My Not-A-Hippie Manifesto

When I was nine years old, my family moved to Washington state. While we fully embraced mandatory curbside recycling, we still held quite a few of the practices of the "eccentric" locals at arms length. We called them "crazy hippies", "tree huggers" or "the earthy crunchy granola types." They did things like wear [almost always non-stylish] clothes from organic fibers, didn't shop at Walmart, bought organic whole grain foods, used [what seemed to be] sub-par beauty and sanitation products, ate flaxseeds, wore birkenstocks and planted trees. They extolled the virtues of mud and natural "unprocessed" things.

To illustrate how different my family was from these people: when we were learning about "junk food" in elementary school and how things like boxed mac & cheese, corn dogs, spam and hot dogs were processed "junk foods" that you should only eat on occasion, I was left wondering 'Well then what do you eat? That's what I would call dinner.' We were a white bread eating, high fructose corn syrup consuming, walmart shopping family.

My journey has been gradual. When I first moved out of my mom's house to go to college, I met friends who I regarded as relatively normal people who ate whole grain bread products and drank soy milk. I started learning about the difference between processed and whole grain foods and decided to try them myself. I was a vegetarian so already ate a lot of vegetables but found when I moved to whole grain pastas and bread, using butter and olive oil instead of margarine and cooking a lot of my food myself instead of always eating at McDonalds and Taco Bell or ordering pizza....I felt a ton better.

Eight years later, I'm a mom who uses cloth diapers and glass bottles. I bring m own bags to the grocery store. We're using a modified vaccine schedule instead of the one pushed by the CDC. My son is still exclusively breastfed (or bottle fed expressed breast milk) but when he does start with purees and solids, we will be making our own foods at home. We agree with Dr. Sears' approach to parenting and especially "night parenting" and how we are teaching our son to sleep on his own.

When people find out that we do these things, I can see them write me off as one of those people who I used to write off. They think I'm a hippie who is fighting the way Americans do things in vain. They think I prefer ineffective, more arduous ways of doing things that surely must cost more. But really?

I am SO not a hippie.

I was not raised with that world view. I like foods that taste good. I don't own a single pair of Birkenstocks. And I (at least occasionally) shop at Walmart.

So why am I doing all this stuff? For lots of reasons. But at the root of all of this, it's because I am a Christian. I realize this sounds odd beause in America at least we tend to associate Christianity with being a republican. Being a republican with denying the existence of global warming. And the denial of global warming with actions that maximize things like pesticide use, SUV's, plastic grocery bags and refusing to recycle.

So what does Christianity have to do with it? In the very first chapters of the book of Genesis, God makes people and puts them in charge of the Garden...the earth that he created. They are to "fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." We as human beings are God's chosen guardians and care takers of the Earth. Like the master in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30, I believe that one day God will ask for an accounting of what we have done with the things he entrusted to us: Our finances, our children, our resources and our planet. Did we take good care of them? Are they flourishing and doing well under our care? Or are they sick and neglected? Did we make decisions that were convenient instead of decisions that were right? Did we care about the things God cares about? Or only about the things we care about?

It is my goal to care of the things God has entrusted to me the best way that I can. To use our resources wisely, to avoid known toxins when possible and not create large piles of trash that won't go away for anywhere from 550 - 1,000,000 years.

Like many things, this is a journey. I do not profess perfection. I do not aspire to judge others. I would like to use this space, though, to talk about the choices my family has made, why we have made them and hopefully inspire you to consider the choices you make and whether or not what you are currently doing is really the best choice for you, your family and your values.