Trash or Treasure?

by Robert Horner

This second edition in a series on spiritual solutions for the environment will tackle our first specific issue: pollution from solid waste disposal. This may be the most visually disturbing form of pollution. After all, who doesn’t cringe when they sail into a plastic debris field the size of Africa floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? (If you don’t sail between Japan and the U.S. much, you can just imagine doing it and then cringe.)

For those of you who haven’t seen it in person (myself included), the millions of tons of floating plastic garbage that we dump into the ocean every year actually do go somewhere other than out of the minds of most consumers. Ocean currents in the North Pacific rotate in a clockwise direction forming the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre-essentially a huge vortex, albeit a slow one, which collects garbage disposed in the ocean from all over the planet. The result? The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

For most of us, trash seems to leave our life when the garbage truck carts it away. But it doesn’t disappear, it’s just relocated. Just like we cannot ignore a physical challenge and expect it to go away, garbage will not cease its assault on our earthly habitat until we deal with it both practically and spiritually.

So, how do we go about doing this? Like with any challenge, I begin with prayer. I particularly like working with the concept of habitat. To me, a habitat is a place that fosters growth, that lovingly encourages the development and expression of Life-like our oceans do for sea life. As a spiritual concept, habitat is an "…atmosphere of Love divine…" that no material concept can destroy (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 144).

At the same time, in an atmosphere of Love or God, you’ll find love for and in our neighbors. In other words people won’t be careless or wasteful. They’ll want to express love by keeping a clean and healthy environment that blesses everybody, including themselves. Even though one piece of plastic—or one trillion pieces of plastic—cannot really have one bit of effect on our true, spiritual environment, if we deal with the garbage problem metaphysically, this purity will have to be expressed in a practical form in our human lives.

And since our accumulated garbage appears to be having a very negative effect on the survival and breeding of fish, algae, plankton, and other organisms in the North Pacific, not to mention elsewhere, we have an incentive for praying for insights into what we can do for the world. Unfortunately, there are no magic technological fixes. Engineers have so far failed to produce a trash vaporizer. But it’s possible that our prayers will support an insight that will yield a solution to that oceanic garbage patch.

I think solutions will come more readily as we turn from faith in material technology to see how we can purify our own lives, love our neighbors more, and understand God better. We already know about certain human solutions, such as recycling, which is certainly an important part of reducing waste. But there are others. Reuse is an underappreciated (and under-practiced) aspect of the solution. By reusing goods—and buying products that are reusable—we can delay or even prevent materials from reaching the garbage dump. Furthermore, reuse is an easy way to curb our consumption of raw goods.

It is important, however, to match our physical efforts to solve the garbage problem with spiritual support. One of the beliefs associated with waste is that anything that is good is also bad-that anything used to improve life also detracts from it. Consider that new computer you just bought to help you get through school. It will help you to accomplish a lot of good. Of course, one day (probably in just a few years), it will end up next to your old computer in the city dump. Or will it? You could recycle it, right? Electronics recycling is gaining momentum in a lot ofareas right now, and taking that right action is a good step, but to really get some permanent answers we need to go deeper.

The Bible tells us that God’s true creation is full of infinite good and devoid of evil. We also know that it is completely spiritual. Furthermore, Principle lies behind all of God’s creation. With Principle comes purpose, and nothing with a purpose can ever be without use. As we work to elevate our thought to God’s absolute expression, these concepts will become clearer to us.

Seeing that divine Mind includes all intelligence will reveal inspired ideas about production, packaging, transport-everything. Ultimately, as we rise above matter and its illusions, we will be find ways to gain the good we want, but in less wasteful ways. Perhaps more uses will be found for recycled items. New ways to produce products with less energy and less waste can be found. By valuing God’s creation in this way, we’ll be purifying our thoughts and supporting any and all efforts to purify the environment.

I find this to be a powerful concept. Of course, in this human existence, it wouldn’t be very responsible to indulge in wasteful practices and then expect prayer to make everything okay. Being wasteful, or not recognizing the usefulness present in God’s creations, is a form of sin. As Mrs. Eddy says, "…if the sinner continues to pray and repent, sin and be sorry, he has little part in the atonement,-in the at-one-ment with God…"

We should all take steps to eliminate waste in our thought as well as our lives. Small changes in thought and action can do wonders-even eliminate garbage patches, both physical and mental.

19:20-22 if (to 2nd ,) if the sinner continues to pray and repent, sin and be sorry, he has little part in the atonement, — in the at-one-ment with God,

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 12:21 pm and is filed under World Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.