Toolbox for Sustainable City Living

Some quotes I like from Toolbox for Sustainable City Living by Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew:

• "If it is not safe it is not sustainable. If a rooftop solar collector falls through the roof, it's going to be even harder to keep the house warm."
• Regarding the laws which prohibit composting toilets, "We look forward to the day when we will all be free to not poop in clean water."

The Education of Little Tree, Chapter 2

I think I read The Education of Little Tree a long time ago, but I don't remember it much. Today I picked it up and started reading. I realized that I didn't want to read it through all at once. At the end of chapter two, I stopped, because I wanted some time to ponder the things said in that chapter before I went on to read more. There were two things in particular that struck me:

1. "It is the Way....Take only what ye need. When you take the deer, do not take the best. Take the smaller and the slower and then the deer will grow stronger and always give you meat....Only Ti-bi, the bee, stores more than he can use...and so he is robbed by the bear, and the 'coon...and the Cherokee. It is so with people who store and fat themselves with more than their share. They will have it taken from them. And there will be wars over it...and they will make long talks, trying to hold more than their share. They will say a flag stands for their right to do this...and men will die because of the words and the flag...but they will not change the rules of the Way."
2. "Ol' Tel-qui is like some poeple. Since he knows everything, he won't never look down to see what's around him. Got his head stuck up in the air too high to learn anything."

Religion as opening your heart to love

Tonight I was listening to "Rich" by Neal and Leandra. I used to think of it as a song about romantic love, but tonight I realized it could be a religious song. It says,

"Let the world go on believing
It can dry up all my dreams
Your love is the water
And I've waded into the holiest of streams"

It reminds me of "Morning Song," which I quoted in last night's entry. "Morning Song" says "I will go with beauty round me."

To me, both seem to be about finding an inner peace, regardless of what is going on around you.

It also reminded me of a blog post I read recently regarding how people who don't believe in God as a separate, sentient entity participate in Quaker worship. Using the concept "God is love" the author substituted the word "love" for "God" in a quote from George Fox (the founder of Quakerism), "that is it which must guide everyone's mind up to love, and to wait upon love to receive the spirit from love, and the spirit leads to wait upon love in silence, and to receive from love." The blog author goes on to say, "there is no object towward which our worship is directed, toward which we proffer reverence. We're simply waiting to feel the motions of love directing our lives. Thus do we avoid the error of attempting to objectify, to reify God."

That blog post, and the two songs, explain what religion is to me. Religion is a set of practices which help us to open our heart to love. And God is what we experience when we do open our heart to love.

Morning Song

I wrote about "Morning Song" by Daniel Dutton just over three months ago. I need to remember that song today. I feel sick, the cold and dark season is arriving, and many people around me are afflicted with illness. Somehow, through all the hardship, can I find a path?

The song says:

Sun I pray, let me life begin today
I promise I will go with beauty round me
Dark nights and cloudy sorrows
Will turn at last to the sunny skies of love
Troubled dreams, fold your wings and vanish
All the fears fade and pass

Fluid identities

One would think that a person either is or is not Christian, Pagan, etc., but it's not so simple.

A Jewish person, seeing that my ancestors were Christian for centuries, and that I celebrate Christmas, would call me Christian.

A devout and conservative Christian, seeing that I don't consider Jesus to be my personal savior, nor the Bible to be the word of God, would say that I am not a Christian.

Some, seeing that I practice an earth-centered religion inspired by pre-Christian traditions, might call me a Pagan.

Others, seeing that I don't believe in gods or magick, might say I'm not a Pagan.

Sometimes we change, but other times, we stay the same as the words attached to us shift, depending on who is doing the attaching.

If a person sees who I am, I don't really care if they call me Christian or not-Christian, Pagan or not-Pagan. If they see who I am, then the words they choose to apply vart depending on how they define the words.

Trying to solve the problems of the world

The problems that face us humans include:

• How to live sustainably, so that we can live well for many generations to come.
• How to get along with each other, replacing violence, oppression, and poverty with freedom, equality, kindness, respect, and integrity.

We humans come with many different interests and abilities and perspectives. If we could all work together, maybe we could solve these problems. But, I think in order to all work together, we need to solve the poverty, violence, oppression, and so forth, so it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Other things that we need in order to be able to all work together on solving these problems:

• For everyone to have education and access to information. The internet helps a lot with access to information, though we are still a long way from everyone having access to all information they should have access to. I don't think we are doing such a good job with education, based on the lack of wisdom and knowledge I see. Actually, I think certain aspects of our society (e.g. Glenn Beck) foster ignorance.
• Health. It is hard to focus on solving the problems of the world when we are exhausted or in pain.

I don't have the solutions to poverty, violence, oppression, and sustainable living. What appeals to me is working on the second list, on education, information access, and health, empowering people to work together on the items on the first list. We need engineers, architects, scientists, policymakers, and activists to work together to transform our world. I could never do a lot of those jobs. But I can work in education, helping students grow into becoming the people who will be able to transform our world.

Mercedes Lackey's early Valdemar books

I don't like Mercedes Lackey's books quite as much as I like books by Robin McKinley, Cynthia Voigt, Tamora Pierce, and Frances Hardinge, but they are solid. They do the job of engaging me, and have more positive than negative attributes. And the big advantage is there are a lot of them, so they can still provide me with fresh entertainment. I've read the books by the other authors I mentioned multiple times already, and sometimes I like something new.

I read a few Mercedes Lackey books, enough to know they were good, and then I decided to read them all in chronological order. That is, in the order in which they happened, not the order in which they were written. She has actually written books about several different universes, but so far I've only been in the Valdemar universe.

That universe starts out with the Mage Wars books. They held my attention, but if they were the first books I read by her, I probably would not have bothered to read any more.

Next were the Last Herald Mage books. Those were good. Very gripping. A young man lives through bullying, isolation, and loss, and emerges to devote himself to serving humanity. Actually quite good, the books in this trilogy are on a par with books by Tamora Pierce and Robin McKinley.

Last night I read Foundation. The other books were in trilogies, and this book is clearly not a standalone book. It is as if a whole book is divided into multiple bindings. (I don't know if this will be a trilogy like the others, so I'm not sure how many bindings the book is divided into.) The sequel will be published three days from today, and I ordered it on inter-library loan a week and a half ago.

One nice thing about this book is that the main character does not come from privilege. For example, they say they are overcrowded, and apologetically ask if it's okay if he sleeps in a heated, furnished room that's in the stable. They think it's treating him poorly to make him sleep in the stable, while he thinks it's amazing to be able to sleep in a heated, furnished room.

There was a nice description of a winter solstice observance. People gather together and take turns sharing stories and songs on the theme of hope in darkness, or something good emerging after a bad time. There is a container of earth, and each person plants a seed in it. The container will be placed outside, and in spring, plants will grow.