Advent, Plastic, Immigration and God:

A good friend of mine was embarrassed to tell me that she uses a plastic baggie to pick up her dog’s poop on walks. Embarrassed because she assumed that I would judge her, and that my own practices in relationship to plastic are pristine, maybe because I bring up the problem so much. I was surprised, and added sadly, that I too, use plastic baggies, and that I am trying to get a hold of some biodegradable ones, but they are only available on-line, and in small quantity for more money. I remain, like each of us, lacking, yet still trying dearly to make life affirming/healing choices.

It is like when I was asked if I eat meat. I said I do not eat farm animals. They responded sharply, “Do you wear leather shoes?” As if from my one sentence I had claimed to be pure and separate from the rest of the human race because of my choice to be compassionate. People want things to be cut and dried, black and white, rich and poor, dead or alive, pure or deficient, so that they do not have to suffer through the ambiguities, the contradictions of being and the pain of all the imperfect striving, trying and complicated living we all do. It isn’t fun to fail or to not live up to ideals or to disappoint people who want to look up to you, like a doctor or a pope.

I look at the packaging of my breads, chips, toothpaste, apples, vegetables in my hands, and two of my reusable shopping bags are made of nylon which is made with oil, just as the baggies are for dog walks….I realize this…
The truth of the situation is that if I were to live separate from plastic, I would not be living in this society. There is no purity, there is no perfection in this world. Our connections are linked and threaded through so deeply, there is no extrication of anything from anything else, at least not as things stand now. This does not mean that everything is futile. Action still has great impact and discernment still has enormous value. Sometimes it has to be “little by little”, as Dorothy Day would say.

And I cannot look at the daily defeats of plastic in my life each day and be defeated. This is an issue that is so urgent that we need to persist despite the thoroughness of its penetration in our lives. What a strange problem we have.

Plastic is as all things are, from the earth, though manipulated to beingness by men, still, natural to the planet. Yet its existence seems unnatural in light (a thinly veiled pun, sorry) of the way it does not deteriorate as most things do. So only light can break the stuff down and only into microscopic particles.

Listening to Studs Terkel today on NPR was so strengthening. His voice of wisdom and integrity is so needed. He is keenly aware of the fact that we need a great change. And he raised his blessed voice and said the truth, “We are all immigrants. This anti-immigration hysteria is obscene!” Indeed, we are all immigrants, and if there was a deep acknowledgment of this perhaps we could bring a historical healing to this country, who Terkel said has always been in conflict.

Mistakes, failures, defeats are not definitive of our identity or our value. They are par for this course. We choose how to respond, and maybe on our best days of achieving our ideals we actually fail in yet other ways, maybe in relationships in a personal or spiritual sense, what have you.

There are always ways in which to change and grow, hopefully, we believe this. Perhaps we will not see the benefits of our positive and lasting actions in our lifetime, and maybe we will. And we may have to wonder and not know, because we have been glued and sown to so many empty idols, and have missed, so many times, the Divine Presence –sitting quietly with us the whole time in awesome compassion that scares us with the breadth and depth of it. No, it isn’t either/or, and it is both/and.

I fail all the time, and it is embarrassing sometimes. But I learn and I realize one cannot attain perfection, and that is not even the point of this life. I know goodness and God in appreciating, in feeling gratitude in realizing beauty in graced moments, as I have mentioned before. It is the importance of recognition: Love all around me and all around you, and the sick, and the poor, the immigrants.

This cannot be stressed enough in this clamoring Christmas season. Advent is so not about clamoring or purity or perfection. Oh, Advent, I feel such a tear (like the tearing of fabric) within me at this time. Loss of loved ones is felt keenly now. Material possessions clamor for our attention. The desire to give, but with a swirling pushing confusion in finding what is meaningful. The desire and longing for wholeness, healing, truth, courage….

I want to sit still and contemplate Jesus’s mother, the Mother of God. In Luke she treasures all the gifts and happenings surrounding her child’s birth. She contemplates them deeply in her heart. I want to imagine her, protecting her thoughts and memories of the time with pure love–the gift of a child who has the capacity to hold the Divine within as no child has done before. His voice is filled with so much truth that thousands of years and translations do not muffle His Holy Spirit.

What a painful time it is, to seek that dirty manger within and grow faith strong enough to believe the King of Kings wishes to be born there, again and again. To learn from the Mother of God to nurture my love with maternal contemplation.

To have compassion is to “suffer with”, that is the meaning. First thing everyday, the Divine is having compassion with us, no matter how dirty or polluted our home, life, heart or mind is. With an invitation for each of us to seek to be Great in compassion too. The sooner we can dive deep into this knowing the sooner we can participate in the Holy Spirit’s movements in our lives and others lives. Like I mentioned yesterday, to be remembered, nothing is impossible for God, as this was mentioned in Luke as well.

Thank you for listening to my musings and genuflections today,

may you be blessed with grace filled recognitions of love this season,

with gratitude and prayers,

CSS

p.s.
Beth Terry left a great comment and has a lot to positively contribute re: plastic….