An Interesting Point of View

This week my Ministry Assistant Dorothy Jentgens shared from a conversation she had with her 83 year old mother.

My mother is pushing 83 and pooh-poohs the idea of “green” and recycling saying she has been doing it since she was a young woman and society made her stop.

Her case:

She never used disposable diapers but washed out the diapers we used when we were small and sent them to the diaper service who washed and sanitized them and returned them all folded neatly. Same goes for disposable bottle liners. No plastic in the garbage for her! She used glass bottles and sterilized them on our stove.

We had a milkman. You washed out the GLASS containers and put them in the milk box. He delivered milk in those containers after they had been taken back to the dairy and sanitized thoroughly by the company. No plastic in the recycle.

The same thing happened with soda. No cans, glass. You rinsed them out and returned them to the grocery and then they sanitized and refilled and were back on the grocery shelves the next week. The kids had fun looking at the bottoms of Coke bottles to find out where they came from because Coke had bottling companies in every state and they marked the city of origin on the bottles where they manufactured them.

Most clothing and laundry was hung outside for natural drying. What a great smell! No BTU's used in that process while a dryer spun your electric meter around.

Garbage was taken to the outside trash can in a wrap of newspaper and two paper grocery bags inside one another. Oh look, no plastic.

She had a vegetable garden for fresh vegetables and by that garden you kept a “kip” where you composted for that garden. That compost was mostly our grass clippings, potato and other vegetable and fruit peels, bush and tree clippings, leaves and dog droppings picked up from our yard. She had the most wonderful tomatoes ever. Organic, anyone?

Some lessons I take away from this conversation:

1. There is much to be learned from our elders. We sometimes think that those who are older are of little value. Their experience, wisdom and insight are often invaluable. Take time to build relationships with those who have lived longer than you. It will benefit you for eternity.

2. Newer is not better. The spirit of the age seems to be “throw out the old, to make way for the newer and the better.” Newer is not better, better is better. The automobile industry has taught us this lesson over and over again.

3. People can still contribute whatever their age. Most of us tend to write off those who have “slowed down” in life. Many of our greatest steps of progress have been instigated by those whom were deemed “over the hill.” Do not allow your age to cause you to cease to have input in and be active in our society.

4. There is no substitute for experience. We place high value on education and youth and then to our detriment ignore the value of experience. While education is valuable and youth is a blessing nothing can replace having been there and having done that. Most of the population under 50 has not shared the experiences Dorothy’s mother spoke of.

Having said this we are also wise to not reject that which is new and different simply because it is new and different. This spirit would cause us to still be living in caves and warming ourselves by the fire. As we face our future it would seem wise to recognize that we need not reinvent the wheel while we do pursue ways to make the wheel more efficient.

Thank you to Dorothy’s mother for her wise insight.

Attempting to connect the dots…

Wayne
Romans 1:16

Quotable:
“No matter what age you are, or what your circumstances might be, you are special, and you still have something unique to offer. Your life, because of who you are, has meaning.”
~ Barbara de Angelis