(This is the introduction to a new writing project of mine - a book about spirituality and service.)
One day in the early 1970’s, my high school buddies Rock and Doug went to the freeway on-ramp in Santa Cruz, California, and stuck out their thumbs. They were headed for adventure in the great Northwest. Rock held out a cardboard sign that said “SEATTLE”. Lots of time and many cars passed by. In a flash of frustration-fed inspiration, Rock turned the sign around and wrote ALASKA on it, and held it up. Very shortly, a car pulled over. They hopped in and began their journey north. It seemed that aiming higher helped them to get closer.
I stuck out my thumb and headed down the road of service and activism as a teenager. With great ceremony at the time of the first Earth Day, a group of us at our high school buried an internal combustion engine (from a lawnmower), indicating our distaste for the pollution it caused. (I’m sure the old engine poisoned the earth around it with its oil and heavy-metal residues. Happily, we didn’t bury it in the organic vegetable garden we planted on the campus.) At age 16, I was appointed to a federal student advisory commission on the environment, a group made up mostly of radicalized graduate students. We traveled to university campuses and mobilized students to push for clean air and water laws. My high school friends and I became activists, pressing for local environmental preservation and protesting against the Vietnam War.
I went with my church youth group to Tijuana and Ensenada in Mexico to fix-up and paint-up schools and orphanages. I burned inside with commitment to do all in my power to end the kind of grinding poverty I witnessed there. Surely we could end poverty in America, if not south of the border!
Those were days when millions of young people like myself, around the world, rose up to challenge “the system”. A confluence of events led us to question authority and dump the dominant paradigm. “Any day now, any time now, I shall be released,” sang Bob Dylan. “Up against the wall!” howled Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane. I came of age in a time when we assumed that justice and peace and environmental restoration were within our reach, any day now, any time now.
“Any day now” turned into years. “Any time now” turned into decades. Poverty still exists. Local pollution has been abated, but global warming has accelerated. Peace is elusive, even after all the protest actions into which we poured our souls. Vietnam, then Central America, then Iraq, then Afghanistan took the headlines of conflicts in which America was embroiled.
Some of us lost patience and gave up. Some of us lost faith not only in the government we had back in the day, but in the potential of any government to do right by its people, ever. Some of us gave up on public affairs and focused entirely on private affairs. Some of my peers, who once counted themselves in the counterculture, got high-paying high-tech jobs, bought Porsches, and espoused libertarian views. The “party of no” that stands in the way of political and social progress in America today has its roots partly in the disappointment that followed those “any day now” days of the 1960’s.
Whether by virtue of our own virtue, or just by the grace of URFKAG, the Ultimate Reality Formerly Known As God, others of us hung in there. Maybe we were just too stubborn to give up, but I like to think that at least some of us figured out that the journey wasn’t just to Seattle. Rather, it was going to be a very long and bumpy hitchhike to Alaska. The road ahead was not just to victory in a particular campaign at a particular moment in history. Rather, the road ahead was being carved out of the wilderness through attraction to a higher goal. Challenges, victories, and failures along the way were blazed trees and stone cairns marking a much longer journey toward spiritual self-realization. What we once saw as the ends of our efforts were really the means by which we could grow in compassion and widen in consciousness, both as individuals and as a society.
Having a higher goal than our immediate tasks helps us to achieve our immediate tasks. Knowing we are hitchhiking to Alaska gets us to Seattle quicker, and with a better attitude.
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To hear me in conversation about progressive Christianity, science, and religion with Michael Dowd, author of THANK GOD FOR EVOLUTION: http://evolutionarychristianity.com/blog/audio-downloads/ - scroll down to find my name --
To see a new, beautifully-filmed documentary about Appalachian mountaintop-removal coal mining: http://deepdownfilm.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=138%3Apeople-power-faith-and-mountaintop-removal&catid=37%3Apeople-power-series&Itemid=75 - it is inspiration for putting faith into action for environmental protection....