Structural Change

I just finished watching series 4 of The Good Life, a 1970s sitcom from BBC that aired in the US as Good Neighbors. The library system only had this last season of the show, so I requested that to see whether I would like it. I enjoyed it very much and so will probably purchase the set that contains series 1-3 at some point and then donate this to the library when I have watched it. It is about a these neighbors, both of whom were corporate suburban couples until one of the couples decides to drop out of the rat race and become self-sufficient. Some of it brought me back to my own corporate suburban 1970s childhood. Some of it was pretty laughable--like when they worked for a sheep farmer in exchange for fleeces which they spun (with a drop spindle), dyed with nettles, wove the yarn into cloth, and then sewed into a suit--presumably by hand, since the woman was always seen sewing by hand. This seemed to happen in a remarkably short period of time! All in all though, it was quite entertaining. At one point, though, it struck me how difficult (impossible?) it can be to be truly self-sufficient in a society where that is somehow held up as the ideal, but is structurally set up to make this very, very difficult. At some level, of course, none of us are self-sufficient, and indeed even in the show, they had to barter with other people to get their needs met. This has always been the case, I would venture to say, throughout human evolutionary history. Cooperation was a part of our evolutionary process and no one truly goes it alone. So, although we can strive to meet as many of our needs as possible on our own, we can't ever meet all of them. Still, having the knowledge to grow food, cook with what you have, and make do in creative ways with things you have just makes a lot of sense to me. When she cut up one of her husband's pullovers and made herself a tabard vest and leg warmers, I chuckled to myself. In the last episode she was wearing a patchwork shirt that looked like it had been cut out of other old shirts in different shapes and sewn together, seams outward. Now this is something I want to try myself. In any case, there are parts of this kind of lifestyle that not only do I find attractive, but that I actually do in my own life. There are limits--I know that unless I am doing container gardening, for example, I really don't care for it. So I will plant a few tomato plants in pots, but I have also joined a CSA and will support a local farm family that way. Brunswick happens to be a place where I can do that. In Fairbanks, we lived without running water for a couple of years. This was pretty painless, although it took organization and planning, because Fairbanks was set up for that kind of thing. There were places we could go to buy water and pump it into our containers. That's the thing--the system has to be set up in such a way to allow and even encourage people to make these kinds of changes in their lives. Clearly the system we have now does not work and millions of people know this and try to make positive changes in their own lives. This needs to happen because we need these individuals to turn into groups which will turn into larger groups that will eventually be large enough to force cultural, societal, and structural change. But these pioneers do have it a little harder--they are trying to build alternative lifestyles within a structure that is often not supportive and may in fact hinder them. So we all do what we can. One of the things I was happy to see in the show was the expression of the joy that such a life can bring. The more I have tossed aside all the trappings of a consumer lifestyle the happier I have been myself. There is little joy in shopping--I can think of few things more mind-numbingly boring. But there is satisfaction in taking a bunch of string, manipulating it with my crochet hook, and ending up with a pair of socks or a shirt. Bucking the system at any level requires creativity. I think we need as much of that as we can get.

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Service

Yesterday a friend was musing about how she gives to others at Christmastime. She was talking about making ornaments and baking cookies and giving them out to the people in her 55 and over neighborhood. It got me thinking about how I engage in service. I usually don't have much money, because I choose to live simply. When I have had money to give, I have given it, but usually service for me takes the form of time and creation.
I have volunteered my time to various organizations through the years. I worked in the women's centers at two different universities. I have spent time working in art galleries and with arts organizations in two different states. I have been active in the peace and social justice committees in churches I have attended over the past 5 years. I have worked with the Oregon State University Extension Program in food pantries helping to educate people about food preparation and safety, and nutrition. I got training and certification in literacy education. All of these areas of life are important to me and I felt good about giving my time to support them.
I also feel that it is important to give to individual people. That is a form of community service, too. There are many ways to do this, of course—being a friend, providing a shoulder to cry on or an ear to listen, helping someone around the house, and countless other things provide us with ways to build community and support each other. For me there is also the fact that using my talents in the service of others feels spiritual to me. Like my friend, I bake a lot. It is a good feeling to give someone a tin of homemade cookies and see their face light up. I also crochet (and sometimes knit, tat, or cross-stitch). Most of what I have made over the past 25 years has gone to other people. In the last 7 years or so, I have made countless prayer/blessing shawls. It all started when my mother-in-law's mother died. I had heard about prayer shawls and thought it would be a good thing to do, so I made one and mailed it to her. She called me on the phone and cried as she told me that it was the nicest gift anyone had ever given her. This was quite a moment for me because this is a woman who was not at all happy that I was marrying her son (she probably had good reasons for this, mainly the fact that I was 18, he was 28 and we had only known each other for a couple of months, but after 29 years, I can say it's worked out). Our relationship was fine by then, but it was still a powerful moment for me. It has all snowballed from there. I can be talking to someone and my inner voice will suddenly tell me that I need to make them a prayer shawl. Sometimes it seems obvious to me why this is so, but sometimes it really doesn't. I have tried to talk myself out of it at times, but it never works and the thought hounds me until I make the shawl. I am always glad I did. For me, this exemplifies many things that I think are important—the power of creating things with my own hands, the connection between people, and the shawl itself is important, because it symbolizes for me a comforting embrace. When I give someone a shawl, I am giving them a hug that they can feel even when I am not there. I find shawls very comforting and have several of them that I wear regularly. So this is an important form of service for me.
One less tangible way that I engage in community service is by living a conscious, thoughtful, simple life. I am respectful of the earth, of people, and of the material resources provided by the earth. I do not waste. I do not engage in overconsumption. I rarely shop and when I do, I buy secondhand. I use the library. I do not own a TV. A life of creativity, thinking, and experience is what is meaningful to me, and not one of mindless shopping. I see this as a way to not only set an example, but to use less, thus helping in a tiny way to make the planet more habitable for others. This is a form of service to my fellow humans and to the earth and all of her others creatures as well. All of these ways of serving others and the planet are expressions of my spiritual path. I am not a religious person, and I consider myself a humanist, so it's not a god thing. It's a being a human being thing.

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