"It's our most common landscaping feature and a source of pride for many of us. The ultimate goal is a perfect weed free lawn. A dandelion or two is an indication the owner is negligent and lazy."
:A recent issue of Newsweek brought the news, indirectly conveyed, that this cult remains vividly alive. In April, Pete Barthelme wrote one of those self-celebrating stories about moving away from the pressures of urban civilization to an isolated place in the country, in his case a coastal fishing area in Texas. He told us he's now isolated from movie houses, he gets one TV channel intermittently, the grocery store is four miles away, there are no neighbours for half a mile, and he's happy. But then, inadvertently, he slips in the fact that he has a lawn. In his old life he employed a lawn crew, but he's now replaced them with "a very fine riding lawn mower with a full 11.5 horsepower, which happens to be fun to use." He doesn't tell us why, in the middle of nowhere, he maintains a lawn. He doesn't imagine that the question would occur to us. He knows that even among those who abandon urbanism and "go back" to nature, the lawn remains a necessity. Without it, they would feel incomplete."

"But what is a lawn really?"



"In most cases it is a uniform growth of non-native grasses. Its a source of pollution, (fertilizers, pesticides, lawnmower exhaust....) and represents habitat that has been lost.”
–Robert Fulford
--http://forums.techguy.org/random-discussion/129884-lawn
-north-americas-magnificent-obsession.html

Perhaps nothing illustrates more universally our need to conform, to be socially correct, to fit in–nothing illustrates it more than our deliberately cloned lawns. Vermont, Oklahoma, Florida, Arizona, Minnesota: all lawns look the same, slight variations on a theme, a theme composed by someone in England, centuries ago.

In this land of “individualism” our lawns belie our proud claim; we dare not do anything different. Not even Sinatra, Presley, or Paul Anka (who originally wrote the lyrics) “did it [his] way.” They each had a team of hired lawn-keepers who did it the American Way, which is the English Way.

Artificial, heavy consumer of our rapidly depleting aquifers, repository of fertilizer and pesticide chemicals that run off into and pollute our water systems, Saturday sound polluter and air polluter, by many it is a dreaded “necessary” Saturday chore: the lawn.

But why do I waste blog space on this? Such knowledge is widespread, and has been since Silent Spring, and Sand County Almanac, yet less than .01 percent of us have made any change at all. I am Don Quixote, tilting at windmills; our society will never change. Or is that too cynical?

Our society has changed radically, dramatically, traumatically, since 1960. Prior to the election of JFK, ninety-percent of all adult men wore hats when out-of-doors. Now, maybe 5 percent do. Nuns wore habits, business men were clean-shaven, wore white shirts and neckties, hair trimmed neatly short, and shoes polished. Now, even ministers may be found in blue jeans, sandals, and T-shirts, faces bewhiskered and hair cut to every length or perhaps shaven. Societies can change. The traditional lawn could shrink to a relatively small total acreage nationally. At present, lawns occupy 25,600,000 acres of national landscape.

Do I think this blog is going to change things? No, not really. Yes, significantly. Something changed me and caused me to shrink the area that I mow by 85 percent, and I don’t water that. And yes, I’ve been told that my yard is a disgrace to the neighborhood. The point is, I changed, and I believe that one of you readers will begin to consider the same. One by one until someday a critical mass is formed. Read The Tipping Point, and see how it happens.

Meanwhile, back in the real world and Robert Fulford:

"What I mean by the lawn as moral issue is its place in human relations and its role in public shaming. In North America today, a lawn is the quickest, surest indicator that the deadliest of the seven deadly sins has attacked from within. As the death of a canary announces the presence of gas in a mine, so a dandelion's appearance on a lawn indicates that Sloth has taken up residence in paradise and is about to spread evil in every direction. And when a whole lawn comes alive with dandelions--it can happen overnight, as many know to our sorrow--then that property instantly becomes an affront to the street and to the middle-class world of which the street is a part. Pretty as they might look to some, dandelions demonstrate a weakness of the soul. They announce that the owner of the house refuses to respect the neighbourhood's right to peace, order, good government, and the absence of airborne dandelion seeds.

Perhaps nothing illustrates more universally our need to conform, to be socially correct, to fit in–nothing illustrates it more than our deliberately cloned lawns. Vermont, Oklahoma, Florida, Arizona, Minnesota: all lawns look the same, slight variations on a theme, a theme composed by someone in England, centuries ago.

In this land of “individualism” our lawns belie our proud claim; we dare not do anything different. Not even Sinatra, Presley, or Paul Anka (who originally wrote the lyrics) “did it [his] way.” They each had a team of hired lawn-keepers who did it the American Way, which is the English Way.

Artificial, heavy consumer of our rapidly depleting aquifers, repository of fertilizer and pesticide chemicals that run off into and pollute our water systems, Saturday sound polluter and air polluter, by many it is a dreaded “necessary” Saturday chore: the lawn.

But why do I waste blog space on this? Such knowledge is widespread, and has been since Silent Spring, and Sand County Almanac, yet less than .01 percent of us have made any change at all. I am Don Quixote, tilting at windmills; our society will never change. Or is that too cynical?

Our society has changed radically, dramatically, traumatically, since 1960. Prior to the election of JFK, ninety-percent of all adult men wore hats when out-of-doors. Now, maybe five percent do. Nuns wore habits, business men were clean-shaven, wore white shirts and neckties, hair trimmed neatly short, and shoes polished. Now, even ministers may be found in blue jeans, sandals, and t-shirts, faces bewhiskered and hair cut to every length or perhaps shaven. Societies can change. The traditional lawn could shrink to a relatively small total acreage nationally. At present, lawns occupy 25,600,000 acres of national landscape.

Do I think this blog is going to change things? No, not really. Yes, significantly. Something changed me and caused me to shrink the area that I mow by eighty-five percent, and I don’t water that. And yes, I’ve been told that my yard is a disgrace to the neighborhood. The point is, I changed, and I believe that one of you readers will begin to consider the same. One by one until someday a critical mass is formed. Read The Tipping Point, and see how it happens.

Meanwhile, back in the real world and Robert Fulford:

"What I mean by the lawn as moral issue is its place in human relations and its role in public shaming. In North America today, a lawn is the quickest, surest indicator that the deadliest of the seven deadly sins has attacked from within. As the death of a canary announces the presence of gas in a mine, so a dandelion's appearance on a lawn indicates that Sloth has taken up residence in paradise and is about to spread evil in every direction. And when a whole lawn comes alive with dandelions--it can happen overnight, as many know to our sorrow--then that property instantly becomes an affront to the street and to the middle-class world of which the street is a part. Pretty as they might look to some, dandelions demonstrate a weakness of the soul. They announce that the owner of the house refuses to respect the neighbourhood's right to peace, order, good government, and the absence of airborne dandelion seeds."

Love's Dialectic, 1

The Winslow Boy, a movie, closing scene:

[Young man and young lady, apparently quite “taken” with each other.]

“You continue with your suffragette work, Miss Winslow. Don’t you know it is a lost cause?”

“So little do you know about women, Sir Robert.”
(then)
“I don’t expect I shall ever see you again.”

Robert, with a knowing smile, responds:

“So little, you know, Miss Winslow, about men.”

And the sunshine of a slight smile slowly lights her face.
_______________________________

It isn’t over until it’s over--and it is not over yet.

When love is afield, the dialectic stays active. If love is to continue, a necessary condition is to consider, always, the other.

Actually, the same is true in any kind of continuing relationship, from international diplomacy to the business place to the classroom to a hospital stay. It is necessary, perhaps even sufficient, that we consider the other.

No Regrets? Not Me!

“In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself”

The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn’t know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they’d claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn’t understand remorse.
Lions and lice don’t waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they’re right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they’re light.

On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.
--Wislawa Szymborska

That makes me feel better. Sometimes my head is clear, my sinuses are clear, my goal is clear, but my conscience is never clear. I’ve never understood people who tell me they have no regrets, that if they could live their life over, they would change nothing.

I am good at understanding. I have a very strong imagination. But I cannot understand, I cannot imagine living with no regrets, for “there is none good, no not one.” All have sinned and come short, not only of the glory of God, but of most any set of human standards of conduct. That implicates me. Much that bothers my conscience is irreversible. The damage has been done and cannot be undone.

Although I don’t have a clear conscience, I have found that I can, nonetheless, live with peace in my heart, peace like a river. In Christ forgiven, I am accepted and set on the road to wholeness. My regrets are real, they are strong, but in Christ I do not allow them to haunt me. I don’t know how all of those wrongs and all that pain was made right, redeemed in an incarnate God/Man; I do not understand with clarity how his death, raised--by the purpose and power of God--in newness of life, has reconciled all alienation and estrangement and has transformed suffering into joy and peace. I don’t understand, but I accept and can lie down in peaceful sleep, because my conscience has been cleared through no doing of my own.

But to say I have no regrets would add insult to injury to so many I have wronged. Are there actually humans who like the jackal do not understand remorse? If so, I ask and Szymborska asks if they are indeed human? Perhaps, apart from Jesus, called Christ, there are not true humans.

Starbucks Quote #192

What is a celebrity? Until a few years ago, I thought I knew. Babe Ruth was a celebrity, as was Sergeant York, John Wayne, Martin Luther King, Charles Lindbergh, Michael Jordan, Tom Landry, Sam Walton, Lincoln, Hemingway, Billy Graham, Johnny Cash, Luciano Pavarotti, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Sam Houston, and Robert E. Lee--and the list could go on and on. When it comes to names like, Van Gogh, Picasso, Beethoven, Mozart, Rembrandt, Eisenhower, Bogart and Bacall, Tracy and Hepburn, we don’t even need first names.

It seems that a new definition of "celebrity" has emerged from somewhere, perhaps out of some garbage truck. According to most dictionaries, celebrity refers to someone famous, and famous means "well known." Famous is a first cousin to "family," folks with whom we are familiar. I guess this means that fame has mutated. I know why the names listed above are familiar, but I am not quite sure how nor why we have become familiar with our current crop of celebrities. I do have my suspicions.

We are familiar with the listed names because of their accomplishments. The new breed–mutants of historical celebrities–has managed to accomplish the gaining of our attention by getting our attention. That is about all they have accomplished, but for those who find nothing else to transcend their own barren existence, this may be enough. But where does this lead?

Quote #192 on a Starbucks cup gives us the answer. According to Donna Phillips of Claremont, California:

Many people lack a spiritual belief system and fill that void with obsessions about celebrities. The celebrities are raised to the rank of gods, and these earthly gods will always fail the expectations the masses have set for them. The cycle runs thusly: adoration turns to obsession, obsession turns to disappointment, and from disappointment it is just a short emotional jump to contempt.

Long ago, through the Hebrew prophet, Jeremiah, God says much the same, but much pointedly: ". . . my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water."

Forced to Smile

"Jerome’s [late 4th century] own character was notoriously difficult. . . . . It amuses me greatly to envision Jerome, of all people, shining like a star, and hating every minute of it. As we’re leaving the church, I mention this to one of the monks. ‘Ah, poor Jerome,’ he said, ‘forced to smile and sing for all of eternity. Maybe that’s his punishment’.’‘
--Kathleen Norris

Would heaven be hell if John Piper and Clark Pinnock found they were together for all eternity, or Paige Patterson and Art Allen? How many Christians are there who have no real interest in developing the whole range of Christian virtues or reaping the fruit of the Spirit? We want the forgiveness of sin and the acceptance of God; more to the point, we want to avoid hell, and perhaps, get to go to heaven.

We may even want to become a serious Christian to a degree, on certain points, but might genuinely cringe at even the thought of actually allowing the Spirit to rule and reshape every dimension of our thoughts, feelings, decisions, and actions.

Raw Sewage

[Speaking on why she doesn’t let "the one-eyed monster in her house"] "Having a sieve up on the roof collecting wild beams from everywhere does seem poetic, but the image that strikes me as more realistic is that of a faucet into the house that runs about 5 percent clear water and 95 percent raw sewage."
--Barbara Kingsolver


Except for the weather channel, I stopped watching television near about twenty years ago. It didn’t matter what you view–and hear–it numbs the mind and agitates the nerves. I found that I could not go to sleep for a few hours after tv. It took that long for my nerves to calm. Also, it was almost all pointless.

But my main reason for eliminating the "boob" tube from my life was that it was robbing my life. We have a limited amount of time in which to live, why give time to watching the imaginary life of others rather than spending that time living my own life? I quit because I didn’t have time/life to waste. I certainly would never watch it, or do anything just "to kill time."

"If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds of distance run. . ."

From what I read about the developments on tv over this past twenty years (confirmed by what I have seen in passing on the omnipresent and unavoidable screens) I can’t help but wonder why intelligent and responsible people not only allow raw sewage, much less pipe it into their homes, but also what kind of soap they use to wash the stuff off.

I’m with Kingsolver when she says, "To me, that ubiquitous cable looks an awful lot like the snake that batted its eyes at Eve." There are better things to do than be deceived and taken in my those eyes.

Ostensibly Christian

[In a California radio interview with Kathleen Norris, on Pacifica radio] "‘Do you consider yourself a Christian?’ my host asked. I sighed and said, ‘My problem with that is that so many people who publicly identify themselves as Christians are such jerks about it.’"
--Kathleen Norris

I cringe when I see these jerks with simplistically "Christian" messages on their t-shirts and bumper stickers or when I see them praying over their food in restaurants. I don’t label as jerks everyone who follows these practices; many are not. Many are sincere and unthinking Christians.

I have yet to see a t-shirt sporting the Jesus’ words according to Matthew 6:1, "Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven."

One reason ostensible Christian testimony bothers me is that often I know these people. I know that much of their daily practice--speech, attitude, action--is contrary to clear biblical guidelines. If I were not a Christian, if I were not already "born again", neither they nor their message would attract the least of my interest. Like everyone else I would find myself paying more to the person than to what they were advertizing.

The same holds for so many of the cute "Christian" messages that show up on the marquis in front of churches. They make some of the insiders feel good, but to the outside passerby they may look either innocuous or offensive. Nearly always they see them as childish.

I've lost my source, but somewhere Doris Betts wrote, "Christian spoils into a rancid adjective."