scale composting and now that they have quit we are just back to where most communities are. That fact that my local company is still composting yard waste is a huge plus.

So what will I do? I will encourage our church and our family to wash more dishes. I will reduce the amount of compostables I use and recycle those that I can in my own compost (those made of paper, cardboard, bagasse and palm leaves), and throw the rest in the landfill because I think it’s wrong to burden our recycling serve with sorting them. (Most people agree that they aren’t recyclable and it just messes up the system if you try to recycle them.) And finally, I will continue to do what I can to encourage my local community to develop better industrial scale composting. It seemed like crisis when they stopped taking compostables, but now I’m starting to think of it as just one more wake up call.

Queen Maeve is Dead

Queen Maeve is Dead – 12/31/22

It seems appropriate to write something in my blog for the end of the year, 2022, and what’s on my mind is my chickens. This is because last night Queen Maeve died. She was a Rhode Island Red and was almost 8 years old (about average for a chicken, I think). What made Queen Maeve interesting and unique for me was that she was a transgender chicken (sort of). Back when Queen Maeve arrived as a chick with 9 other chickens in 2015 she had a brother, Theodore, who was a very dominant rooster. The only male in that group, he grew very large (he was a Plymouth Rock). He was very dominant, providing a clear pecking order, but he began to over-mate, which seems to be a thing. The symptom of this was that he was gradually tearing all the feathers from the backs of the chickens. I assume that in the wild, or in a free range situation this would be less of a problem as the hens could escape, but in the confines of my coop some hens were really starting to suffer. I tried tar on their backs and a special goop I obtained from the UK, but nothing deterred him, so he finally had to go. 

Now it gets interesting, because in the absence of a strong rooster the pecking order was left in shambles. There was a void at the top and evidently it is common for one of the hens to step up and fill it. Queen Maeve stepped up. I can’t remember what I called her before, but once she stepped into leadership I named her after the mythical queen in Ireland who has a cairn tomb on Knocknarea mountain in Sligo, Ireland. I climbed up to it once and read about this legendary queen of Connaught and it seemed to fit this red feathered queenly bird.

As she stepped to the front of the pecking order Queen Maeve began to change. She grew a comb like a rooster, quit laying eggs and regularly mounted the other hens. She developed the full chest of a rooster, but not the impressive tail feathers. I never checked for a penis, but none of the eggs were ever fertilized, so we figured the transition was never complete. Therefore, though we called her our “transgender chicken”, I don’t really know how accurate that designation is. 

But Queen Maeve, for the next seven years of her life, did behave like a queen. No one messed with her and her feathers were always perfect. She never laid another egg, but she ate first, if she cared to, got first choice on the roost for the night and dominated each new generation of chickens who moved into her realm. There was some feather damage to the lowest chickens in the pecking order from Queen Maeve mounting them, but nothing as serious as had been done by Theodore, so I let it be. By then I was done with messing with the pecking order, having learned how that important that is in flocks of chickens. The years with her at the top have been quite peaceful. Everyone knew their place and all was peaceful. I am sorry Queen Maeve is gone, as I grew quite attached to her. But I am also sorry because now there is void at the top of the pecking order and I’m wondering what will happen. Who will step up or will they establish a consensus based cooperative?

Speaking of the pecking order leads me to my other piece of chicken news. With the death of Queen Maeve the only remaining chicken from the original 10 is Alexandra. She was named in honor of the wife of the Russian Czar Nicolas who was the mother of the son with hemophilia. I named her that because she was one of two Easter Egg Araucanas in that original group, one of who was large and impressive so I named her Victoria, but the other was sickly and small so I named her after Victoria’s less successful granddaughter, Alexandra. My Alexandra was always the bottom of pecking order. She was scrawny and unhealthy looking most of her life. She was the one whose back was the most torn up by the rooster, Theodore, and she continued to suffer under Queen Maeve. She hasn’t been much of an egg layer either. She routinely laid eggs with inadequate shells in her early years. Each year, I fully expected her to die. But now she has outlived them all, and it makes me wonder about pecking orders.

Is it possible that being at the bottom of the pecking order is actually an advantage. Maybe there is less stress because the hen knows exactly who they are and where they belong. They aren’t competing for power or dominance because it’s clear there’s no hope. They eat last, but they do eat. They get beat on, but they never doubt their place. Anxiety is a big part of a chicken’s life, after all, and perhaps the hens that suffer the least are the least anxious, precisely because they are at the bottom. A brief google search of hens at the bottom reveals that they are not to be pitied, despite getting beat up and being the last to eat and last to pick a place to roost. Google says they tend to be laid back in personality because they aren’t trying to dominate. And though they may be last to eat or perch, in a well ordered flock my sources claim that they will nonetheless eat and will have a safe place to perch. So my theory sort of works: less anxiety, a clear role in the flock (the bottom), and all they need to survive. I imagine a chicken expert could tell me more, but what I do have is evidence in my coop, as Alexandra lives on, her feathers now beautiful and seemingly very healthy this morning, having outlived all chickens of her age that arrived together that first year. The last shall be first, perhaps, when it comes to chickens.

Life Inside a Mirage

I haven’t written in this blog for ages, and I thought a short explanation was called for. 

So why haven’t I been writing anything?

Basically, as the pandemic isolation kicked in, I just stopped. I lost any energy I had to try and be creative. Despair about the climate crisis had been growing on me and it was easy to get depressed and feel like there wasn’t much hope of humanity actually doing anything about it. There were so many reasons to give up…Trump was President… The hardest thing was the fact that so many people supported and that he was the tip of the iceberg. This reality is ongoing, of course. I guess I just lost my hope. Then the pandemic came and all that has entailed. I am in awe of the many people who have held onto hope, or at least gutted it out and kept writing and working and hoping for change and for justice. I haven’t shut down, I have kept up my donation garden and growing vegetables to donate to food pantries. Our non-profit, Earth’s Table, has grown and developed in many wonderful ways. It is a good team of people and a source of inspiration for me. Working outside and digging in the dirt continues to renew me and keeps me going. I have kept voting and working for progressive candidates. I have kept working on environmental work locally, active in our local church Earth Action Team and the Boulder Greenfaith International Circle. Taking action has helped. 

But the fact remains, I just quit writing. Lately, I have missed it. As I think I have shared in the past, writing articles and sermons in my career was a benefit to me, primarily. I hope others got something out of it, but it was a gift to me; clarifying my thoughts, forcing me to do research and come up with new ideas. Forcing me to learn something. By shutting down I lost this enriching part of my life. So here I am, it’s time to try again. 

If one allows oneself to be negative, all the problems that existed when I quit writing in 2016 are still around and are mostly worse. The pandemic has taken it’s deadly toll. The divisions in the country and huge support for the racism and reactionary ideas of the “Trumpies” (as my neighbor calls them) is still around. The climate crisis worsens and Glascow was pretty disappointing. Climate events wreck havoc on communities around the world. The summer air quality in Colorado from the fires has become much worse. Wildfire swept through suburban Boulder recently with enormous loss. However, there is much to celebrate and I am encouraged by many things that are happening with the environmental movement. But regardless of how I am feeling, or what progress has been made or not made, despite who happens to be on the Supreme Court or in US government, I need to rejoin hopeful action. I have to make myself write something, if only to get my brain going. But really because it symbolizes hope for me. It is a sign of faith. Faith that the Spirit of the Universe, the Process of Creation usually named “God” is still evolving and creating and is present in me and all things. I need to kindle this faith within me and seek hope. 

Life inside a mirage – visiting Palm Desert

There have been many science fiction depictions of humanity living under domes. Logan’s Run, a movie from 1977, is set in the future and depicts a human society that has destroyed its climate and is forced to live under a protective dome in order to survive. I also remember the Biosphere experiment in 1991 where eight people tried to survive in a self sufficient biosphere for 2 years. Or the Eden Project that Laura and I visited in Cornwall that uses domes to create huge greenhouses in an abandoned quarry that support plant and animal life. The vision of humanity reduced to living under domes on a planet Earth where the environment is no longer conducive to human life definitely figures in my imagination. On my recent visit to Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage and the other towns in the Coachella Valley in California I was struck by the fact that people there are already living under a kind of dome.

Driving into Palm Springs, after camping in Joshua Tree National Park, we drove through a bleak, desert environment where only plants and animals that have adapted to the harsh conditions still thrive. But driving into the Coachella Valley one arrives into a seemingly lush place with palm trees and bright green grass. Golf courses thrive next to housing units (mostly surrounded by walls) with bright flowers and healthy gardens. A growing community, it supports a huge number of people and their pets and gardens. It’s like you dropped a verdant, tropical city into the middle of the California desert. There is one big difference however, tropical cities have water, but in the Coachella Valley almost all the water comes from somewhere else, much of it from the Colorado River. One of the cities there, Rancho Mirage, where we had dinner one evening, seems perfectly named; a mirage, a non-existent vision of water or oasis in the desert. It struck me that the whole thing is a mirage, an artificial city with little or no relationship to its environment. The thousands of people who live and visit there can remain oblivious to the fact that there is a desert world outside their little oasis. Stepping two feet out of the irrigated zone and you are back in arid sand and rock. It occurred to me that they might as well be living under a dome, in fact a dome might help the valley infrastructure by allowing them to recycle air and water and be less wasteful of resources. 

Humans in the Coachella Valley seem to living, shopping, playing golf, watching TV, eating out, building houses and going about their business completely separated from the Earth’s natural environment around them. Though starkly obvious in the Coachella Valley, it came to me that much of humanity, particularly in cities and suburbs, go about their lives in very similar ways. Is my life so different? Even if the city is located in a less arid environment, many of the inhabitants have little or no connection to the surrounding environment. Unless someone is a gardener, hiker or other outside enthusiast, it’s easy to live out your life as if one was completely separate from nature. I say “as if” because in reality we are all completely dependent upon nature and living in cooperation with the Earth and our fellow creatures. The Coachella Valley may receive a crash course in the interdependence when the Colorado River runs low on water. The fact is that Climate Change is gradually giving all of us this crash course in interdependence.

Our utter dependence on the natural systems of the planet is not a new idea. Indigenous cultures around the world all recognized the interconnection of humans with other organisms. The current environmental movement and earth based theology is beginning to share this idea as well. We are part of nature, yet as a species we seem determined to deny this reality and live as if we are somehow above and independent of the rest of our plant and animal relatives. Western culture, particularly developed a culture and belief system that sees humans as separate from the rest of nature.

Thomas Berry, a Roman Catholic scholar of the History of Culture and Theology who called himself a Geologian, defined a bioregion as: “an identifiable geographic area of interacting life systems that is relatively self-sustaining in the ever-renewing processes of nature. The full diversity of life functions is carried out, not as individuals or as species, or even as organic beings, but as a community that includes the physical as well as the organic components of the region. Such a bioregion is a self-propagating, self-nourishing, self-educating, self-governing, self-healing and self-fulfilling community. Each of the component life systems must integrate its own functioning within this community to survive in an effective manner.” (Thomas Berry, A Biography, Tucker and Grim, 2021) Humans, whether we like it or not, will not survive apart from the systems of the Earth that make up our bioregions. That we can live apart or separate from Nature is an illusion. Yet much of the contemporary world seems to be entrenched in this mirage.

So how do we wake up? For the people of the Coachella Valley, living within the local resources, in harmony with their environment would mean some pretty serious changes in lifestyle and many of them pretty uncomfortable. I suspect that for humanity to step out of our illusionary domes and try to live sustainably in our local eco-systems is going to mean less comfort as well. I also suspect that this change is coming one way or another. The only question is whether we rise to meet it and begin to make the changes necessary to make the transition gracefully, or if we continue to live as we are and change comes down on us cataclysmically.

Circular Economies

Circular economies

March 22, 2020: my wife and I are isolating for Covid-19 due to her severe asthma and lung damage. Plus, we are both over 60. So we are reading the news, reading books we have on hand, gardening and such. We are very fortunate, of course, for we are privileged people with enough resources to have a nice house mostly powered by the sun and geo-thermal energy. We have big gardens that have filled our freezer and pantr. Our chickens are laying again after a winter rest, we have milk delivery and we really have no need to go anywhere. It doesn’t stop me from moments of fear as I contemplate where I went in the last week before we cut ourselves off, and who I was with, one of whom, at least, is sick. But I feel solidarity with people all over the world in similar situations, even though I am isolated from them.

We are at the beginning, I suspect, of a long process of using the resources we have on hand: food, books, internet access, art and craft projects, garden work, home improvements and such. Already I am finding myself digging around to see what wood and supplies I have available to build things, repair toys for my granddaughter and create stuff in my garage. As I get ready for the garden season I am re-using pots and germination trays, thinking about being careful with the potting soil I have as I will try to avoid buying more and the human interaction that involves. We are digging into our freezer big time and actually looking at the bottom layers and calculating how to use it’s contents. We are reducing, reusing and recycling in new ways already. Then I read the latest National Geographic and came on their story about trash and the circular economy that many people are working hard to develop, reusing and recycling trash with the goal of zero waste. Something clicked.

It’s a good article and heartening to see the great work being done toward recycling metal, clothing, food and other resources that have been wasted on a huge scale as the modern economy of single use and and throwing things away has developed. As the article points out, there is no waste in nature. An obvious point, but one not often considered by the average modern human. If we are to mimic nature (biomimicry as a goal I have written about before) we need to move toward zero waste. This is the circular economy. Everything is made with the purpose of use and reuse. Everything comes back around to rejoin the economy in some form. Like the old time sustainable farmers who had little or no waste. Animal manure fertilized the field, unused or spoiled food went to animals or compost, old clothes became rags or quilts, metal was melted or repurposed in some way. Swords became plowshares. Humans have long moved toward throwing some things away, of course, but at least they rotted and became part of the earth again. With plastic and petroleum products we now have waste that almost never goes away, at least in the foreseeable human future. A circular economy today will require a great deal of ingenuity and hard work. It will require some kind of “come to Jesus moment” for humanity, to realize the need to transform our economies and reorder humanity to live in harmony with natures processes in order to survive. 

Which leads me back to our isolated life and meager beginnings of seeing what resources we have on hand at home to get through (potentially) the next 6 months with minimum shopping. I am wondering if this is happening in other households to a varying degree. Obviously, a family in a small New York apartment has very different resources to draw on and will have a harder time adapting to the new normal. However, perhaps, apartment building communities, co-housing units, neighborhoods and such will be forced to consider how they can work together to use the resources they have. An empty lot could become a garden, perhaps, or even a greenhouse in the basement with grow lights. At the very least people may begin to think of the advantages of a more circular economy and the deficiencies our our current system could begin to dawn on us. 

The clearing skies over our cities are already being noted by climate activists and others. As people drive less and the oil industry fracks less the skies over the Front Range of Colorado are clearing a bit. They can see the difference in pollution over China, New York City and LA from space. Optimistically, the current crisis of Covid-19 could result in some rethinking. Something to consider as you stare into your freezer, your bookshelf or your storage closet contemplating how to use what you have on hand in the next few months.

Humans and the New Wild

Humans and the New Wild

  In Bill McKibbons’s first book, The End of Nature, he works with the premise that nature is a process that previously operated independently from human beings but is now directly affected by the actions of people: it is no longer independent, but dependent upon us. He wrote, “If the waves crash up against the beach eroding dunes and destroying homes, it is not the awesome power of Mother Nature. It is the awesome power of Mother Nature as altered by the awesome power of man, who has overpowered in a century the processes that have been slowly evolving and changing of their own accord since the earth was born.” Many conservative commentators have reacted to this idea as they have to climate change itself, saying that it is arrogant to think that human beings could be so important to the processes of the Earth. However, based on how Bill McKibbon exhaustively explained it, and as the years since it’s publishing in 1988 have illustrated, I think he was right. Nature on Earth no longer operates independently of humans, but is influenced at almost every level by our actions.

On one hand, this is a devastating reality, for it means that human actions are immensely important for the future of the climate and in the current economic and political reality this doesn’t bode well for our future. On the other hand, it means that we must take this responsibility seriously and work to have a positive effect on the future of Earth and the organisms who are still alive. We can work in harmony with Earth’s processes and seek positive outcomes. 

One name for this way of thinking is the “New Wild”. It postulates that not only do humans now have this power to work with Nature, but that we have a responsibility to embrace this reality and operate in harmony with Nature and help it thrive. It is no longer optional. If we leave Nature to regulate itself now, it will, of course, do so, but the results may not be to our liking, as the affects of humans past decisions about fossil fuel use, industrialization and so on continue to play out. In this scenario, many species, including ourselves, may become extinct or at least be severely and negatively impacted. The New Wild envisions a natural world tended by humans, but also supporting us. Humans not separate from Nature, but a part of it, thriving side by side.

I think we need to embrace this new paradigm.

“Earth, A New Wild”, hosted by Dr. M. Sanjayan, is a PBS show that partly inspired this blog. I recommend it. It addresses this idea that humans need Nature, and now that humans have damaged it so severely, Nature needs humans. The show tells stories about how the systems of the Earth and human culture are interrelated, about how humans can not survive without Nature, and how Nature  would survive without humans, but be deeply altered. For example: one episode tells how in India, people were completely dependent for centuries on vultures to get rid of the bodies of dead cows which are too sacred to eat and are dragged out of cities to the countryside to rot and be devoured by vultures. However, an drug used to inoculate cattle was toxic to vultures and they began to disappear, with catastrophic consequences. Carcasses began to build up, spreading disease and resulting in a plague of feral dogs and rats well fed on rotting bodies. Eventually, humans had to intervene, banning the drug and learning to breed vultures and repopulate them around India. Vultures are slowly recovering and with them the countryside around cities. In another episode, scientists and ecologists are working with New York City to bring back the oysters and mollusks is the bay and rivers of New York to clean the water and bring back other species such as fish and birds. Again, human intervention can regenerate an Earth system, but one that is badly needed to combat the slime and jellyfish taking over the waters around New York.

The example of this closest to my current reality is growing food. All agree that soils worldwide have become degraded by conventional agricultural and building practices. The soil in my gardens was scrapped off for building, mixed, piled up and then bulldozed back around my property willy-nilly. Previous to that it was range land with cattle and then horses, probably overgrazed, compacted and degraded before being sold off for building lots. Digging down I had clay, poor water absorption, little fertility and compacted soils. I could leave it alone and go grow food somewhere else…I could use conventional methods of tillage and pouring fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides on it which would be a temporary solution with other environmental problems….or I could educate myself about soil health and work with Nature to regenerate the soil. This takes time, labor, lots of organic material and education on my part. I am four years in and many loads of manure, ground up leaves and garden waste later and I am seeing some improvement. In order to grow food for our family as well as for donation to food pantries necessitated my intervention in a natural system that was deeply degraded by human activity.

This is not a new thought, people have worked with Nature all through human history, but it is a new paradigm to recognize that it is the key to human survival. For too long humans have lived and worked with Nature as an expendable resource. Humans have been the center of our theology, our worldview, our industry,  our inventions and our way of life, and Nature was a tool to serve us. The new wild accepts the reality that we are and always have been completely dependent upon the systems of the Earth and it is only by recognizing how enmeshed we are that we will survive. 

Coral reefs are disappearing, but the oceans need reefs as nurseries and breeding grounds. Humans need the ocean if we are to continue to live as we have. We may need healthy oceans just to survive as a species. The good news is that humans are learning to rebuild new reefs and plant new coral. Humans need to alter what we pour into the oceans and devote resources to restoring reefs. Humans eat great amounts of meat, but the conventional methods of producing meat are gradually degrading the range lands and polluting our rivers and oceans. But people are learning new ways of keeping ruminants on the land, moving them around quickly so they graze, poop and dig up the soil with their hoofs, regenerating the range land. We can have meat and healthy land, but we have to learn to raise animals in a new way (see the work of the Savory Institute as an example). There are countless examples of people more knowledgable than I am who are already developing, implementing and writing about these ideas all over the world. If you start looking, you’ll be amazed, and maybe you already are. My point today is just to highlight this new paradigm, a new way for us to think about our relationship with Nature. We can’t think about Nature in the same old ways, we are now and always have been, part of the wild.

Transforming How I Think About Soil

Transforming How I Think About Soil

Kristin Nicols, chief scientist at the Rodale Institute asked, in a podcast I listen to, what came first, soil or plants: “You couldn’t have plants without soil, or soil without plants – the missing link was fungus.” It was part of an analysis from Rodale that concluded, among many other things, that farm subsidy programs should not be based on yield, they should be based on soil health.

I have not written in my blog for about a year, something I wonder about. It could be I have been just too busy with the Earth’s Table gardens, but my current theory is that I have been too overwhelmed by the crazy political situation in America and the looming climate crisis to write about regenerative stuff. It feels irrelevant and too late. I know this is not rational. Many people are doing all they can to save democracy and address the climate crisis. I am slowly recovering a bit, and thought I’d try to address a major change in my thinking about soil.

The most important thing I have learned about soil this year (from podcasts and books such as A Soil Owners Manual, is that fertility comes from the organisms and plants living in the soil, not from added fertilizers or whatever humans try do to regenerate soil. Humans can help, but it is the healthy biome of the soil that will save agriculture. For me it is a sea-change in my thinking. I, like many gardeners over the centuries, viewed soil as a medium in which plants grow, that is gradually exhausted by our gardens and agriculture and must be supplemented and renewed through careful human effort. I would till, add compost, fertilizer, weed, and add manure or whatever I was reading about lately to renew fertility. I viewed soil as a sort of neutral substance that held the stuff needed to produce plants, like perlite or something. David Montgomery refers to this as thinking of soil as dirt, just the medium for other additives. I have come to learn, as many others are lately, that this view of soil is all turned around. What regenerates soil that has been exhausted by human agriculture is the biome of the soil: the animals, fungus and plants that live in it, and they are interdependent upon each other. 

Everything that I have learned in the last few years about forests and agriculture, trees and other plants shows how they are dependent upon the fungus and microbes living in the soil for their nutrients, communication between plants and, basically, their ability to live. The fungus and microbes, however, are equally dependent upon the plants to provide sugars obtained through photosynthesis and the organic material left in the soil by dead and rotting plants. It’s a system that humans can help function better, but that is actually independent from our efforts. Most actions by humans over the centuries to manage forests and fields have actually done more damage than good to the soil biome and have resulted in what we have now, exhausted, depleted soils, massive erosion, dead zones in the oceans and the degradation of much of our agriculture land and forests.

I won’t try to explain all the science involved in this system since others are doing it much better than I could and there are now many books and podcast you can listen to that will help you understand this if you are interested. There’s a mini-revolution in thinking about soil going on and there is a bunch of material out there for you to read. My point today is simply to raise the issue and think out loud a bit about how this is affecting the way I manage my gardens now. It is also, I believe, an important issue to understand as we seek to regenerate our land, improve local food sources and address climate change.

In A Soil Owners Manual, the author talks about how we must feed our livestock. Not that we all have cows and pigs living on our land, but that gardeners and farmers all have livestock living in the soil. Our livestock are the fungus, insects, animals and microbes living in our soil. Basic care for soil and the rejuvenation of our soils means feeding and caring for these organisms. Tilling, fertilizers and pesticides, long the mainstay of growing food, actually damage the soil biome and should be used sparingly if at all. Instead, we should leave the soil alone as much as possible, (no-till) and add things to the surface of the soil that will aid the biome. It is beneficial to add organic matter such as compost, leaves, manure and such. It is beneficial to keep roots in the ground, plants are needed to feed the soil organs, and it is beneficial to keep the soil covered with organic material if possible to hold moisture in the soil and keep CO2 in the soil. 

So, from what little I have learned so far, I have quit tilling my garden beds and have been making compost like crazy. I am trying to learn about cover crops and keeping some roots in the ground in the off season. I put up a sign at the end of my driveway in the fall, “Leaves needed for mulch, Thanks” and received about 100 bags of leaves from my neighbors this year, which I grind up and dump in the compost or on my beds to keep them covered. I apply mulch (leaves, old hay and grass clippings) to control weeds and pull lots of weeds. Weed control is definitely a problem if you don’t till, so I am still figuring that out. Some people till ever 3 to 5 years to control perennial weeds and I have that under consideration ( it’s been 3 years since I tilled the beds). I have pretty much cut out the use of pesticides to prevent wiping out soil organisms by accident. Very occasionally I have used Pyrethrin or Sluggo for Bean Beetles and slugs respectively, but I try to limit that. All the mulching definitely increases the number of slugs, but I have read that as long as I don’t use Sluggo Plus, I won’t kill earthworms. Generally, I am still reading and learning and figuring this out, but the sea-change has come and I am rethinking everything I know about soil health.

This feels like a huge transformation in thinking for me, and I am surprised as I talk to people who are not gardeners or farmers, to learn that this revelation hasn’t quite reached the majority of non-garden people yet. So I share it with you. 

There are lots of ramification of this as one starts looking around. There are folks raising cattle by moving them around from field to field, rejuvenating the soil of their grain fields by the cattle chewing down he grass, cutting up the soil with their hoofs and depositing manure before being moved quickly to another field to do the same. Grass fed beef and milk seems to be a part of this new thinking about soil that may revolutionize the beef and dairy industry to be climate sustaining. Forests can be managed differently if we begin to understand what is happening under the surface. Tractors, huge harvesters and such and our dependence upon petroleum in our agricultural system may change dramatically, with all kind of good results for the climate. This new thinking about soil could be the most important thing to happen to the human agricultural thinking since humans started planting wheat in Asian Minor.

There’s my hopeful thought for the new year. I encourage even non-gardeners to look into this a little, just so you have something positive to add to your thoughts as you lie awake at night wondering what your children’s and grandchildren’s world will look like. It’s helping me a bit.

Resources on Soil Health

Podcasts I like:

Regenerative Agriculture Podcast by John Kempf

Sustainable World Radio with Jill Cloutier

The Permaculture Podcast with Scott Mann

Regenerative Permaculture, Clint Locklear

Bioneers, Ecological Food &Farming

For the Wild, Ayana Young

Books I like:

A Soil Owner’s Manual, Jon Stika

Dirt, The Erosion of Civilizations, Daniel Montgomery

Growing a Revolution, Daniel Montgomery

The Hidden Half of Nature, Daniel Montgomery

Rainwater Harvesting, Brad Lancaster

Introduction to Permaculture, Bill Mollison

Cows Save the Planet, Judith D. Schwartz

Teaming with Microbes, Jeff Lowenfels

Teaming with Fungi, Jeff Lowenfels

Ask Nature – Antoni Gaudi and Biomimicry


My first exposure to Biomimicry I remember was visiting the Eden Center in Cornwall, UK in 2014. The buildings at this restored gravel pit look similar to geodesic domes, but are built to mimic soap bubbles, insulating the buildings and providing light weight material  to sit on the unstable sands of the building site. The architect, Jolyon Brewis, used the mathematical formulas of spirals of pinecones, pineapples and sunflowers to create these strong, durable structures that let light in but insulate well. This design from nature intrigued me, but biomimicry didn’t crystalize in my mind until we visited Barcelona this year and learned about the work of Antoni Gaudi. We saw his amazing cathedral, Sagrada Familia, started in 1883 and due to be finally finished in 2024, as well as the Park Guell, and various other homes and buildings. In his later work Gaudi drew inspiration from nature, both for the decorative elements of the buildings and for design. He studied the structure of trees, rushes, reeds and bones to add strength to the beams holding up the roof of Sagrada Familia and copying the fractal structures found in nature, he gave his columns double-turn helicoidal shape adding strength. His study of nature’s forms resulted in other forms such as cones, the hyperbolic paraboloid and others. But it was his way of decorating these structures that really captured me. Covering much of the roofs and building are his broken tiles, Trencadis, in which he used recycled tiles, buttons, shells and even bits of old pottery brought by the workers, he added a wonderful, organic feel to his structures. Not straight and flat, but rolling, undulating surfaces that seem almost alive. Natural images of animals and plants are everywhere. I came away amazed that this man, over 100 years ago, was already utilizing biomimicry. It inspired me to go look for contemporary examples and I found them everywhere.

Biomimicry describes the process of humans borrowing designs and systems from nature to create their own technology. It is literally the imitation or mimicking of the elements of nature for the purpose of solving human problems. One of bioimicry’s major advocates, Jan Benyus, co-founder of the Biomimicry Institute, says that biomimicry is observing how life has learned over millions of years to take care of her offspring and we must now learn from nature how to take care of our offspring. Biomimicry imitates natural systems that employ negative feedback loops, reusing, recycling, receiving and giving back. These systems of design and production of materials, structures and even social structures and communities are modeled on biological entities and processes. She says in one podcast that we need to learn to be “Earthlings”, creatures of the earth, not separate from it. Our current way of doing things, she would describe as a “death culture”, extracting, receiving, using and never regenerating. That has to change and biomimicry is one good tool to use. Nature has been perfecting it’s systems for a long time and humans can learn from it’s designs. We have millions of ancestors in nature, and therefore, millions of teachers. Nature can be our mentor.

Humans have, of course, always done this. Leonardo da Vinci studied the flight of birds and made attempts to develop flying machines. The Wright brothers studied the flight of pigeons in their early designs of planes. Buckminster Fuller, who the Eden Project copied, mimicked the structure of trees in his design of the modern home, hanging all the structures on a central stem or backbone. It didn’t catch on. In the 1950’s, the American biophysicist, Otto Schmitt developed the Schmitt Trigger by studying the nerves of squids. In his continued study of natural systems he coined the word, biomimetics. Even Henry Ford, who insisted that his parts be delivered in crates whose boards he could use as Model T components, was recycling and reusing in what we now see as biomimicry.

Biomimicry is gradually becoming a mainstream design method. In an effort to decrease water usage at the Great Sand Dunes State Park in Colorado, designers asked what does nature do? Struggling to find a new system, they suddenly realized that nature doesn’t go up on the dunes in the hottest part of the day. A nature based strategy is to discourage human exploration during those hours and open earlier and later. Biomimicry doesn’t have to be complicated.  Janine Benyus is excited about 3-D printing as way of utilizing recycled plastic. Agriculture, forestry and greenhouse growing all benefit from studying the way nature does it. Such systems are by definition regenerative. Researchers studied the termite’s ability to maintain constant temperature and humidity in their termite mounds in Africa despite outside temperatures that vary from 35 to 104 °F. They scanned a termite mound and created 3-D images of the mound structure resulting in construction techniques that will help with insulation.

The Biomimicry Institute has started the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge. I recommend looking it up. In 2018, there were six teams recognized for their designs.  A team in China worked to develop a way to combat soil erosion resulting from the Three Gorges Dam. They mimicked the Kingfisher’s “third eyelid”, a protective layer that a covers the bird’s eyes while under water. Their design is a mesh structure that covers soil while it is submerged and water is rushing over it. Another team at Georgia Tech were looking to find resilient ways to harvest renewable energy. They designed a generator that produces clean energy from underwater sea currents. They studied the bell-shaped bodies of jellyfish, how schools of fish position themselves in currents, how heart valves move liquid and kelp blades adapt to flowing water to develop their generator. Another team generated energy on urban freeways copying cockroach shells, condor wings and the structure of desert snail shells.

These are just a few examples of biomimicry that I am beginning to see everywhere I look. I am sharing this to encourage everyone to watch for this, and use it in your own problem solving, but mainly I share because this is something that gives me hope. According to these biomimicry design folks, all the answers we need in order to survive as a species and regenerate the Earth can be found in biomimicry. It is up to us to discover them. We’ve just been going about it in the wrong way, thinking of humans as smarter than nature and independent. It’s a new way, or rather, a very old way of thinking.

Janine Benyus would say that “What do you want?” Is the wrong question. The right questions are “What do you want your design to do?” and “How does nature do it?”. 

Ask Nature.

The World Peace Prayer in Anxious Times

The World Peace Prayer In Anxious Times

In the Fall of 2001, after the Bush administration invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, our local church started saying the World Peace Prayer each Sunday. It is a prayer adapted from the original in the Upanishads and gave voice to our congregation’s opposition to the U.S. invasion. The war in Afghanistan is still going on and the congregation has continued the prayer, now as a central part of the service instead of a special add on of social concern. The prayer has grown on me and I now say it each night since our current president was elected.

“O Lord,

Lead us from death to life, from falsehood to truth,

Lead us from despair to hope, from fear to trust,

Lead us from hate to love, from war to peace,

Let peace fill our hearts, our world, our universe, peace, peace, peace.”

 

I have learned that in Sanskrit the word for peace, shanti, is a word meaning inner peace, tranquility, calmness or rest. In both Hindu and Buddhist practice some people chant shanti three times to promote peace in body, mind and spirit. The mantra “Om Shanti Shanti Shanti” is sometimes used to close a Hindu or Buddhist worship service. The words seem even more appropriate to me now as a guide to inner peace than they did in 2001 as a call to peace between nations. 

“Death to life” is a good place to start ones’ prayers, choosing to put aside the things of death, not focusing on the end of life, not being awake to the fact that I am alive, not being mindful of life right now. To choose life feels to me like choosing to be awake in the present moment. To choose life is to not give up on the world and on the force of life in the universe. It is to hold on to the hope that life is evolving toward greater interconnection and cooperation. 

“From falsehood to truth”, besides being a direct rebuttal to the president and his allies, (which is comforting to me) is a also personal commitment to seeking truth in my own journey. To reject the tendency in myself to hold to false assessments of my own abilities or thoughts. “Don’t believe everything you think”, a Buddhist expression I like, points to the tendency to let falsehoods drive one’s fears and negative thinking. Truth is associated with God in all religious traditions. To seek truth, scientific truth, personal honesty or ultimate purpose and meaning, in my opinion, is to seek God. Letting go of falsehood can be surprisingly hard and for me requires constant vigilance. It’s a good thing to remember in evening prayers.

“Despair to hope” has been particularly powerful for me to say each evening during this period of politics since 2016. I find in myself a strong tendency toward despair. I have felt at times to be just this side of giving up and dropping out of efforts to oppose this administration and their racist, fear based agenda, or to work to save our planet. This tendency towards despair reflects my own predilection toward pessimism, and probably doesn’t affect everyone as it does me. It’s easy for me to move to the very negative place of giving up on the value of action and efforts for good. Holding to hope is essential in this time. It is a natural outgrowth of “death to life”, “falsehood to truth”.  In fact, it seems to me that the phrases in the prayer follow a logical order and build upon each other. Choosing life leads us toward truth, truth toward hope, hope toward trust and trust toward peace.

From “fear to trust”, is perhaps the most difficult and cuts to the root of the human dilemma. Fear is the opposite of life, or truth and hope. Fear is so deep in the human psyche that it’s extremely hard to uncover. From the “fight or flight” proclivity deep in human evolution to our basic sense of self and ego preservation, fear holds us down in all sorts of ways. Fear can immobilize  us in our shoes, make us sick and make us hide away in all sorts of ways.  It causes hate and wars, it leads easily to violence, against others and against ourselves. Much of my personal journey toward physical and mental health has been an effort to face and overcome my fears. To move to trust is immensely difficult sometimes. It is the basis of faith, whether that be faith in God or the basic goodness of the universe or simply faith in my personal ability to face an obstacle. As a part of this prayer, I think trust does necessitate trust in the goodness and dependability of the universe, in some higher power, in whatever way the individual may envision that power. In my own case I envision the process of the Cosmos and therefore our Earth as orderly and good. If there is a Creator, a “Great Mysterious” Presence, (as Black Elk, the Lakota holy man spoke of) then it is inextricably tied with the order and evolution of the creation. This pantheist or panentheist presence is ultimately a source of trust in this prayer for me.

All this culminates in “hate to love” and the natural extension of that, “war to peace”. Choosing life leads to truth, seeking truth leads to hope, embracing hope leads to trust, and it all leads to love. Letting go of hate, and even facing the reality of hatred in my own heart is not easy. One again has to choose. Choosing love over hate and intentionally working at loving people who are difficult to love. I need a lot of life, truth, hope and trust to love some individuals in this political climate. Once love is grasped the next step of war to peace is fairly inevitable. Clearly, war between nations is impossible when love is present. There are, I suppose, many ways to be at war, with others or within oneself, so perhaps it is not so simple. To be at peace within and with others may require all we have learned about life, truth, hope, trust and love.  

The ending, “May peace fill our hearts, our world, our universe, peace, peace, peace”, is both comforting and empowering for me. It affirms my place in the universe and allows me to petition for my own inner peace. It also allows me to extend my prayer beyond myself. At a time when humans are affecting life on Earth so profoundly, praying for the world is essential. Finally, praying for peace in the universe, while feeling quite presumptuous, includes me as a contributing part of that universe and affirms that my intention for peace is powerful. 

I wish I could say that I am at peace with the state of politics in the U.S., my anxiety about Climate Change, racial justice and the other challenges facing us these days, but I have a tool in the World Peace Prayer that has given me some guidance on my journey

When I say the ending, “peace, peace, peace”, or “shanti, shanti, shanti”, I think of the Hebrew word Shalom, (wholeness, harmony, peace) as well as shanti (calmness, tranquility and rest). It encapsulates the whole prayer.  It feels good to be united with people of non-Christian faiths when chanting these words. I recommend this prayer for our anxious times.