Waste Management

This is a cow pie.

And this is a sewage pump.

Today on the church blog we discuss producing and managing waste as Christians in the church so get out your rubber boots and shovel. There are two points about producing waste in the church based on the analogy of the body. The first is that in order to be healthy we need to produce a regular quantity of waste. The second is that we need to actively manage the waste that we produce in order to remain healthy.

First, healthy people (and churches) produce waste. Going to the bathroom might not be your favourite thing but if you ever stop doing it for an extended time you're in real trouble. People live long and full lives without the ability to see. Many people can't hear. Hands, fingers, toes, feet, arms or legs can all be amputated and a person can live for many years without them. But if your body stops eliminating waste your mental function slows down, physical functions slow down, and if not treated promptly, you will die. Our various natural processes require food energy but we can't use every bit of the stuff we eat. The wear and tear of our action and internal circulation require that some stuff be filtered out of our bloodstream. The cow that produced the pie above is healthy in every way but not every bit of grass that she eats is useful so the body sorts out the stuff it can't use and gets rid of it so that she can eat more and stay strong and thriving.

That's such a simple truth of our daily bodily lives that it feels foolish to describe it but that's a very difficult truth to realize about the rest of our lives outside our physical bodies. When I go to a meeting I want every word to be thoughtful, well-considered, accurate, and helpful. At my job I don't want to produce waste - I want to use my time wisely and produce worthwhile things. When I am in a worship service it feels like a letdown to have to sort out the digestible bits of the sharing or the sermon or the music from the other stuff that I don't have use for at the moment or can't use or maybe just find objectionable. But that sorting out or digestion or discernment process is one of the functions at the core of what we do together as Christian people. In the same way that our physical body would suffer and become dysfunctional if we tried to retain every bit of everything that we took in, so too our spiritual selves will begin to feel bloated and uncomfortable and unable to process new experiences if we don't regularly sort through the thoughts and experiences that we have already had to get rid of what we aren't able to use. That last part is important. In order for digestion to work, there has to be a way to get rid of stuff. Getting rid of it doesn't make it bad, it just means our physical body can't use it right now, so it can return to the land and become fertilizer for new food. Memories or experiences or ideas that we have set aside or maybe fully processed all the nutritional value from, need to go out the back door of our spiritual and congregational life so that we can continue to consume and benefit from fresh spiritual food in our relationship with God and each other.

If we believe that we need to act on every good idea we will soon have no ideas at all. If raising a topic for discussion is seen as having made a decision about that topic there will soon be no discussion at all. If questioning why something is important is seen as a way of saying that it is not important then soon nothing important will remain. We need to consume a regular diet of good spiritual as well as physical food which means our spiritual digestive process needs to be active in using that food which means that we will produce a daily and weekly batch of byproducts we don't have use for at the moment.

Second, once we are able to discern and sort out our ideas and plans, we will soon have an appetite for more spiritual food and it will become important for us to manage the regular quantity of waste that we produce as healthy faithful people. The three first accomplishments of your life as a young child were talking, walking, and using the bathroom. We move from being babies to being children when we can communicate, go places, and have some control over our waste. Healthy people and animals produce a lot of waste but we regulate and control it in ways that allow us to stay healthy. If you live in town, a large portion of your tax bill goes toward building and maintaining a way to make sure that whatever you flush down the toilet doesn't end up on the street in front of your house. We want sewage to break down through exposure to UV radiation or biological decay or chemical dissolving. Any farmer who raises animals needs to deal with their waste. Al from our congregation and the other members of the Bovine Fecal Relocation Technician's Association deal with specific provincial requirements for when manure can be spread on which fields and in what quantity. Too much or at the wrong time or in the wrong place (like near a stream) and the fertilizing potential of the manure becomes damaging or toxic instead of helpful. If you want to open a restaurant or have employees working on a job site, one of the things you need to think about is where those people have a safe, private, and sanitary place to manage waste that doesn't contaminate the rest of the location.

Again, our (and all) churches need to be exactly like that. We will produce waste if we are healthy. We might disagree about which bits are waste and which are useful, but we need ways to manage that process so that, just like with physical food, the waste stream doesn't contaminate the food stream. Sometimes people are reluctant to raise issues that are uncomfortable or stinky or messy because we remember that once upon a time, so and so said such and such a thing and it was hurtful and divisive. Some of us have been that person ourselves and remember how terrible it was to make a mess in public. It is embarrassing. It is awkward. But if a young toddler has an accident in public and is embarrassed about it or shamed for it they might decide to not go to the bathroom at all anymore. That's not a useful reaction because it leads to more accidents and frustration and upset, not less. Each hurtful or embarrassing accident that we have in managing the waste produced by our life together in the church is a reason to work more carefully at managing that healthy waste in good ways, not search for ways to stop making a stink altogether.

We produce waste when we are healthy. It doesn't need to be pleasant but it's not bad and we will become unhealthy if we try to stop. Once we produce waste we manage it in ways that are efficient, respectful, and fertilize new growth. The apostle Paul notes that the parts of our body that are 'less presentable' are the ones that we treat with special attention. That's not because they have some mystical magical power – in fact it's exactly the opposite. The parts of our bodies that process our food and sort the life giving energy from the natural healthy waste products have essential functions that we cannot do without and have no duplicate or spare parts to fall back on. We guard and protect those functions because of the important daily role they have in our health and vitality. We are careful to manage our waste in ways that allow it to become productive fertilizer over time rather than a toxic contaminant to our lives. All of these are true of the body of faith as they are of our physical selves.