Winter Solstice 2007, Austin, Texas: Luminarios

So, I called the mail order place that I heard about and requested “a perfect Christmas.” [click] …

She hung up on me! I don’t believe it. So I called back… waiting… Muzak… still waiting. “Real Christmas Store, your order please,” the voice droned.

“Okay, how about a pleasant and memorable Christmas?” [click]

Not again!? What kind of Mickey Mouse outfit do they run?

I called back. “Alright, I’ll settle for a less than perfect Christmas.”

The voice told me, “we don’t traffic in those either.”

About to reach my wits’ end, I asked, “well what do you offer?”

“A messy Christmas,” the voice replied, barely concealing her annoyance. “You obviously never ordered from ‘The Real Christmas Store’ before.”

“No, I must say, I never have. Well, fine, I’ll take one of those; I seem to have run out of other options.”

“Very well, that completes your order,” she said abruptly.

I sputtered, “well, not exactly.”

The voice snarked, “that wasn’t a question.”

Startled, I interjected, “but when might I expect delivery?”

I could practically see her eyes rolling; the voice said, “you’ll know.”
***

Standing barely 5 feet tall in her garden, the diminutive Dr. Phlox peered at me through her thick spectacles, which distorted her eyes and obscured her expression, and half smiled at my childish question. “The loose folds of skin on my neck happen because I grew up way before your parents came into this world.” Dr. Phlox would never ridicule a nine-year-old for asking impertinent questions – if asked out of genuine curiosity. I adored her and treasured every moment we spent in her garden. This nine-year-old meant no malice but could not resist asking any question that popped into his head.

Dr. Phlox showed me how she fed the birds, tended flower beds, and let me sharpen tools in the barn on the rotary whet stone – showering sparks. Her stories about the Big Thicket, May apples, spiderworts, azaleas, Lady Banks roses, iris, narcissus, fig trees, magnolias, cottonwood, black walnut, and too many other plants to remember, left an indelible impression on me. She inspired me with a love of gardening and nature that burns like a beacon decades later. I called her “Aunt Jack.”

People of Aunt Jack’s generation witnessed nation-crushing poverty, injustice, unimaginable pain and sacrifice of world wars, as well as revolutionary social changes resulting from the introduction of electric lights, telephones, radio, television, electric street cars (and their demise), automobiles, artificial satellites orbiting the Earth, women’s suffrage, the New Deal, Social Security, and all the other incredible changes of the twentieth century. She lived a modest yet graceful existence. I barely remember her husband, who predeceased her, but I remember her Plymouth with push-button gear shift. Through patience, kindness, wisdom, and humor, she instilled in me and countless others the importance of thrift, integrity, diligence, and a love that surpasses all understanding.

The boy who did not measure up to arbitrary standards of masculinity imposed on and by classmates and adults received a priceless spiritual gift that held him together through countless trials. Of course, Aunt Jack did not give me a suit of armor that remained forever unchanged. Likewise, when I demonstrate my faith in a seed from a great tree, I do not build the stout trunk, strong limbs, leafy canopy, the birds’ nests, the flowers, or new seeds. I plant the seed and a power greater than myself does all those other things. The spirituality planted in me as a child rooted itself in Mother Earth and receives sustenance from Her and Father Sky. That spirituality bears new fruit year by year. It connects me, through my spirit guides, to the ancient past, the unknowable future, and the community that sustains me today.

Just Willing Tree, planted decades ago, struggled to maintain its presence through drought, ice storms, plagues of insects, tiny Tarzans and Huns, brutish pruning, paving over its roots, festoons of gaudy decorations, and a procession of tenants who thought they “owned” the tree. Climate change also altered the tree, unnoticed for years but eventually undeniable. Tree wanted desperately to restore forests by sowing more seeds and reinvigorate the planet by absorbing carbon dioxide, casting shade, harboring birds and insects, and feeding all manner of animals and other life forms. Great aspirations and achievements would surely justify his existence and he would achieve his full potential. Each noble effort met with frustrating resistance, heartbreak, limb break, and the embarrassment of ball moss. Sometimes, a fungus would consume a branch. During each of these injuries and insults, the tree “thought” that he would die. Survival compelled reinvention. The succession of abuses, natural and man-made, failed to extinguish the tree’s life but imparted a sense of character unique among all trees. Eventually, he became a cosmic tree – gnarled and wizened. He began life a child of the universe but only after enduring decades of life on life’s terms did anyone recognize the cosmic beauty he represents. To the extent that trees can, he grew to appreciate his role in the cosmos.

Maturity lends one’s opinion a certain weight. Facial creases and clever expressions elicit respect. Wrinkled skin, gray hairs, creaky knees, and unfashionable shoes testify to one’s age. Spirit maturity radiates unconditional love, wisdom to recognize truth masked by falsehood and embodies experience to see through anger, fear, shame, sadness, or joy and find the true presence within.

Memory of pain teaches us to hide behind masks. Fear of lost love blinds me to future paths, shame of lost integrity curses me, and sadness of lost assurance casts me adrift beyond sight of landmarks. Joy lifts the fog of deception, sets me on the path of hope, and reconnects me to the bliss that the Great Spirit gave me at birth. The joyful childhood garden of flowers and butterflies gave way to the chainsaws, dust cannons, and wastelands of adolescence and early adulthood. Amid life’s horrors, disillusionment explained the loss of bliss. The joys of childhood seemed only deception.

Imprisoned by the illusory moment, the brutality of survival seemed more real than anything else. How could anything but evil explain cruelty? How could anything but immorality explain indifference? How could anything but stupidity explain rudeness? How can I ever forgive the ones who wounded me and left me for dead? How can anyone ever forgive me for all that I did wrong or all that I left undone? How could I ever ask? If I neither ask forgiveness nor offer amends, how can I earn redemption? If I cannot forgive those who injured me, will not the injury persist, twist, and crush me? When I behave rudely, do I not dismiss it as “inconsiderate” or inconsequential? Did I fail to pay attention or deny the sanctity of that other person? When I ignore the beggar, when I fail to protest unjust government policy, when I fail to give my time, talent, and treasure to charity, do I not justify my inaction? Do I not rationalize, that my trivial gesture of kindness, my inconspicuous act of civil disobedience, or my agnostic altruism will not only fail to solve the problem but might jeopardize my personal and economic security? How many times have I lashed out in fear or anger at someone who threatened me or threatened the social order that I trusted to keep chaos a safe distance away? How many times have I taunted a dog behind a fence to bark? Did I ever wish I could inflict pain on an alleged oppressor? Did I ever convict someone based on flimsy hearsay? Did our justice system ever execute the wrong person, based on lies or false evidence? Did I ever place a phone call while driving? Did I ever say, “let the punishment fit the crime?”

Today, I can choose a different truth. I can create a safe place, with trusted friends, to open my heart, examine paralyzing shadows of my soul, and allow others to examine theirs. Today, I can see what anger, fear, shame, and grief did to me and others. I can see it on their faces and on the faces of those I meet every day. I might not know the particulars of their pain, but I can see the lingering damage. I remember walking through the burning ring of fear and shame to find love, acceptance, and healing on the other side. I know what it feels like to walk with someone else, hold the lantern through their ordeal, and witness the joy of liberation from self-imposed exile.

Whatever else I did in 2007 pales in comparison to that.

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Winter Solstice Prayer for Reconciliation, December 2006

May you enjoy serenity and celebrate your accomplishments. In this season of reckoning, I ask, what did I achieve in 2006? What existed? What happened? Where did I go? Who do I owe? What did I learn? Did it matter? Did I affirm or transform my values? Do I love and respect whom I serve? Who do I serve? How much do I want to confess…or remember…or amend?

I journey inward for answers. The forest in winter exposes its elf. Devastating drought afflicts the landscape, hidden in tree rings, inscribed on my heart. Plaintive bones, reaching overhead, grown through years of plenty and of want, whisper tales that foreshadow the future. Hard, bright sky, subdued by wispy crystal clouds that veil the mid-winter sun, filters through dormant, tattered canopy. Powder dry creek beds, empty pools, and skeletal trees beg for understanding. Diluted light on naked limbs and drifted papery mittens accompanied by wistful bird calls inspire my introspection and anticipation. What future does this scene foretell? What debt do I owe for this? How will I pay?

Fickle weather…Pacific moisture, streaming in from southwest, across Mexico, brings little change in temperature or rainfall but unquestionable change in clouds – like an imperious invasion. Although lacking the stench and noise of war, gray billows evoke the battlefield. At woods’ edge, terrifying machinery chews trees, churns soil, and buries homes of forest and prairie inhabitants to build more suburb. Blame swirls in poisoned wind. Predicament curses these sugar crystal houses. What part of this sham do I own? How might Mother Nature impose penalty for this offense?

My higher power admonishes me: Listen to the Spirit of the Universe! Make sense of it! Time flies! Think differently! Uncertainty rules tomorrow. Alas, the silken thread I trace – through righteous highs, shameful lows, and the pit of darkness – constantly threatens to break. It connects even the trivial and the profound. Crafty spirits – large, small, benevolent, and malicious, wittingly or not – misdirect and distract me until I recover the thread. Then I do the next best thing.

Frodo’s ring saga enlightens my self perception. Like the hobbit, I judge myself least capable of heroism, unprepared for dire circumstances, yet thrust into a daunting challenge. Tyrants fight each other and exploit me and my people while striving to contain, discredit, or destroy me. I lose my way and forget my mission as I witlessly pick up and hide in their cloak of alienation, a deceptive device that serves tyrants. Incredibly, guides, counselors, and comrades surround me. If only I will drop the weapon that keeps me wounded, I can see my allies and enjoy their support. Oblivion awaits on the plain of merciless reckoning if I surrender to my shadowy wraiths: fear, ridicule, anger, indifference, shame, unwarranted criticism, and prejudiced condemnation. If I can muster the strength to lift it, my starlit lantern of truth and integrity will guide me to courageous compassion.

If I can escape alienation, enlightenment and allegiance empower me. So, I refine my philosophy and seek kindred spirits who share my concerns about ecological perils. Through the lens of mission and mentors, I create my own understandings of climate change, habitat loss, and biological carrying capacity of the planet. Challenges to my understanding of reality sow self doubt. Vacillating between global concerns and immediate human needs, respecting the present place and time instead of drifting away to what might or might not transpire, I struggle every day to make my life meaningful, consistent, and relevant.

Reflection on my actions and beliefs illuminates my contradictions and self-defeating thoughts that keep me stuck in futility. If I deny the spiritual paths of others; how can I expect them to acknowledge mine? If I condemn beliefs and values of others; how can I expect them to tolerate mine? I bemoan the society that aides and abets suffering while I neglect to comfort a tortured soul. I despise the person while my heart bleeds for “the people.” I imagine awful catastrophes in the dark of night instead of surrendering to sleep so that I may view the world clearly in the light of day. I deny my pain or wallow in self pity instead of reaching out to grab the life preserver that will rescue me.

A drowning whirlpool of hopelessness, a place where I dwelt often, marks my emotional bottom. I want to believe that I need not return there, though the grim innkeeper welcomes me in perpetuity. I visited there this past year. Oracles spoke: directing me to ask for help from honest people; telling me not to fear investing in myself; telling me to find joy and love in unexpected places, to join the dance, to reclaim my voice. One said to listen to the stories of broken people, to honor them, and to grow a new sense of purpose. One said that tears heal hardened hearts. One said to notice consequences of actions and that my participation matters more than I know; that showing up to support others means showing up for myself. Out of darkness, light may emerge.

Mistakenly judging myself invisible during a dark walk through gray solitude, a funeral woke me. A young man, just beginning his journey, perished in a car crash. Shock of his unexpected death provoked agonized mourning among family and friends. He probably never knew how many lives he touched or the towering expectations shattered by his untimely demise. The spectacle of unmitigated sorrow reminded me of the miracle that any of us survives reckless youth. How many times might I have died, but for grace? Like George Bailey’s “wonderful life,” how many souls did I touch or salvage, and might I – without realizing it? Even if I committed a terrible mistake, even if I offended someone, the interruption provoked an unintended consequence and a reconsideration of a purpose and mission. If I never erred or strayed, would I ever learn to search my soul, or yours?

Fantastic spirits intervene for me. Working for a State agency conditioned me to obey rules and avoid initiating bold proposals for fear of ridicule. My personal development work encourages me to take risks and disclose my concerns and aspirations with conviction. Studying the unfolding energy and ecological crises and engaging in conversations with citizens concerned about “Peak Oil” inspired me to propose provocative policy initiatives. I asked directors: “how might another doubling or tripling of the prices of oil, gasoline, and electricity affect our agency and its clients and should we contemplate contingency plans for those possibilities?” My question induced serious discussion and a request that I draft a proposal for management’s consideration. Policy proposal discussions with my supervisors invoked feelings and skills that I had not previously used in this job. Disclosing my passion about renewable energy and conservation seems to have amended their judgments of me and my ideas.

I want you to know that I think about you and all my friends and relations throughout the year. I feel sad and ashamed not to see you more often or express my loyalty and gratitude for my friends and family members any better than I do. I fear that my ecological obsessions, and my brand of politics, provoke me to think and say things that distance me from those I love. I want to become a better brother, son, uncle, nephew, and friend. I bless you and pray that you find joy and healing in the coming year.

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Winter Solstice Greetings 2005, A Metaphorical Garden

Step across the threshold, into eternity, cosmic consciousness, whatever you may call it. Listen to a soulful song, read an inspiring book, engage in animated conversation with someone who provokes your imagination to construct novel arguments. Something clicks, like a key tripping tumblers in a lock. Perhaps a peptide released from the brain engages with an enzyme to change its conformation. The enzyme in turn transmutes neurotransmitters. What the [bleep] do I know? A new idea pops into my head, a feeling of revelation washes over me that seems to answer a cascade of previously unanswered or even unconsidered questions.
Do we really consist of “star stuff”, as Carl Sagan proposed? Maybe we consist of compost. Perhaps both prove true in different parts of the algorithm that represents life or that life illustrates. If all things must pass, if even a miracle won’t last, if all things must fall, and even stone turns to dust, does every human endeavor result in an exercise in futility? Ultimately, each must answer the question subjectively. I believe that futility does not govern my life. We stand on the shoulders of giants. By the same token, we become cells in the body of a new leviathan that survives beyond our corporeal existence. Thousands of years from now, regardless of whether anyone living then knows it, a tiny crystal in the foundation stone of some future civilization will exist because I existed – whether I formed the crystal, or merely carried it a little farther along. Even emotions leave footprints.
Despair, denial, morbidity, even futile struggle against inevitability - following a devastating ice storm, late in a year plagued by ruinous drought, an oppressively torrid summer that lingered unwanted into October, coincident with multiple catastrophic storms, floods, earthquake, pestilential plagues, and the spectre of pandemic disease – compounded by treacherously unaccountable leadership – all these and worse must have visited our distant forebears. In my sociologist mind's eye, distant ancestors appear burdened by personal and community crises, sorrowfully lengthening, chilling nights, attenuating daylight, deteriorating weather of late autumn, loss of food crops, fear of want, denuding of deciduous trees leaving a skeletal landscape, destined to rot, and presided over by a pitiless sky of featureless gray and icily biting wind. This dismal mindscape must have contributed to more than a few isolated cases of seasonal affective disorder syndrome, before the diamond hard winter sun returned.
Blessed relief accompanies the realization, remarkably early after solstice – on a crystalline brisk morning following a bleak time plodding without the sun – that the days lengthen, if all but imperceptibly. Before that moment of relief, we bolster our spirits during a vulnerable season, anticipating winter solstice, warding off darkness, celebrating festivals of lights, stoking fire in the hearth, and festooning houses and streetscapes with multitudes of tiny twinkling incandescences. We seek solace in community and comfort food. As uncertainty about the weather taints our whole outlook on life, we crave reassurances that spring eventually will return vitality to us. Intellectually, we expect it because it did before. But the primitive, irrational, emotional mind of the inner child needs more comfort than misty memory may conjure. Will the flowers ever bloom again? Will the vine ever fruit again? Faith in a seed or a dormant tree requires a metaphysical network both inside and throughout our culture that itself depends on botanical riches but distracts and isolates itself with technological artifacts.
Artifacts such as the ambiguous blessing of leisure time, labor-saving devices, life-extending medical and public health practices, beneficent labor standards, and the social safety net - all these beloved and begrudged modern comforts bestow upon some the dubious gifts of midlife crises and geriatric dotage, during which we may recall the glories and follies of our heedless youth, worry about the fates of our descendants, successors, and legacies, and re-examine the lives that we thought we might want to lead before disillusionment and pragmatism ossified our status. Reminiscing, the insights accumulated through four decades seem sagacious when we consider the naiveté of youth. Then an elder of six or nine decades adjusts the light and eclipses the accomplishments of middle age. Then again, contemplating history's traces one repositions the light yet again through lenses of sages or tales told by sediments of time.
Interpretation of such events calls into question the credibility of the messenger. Now we "question authority." Now it seems that factual relativism becomes its own personality cult, with sacraments of agnosticism and ad hominem epithets. We follow the guides we trust and discount all others who might equivocate or give us contradictory ideas whose veracity we cannot divine. Ideally, verification via direct observation, comparison, and analogy, within the framework of our understanding, enables us to impute causes and consequences. Personal histories filter and color our perceptions, making us believe what we believe and disbelieve what we don't. Does the observer alter the event perceived? A curmudgeonly wag once defined a liberal as a conservative before a mugging. More or less cynicism imparts a different conclusion. Who knows why the survivor of adversity, disappointment, and tyranny may acknowledge the existence of many philosophical and political opinions that do not fit neatly into stereotypical "liberal" or "conservative" molds? After all, adhering too tightly into a mold would shut out light and air, causing moldy corruption. At any rate, truth cannot enter a closed mind.
In nature, decomposition of dead matter returns vital nutrients to the soil, where they await re-use. Natural restoration of the soil's micro-life enables new macro-life to burst forth in the following season. Thus completes the cycle of life. A tree may grow for a time, adding new branches and rings each year, becoming stately upon previous years' achievements, enjoying periodic dormancies. Eventually, time, disease, pestilence or adverse weather will extinguish the life of an individual tree. Meanwhile, its progeny may populate a vast forest. The demise of the individual tree creates opportunities for not only its progeny but a myriad of other creatures who owe their existence to its accumulated legacy. The shifting fortunes of time, climate, catastrophe, and geological change contribute to ecological succession in which meadow may become forest or swamp may become desert. As one population gains the upper hand, it can alter the environment - which may turn advantage to a different population. Just imagine that blue-green algae rendered the primordial Earth hospitable to animals. Alternatively, a massive monoculture - say a cornfield, a lawn, or oil palm plantation - represents a vulnerable population in a dynamic world, dependent on ruthless defense against plague, drought, and opportunistic interlopers. The slightest breach in the monoculture's defenses may lead to its collapse. Observers may at first blame a beetle, a fungus, a drought, or a defect in some individual or part of the population for the catastrophe but more fundamental blame lies with uniformity of the population itself. Strict enforcement of conformity breeds vulnerability and dependence - not strength. In the New Year, every day, may we revere the life and love all around and celebrate the cycle of life? With eyes, heart, and mind wide open, may we allow the truth of the universe to flow through us? We may revel in abundant diversity in the New Year!

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Electric Power Conundrums: affordable, sustainable

Fantastic technological breakthroughs will not reduce our carbon footprints or our aggregate energy demands if the majority of people don't understand their roles in making our society sustainable.

Austin Energy, our municipally-owned utility, invests millions in demand-side reduction (DSM) programs to improve energy efficiency and reduce the need for new power plants. Working with Amory Lovins (Rocky Mountain Institute) in the 1980's, Austin Energy created a program of incentives and rebates that constituted what they called a "Conservation Power Plant" that returned the equivalent of 500 MW of power to the grid. Since then, according to Roger Duncan, Austin has added 700MW of conservation power. Although the consumption per customer has gone down, the city has not reduced its carbon footprint -- because the population of the city continues to grow.

In the 1990's, Pliny Fisk and Mike Myers worked with Austin to create the Green Building Program and compile a directory of "sustainable sources" -- vendors providing energy conservation services and products. Austin's Green Building program remains one of the most aggressive in the nation for saving energy and reducing consumption of other resources.

After a couple of decades of conservation programs, it becomes increasingly difficult to continue meeting new electric load growth through conservation measures. Although thousands of low-income homes could still benefit from weatherization and appliance replacement, those programs often cause increases in power consumption. A low-income household with an old, inefficient window air conditioner and no insulation or weatherstripping cannot afford to cool their home in the summer. Weatherizing that home and providing them with a high-efficiency air conditioner suddenly enables the household to afford summertime cooling. The same phenomenon apparently occurs with home heating systems as well. The more affluent households seem to add electricity consuming devices as fast as they can reduce demand on old appliances.

Conservation Power Plants take many forms. Through contract agreements with certain customers, Austin Energy can clip peak electric consumption loads on hot summer days. Radio-controlled thermostats, that the utility can cycle off and on at prescribed intervals during peak consumption periods, not only help to prevent power outages -- they reduce the need for additional generation capacity to cover those peak periods. Natural gas power plants, the easiest generators to ramp up and down, typically cover peak period demand. Coal powered generators ramp up and down a little less easily and tend to cover more base load. Nuclear generators, the most difficult to turn up and down, remain operating at basically the same level at all times. Wind and solar power, the cleanest but least controllable, enable us to reduce our carbon footprint and Austin Energy uses all of these that they can get.

Shifting the power load to off-peak times also helps. Austin Energy chills water at night -- making "giant popsicles" -- and uses that chilled water during the day to cool buildings that purchase chilled water to operate central air conditioning systems.

Strategic conservation reduces demand at all times during the day and year. These measures include improvements to total building energy efficiency and high efficiency appliances (especially refrigerators, that operate 24/7). This also includes replacing incandescent lights with either compact fluorescent (CFL) or light-emitting diode (LED) fixtures. Compared to incandescent lights, CFLs save 75% of electricity for the same light output, and LEDs save about 90%. Austin replaced traffic signals all over town with LEDs. The utility works hard to ensure the effectiveness of these measures because they represent a significant investment in system capacity.

Wind and solar power represent a growing proportion of Austin's energy supply growth. Wind works better at night and solar only works during sunny days. Silicon-based PV works less well on the hottest days. Wind and solar power complement each other but the need still exists to store power for times when these generators do not work. The problems of large-scale electricity storage preclude their widespread use at this time. Austin has begun discussions with companies, such as GridPoint, to provide small-scale battery systems that would make sense at the scale of a house. Home power storage represents just one component of Austin's distributed power generation program.

Solar power looms large in the hopes of Austin's conservation-minded electric market participants. Just in the past week, Nano Solar announced $1/watt thin film panels for $2/watt delivered power systems. Hardware required to make the PV power available contributes to the additional $1/watt.

Tremendous technological improvements give cause for tremendous hope of solving the unfolding energy crisis. However, public education still lags behind. Utilities, whether public or private, balk at raising rates as a means of curtailing consumption. Consumers tend to relax their dilligence when energy efficiency improvements make consumption more affordable. It seems to me that substantial progress toward energy sustainability will elude us until the general public finds energy efficiency and conservation vitally important and everyone participates in making it happen.

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