06 01 11 Learning from Life in a Bioshelter

For Cindee and me, living in our bioshelter home is a spiritual journey. How could it be otherwise? The house mimics a living creature, with ventilation systems that allows the house to “breathe,” a water system that “drinks-in” rain and then "digests" (recycles) nearly every drop, a "warming" system based on passive solar heat stored in a massive thermal mass, and a small plot of land that increasingly provides both building materials and food.

Participating in the life of this living system requires a relational awareness. Our home and lands join with us in a relationship of mutual care and responsibility. And although living in our bioshelter home is a reminder of what life is about, as a Christian I find it also reminds me of the basic truths lived-out by my Judeo-Christian forebears in order to pass it on to later generations. That truth: that we live in a wonderful web of relationships; and just as those relationships provide for our needs, so must we also participate in a way that cares for the needs of the whole.

This teaching is replete in the Bible, though Post-enlightenment Christianity has sometimes forgotten. In fact, the Hebrew culture out of which Genesis emerged was first and foremost a relational culture. The Hebrew worldview saw all things through a strong lens of mutuality and relationship. We see this, for instance, in the idealized version of Hebrew society provided in Leviticus 25, where tribes and families had permanent responsibility for tracts of land. The land was to provide for the people, and the people were to watch over and care for the land. Ideally, even if the family desperately needed money, they could not sell the land outright, but could only sell the use of the land until the Year of Jubilee, when ownership of the land returned back to the true owners. In fact, even ownership meant something else. True ownership of all things belonged to God. People are called to serve as stewards of these things that really belong to God.

I have sometimes wondered what that was like for them. Did it seem to them that the land long belonged to them, or that they belonged to the land? If it was God’s mandate that they serve as stewards of certain plots of land forever, then surely they belonged to the land as much as the land belongs to them. Such thoughts are foreign to my 21^st Century American brain. But in our bioshelter home, these thoughts begin to ring true.

For instance, our home recycles all the wash water in the house. The gray water system collects water, food and detergents poured down the various drains in the house and processes this runoff before putting it back in the cistern for reuse. The processing system includes pouring the water into a series of settling tanks into which we have introduced basic septic-system bacteria and air to promote purification. The bacteria feed on the food scraps, hair and skin, and the biodegradable detergents we use (no chlorine or toxic chemicals in our house!), consuming these and cleaning the water in the process. After a period of time the water is then pumped back into the wetlands of our solarium, where the plants and the fish (koi) feed on any consumables left in the water. The now-clean water then goes into the cistern, waiting for us to turn on the faucet and use it once again.

Though we do pull the water through a filter before consuming it—safety is important after all—we mostly count on living with our water system. We know that we must feed the bacteria (they die off if we leave the house for too many days), pay attention to the fish and wetlands, make sure the air pumps into the settling tanks, and learn what we can safely use to clean dishes and hands. We live in relationship with the house.

Of course, like all people, we live in relationship with our neighbors, with our community and with the world. But living in a bioshelter seems to help us not to lose track of what that means. Living well in relationship helps assure that we are cared for, because all are cared for. Living in relationship means living so that everyone thrives, and noticing when some are failing. We thrive when the whole system is thriving. But if any one part suffers, we will all suffer eventually.

I realize that none of this is new, or profound. It is not rocket science. Still, it seems to me that this old awareness, that our worldview must always be a relational worldview, is the very lesson our contemporary generation has been rediscovering and making its own. I find it very satisfying to be living in a place that reflects the lessons my generation is rediscovering. And perhaps sharing about this unique home will somehow be satisfying for others, too.