Our Brothers' Keepers

Once upon a time, we couldn't ask people not to smoke in our presence. Once upon a time, we couldn't ask people not to drive while drunk.

But slowly and with great effort, cultural expectations, the public will and the law changed. Through a groundswell of well-managed, and well-financed, educational campaigns, our attitudes about what was right and what was wrong evolved. Ultimately, both smoking and drunk-driving were not seen as private acts protected by the right of self-determination, but as threats to public health that should be regulated on behalf of public welfare.

So it must be with the environment.

We need a broad-based public will campaign that encourages us to say something when we see each other trash the environment. We need to make it socially unacceptable, taboo and publicly embarrassing to manufacture, purchase, consume and use things whose production or disposal harms us all. Not just because it hurts the environment somewhere beyond view; or that it will eventually affect our children somewhere beyond now. But because, like second-hand smoke and another's drunk driving, we ourselves are put at risk.

It is not about big business vs small animals; or economic development vs tree-huggers. It is about personal and collective behavior vs us and our health, right here and right now. (And sometimes, as in smoking and drinking, it is sometimes us vs us.)

Whether the issue is the behavior of international companies and their factories overseas, federal tax incentives that support bad energy and agricultural policies, lifestyles that are too large, or disposables being used by our own families and congregations when durables would do, we must speak out and say something. Individually and collectively.

For most of us, it is hard to do.

I was in the check-out line in a neighborhood market the other day, and as the cashier was ringing up my purchases, I told her that I did not need a bag, I had my own. Too late. Habit had forced her hand. My purchases were already landing in the plastic bag.

She paused and asked, "So you don't want this bag."

"No," I replied. At which point she dutifully took my foodstuffs out of the bag, placed them on the counter and proceeded to throw away the plastic bag.

That was not what I intended. The exchange was not about me but about the bag. Not about my aesthetic preferences but about not creating waste in the world. This nuance was clearly missed. The ability of so many of us - for this is not the first time such an exchange and result has happened - to blithely throw away a pristine object untainted by use, dirt, blemishes, holes or damage indicates what a profligate and environmentally insensitive lifestyle we live.

But did I say something? No. No doubt because I didn't want to offend. Or have the cashier think ill of me. Or fail in my message. Or any number of other reasons. But at what price did I hold my tongue?

My friend Rebecca, who is a gentle, loving, passionate soul, told me she would have said something like: "You know, you can use that bag again." Not in a chiding or judgmental way but in a hey-here's-an-idea, awakening kind of way.

Once upon a time, we needed to be taught how to ask others not to smoke: "Thank you for not smoking" was crafted as a socially acceptable message which really meant: "No Smoking."

"Friends don't let friends drive drunk" really meant, "Don't drink and drive."

We must craft ways to speak of caring for creation so that the message can be heard, and heeded. We need to learn how to shift cultural attitudes toward the concept of "enough." We need to make a pact with each other that we will all do this together, have each other's back, so that we do not flinch from this task or feel ostracized in the process.

And we need to teach these ways not only to ourselves but to the youngest of children in the earliest of grades. Like "Stop, Drop and Roll," we need to find the way to encapsulate the message of caring for creation in a phrase that is short and sweet.

There are people working on this, and studying this, even as I write. But we don't have that pithy catch-phrase yet.

If, as you speak to those around you, teaching them about our obligation to live well and justly on this earth, you trip upon such a phrase, do share it with the rest of us.