“the making of these differences is the making of the world.”

– Wendell Berry

I really want to be green. It’s been my favorite color since I was tiny, and has come to stand for ideals I respect, ways of living that are balanced and sustainable for the individual and for the community.

But let’s face it, it’s complicated! I’ve been reading some of Wendell Berry lately, as well as Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” and I’ve got more questions than answers. Just like buying organic may mean shipping your food farther (sure, no pesticides, but you’re using up a lot more gas and creating more pollution!), every bit of “going green” is complicated.

Wendell Berry advocates living on a farm, attaching yourself firmly to the land, not moving, caring for and husbanding the land so that it’s fertile throughout your lifespan, your children’s lifespan, and their children’s lifespan. But what does that mean for someone like me, who has always grown up thinking that being able to move and being unattached from one’s possessions and land is a good spiritual attribute? We’re pilgrims, right? Not of this world?

And what does that mean for the wonderful benefits of world traveling? Is going to see Japan for a week bad for the environment? Or do the benefits of widening my mind and experience outweigh the gas I use for the flight? Or does that mean I should seek to live abroad, rather than just travel, sustaining myself the same way I would in the United States, with green living practices, so that I can recoup the cost of gasoline to get there with contributions back to the community? Can you get a visa for that?

And what about living within our means but also living green? In a lot of ways, sure, living green is cheaper. You’ll use less electricity. But what if you want to be really green and use solar panels to power your home? Is it better to go into more debt to put solar panels on your house, or to use more electricity until you can pay the solar panels’ cost in cash?

What about green clothing? There are lots of organic clothes out there, but one is faced with the same dilemma as organic tomatoes — they come from ungodly far away, using up a ton of gas in their transport. Not to mention they are without question more expensive than your average I-heart-Wal-Mart t-shirts. What’s a fiscally responsible and hippie-minded college student to do? I can’t afford organic clothing, I don’t like the gas that’s spent transporting them, and I refuse to enter Wal-Mart.

Going to vintage clothing stores, making one’s own clothing, and frequenting salvation army stores come to mind as possible alternatives, none of which really solve the whole dilemma. Making one’s own clothing does not by any means guarantee organic or local fabric, just good labor. Vintage clothing can be expensive and difficult to maintain, although the fact that I’m recycling what I wear is a plus. And, as much as I love the salvation army, it is prohibitively difficult to clothe oneself entirely from their racks, since frankly, most of the things they sell do not fit well (not to mention they are ugly — being an extremely aesthetically aware person does not help me fulfill my green leanings). In addition, the salvation army generally doesn’t sell things like underwear, so you’re left buying that at some other, not-eco-friendly store, too.

What if I raised sheep and spun my own thread and wove my own clothing? I do, actually, have the expertise to do the spinning (well. . . my thread is totally lumpy, but for the sake of argument let’s pretend that I can spin really well), weaving, and sewing (we’ll assume access to a sewing machine to speed the process), but I don’t know how to raise sheep, and — oh yeah — I currently live in a dorm. So even though I have the knowledge to make my own clothing, my location and the time costs associated with the idea are enormous problems.

Oh, and here’s a dilemma: I’m getting a great college education that’s making me want to be as eco-responsible as possible (a good thing, right?). But it’s a residential college, so I (like the majority of students) live in a dormitory. I can’t grow things, except one or two potted plants (Messiah does have an on-campus garden that sells food to Lottie and other students, employees, and faculty over the summer. So yay! Our on-campus space is at least being utilized well, even though we can’t all have our own little gardens). I can’t can or preserve my own food, because there’s no space to store it, and precious little space to prepare it in (speaking of which, you know what class I would totally take, were it offered? A small-scale agricultural course: how to plant a garden, maintain one without pesticides, save seeds and preserve heirloom plant lines, prepare food for the winter, and have a balanced diet even when eating only foods that are in season). I don’t even have control over the level of air-conditioning in my residence hall. There’s no space for a clothes line, so while I use a drying rack for about a quarter of my clothing, the rest gets put in a dryer and uses a lot of electricity.

And as much as it pains me to say it, some brilliant eco-friendly ideas are complicated by my vocation. And I’m not just talking the artists’s dilemma of paints containing heavy metals also often produce the best and most long-lasting colors. I’m talking about a more general Christian life vocation.

I read about these tiny houses that are so cool. For one adult, you can apparently live comfortably in less than 100 square feet. But what if I believe my Christian vocation is to live in community? I’m getting married. I’ll probably have children at some point. I want to have a home which is always open to friends and family, where they can come visit and sleep over and be fed and hang out. When it comes to hospitality, 96 square feet only stretches so far.

Maybe the answer is to get a hundred people interested in tiny houses (maybe 3-400 square feet in size instead of 100 — there are certainly plenty of blueprints for tiny cottages of 500 sq. feet in size available), line them all up in a neighborhood somewhere, and have larger common areas together where friends and family could be hosted for overnight stays. Everyone could chip in for laundry rooms and play areas and gardens, lawn care equipment, clothes lines, etc. Workable, but not by any means a simple solution.

So how do you negotiate the many costs and complications involved in living green? That’s all I’m wondering. Not a lot of authors acknowledge complications. They’re persuasive, but they’re not in the business of making you think about how complicated an effort it really is. Worthwhile? Absolutely. But complicated? Heck yes!

Maybe I’ll start small: Seventh Generation laundry detergent, buying as much food as possible from within a 60-mile radius of where I live, and trying not to kill a potted plant in my on-campus apartment this winter.

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