Church and Community Change

They are starting a program to explore making Belfast a "Transition Town" of the kind that develops resilience for the coming changes of climate and energy use. I haven't read the book that goes with it yet, and as usual, I have to be at work during about half the discussion group meetings that are about to happen -- one of the perils of a line of work that requires meeting with people who have normal jobs during the day. But that book is on order, and I'll go when I can.

I have been reading another book, though, $20 Per Gallon, by Christopher Steiner, subtitled "How the inevitable rise in the price of gasoline will change our lives for the better." Steiner works for Forbes magazine, coming to business journalism with a background in engineering, so his investigative choices are interesting and his analysis is mostly sharp. He outlines the changes that the market system will bring into being as the price of petroleum products rises, giving some attention to the global warming question, but focusing mainly on changes in lifestyle that will come. Mass transit, dense urban centers, food production near point of use, rebirth of manufacturing.

Coupled with a reading of Jim Wallis' Rediscovering Values On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street, a Moral Compass for the New Economy, $20 Per Gallon opens some interesting vistas on the future.

The most important vista I see, through the lens of these two books and my own experience, is that we have some really important choices to make about our values and how we use them to shape our lives and communities. Change is coming. The big question: Is it going to be governed by the Wall Street ethos that considers demand and costs of production and not much else, or is it going to be governed by something more human- and planet- oriented?

Either way, it won't be a catastrophe. Still, I have become weary of realizing time and again that my body and mind are being used as ATM's for some corporation. I'm going to get to as many of those "Transition Town" meetings as I can and try to get a glimpse of an alternative.