The Impossible Has Happened

Today, Sept. 28, 2015, Shell Oil announced that they have sealed and abandoned their exploratory well in the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea siting “insufficient amounts of oil and gas to warrant further exploration.”

Even though they drilled to 6800 feet, they found very little oil or gas. Despite investing billions of dollars in this endeavor, they will “cease further exploration activity in offshore Alaska for the foreseeable future.”

Wow, I am thrilled beyond words! Our passionate protests in both Seattle and Portland’s harbors pleaded for an end to focusing on fossil fuel extraction as an answer to future energy needs. The U.S. must now truly focus on alternative energy development and deepen our commitment to minimizing CO2 emissions in the atmosphere.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead, American cultural anthropologist.

Welcoming the stranger

In 1952, when I was six years old, my parents scrambled together a down payment on a chicken coop. that’s what we called the strung together shed-like building on half an acre in the flood plain of the Wabash River at the edge of Indianapolis. Linoleum floors, drafty fireplace in a small living room, funky kitchen, big yard, a few climbable trees. My parents put in a garden, bought real chickens for eggs and meat, and we began subsistence farming while my father worked two jobs, and my mother managed the harvest, the chickens, and sewed clothes for three little children aged 6, 4, and 1. We got new underwear for Christmas and one real toy. I thought it was paradise.

In the wider world, I was oblivious then to McCarthyism, Stalinism, nuclear arsenals, the Cold War, the subjugation of women, racism, etc. etc. I was a child in a pocket of relative safety in a difficult age. We all just held on as best we could. And then the Hofmann’s came to live with us.

In that tiny house, we absorbed Doktor and Frau Hofmann, their daughters ages 13 and 17, and their 20-year-old son. I was just learning to read and came home with my picture dictionary, seating myself between these big girls and teaching them basic English vocabulary and pronunciation. They had been living in a displaced persons camp since the end of the War—7 years in a railroad car. Dr. Hofmann had stood up against fascism and spent the war imprisoned and tortured; his son Christofe was so mentally traumatized he required the full-time attention of the Frau. Gisela, the older girl, did housework helping my mother, while Angela occasionally came with me, crammed in a tiny school desk, learning to read. Refugees.

Our family, borderline poor by American standards, was borderline rich by theirs. My parents, stressed and unsure how to make their own way in life, sponsored this family’s immigration and integration into American society. Soon they had an apartment downtown, clothes, second-hand furniture. Eventually the family moved to Iowa where Doktor Hofmann got a job as a medical assistant in a mental hospital, and, hopefully, help for his son. We got Christmas cards over the years, always thanking us for saving their lives.

I don’t know what happened to them (and their names are changed here for privacy). They were part of my childhood. They remain unforgettable teachers who opened my early awareness to the realities of the wider world. And it is through this intimate experience that I watch the current refugee crisis in Europe.

I acknowledge the social, political, economic, and religious complexities regarding what is happening there. I understand this unstoppable influx is overwhelming even the most welcoming countries and raises important questions about what it will mean to be “European,” as the continent becomes more and more multi-racial, multi-religious, and multi-worldviewed. The consequences of centuries, are swirling around: shall we increase the razor wire or increase the dialogue?

Our friends in Europe are on the lines in Austria, Slovenia, Germany, handing out food, helping to maintain calm among exhausted, stressed people who can barely speak a few words of common language, who are looking into one another’s eyes to grab a bit of trust and courage to stay on the path.

I have no idea how my country, state, or community, would react to 10,000 people crossing over the nearby Canadian border every 24 hours, walking down the Interstate desperate to get somewhere…anywhere…safe.

Even if there is “no solution,” there is choice in how we respond. We have turned into a new age and I believe we can show up for this!

What I know is that welcoming the stranger into our homes and communities makes them not a stranger. Six years after WWII, a German family needed help: they got it. They were no longer the enemy. Now people who are largely Muslim, largely from Syria and Africa need help: it is up to us, the white, privileged folks, to stop seeing them as the enemy, and to react with so much kindness that our actions breakdown barriers and misunderstanding.

I am well if you are well.

I am safe if you are safe.

I am home if you are home.

Dr. Hofmann, Frau Hofmann, I hope you had good lives. Christofe, may your suffering have been alleviated. Gisela, Angela, somewhere you are women in your 70’s, may you remember the little girl on the couch earnestly teaching you first grade English. I remember you.

 

For more information:

This video helps explain and calm some of these fears about immigration into Europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvOnXh3NN9w

If you want to HELP– support the World Food Programme of the United Nations: wfp.org. They are desperately in need of money to keep feeding the millions of people displaced in the Middle East and elsewhere. This is not the time for them to go broke.

 

*** BESTPIX *** HORGAS, SERBIA - SEPTEMBER 07:  Migrants cross into Hungary as they walk over railroad tracks at the Serbian border with Hungary on September 7, 2015 in Horgas, Serbia. Thousands of migrants crossed into Hungary today from Serbia near Horgas. Since the beginning of 2015 the number of migrants using the so-called 'Balkans route' has exploded with migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey and then travelling on through Macedonia and Serbia before entering the EU via Hungary. The number of people leaving their homes in war torn countries such as Syria, marks the largest migration of people since World War II.  (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

*** BESTPIX *** HORGAS, SERBIA – SEPTEMBER 07: Migrants cross into Hungary as they walk over railroad tracks at the Serbian border with Hungary on September 7, 2015 in Horgas, Serbia. Thousands of migrants crossed into Hungary today from Serbia near Horgas. Since the beginning of 2015 the number of migrants using the so-called ‘Balkans route’ has exploded with migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey and then travelling on through Macedonia and Serbia before entering the EU via Hungary. The number of people leaving their homes in war torn countries such as Syria, marks the largest migration of people since World War II. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

 

 

Camping out & in

cbintree

Old growth and still standing!

Every year on the last week of August, we head off with a couple of friends, our dog and their dog, and go camping. Usually we cross to the mainland and into the Cascade Mountains. This year wildfires and smoke veered us west to the Olympic Peninsula where we skirted the edges of the National Park and camped along the north shore of the state, gazing across the Strait to Vancouver Island, Canada. Soft, end of summer days: one long beach ramble, one hike through National Forest, one drive out to Neah Bay to peer over the western edge of the Continent and walk reverently through the Makah Nation Museum.

ann:tent

The master of dry tenting!

We were keeping a close watch on the weather because a storm was predicted. It arrived right on schedule and we hustled out of camp early Saturday morning, made the last ferry to run the gap before gale force winds took over the rest of the day. We got home at 11:30 AM, 30 minutes later our electricity went out for 24 hours. Camping continued.

Two immediate lessons: 1) it is easy to get by on almost nothing if the almost nothing you have is exactly what you need; 2) It is harder to live so simply at home when the house is full of conveniences that “aren’t working.”

The July 20 issue of The New Yorker published a well-told, well-researched article on the Cascadian subduction zone that runs off this gorgeous coast. In this piece, scientists predict that when the building pressure releases from the juncture of the Juan de Fuca plate and the North American tectonic plate, the northwest edge of the continent, will experience “the biggest disaster ever known to North America.” The article goes on to say, “By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded the region will be unrecognizable.” Chris Goldfinger, paleoseismologist at Oregon State University, states the odds of a big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years as 1 in 3.

Dire warnings floated like flotsam on the tides of social media for several weeks. Journalist Kathryn Schulz was both praised and excoriated, the New Yorker put out a second piece reminding people how to stock up for disaster, and survival gear sold out in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver stores. And then it was a hot, dry summer and we focused elsewhere.

But inside me lives this awareness of vulnerability. We moved here from MN with long-term survival and sustainability in mind: a climate with water, where food can grow 12 months a year, where we could heat the house with a wood-stove, could live in woolies and survive. We have taught disaster preparedness to island newcomers and hosted a dialogue for the church, community, and county groups who are supposed to be ready to respond.

3friends

Watching the day go down.

This is my chosen place: if it liquefies into Puget Sound I am willing to ride it down. If I survive, I have skills that will help others survive. This is my chosen community: whether we face 24 hours of home-based camping or 3 months of drought, fire, and smoke, I am talking up core values of sharing and caring for the folks around us as well as for ourselves. I am here to make peace, to hold space, to make a story we can live with that encodes a way forward.

I know how to camp, to grow food in a garden, to harvest seaweed and clams, to help neighbors meet in the middle of the road. Since electricity came back on the washer-dryer cleans my clothes, the dishwasher cleans my dishes, the lights turn on and off, hot water runs into the sink, toilets flush, the computer connects to the Internet, my phone recharges. And I move into the week thinking—okay for now, but remember: it is easy to get by on almost nothing if the almost nothing you have is exactly what you need.

I want to be part of exactly what is needed that helps us face whatever comes.

I am enjoying the beauty while we remain here together.

Sunset over Strait of Juan de Fuca

Sunset over Strait of Juan de Fuca