Filed under: eco-friendly, organic, parenting, sustainable | Tags: california, children, christianity, eco, ecostiletto, family, green, kids, los angeles, mommy, parent, religion, sarnoff, sustainable, unitarianism
After my brush with pagan paranoia and subsequent realization that when it comes to drinking the clear waters of meditation I am the cloudy cup, my search for a spiritual place to support my family lead me right to a place I never thought I’d see again: church.
Not that my personal experience with said institution has been all that bad. My father was raised Christian, my uncle is an Episcopalian priest and I spent a big chunk of my childhood singing with my best friend in her church’s choir.
But as an adult, I cringe at the wars, terrorism, bigotry and racism that have been—and continue to be—performed in the name of Christianity.
So how did I find myself sitting in a pew a few weeks ago, humming along to a tune that I recognized from childhood as “Praise Him from whom all blessings flow,” holding a sheet of paper listing hymns and sermons, and folding my $5 donation into a tiny manila envelope?
Let’s back up to the paganism part. For some time, I’ve worried that my children have no regular exposure to the concept of social responsibility, something that seems to be reinforced by organized religion. Although I spend a big part of my life focused on increasing people’s awareness of eco-consciousness, my children don’t connect growing and eating organic food, recycling, composting and turning off the lights with any bigger picture.
Yes, we meet as a family each year and choose where our annual donation will go. We donate cans and diapers to food banks, clothing to charity, and games to Toys for Tots. My husband and I talk with our children about Doing The Right Thing, and try to demonstrate that concept with our actions. But there was no regular instruction in the benefits—both socially and personally—of empathetic action.
And we had no division of days. Our big end-of-the-week activity was watching “60 Minutes” together—often with both my husband and I on our laptops, catching up on work. I felt like our workweek was sliding into our weekend and back again. There was no full stop, no reflection or meditation—things that I remembered from Sunday mornings, and things that I wanted my children to experience.
So I stumbled into a Unitarian Universalist church a few weeks ago. I was nervous, anxious, and sat near the back. The high beams and creaky pews transported me back to childhood as I watched children gather at an altar to donate canned food for the homeless.
But although the sounds and smells were familiar, the message was radically different. There was no representative Jesus on the cross; instead, symbolic flags showed symbols of Christianity, Judaism, Muslimism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and many other isms that I didn’t recognize. And the service, which involved a spoken meditation written by Thich N’hat Hanh and a reading from a book by Holocaust survivor Dr. Viktor Frankl, was proof of the congregants’ claims to be resolutely “anti-racism, anti-oppression and united by shared values, not by creed or dogma.”
Remember that “Praise Him” tune I was humming? Here’s what we sang that day:
Rejoice in love we know and share,
In love and beauty everywhere;
Rejoice in truth that makes us free,
And in the good that yet shall be.
I’m not saying that this church answers all my questions or solves the problems that I struggle with as a parent—perhaps the cup will cloud over at UU, too. But I’ll be bringing my kids back next week.
Amen.
P.S. This will be the last Mommy Greenest post for a while, as I’m taking this show on hiatus. Three kids, life and EcoStiletto.com is taking its toll, and I’d really like to watch “60 Minutes” without interruption. See you in 2010! xxRachel
Filed under: food, green, organic, parenting, sustainable | Tags: candy, china, eco, green, halloween, holiday, organic, plastic, styrofoam, sustainable, treat, trick
In the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you that I actually wrote the majority of this post last year. And not that I’m so brilliant or anything, but I wanted to run it again to highlight the fact that despite a bout of Buddhist soul-searching in order to instill some semblance of self-realization upon my children, their materialistic yearnings are in full swing, yet again, this Halloween.
In fact, not much has changed chez nous this year: The $7 Mona Lisa’s skeleton portrait, purchased from the Chinese crap factory otherwise known as Party City, hangs on the door in an effort to thwart my kids’ relentless requests for a styrofoam graveyard on the (ec0)lawn. We grew three gorgeous pumpkins in the garden this summer, which are just waiting to be carved. And despite the fact that I’ve been hoarding cardboard in anticipation of designing some truly terrifying gravestones, last night they told me anything homemade wouldn’t be scary enough.
Sigh.
Yes, Halloween has truly evolved from what I knew as a kid: Kleenex ghosts hung with thread in the window, a few hand-carved pumpkins on the porch, a pillowcase to carry the loot and a ghost costume made from a sheet over my head. (A sheet with the over-the-head part colored yellow made me an fried egg one year. The visual still makes me cringe.)
Today I get guilt from my kids every time we exit or enter the house. Why don’t we have cobwebs. Why can’t we get a tombstone. Why nothing screams or sighs when you pass through our front door.I’ve tried to explain that we’re trying not to buy so much plastic. I’ve tried to explain that plastic is made from oil, and oil is non-renewable, causes pollution and wars (not necessarily in that order) and that it never, ever goes away, it just breaks into tiny little pieces that swirl in the middle of the ocean. My in-laws even made bat cut-outs for the windows.
All they want is a $49.99 screaming ghost hanging in our entry way. Oh, and candy, did I mention the candy?
Far be it from me to deny my kids a little Halloween candy. But it’s with a wince that I witness the bags stacked high in the supermarkets, filled with candy that’s made with (un)fair trade chocolate, artificial food colorings that have been linked to hyperactivity and ADD, and high fructose corn syrup, which health experts say alters the way our metabolic-regulating hormones function and basically tricks our bodies into wanting to eat more and more of it. (Ergo the post trick-or-treating gluttony.)
Last year, I sourced candy free of petrochemically derived artificial colors and flavors, and not made in China (whose melanin-tainted milk chocolate gave us quite a scare). I found indie packs of USDA certified organic cotton candy made from evaporated cane juice, single-serving bags of organic gummy worms, individually-wrapped organic hard candies and yummy bubblegum made from a natural chicle gum base sustainably harvested in Central American rain forests, rather than the synthetic plastic that’s in conventional gum. (Thinking twice about handing out Hubba Bubba?)
That didn’t stop my kids from bringing home bulging bags of chemically-enhanced candy, which they ate in gluttonous frenzy until they made themselves sick.
This year, I might just shut off the lights and hide. Although the sight of the Barnacle (read: baby) done up like a kitty-cat might be worth staying up for. I think I’ll leave the lights on. Keep the bats in the windows. And hand out organic pretzels.
Filed under: beauty, eco-friendly, fashion, green, organic, sustainable | Tags: beauty, chemical, cosmetics, diy, eco, green, home, mask, paraben, scrub, sustainable
It’s not like I’m some crazy Birkenstock wearing woman who uses The Rock on her underarms. I like lipstick as much as the next girl—I just like to know mine’s lead-free. Think I’m kidding? Go to the Environmental Working Group’s Cosmetics Safety Database and search your brand of lipstick. More than 60% contain lead, which is a neurotoxin. And most women eat about nine pounds of the stuff over their lifetimes. But seriously, there are so many awesome beauty products that are totally chemical free these days, why would you want to use anything else?
At www.EcoStiletto.com, I feature beauty options that just might get you off chemicals altogether. But for the DIYers among us (read: me), I whipped up a facial scrub/mask recipe that you can make in minutes and delivers a serious glow.
How? Go to the kitchen and grab sugar, eggs, honey and instant oatmeal. Go on, I’ll wait!
A little background: I love scrubs but don’t like that most of them contain oil. I like things that can be used on my face, hair and body—and oil isn’t one of them, no matter how pure, it still gives me zits and always ends up in my hair. So I created this Essential DIY Scrub & Mask that I’m totally addicted to—used it for three days straight (okay I’m a little obsessive) and seriously my skin was NEVER better. My blackheads were gone, my giant pores were smaller and my skin felt super soft and clean. Try it!
Essential DIY Scrub & Mask:
Six tablespoons raw organic sugar
One free range organic egg white
One tablespoon organic honey
One packet plain instant organic oatmeal
Strain the egg white into a bowl (or mortar, if you’ve got one), then blend in the sugar with a fork (or pestle). Blend in the honey, and then the oatmeal (leave it uncooked). Now rub the mask into your skin in small circles.
Some people think that sugar can be too harsh for the face, so if your skin is sensitive, please be gentle. I, on the other hand, have alligator skin. I like to put some muscle into it.
Once you’ve thoroughly exfoliated your face, just clump some more of the scrub onto it and let it dry for 10 to 20 minutes. (Make sure you’re wearing not-so-nice clothes, as it sometimes does fall off a bit.) Wash off, and presto, glow-o!
You can also use the scrub in the bath or shower—because it lacks oil, you don’t have to worry about slippage. Make sure your pipes can handle the small amount of oatmeal involved. And keep any excess in the fridge—it’ll keep for a few days, but after that, toss it. (If you use it straight outta the fridge you might need to dilute with a little water for better spreadability, just fyi.)
The secret ingredient to this recipe is honey. Honey is a natural emollient, which means it helps the skin trap moisture. When I visit my family in Santa Fe, I always stick a bunch of organic honey sticks in my carry on. At night, I crack open one of those sticks and slather the stuff on my face. I leave it on for 10 minutes or so and wash it off. (It helps if I haven’t already had dessert. Yum.) It leaves my skin super dewy and soft, minus pore-clogging oil.
Sugar is a natural exfoliant, as is oatmeal, which also has colloidal—or soothing—properties. I’ve used whipped egg whites on my skin for years to cleanse and minimize pores—recently I heard that egg whites also increase the production of collagen, which is something I didn’t care about as a tweenager. I’m not a beauty scientists so I can’t tell you exactly how it breaks down. But for those of you who are trying this right now, tell me how you look in 20 minutes. It works, right?
I am not a religious person. In fact, I’m not sure I even believe in god. Growing up, my religious education was diverse, to say the least: Native American ceremonies with my dad, singing in the Episcopal church choir with one friend, celebrating Passover with another. As an adult, I learned about meditation through yoga classes but never tried it beyond shavasana. And although I’m thankful for my exposure to many different religions, I’m worried that my children are missing out on a crucial spiritual element.
I may just be raising a house full of pagans.
So when a friend invited my children to join hers at a Sunday morning Buddhist meditation designed for kids, I cajoled mine into going. I even corralled a friend for each and dragged them along. And it was all fine and dandy until the stress kicked in: I worried about being late, about the Barnacle (read: baby) misbehaving and about my kids disrupting the class. “If this is what going to meditation means to you,” my husband told me in the car, “You are obviously missing something.”
So I calmed down. I sat with the Barnacle in my lap while my kids joined the circle on mini pillows. We closed our eyes and envisioned negative thoughts blowing out of our noses as black smoke, and positive thoughts entering our bodies as white light.
Then the leader did a science experiment, beginning with baking soda in a cup. “This is your mind,” she said. She poured in vinegar, which created a cloudy liquid that foamed up and over the top of the cup: “This is what negative thoughts do to your mind.” And as she read aphorisms from a book while my ever-inquisitive children asked increasingly out-of-context questions, my anxiety grew.
By the time we wrapped up with an art project where the kids decorated hearts with pictures and descriptions of what made them happy—and my 10-year-old son and his friend began a heated discussion of their favorite new video games that culminated in both of them writing that what made them happiest was the absence of their siblings—I was fuming. When my husband returned from getting an (inopportune) cup of coffee, I basically shoved the Barnacle at him and stomped out of the room.
I wasn’t mad at my husband, and I wasn’t mad at my kids. I was mad, I think, at the fact that I had envisioned the experience of meditation as transformative—I’d hoped that we would start deep breathing together and the five of us would become some kind of model Zen family.
The reality of my real family disappointed me.
But why? Because my kids are competitive, combative and loud? Because my son likes to talk about video games and my daughter knows all the words to Selena Gomez’ latest album? Because the Barnacle is—for want of a better descriptive—two?
As my husband pointed out, I was the cloudy cup in that situation.
My children moaned and complained every time I mentioned the meditation class, but in the end they came with me to experience something completely different. They sat quietly as someone they didn’t know talked to them about things they didn’t understand.
Sure, they ended up back in their comfort zones. But they trusted me enough to take them outside of it. That’s white light to inhale, a story to write about on a paper heart and a concept I’ll try to remember the next time the water clouds.
Filed under: eco-friendly, green, organic, parenting, sustainable, travel, vacation
Despite the fact that Tinkerbell may be Disney’s new poster girl for energy efficiency and tween stars like Dylan and Cole Sprouse offer carbon footprint reducing advice between “Suite Life on Deck” shows, the O.G. Mouse House is far from environmentally conscious.
I found out first hand this week when my family of five—plus our friends, a family of three who were visiting from Chicago—made our annual pilgrimage to Disneyland.
We tried to be as sustainable as possible. We packed in an organic lunch—after first confirming online that dietary concerns were justification for bringing in outside food, then nervously covering the food with sweatshirts as we entered. We had anticipated a showdown in which we would have to explain the concept of pesticide-free as a justifiable dietary concern, but nobody even blinked.
We also brought stainless-steel water bottles, which we filled up each time we found a rare water fountain. (Then we caved and let the kids get icees, which probably blew their high fructose corn syrup allotment for the year.)
In between, we went on as many rides as we could cram into a 10-hour period. It’s probably stating the obvious, but the amount of energy used to run these rides—plus restaurants, lights, trains and the other electrically-fueled experiences that make up Disneyland—is mind-boggling. With the place smack dab in the middle of sun roughly 350 days a year, the lack of solar is a crime.
We did find bottle and can recycling bins, but they don’t accept any of the immense amounts of paper and plastic used to package and deliver the snacks, sodas and fries that we consumed once our clandestine organic lunch was complete. C’mon Disney, even the Los Angeles Zoo uses biodegradable plastic cups!
Now that studio head Dick Cook—the former park tour operator who spent 38 years working his way up the ladder to studio head—is out, word on the street is that things will change dramatically at Disney.
Here are some changes I’d recommend: Solar. Wind. Biodegradable plastic. Organic options. More water fountains!
Other than that, Disneyland is perfect. Thanks, Walt.
