eco-catastrophe and the new creation

as a teenager when i first became aware of the politics of food, i made a sign with crayons on yellow construction paper and tacked it to my bedroom wall: YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT.

through a series of fortunate coincidences, or perhaps because i am dancing ever closer with the True Music, i came across this quote by John Robbins:

"Maybe we aren't on a one-way road to oblivion. Maybe we're standing at a crossroad, facing what may be the most important choice human beings have ever faced, a choice between two directions. In one direction is what we will have if we do nothing to alter our present course. By doing nothing, we are choosing a world of pollution and extinctions, of widening chasms and deepening despair, a world where humanity moves ever farther from achieving its highest aspirations and ever nearer to living its darkest fears.

"Our other choice is to actively engage with the living world. On this path we work responsibly and joyfully to make our lives, and our societies, into expressions of our love for ourselves, for each other, and for the living Earth. In this direction we honor our longing to give our children, and all children, a world with clean air and water, with blue skies and abundant wildlife, with a stable climate and a healthy environment.

"If you live with fear for our future, you are not alone.

"If you live with dreams of a better world, you are not alone."

John Robbins, The Food Revolution

confession: i've never made it to the end of the bible; never read revelation; afterall, isn't that where all those rapture-crazed fundamentalists find their inspiration? i'm not interested in the rapture; not interested foresaking this world for the next; don't go in for some elitist club of predestined select; jesus came to save us all; and to foresake this beautiful jewel of god's creation seems downright sinful. but evidently, from the discussions in the small groups, the book of revelation lives up to its name; however, it is a very difficult and controversial writing, with many schools of interpretation.

nevertheless, there will be an end of days and a second coming of christ in a world made new. a popular view is that this world will be destroyed and a new one created, like noah and the flood.

but, in conversation with pastor kitson, we discussed an alternative: that this world will be transformed to the new, through a cleansing and purging, as in a crucible.

and i dimly remember a conversation with kate long ago and late into the day, that perhaps in the new world we will come to see god in each one of us and so bring about the second coming.

and perhaps, then, we are in the midst of this transformation, and each of us stands at our personal crossroad, and collectively we stand at the crossroad of creation.

the personal is political, the inward is outward, and within you without you.

so, as you and i stand at the crossroad, be careful we don't take the wrong turn and follow those on the path of destruction, for "their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ."

"If you live with fear for our future, you are not alone. If you live with dreams of a better world, you are not alone."

we are what we eat. may we eat well.