I left Duke and the United States hating words about "sustainable", "renewable", "green", and every other fake word that gets put on boxes of cookies, lumber, oil changes, and in restaurant windows. But after two months in Haiti, all I have realized is that NOTHING down here is sustainable, renewable, or green. In fact, they are the antithesis of all that is sustainable. Which has been the main impetus behind my desire for a reforestation/ environmental project. They deserve something that is sustainable. And in seeing the need for sustainability here, I have been reinvigorated for the desire to bring sustainability to all. My first place to start is where I was essentially "born": Sewanee, TN. I have taken a job to work as the right hand man to the school's new Sustainability Director.
But the one thing that I know I must learn to accept with my new project down here is patience. This project and its subsequent growth of seeds and biomass will certainly take a long time. It will be at least two years before any product can be produced.
My thoughts of time were born out of a very interesting phrase I conceived of the other day:
God's renewable resource is time.
We might have infinite water (to a degree), air, and even lumber (if grown and harvested "sustainably"). But just like resources of oil, natural gas, and coal, we humans do not have the luxury of infinity. To quote a girl who came down here with the Richmond mission team, Kathleen, "We are only given just enough time." Some people will use there time to establish Fortune 500 companies and amass ungodly sums of wealth. Others will use there time to end up in prison five times and foster unhealthy drug addictions. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle. It is obviously best for us to make the most of our time, utilizing the gifts God has given us to best serve our fellow humanity.
God does not have to worry about this. For him, there is no birthday allowing him to legally drive or go to bars. He will have no mid-life crisis where he goes out and buys a pitiful Mazda Miata. He will not retire and he will never die.
It has always been a mind-blowing realization to think about infinity, which is the only word we can use to describe God's view of time. He is the Alpha and the Omega. But for him, there is no middle of the alphabet. He sees it all at once. It is not one long timeline that he is manipulating like an audio recording, throwing in a Messiah here, a Ganhdi here, a reformation there, and a Hitler here. To him, it is all, simply, one moment, one creation.
To think about it this way can be quite scary. The only idea that ever helped me grasp my mind around it was to think about heaven as such:
If God is infinite, then heaven must also be infinite since it is his home. If we die and go to heaven, then we enter infinity. If I die in 2045, I enter infinity then. If my child dies in 2076, then he enters infinity then. Yet once you enter infinity, it is all one single moment. Thus, my child will be already be there in heaven when I get off the bus. And so will everyone else before and after me. Pretty amazing, right?
As I write this, I cant help but think about my time here in Haiti. In the long run, it will simply be a quarter-year diversion in a Third World Country. And hopefully my little plot of Time that I am harvesting on this planet is only about one-quarter exhausted. I sure hope that my "Peak Oil" moment comes far down the road (and that I don't buy a Mazda Miata). But for now, I am slowly using the last third of my exhaustible resource plot that exists here in Haiti, drinking a cold Prestige with three adults from Springfield, Missouri and talking Razorback football. I guess that's okay for now.
Song of the Day:
All signs say I should choose "Time" by Pink Floyd. And while one of my greatest concert experiences ever was with the band Moon Taxi covering that song, I will leave Roger Waters for another day. I could play my favorite instrumental song "Time Stops" by Explosion in the Sky. Or "Time Will Save the Day" by Ben Kweller. Or maybe even "Your Time is Gunna Come" by Zeppelin. But instead, here is "White Daisy Passing" by Rocky Votolato. My favorite lyric is in a vain with "Time" by Floyd:
"I'm going to sleep at the bottom of the ocean because I couldn't let go of the water at the setting sun"
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