Wanted: Earnest Seekers to Answer "How Can Our Footprint Ecologically Fit Our Planet?"

Our OneEarthIn the past week, two different groups discussing my book, Blinded by Progress, have asked me the question: “How can I have a footprint that is 1.0, i.e., that uses no more than the resources of one planet?” The OneEarth Project joins with all earnest seekers to answer that question, but does not yet have the answer. We do, however, know that (1) earnest seekers need to develop the depth of consciousness and soul to face and deconstruct MultiEarth living, and (2) practice and teach lifestyles, business models, policies, and economic models that tilt toward or embody OneEarth living in every way we can.

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Jubilee — an Economic Model, Not Just Happier Ethics

Just what was it that changed my mind from thinking, “No, there is no such thing as God’s Economy,” to “maybe.” Foremost was the group of people in Chicago with whom Juanita and I had met around Ross and Gloria Kinsler’s book, The Biblical Jubilee and the Struggle for Life. It challenged my ideas that the bible was hands-off on economic models. They showed how the “biblical jubilee” is a model that got expressed through specific lifestyle choices then and still does. I was convinced and readily joined others in the group to form the nonprofit, Jubilee Economics Ministries, dedicated to explicating this economic model, not just as theory, but as a practical alternative to the prevailing economic system. 

By fall of 1999, after Juanita and I had both retired early from our careers, we moved into an intentional community in Chicago with three other households. We named our house and community “Peaceweavings.” There, Juanita and I devoted ourselves to living more fully this new economic model and to the new nonprofit. Though Juanita stopped working with Jubilee Economics after a year, we continued our efforts to live lives shaped by its economics. I continued as the organization’s director even when we moved to San Diego early in 2002.

Challenged repeatedly by the question, “What is a jubilee economy?” I have gradually come to answer, “It is an economy that shows us how to live interdependent with all species while using the resources of only one planet.” The name “jubilee” comes from the version of this economy that the Hebrew people adapted to fit their social structures and cycle of religious holidays. But the model’s origins lie with the First Peoples worldwide. Both First Peoples and Hebrew people held that their economic choices were spiritual choices. The same holds true for me today. I believe that my economic choices show whether I practice the spirituality of Multi Earth or One Earth ways.

A Book Pulled the Trigger for Me

Juanita and I were married in 1996. Two years later, at age 58, I took early retirement, having pastored in three Presbyterian congregations in Nebraska and Illinois over the previous 32 years. I was eager to leave ecclesiastical structures that for me had become too corporatized. The previous year, Juanita had chosen early retirement from Amoco Corporation, unable to continue in what she considered a toxic environment. We moved from the suburbs into Chicago and continued in relationships and meetings that nurtured our evolving commitment to live more justly in the world.

Gloria Kinsler, who had been the leader of Juanita’s delegation to Latin America, re-entered our lives a few years later through a book she co-authored with her husband, Ross. Their book responded to the grim economic struggles they witnessed during their many years of living and teaching in Guatemala and Costa Rica. In 1998, two members of the group that Juanita and I were part of, came with a draft copy of that book, explaining that their friends, Ross and Gloria Kinsler, were asking for feedback prior to sending it to the publisher. We willingly accepted the challenge.

Their book, The Biblical Jubilee and the Struggle for Life, had an immediate impact on us. After discussing it, some of us decided to form an organization we called Jubilee Economics. But when we tried to incorporate, the Secretary of State office in Illinois said we needed to add a word like “ministries” in order to make it sound more like the kind of nonprofit we described. So we did. Jubilee Economics Ministries (JEM) formed in 1999. Ever since, I’ve joined in with others seeking through JEM to answer the question, “What does an economy look like that requires only the resources of one planet and how do we practice it?”

How would you answer that question?