It's EARTH DAY, so please take the time to be inspired by a new environmentalism that I find very exciting: THE BRIGHT GREENS.
What is Enlightenment magazine Associate Editor Ross Robertson writes in A Brighter Shade of Green: Rebooting Environmentalism for the 21st Century, "Bright green environmentalism is less about the problems and limitations we need to overcome than the “tools, models, and ideas” that already exist for overcoming them. It forgoes the bleakness of protest and dissent for the energizing confidence of constructive solutions." [click here to order the whole back issue - highly recommended; it's beautiful!]
The Bright Green movement has an incredible book and blog, both called WORLDCHANGING. Executive Editor Alex Steffen writes, “We need, in the next twenty-five years or so, to do something never before done. We need to consciously redesign the entire material basis of our civilization. The model we replace it with must be dramatically more ecologically sustainable, offer large increases in prosperity for everyone on the planet, and not only function in areas of chaos and corruption, but also help transform them. That alone is a task of heroic magnitude, but there’s an additional complication: we only get one shot. Change takes time, and time is what we don’t have. . . . Fail to act boldly enough and we may fail completely.”
The Bright Greens give me hope, and for more than the health of our world. Their's is an empowering way to look at any concern (and may I suggest the spiritual health and evolution of LGBT people?). Remember Philip K. Dick's famous dictum that "To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement... Whoever defeats the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus... thereby it becomes its enemies."
Instead, as Buckminster Fuller said, "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
amen..."build a new model that makes the old model obsolete." sounds exactly like what Jesus did with the new covenant. "I have not come to do away with the old laws," He says, "but to fulfill them."
and so He taught us a new model and the old became obsolete, maybe it's time for us christians let go of the old laws, pick up our crosses and follow Jesus into the light. maybe we should allow the old laws to be themselves, fulfilled, put to rest, and concentrate our efforts on the new promise..."love your neighbor as you love yourself."..."judge not lest ye be judged." and the many other wonderful tools for living that Jesus gave us in the new covenant. maybe if we read more gospels and less leviticus we could see Jesus more clearly. for all we try to convelute and complicate Him, His message is just so very simple. love. unconditional, unquestioned, unrelenting love. the new model. much love and hope, pj
Posted by: pennyjane | April 23, 2008 at 09:47 AM