06 16 11 The Role of People (Part 1)

The first few months after we moved into our Bioshelter home, I lived there alone while Cindee stayed behind to sell our old house. I decided that living in three rooms (kitchen, living room and bathroom) was a good way to begin, cutting down on cleaning and simplifying my life. I wasn’t going to have much furniture for a while, anyway, so I set up a bed in the living room and made myself at home.

That first night I realized that I wasn’t so alone after all. I swear the sound of the house snoring kept me awake for more than an hour after going to bed. The realtor wasn’t kidding when he told us that a Bioshelter mimics a living creature.

Actually, the sound I was hearing was the sound of an aquarium pump in the basement, set to move water from one water processing tank to the next through brief surges. The brief surges (less than 2 seconds for each, brief surge) keeps from creating enough of a current in the settling tank to stir up the sludge. And the sound of each surge was, I swear, exactly like someone snoring. I lay there awake hearing a two-second snore, followed by two seconds of silence, followed by another two-second snore.

The sound was very clear, because the kitchen adjoins the living room, and the sound traveled very clearly up the drain and out the kitchen sink. I understood very quickly why the bedrooms were situated upstairs, away from the kitchen. On the other hand, as I lay there in bed, I was wishing I could just kick the house and tell it to stop snoring. I felt very much like I was spending the night with a living being—a being who snored.

A Bioshelter is not the only system that mimics a living thing. The planet earth does the same. It draws air across the planet, uses and recycles water, and self-regulates itself amazingly well, which is the very thing that makes what we call “life” possible. In fact, the earth and its life systems are so interrelated that any imbalance that would make life impossible, like species that overpopulate, or virulent predators that threaten all of life. Without this self-regulating system, life would not have lasted for over three billion years.

Living in the Bioshelter has caused me to begin thinking more deeply about living on this planet. Both are relational experiences and require a relational awareness, because the reality is that we each are only one member in the whole society of life. If we are to be good members of this life-society, we need to live conscientiously and responsibly.

The biblical faith assumes there is no other way to live than responsibly and out of a relational awareness of one’s place with all of life. The whole Hebrew worldview of the Hebrew scriptures was a relational worldview. In fact, the seven days of creation account in the Bible (Genesis 1:1-2:4) ends by saying “These are the generations of the creation of heaven and earth.” The word here translated “the generations of” is תולדות in the original Hebrew. That word is used elsewhere to mean “the genealogical annals of…” Even when giving an account of how something transpired, the Hebrew worldview required the use of relational language to describe it. It is a good and essential worldview.

Actually, I have toyed with a ‘what if’ question. What if the writers of Genesis 1:1-2:4 meant it literally when they said these are the genealogical annals of the creation of heaven and earth? If they really meant it, then what they are describing is a relational family tree, and the youngest members of that family are the human creatures. In families, each family member has responsibilities to the family. In fact, in Hebrew society, like most tribal societies, the younger members are expected to honor and care for their elders.

I like that interpretation. I believe the part stating that we must view our place relationally is a very accurate biblical interpretation. I am less sure about pushing it to believe that Hebrew people understood themselves as younger members of the family caring for their elders. But I like that interpretation. I believe it to be a great perspective in keeping us on track as we live in this world.

Even understanding our relatedness to all of creation to be a bit more distant, but related, is helpful. After all, the Bible absolutely insisted that we are to love our neighbor, whether a blood relative or not. We are to see and value our relationships with others, even if they snore.