Why I Became A Hippie

Over the past six months or so, I think I've become a hippie.  A few intentional changes to my life, and a few more planned in the near future, might warrant a few derogatory terms or critical glances.  After all, nobody really likes the tree-hugging organic urbanite except other tree-hugging organic urbanites, right?  What's the deal with those hippies, anyways?  I think a little explanation might be in order.

The story kind of begins last summer.  My wife and I abandoned our desks for twelve weeks to volunteer with a mission organization down in South America.  There were a variety of experiences in Bogota, Quito, the Amazon rainforest, and Lima, but most of our time was in the desert in north Peru.  Sometimes I think that taking a step away allows you to see things with a different perspective and learn a lot.  Then I read through Jen Hatmaker's book Seven.  It's a printed blog of a rebellion against excess, or, dare I say it...a hippie journal.  Then I enrolled in a new class at seminary reading the New Testament.  Reading it again was eye-opening in a number of ways.

All those things combined changed my perspective on a lot of things.  My first insight was that all of my life is interconnected spiritually.  Of course I've long known that my Christian faith isn't confined to Sunday mornings and just before mealtimes.  But I don't think I had ever thought about something as silly as recycling as part of my faith before.   I hadn't thought about how my purchases might be part of my faith.

Another insight came from periodically touring the city garbage dump in Trujillo, Peru.  Some friends had a ministry there, and we went a few times.  People worked there, in the dump, sorting through the trash to look for things of value to sell.  It was a pretty horrific scene - noxious fumes, smoke, smell, grime, animals...all you can imagine.  Startling but Obvious Realization: Trash goes somewhere.  Here in America we're great about pretending that trash bins are the final landing place for trash (they magically empty themselves too).  It's utterly invisible to us, but that stuff does end up somewhere.

I also realized that nature is a great thing we've tended to forget about.  There's a natural cycle to things, from soil to plant to plate, from season to season, so forth.  The earth yields a great deal of bounty that we don't see because it's not as marketable.  And I feel a bit more alive when I'm eating such natural and simple products.  My whole body feels different when cleansed of processed foods and artificial things.  Where we lived, most of our food was also almost entirely locally-created.  It's nice to think that when you buy something, your money is actually continuing to cycle into the community you are living in.

My parents raised me to be reasonably conscious of energy usage and whatnot, but with my newfound connectedness to the earth, I feel more responsible for my little segment.  Christian development literature speaks of breaking free from poverty in terms of four fundamental relationships: with God, yourself, others, and creation.  Now I think I have an understanding of what it means to be reconciled to creation.  Thus, the changes I've been making in my life that might be, I admit it, hippie-ish.

1. Consciousness of our garbage.  I am now working hard to recycle everything I can.  When we move into a house I will begin to compost.  My goal is to reduce our waste disposal to less than the combined amount of composting and recycling.  Shouldn't be too difficult.  Along with this comes saving trimmings from veggies to make broth and tossing meat trimmings and bones into a pot for stock.  Reducing waste comes in all form.
2. Better food choices.  It's worth paying a bit more to get local and/or organic food.  Our food prices are artificially low due to government subsidies, unhealthy shortcuts, and artificial ingredients.  I don't mind paying the real price to support a small business or get products that don't make me wonder what I'm putting in my body.  Part of this is knowing how an economy works, and being conscious of where my money is ending up, as far as I have control of it.  This, to me, is really what stewardship is about.
3. Loving the earth.  Our planet is beautiful, and full of bounty.  It's a miracle, and it supplies our every need, even those we take for granted.  We have got to appreciate it, admire it, and take care of it.  I look forward to composting and gardening, just to be more connected to the earth.  In our concrete jungles it's too easy to live separated from what gives us life.