WHAT WOULD YOU DO ON YOUR ECO-SABBATH?

A lot of us don’t keep much of a Sabbath. If we go to church on Sunday morning, we feel that we did our religious duty for that day. But, most everyone knows that the Sabbath is supposed to be, according to the Bible, a day of rest. Maybe, like many people, you don't feel like that Sunday is a special day, set apart from the other six days. But, wait! Here is a chance to celebrate an eco-Sabbath. It’s another way that we could be motivated to make one day of the week, a real day of rest. The eco-Sabbath can be a special time for you, alone or accompanied by friends and family, to thank God for another day of life and, at the same time, demonstrate your Earth-friendly convictions.

Now, most of us own-up to having a sizeable carbon footprint, which, sadly, amounts to having done our share of damage to the Earth. What’s more, we would like to see an end to the ghastly level of carbon emissions that we've all created. The question is: How can we go about doing something like that? Probably, you're not ready for a “no-impact” life or even a “no-impact” year, as was done and documented by Colin Beavan. But some of us should be able to try out a “no-impact”, 24-hour day.

So, what might our eco-Sabbath look like? It would clearly be a quiet day. On that day, we would make no purchases, not use any machines or anything electric, including computers, TVs or cell phones. That also means no cooking, either (unless it’s with a solar oven). And no transportation methods other than walking or biking. And we'd use as little water as possible - that being only the necessary for maintaining good health and minimal hygiene. How much water might that be? Well, I suppose each participant would need a gallon or so to drink and another gallon or so to wash up. (You notice I didn’t say shower.) And, maybe, we’d need two gallons of water for rinsing out dishes and another few gallons for toilet flushing (and that only when plainly needed).

O.K. That was the negative part – what we won’t be doing on our eco-Sabbath. So, what’s to be gained by going through all this? First of all, it's a perfect way to take some time from day-to-day work and other kinds of responsibilities and to rekindle your religious faith, while, simultaneously, giving our planet a break. By not using any resources for 24 hours, we can cut our carbon impact for the year by 1/365 or 0. 03%. Now, that may not sound like very much. But once we learn how to do this, there’s always a fair chance that it could be repeated. If we did this for one day a week for the whole year, our personal carbon emission would be reduced by some 14%. And, second and equally important, these hours, taken out from our normal routines, can help us think about ways to make our lives more Earth-friendly on a full-time basis.

And, here’s more of the positive part. There are many good things that a person can do well and thoroughly appreciate on an eco-Sabbath. You may remember a simpler time from your youth when on Sunday you went to church and spent the rest of the day visiting with family and friends, eating an unhurried "Sunday dinner", playing games, and singing songs around the piano. Back then, there was enough time to do things on Sundays that were totally different from our regular routines. How did so many of us lose that perspective on Sundays? An eco-Sabbath can be a reason to enjoy some of the same enjoyable (and low carbon-impact) activities with friends and family.

Beyond that, from my own viewpoint, I’ll try out my first eco-Sabbath in good weather. That way I’ll not need any home heating or fans. Also, the good weather should allow for plenty of sunlight, and I’ll be able to carry out all my activities with daylight. Oh, and there won’t be any electric usage for the refrigerator either. I’ll do my "no-impact" day just before I do my weekly grocery shopping and, so, it won’t be difficult to put the remaining items in an ice chest. (This will be a perfect time for me to clean the empty refrigerator, a task that I dislike and am known to put off.)

I can reduce my carbon footprint a bit more on eco-Sabbath by not using any products other than hand soap, dish soap or a laundry bar soap for washing out a clothing item or a towel. That also means no use of paper (other than toilet paper) and, certainly, no plastic products. I’ll probably use olive oil instead of my all-purpose skin cream. Olive oil works as well or better than most commercial skin creams – the only drawback to it is the cost – as price of olive oil has increased a lot lately. My food won’t be heated, but I can eat it cooled - directly from the ice chest - or at room temperature, picnic style.

For my part, I’m pretty sure that I can carry out an eco-Sabbath at least one day a month (that’s 3% of the year) without any suffering at all. On such days, I would be able to enjoy a leisurely conversation at the kitchen table with my husband and take a nice long walk, alone or with my husband (or with my dogs). I could also do some inspirational reading, draw or paint, work in my small garden, write in my journal, do needlework or yoga. I would surely benefit from getting up with the sun in the morning and going to bed early, allowing me at least 10 hours of sleep time. And that would be a really healthy start to the rest of my week.

Now, I've told you some of my ideas about how I'd celebrate a "no-impact" (or "low-carbon impact") Sabbath. What would your eco-Sabbath look like?

Related posts
STAY IN THE NOW 
FIND HARMONY IN YOUR SACRED SPACE
REMEMBERING THE SABBATH 
KEEP AN INSPIRATIONAL JOURNAL
SHRINK YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT
TAKE STEPS TO USE LESS WATER
WHERE TP IS CONCERNED, OBSESSION WITH SOFTNESS = ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION

LOOK FOR WAYS TO BE MORE AWARE OF THE NATURAL WORLD.

Most Western people lead lives that are almost entirely disassociated from nature. They feel that their lives are only related to a specific group of people or perhaps, for a minority, to the human race, in general. For them, the natural world is just a kind of backdrop, a setting that provides humans with their necessities for food, warmth, work and recreation, and from which all is to be taken freely and little or nothing needs to be returned. This kind of disconnect from nature creates damaged mental health and terribly destructive behavior. On the other hand, as almost anyone who's experienced nature recognizes, we can be as closely involved with nature as we allow ourselves to be. And through that involvement, nature can renew and re-create us. This means that our efforts to explore our relationship with our natural environment, can be the basis for more productive and happier lives.

This page is written with the purpose of asking you to do a small study of nature that involves exploring your own special relationship with plants or, more in particular, with a single plant. You have heard the saying that “You are what you eat.” That’s what I’m asking of you to consider. Put one fruit in front of you – some fruit that you like a lot. Meditate on it for a couple of minutes. Lift it up and consider its weight. Turn it around and view it from several angles. Smell it. Think about the many experiences it may have had in order to reach your table and your hand – being planted, breaking through the ground, finding the light, being watered, growing, and then harvested, and transported. Or, for those fruits that grow on trees, their appearance as blossoms, growth to maturity, passing through times of more or less water, more or less light and heat, being picked and then transported. Then say a sort of prayer of thanks, asking the fruit to accept becoming part of you and to help you to be healthier.

While not the only way - or even one of the best ways - to overcome our separation with nature, this simple consideration of a food source can be a start to this process. It can help us be more aware of the importance of our interactions with the natural world – by creating a deeper recognition of our dependence on plants and a thankfulness toward them for sustaining all animal and human life on this planet.

After you have carried out your fruit-considering experiment, I hope that you will open your mind to other possibilities for engagement with plants. There are an estimated 275,000 different species of plants on Earth, and current science knows only a few thousand of them, and even at that, not necessarily very well. Plants do a lot more than just feed us. Plants are many different things, as all native people realize --they're food, shelter, medicines, poisons, and visionary agents. And, as indigenous people know, different species of plant have their own spirits, which can act as teachers, healers, and allies.

Unfortunately, most modern people are so immersed in the material world and with their own personal ego that they assume that plants are somehow unintelligent or even “lifeless”. We are totally ignorant when we think of plants as just a set of chemical processes that somehow appeared on the Earth and have no important purpose other than what the human population makes of them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

While a plant does not have a recognizable physical brain or other obvious animal characteristics, they are, by definition, at one time, living and sentient beings. That means that, in an important way, they share in the same energy sources that animals and humans do. Beyond that, plants form the foundation for the macroscopic level of life on this planet and their presence regulates our atmosphere. It goes without saying that that they also produce “medicine” (healing powers) for themselves and for all animal species. Yet we don’t know how they “live” their lives and, in our arrogance, we often consider them to be unfeeling or unconscious things.

While clearly lacking an animal’s central nervous system, plants do have some kind of a dispersed nervous system that allows them to communicate between their cells and with their organs. And, recently, researchers in some of the lesser-known sciences like plant neurobiology and ethnobotany have shown other surprising facts about the "behavior" of plants. From their experiments, they postulate that plants not only have mechanisms of intelligence (Plant-Mind) but also appear to do their work through a psychic link – a type of biological wisdom. This is the same intelligent link that bonds all life on Earth and is sometimes referred to as the Gaian mind (and that, in turn, is part of Universal Mind).

All of us participate at some level in Gaian and Universal Mind, but our psychic limitations keep us from being aware of our involvement. On the other hand, we can do better than we have in the past. And if we, indeed, love our lives on this Earth – and love the Earth – we need to open our hearts and minds, accepting to be healed by and finding a healing role in nature. Only then, will we be able to find some peace and stop destroying our planet.