What We Need Is Here

What we need is not here: REHAB

It is no secret that we have a lot of friends and guests who are drug addicts. It's part and parcel of life on the street - a cheap way to help you sleep on the ground at night and to keep you awake during the day (it's illegal to sleep in public). And, of course, it's a way to dull the pain that's part and parcel of life in general, a temptation to which many of us from "all walks of life" are prone. The problem with people living on the streets is that they aren't soothing themselves in bars and clubs and their own living rooms, and they don't have a lot of money.

There's a lot of controversy regarding who invented crack cocaine, and sometimes my non-violence-aspiring mind wanders to that mythical person or group of people and wants to wring their necks. What could be more inherently evil than a cheap drug that gives the user an incredible and unforgettable high for about five minutes then leaves them with a life-long craving? What could be more dehumanizing than to live with that obsession constantly in the back of your mind, struggling to take it over? Once it happens to you, it appears you either spend the rest of your life looking for it, or fighting the temptation. And for most people it takes a village to help you fight it; it is that overwhelming. Families, friends, anonymous benefactors, churches, Narcotics Anonymous and other support groups, patience, care, understanding, love... How many of us are wiling to give that kind of financial, emotional, and spiritual help to someone who will drive you crazy with their neediness and possibly rip your heart out with their life story?

I don't know. But it is a fact that there is no place to go in Gainesville for free rehab these days - the kind  needed by people who have fallen to the point they don't have a home. State funding was cut a year and a half ago when the economic crisis hit.

It is hitting home this week because a dear friend is asking for rehab and there's no place to go. What used to be free is now $150/day. He doesn't have this and neither do we. We're contacting friends far and wide hoping to find someplace that will take him in. He has our home to come back to when he's completed a program.

What  is really hard to think of is that he is not alone. His struggles and problems are enough to launch all kinds of wonder about what kind of world we live in. But his story can be multiplied by thousands, maybe millions. People who are as interesting and human as any of us sitting at our computers right now, yet have struggled for years in shame and/or secrecy, fighting these awful battles in their heads, living like "bums" some of them, others able to hang on to the vestiges of a good-looking life while their insides crumble. I have personally known doctors, nurses, teachers, mothers, fathers, and students whose families were able to pull together enough resources to get them treatment and support to jump start their recovery. And I have known some that still flounder, unable to shake it no matter what resources have been provided. But I haven't known any who did it alone.

If you open your heart to the the stories of people, it is hard sometimes to close it back up. Living with addicts, as we do, you get the many glimpses of who they are underneath the addiction - the hard worker up every morning at 5, the one who is kind to children, who is a skilled carpenter, who always offers a hand. What a waste of human life. And what a financial waste to incarcerate them for drug-related crimes when, with that $500/day we spend doing so, we could be offering residential rehab, halfway houses, and job training. Locking them up in prison multiplies the pain - tears apart families, pushes some deeper into poverty, insures that children will grow up without a parent. To what end?

It doesn't have to be this way. What we need is here - caring, committed people who can see the person beneath "the sin," a willingness to use our collective resources (taxes) for the common good. We see this clearly during emergencies and times of war (taxes!). How do we activate all that goodness to make a difference in the every day emergency of addiction?

Happy Labor Day?

A national holiday since 1894, Labor Day got a bit of a shaky start. President Grover Cleveland had recently declared the Pullman Strike a national crisis and sent troops to force workers back to their jobs - resulting in two shooting deaths. The strike was over, the organizer jailed, and workers forced to sign a pledge they would  never attempt to unionize again. To appease shocked and angry workers throughout the country (and to gain some needed votes) Cleveland pushed the congress to agree to a workers' holiday - and Labor Day was born. September was chosen to draw attention from May Day, the international labor day. Cleveland, by the way, was not re-elected.

For day-laborers and contract workers (a growing number of the employed) Labor Day is a forced day off with no pay. My friend Suna writes about her experience and that of others who, while grateful for employment, are in no way living the dream of the workers who advocated for human rights a hundred years ago. Suna's experience of working hard to support her family and still continually facing job insecurity (and no healthcare) is thoughtful and enlightening. 

And writer and farmer Sharon Astyk writes about why we might care about the hardships others face, even when they don't seem to directly affect us or our immediate loved ones. This post about her connection across several generations to an incredible act of courage and compassion makes me want to cry - and cry out against our own hard-heartedness and inability to put ourselves in the shoes of others.

The American Climate and Energy Act of 2009 Justice and Survival

A bill described by some as "the most ambitious energy and global warming legislation ever debated in Congress" was passed by the House Energy and Commerce committee and has a real possibility of making it through the House. It was predictably bipartisan with only one Republican crossing over to vote for it. Four Democrats from coal-mining and manufacturing states didn't vote for it either. But in the end, a somewhat watered-down version passed 33-25.

It sounds sometimes like simple-minded ideology; Republican congressman Mike Rogers of Michigan called the bill "the "biggest energy tax in the history of the United States."  But I want to allow for the possibility that representatives of folks living in states where livelihoods depend on polluting industries are truly concerned about the well-being of their constituents (and not just their own pocketbooks and power). It's going to be a dilemma we're all going to face. We are eventually going to have to choose lower "standards of living" to avoid catastrophe. For those already living at the margins, there could be tremendous suffering unless those of us with more take their well-being into account.

This is true on a global scale as well. If this bill passes the Senate (there is strong possibility of a Republican filibuster), the U.S. - the largest user of energy - will be finally taking a leadership role in conserving it. This is absolutely necessary for getting other countries on board who otherwise have reason to doubt the difference their sacrifice will make. But some of the very poorest countries will struggle with energy standards they fear will plunge them back into the poverty they've been recently climbing out of. Enter the question of responsibility: should those primarily responsible for the mess we're in now be also primarily responsible for getting us out of it?

It's complicated and requires real debate by statesmen and women (not just politicians) who can see beyond their own party and their own political well-being. It's an issue of both survival and justice. The decisions we make today will determine what kind of world we leave for all of our grandchildren. It's got to be physically inhabitable - which becomes more in doubt the longer we debate the impact our current ways of living have on the planet. But we also need to be able to tell the story of how we all got to that place together - the story of what kind of people we were.

Big consumers (countries and individuals) are going to have to find the moral will to lower their own consumption rates while at the same time supporting the most vulnerable. There's no room for  bipartisanship in this.

Another reason I will not shop at Wal-mart

I have written before about why I don't want to support big box stores like Wal-mart by giving them my money. In a capitalist culture we vote with our pocketbooks, and I want to vote for less stuff, locally-made at a fair wage. But this reminds me of how little our pocketbooks are sometimes.

The fact that there are a growing number of people with smaller pocketbooks than mine who are desperately seeking any job is a tragedy. To prey on them is criminal. 

Take a few minutes to listen.

You can't have it all

Last week when the students were here, I was asked a question I hear a lot, "How can you afford to buy locally when you can get things so much more cheaply at Wal-Mart?"

This is an umbrella question that covers several others: "How do you afford it?" "How do you justify it?" Why do you go to the bother?"

The last one, we talk about a lot. While it does add an additional - and sometimes burdensome - step to shopping decisions, we find buying locally worth the trouble. You know these goods already: keeping money in the local economy, knowing food producers so we can be assured that the food is healthy and grown in a sustainable way, supporting folks who are working hard to keep their local businesses thriving in a world of big box stores.

For us, the justification is fairly simple as well - although like all simple things, it's not always easy. We want our money to go toward supporting a just "system." Because we live with and near folks who live in poverty, we see first-hand and every day the downside of the economic and social system that we - John and I, and other middle class folks - have profited from. The larger the system, the more the parts become... just parts. A number of people we meet are treated as "expendable" - whether as former soldiers now living on the streets, laborers working for minimum wage, undocumented immigrants trying to support their families on less than minimum wage, or addicts and alcoholics who've been given up on. Go back a generation and a lot of these folks were from farm families and blue collar factory-working families. They weren't "living high" but they were making a decent living, raising thriving families, and enjoyed a certain amount of social stability. The farm crisis of the 80s and the slow death of manufacturing as jobs were shipped overseas to folks working way below minimum wage (so we could have more and cheaper stuff) destroyed a way of life for many people. Signing on with the military, seeking day labor work, migrating across borders, and seeking relief from drugs and alcohol isn't providing a substitute for the life that's gone. While we aren't under the illusion that our efforts to support small, local enterprises is solving this huge problem, we hope to be a part of a growing movement of people who can begin to turn things around. It simply doesn't make sense for us to be reaching out to the victims of our economic/social system while supporting the same system.

How can we actually afford it? In a nutshell, we decide what we can live without. Like our mamas told us: "You can't have it all." Personally, we can live without cable TV, meat, a very warm house in the winter ore a very cool house in the summer among other things. And we find we can live with eating lots of dried beans along with our farm-fresh veggies. Questions about what exactly one can live with or without are highly personal, but they're worth spending a lifetime pondering. Not to wax too philosophical, but the thrilling question at the core is "What do you want your life to be about?" For a long time, we as a people didn't ask the right questions and the not-asking sent us down a road most of us no longer want to be on. Living the questions (thank you, Rainer Maria Rilke) can begin to set us straight. You can't have it all. What do you want your life to be about?

Garden update - and growing through the economic crisis

We are so close to being able to start planting. Seven people working several hours each day has produced an almost weed-, brick-, rock-, broken glass-free, 20' X 35' area of awaiting soil. Almost.

We are fortunate that a group of young adults from the University of Cincinnati decided to join our household during their spring break - right at the time the empty lot became available for a garden. They are a joy to work with, and much needed labor!

I'm generally inclined to appreciate any person on an "alternative" spring break.  Being oriented toward something a little different, they seem particularly open-minded, and even enthusiastic about some of the goals we have around here. No one balked at flushing the toilets with gray water from the sinks and showers. And when I talked with some of them about our kitchen policy and "food theology" they asked good questions and seemed well-disposed overall toward the idea of eating more simply and with the well-being of others in mind. They seem to want something more, but not in a material sense. It gives me hope that these are some of the young adults next in line to take the reins.

Ironically, one morning while the students were gardening, I needed to step out for a while to talk to another young adult I know who had a problem he wanted to discuss with me: crippling credit card debt that had gotten completely out of control. He couldn't make the monthly payments anymore and wondered whether he should try to consolidate the debt through credit counseling or seek bankruptcy. On top of it, he was deeply ashamed and embarrassed to be in this situation. My first inclination was to encourage him by reminding him that he is not alone - that people all over the country (some with a lot more life experience than he has) are faced with debts they cannot pay, and to tell him that we could look together at the options for handling the debt. But there is so much more to say.

I tend to think of crises of all stripes as spiritual/moral ones, crossroads where you have to look hard at yourself and decide not only what you are going to do, but what kind of person you are going to be. But I want to talk about the economic crisis - both personal and national - in this context for very practical reasons; I think the other solutions - getting bailed out by the creditors or the government or a family friend - are not getting to the root of the problem. Surprisingly, my young friend didn't balk at this. He wanted to talk about his drive to prove himself to his family and friends by appearing successful, i.e. having and doing lots of stuff. He wanted to confess that he kept telling himself "his ship was about to come in" - graduation, the first job, the raise, the tax return, etc. - and would wipe the slate clean for him. His biggest worry was not his credit rating or even the problem of having a lot of worthless stuff that he was expected to pay for over the course of many years. His biggest worry was what people would think of him.

I think this is a burden so many in our country drag around - the need to prove our worth to others by the things we own, the places we can afford to vacation, even the degrees we were able to purchase with student loans.  We've had it driven into our heads for so long that happy or good or smart or successful people (choose your measure) must have certain things (an SUV or a Prius, an expensive dinner out or a concert experience, a cruise or a "green vacation"), that we've lost our ability to think what it is we value or need for ourselves. We've lost our (own) minds.

These crossroads appear in any life, but it is interesting when so many people arrive at the same one at the same time. What are we going to change? Who do we want to be? I'd much rather be having those conversations than just the ones about what size and type of bailout or stimulus will get us back to where we were the quickest.  Backwards is not the direction we need to be going, or leading our young toward. Fortunately, there's a lot of reason to hope in our young people, both the alternative types and the ones being forced to seek an alternative. We need to grow with them.

Thank you, Jon Stewart

This morning, we watched the much touted face-off between Jon Stewart and financial commentator Jim Cramer on "The Daily Show."  Please bear with the discomfort of watching someone publicly exposed as an unethical liar, and watch it.  Jon Stewart, a comic, is such an unlikely hero; but here he is doing the hard work of real journalism - researching the facts, asking what, why, how, and reporting them with candor and passion. After one video clip of Cramer describing how to manipulate markets to make a lot of money quick (at the expense of someone who actually works for a living), Stewart describes how sick and angry it makes him that the retirement accounts of so many hard working folks were played around with like this.

What does this have to do with "living locally?" We're watching an economic system collapse, and along with it - one hopes - the collapse of greed and self-centeredness as the admired and rewarded traits they became among us. We've got something to learn as we do the hard work of remaking the way we take care of ourselves and each other - which is, at its core, what economic (and food, and healthcare, etc.) systems are for.

Jon Stewart unveiled a little more of the truth last night. I'd love to see us turn our anger and disgust into passion for change and the energy to make it happen.

Depression and Depression

"The Thinker" and other Rodin studies - Orsay Museum

One facet of our "new economic reality" (what will it be called someday - the Great Collapse?) that warrants some thinking about is the emotional/spiritual side of this kind of loss. It's been less than six months since the market took its historic plunge and the bailouts began, and most of us have been in a "wait and see" mode. But lately, I am hearing more and more about the repercussions of having the rug pulled out from under one - whether from young people who are about to graduate from college or from older ones who have seen their retirement money suddenly reduced by half.

While most of us knew at some level that houses could not just keep appreciating in value year after year without any actual improvements being involved, and that the gap in pay between those few running the company and those making it run was not just or tenable, and that we couldn't keep on buying and driving more and more without resource depletion, it was a a nice illusion for those profiting from the situation to believe in.  But now here we are in Reality.  And it is scary for those who have lost 40% of their investments, catastrophic for those losing their jobs and homes. It's a matter of security and livelihood and hope in the future, and these things go much deeper than our pocketbooks; they touch us at our core.

Awash in economic advice - Buy more! Save more! Keep your money in the stock market! Get it out of there quick! - I am interested in how to reconfigure the way we look at our lives and the lives of others in an economic system that's changed for good. And I mean that both ways - permanently and necessarily. I've found some voices that have been helpful to me in both understanding what happened and figuring out how to contribute to the "other world" we have dreamed was possible.

Some voices worth listening to:

Parker Palmer - Recently interviewed by Bill Moyers and by Krista Tippett on Speaking of Faith, Palmer offers a sobering analysis of the human failings that brought us here and of the promise of finding ourselves "in one of those interesting points of history where self-interest and idealism converge."

Sharon Astyk - If you read this blog regularly, you know I am a fan. She has been talking the talk with wisdom and an almost frightening understanding of what the future holds if we continue on the path we've been on (she's been right on a lot of the disasters most of us didnt' see coming). She's also walking the walk of raising a young family grounded in values and work that she hopes will carry them and the rest of us through.

Krista Tippett and Speaking of Faith: A new series of short interviews called "Repossessing Virtue" explores the "moral, spiritual, and practical aspects of the economic downtur" with wise folks from all over the political and religious spectrum including urban activist Marjora Carter, physican and activist David Hilfiker, economics professor Ayman Amer, Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzburg, and others.

Bill Moyers - In addition to his recent interview with Parker Palmer mentioned above, Moyers has been on top of the economic crisis from the beginning with thoughtful interviews with economists of every political stripe.

Our neighbors - I learn a lot listening to the fears and hopes of folks in my own neighborhood - the old, the young, the experienced, the newly educated, the hopeful, the fearful, the homeless, the political, those who had money, those who never benefited from the system. They are our community and they  offer us reality, a mirror in which to examine our own belief systems and plans, and real support during times of difficulty. If you don't know your neighbors, now's a good time.

Like the person who is experiencing personal depression who seeks relief through self-reflection, help from others, and the hard work of putting back together a personal world that's fallen apart, I believe we can, during economic depression, find new ground to stand on together. I'm grateful for these harsh and hopeful voices offering us a new and more real understanding of who we are and what the possibilities may be.

Black Friday

Traditionally "Black Friday" heralds the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. This one was even blacker than usual.  Ugh, it was just sickening to read this. My hero, Sharon Astyk, describes the situation well here - how we are all implicated by our greed and need for more, and what the idea of Thanksgiving could teach us about where our treasure should lie.

Here's an excerpt:

The economy is a game of music chairs, and the chairs are disappearing.  When the music stops for each of us, and our chair is gone, for a time we will rely primarily on the resources we’ve built up now.  Those of us left holding the big screen tvs and the designer handbags will have them - or whatever their resale value is.  And those who have ties - biological or chosen - will have those.  The truth is that our consumer culture needs us to be isolated, fragmented, alone, empty - or advertising wouldn’t work, the nonsensical reasoning that we have to have this year’s big thing wouldn’t work.  The primary project of consumer culture is to drive us apart, to make sure we do not share, we do not combine resources, or even consult on how ridiculous the things we are being told are.  And it has worked magnificently.

How can we change the way we are doing this? How can this season be one of building up and celebrating the real wealth we possess - our human ability and drive to form relationships, to forgive, to innovate and make do, to share and to build hope? This is the year to learn.  

Nausea

No matter how local we attempt to live and be, we are all affected by this national catastrophe. This just made me sick to my stomach.

Pause for a moment at 2:29 and hear where almost half of the cash provided so generously by us little people (even though none of us actually voted on it...) went. Ugh.