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Crunchy Meets Conservative
by Candice Z. Watters

One of the results of a postmodern culture is the blurring of lines between once distinct social groups. Six years ago David Brooks introduced the term "bobo" to explain how some people found a way to blend the once polar opposite lifestyles of bourgeois and bohemian. (Think of Ben and Jerry wearing their tie-dyed shirts in their multi-million dollar corporate ice cream headquarters or the suit and tie banker sipping lattes and doing yoga during his lunch hour).

Now meet the latest blend: crunchy cons. While it may sound like a cereal for kids, crunchy cons are actually a vibrant group emerging out of the cultural landscape. Rod Dreher, a writer at the Dallas Morning News (formerly with National Review) coined that term to describe people who are living the crunchy lifestyles often associated with liberal Democrats but within a framework out of which the modern Republican party was built.

The lengthy subtitle of Dreher's Crunchy Cons book says it best, "How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party)."

Do you see yourself at all in that description? Have you ever felt a little out of place in the political party you've voted for? Do the bumper stickers on your car look out of place in the Whole Foods or Trader Joes parking lot?

I've felt this disconnect at times, but I couldn't quite put my finger on the reason. As I flipped through the first chapters of Crunchy Cons, however, I found myself in the pages and realized with delight and relief, that I'm not alone.

I grew up a Republican and even worked for Republicans on Capitol Hill. But I hadn't realized how far the conservative movement that drives the Republican party has drifted from its original vision. With the exception of their emphasis on national defense, Republicans seem focused primarily on fiscal policy, keeping the economic engines humming. While the party has often embraced the issues of social conservatives, it has been reluctant to champion that agenda when it conflicts with big business.

Dreher believes wholeheartedly that the free market is a superior principle for organizing the economy, but believes the "economy must be made to serve humanity's best interests, not the other way around." To that he adds, "big business deserves as much skepticism as big government."

The heart of Dreher's message is a return to what Russell Kirk, patriarch of the conservative movement, identified as "the Permanent Things" — the eternal moral norms Kirk found to be necessary to civilized life.

Dreher worries that modern conservatives are growing too materialistic and are losing their heart for the character of society. "The point of life is not to become a more satisfied shopper," he says. While this attitude runs counter to the lifestyle of most Americans, it taps into a longing for meaning that is slowly emerging.

Author Daniel Pink writes in his book, A Whole New Mind, "For most of history, our lives were defined by scarcity. Today, the defining feature of social, economic and cultural life in much of the world is abundance." The proof of our abundance is in how much we throw away. Pink points out that the United States spends more on trash bags alone than 90 other countries spend on everything.

Pink's best observation is what he calls the "paradox of prosperity." He explains, "While living standards have risen steadily decade after decade, personal, family, and life satisfaction haven't budged. That's why more people — liberated by prosperity but not fulfilled by it — are resolving the paradox by searching for meaning."

Crunchy cons are people who are seeking meaningful lives, not just financially profitable and consumptive ones. Dreher believes that meaning is found in lives built on faith and family.

Though his book is not overtly Christian, Dreher, an Orthodox believer, points to the foundation of faith for crunchy con values — a compass more reliable than the Dow Jones. "Too often, the Democrats act like the Party of Lust, and the Republicans the Party of Greed," says Dreher, "Both are deadly sins that eat at the soul, and crunchy cons believe that both must be resisted in our personal and communal lives."

When it comes to family, Dreher agrees with Kirk's assessment that it's the institution "most essential to conserve." He shares Kirk's observation that "the best way to rear up a new generation of the Permanent Things is to beget children, and read to them o' evenings, and teach them what is worthy of praise" adding "the wise parent is the conservator of ancient truths."

Building on these key platforms, Dreher explains that for crunchy cons, "It's about living a life mindful of and honoring the wisdom in tradition, and in so doing building a tradition to pass on to one's children, and to future generations. It doesn't aim to make folks wealthier, except where it counts: in their relationships to each other and to the natural world."

By telling us about the path his family has taken, and introducing us to numerous people he has met along the way, Dreher illustrates the crunchy con lifestyle dedicating chapters to the marketplace, food, home, education, religion and the environment, among others. In each area, he holds up people whose granola lifestyles would make you sure they're Ralph Nader supporters, but who go on to explain how their choices are based on a conservative worldview.

Building from the conservative tradition, Dreher introduces a new take on "crunchy." "Here's the thing," he says, "we didn't turn into droopy, pale-skinned dullards who washed down our nightly tofu with wheatgrass juice." Good thing, that diet might have dimmed the bright wit that makes each chapter so readable.

The only chapter, in fact, that I had some trouble reading was the one on the environment. In this section, Dreher starts well in his argument that conservatives should have the best vision for conserving the environment God created for us. On this point, more and more conservatives are waking up and re-thinking their appetites for consumption. What troubled me was Dreher's dogged belief in theories and tactics of environmental protection that are still up for reasonable debate among environmentalists.

The parts of the environmental chapter I found easiest to agree with were those that focused on the conserving principles I could apply in my own home. Those principles, after all, seemed most consistent with Dreher's emphasis on the impact of "small platoons" of families living out conservative values instead of taking the approach of some movements seeking social change through top-down programs imposed by government.

That's why Dreher doesn't suggest forming a new political party. He's realistic in his understanding of how the system works and instead, suggests reforming the party most amenable to the crunchy con values, from within. It's about much more than elections and party affiliation. Crunchy conservatism is not, in Dreher's words, "a political program; it's a sensibility, an attitude, a fundamental stance toward reality, and a pretty good road map to a rich, responsible, fulfilling, charitable, and above all joyful life."

The crunchy con lifestyle that emerges from this book is truly countercultural. It goes against the things America is known for (and teaches us to love): fast food, stuff marts, mass public education, McMansions in the suburbs, and more. Though many Boundless readers may find they can't fully adopt a crunchy con life until they've started their families, I think the philosophy behind this movement will resonate with a generation alienated by the emptiness of hyper-consumer culture. One longing for the meaning that comes from living faithfully by the "Permanent Things."

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Surviving Desperation
by Jenny Schroedel

About a year ago, on NPR's "This American Life," I heard the story Louann Mims, a 78-year-old Hurricane Katrina survivor who floated through her flooded home for eight days on an extra firm Sterns and Foster mattress. Before the levees broke, she went out on her patio to have some cereal and a banana. After two bites, she saw water seeping toward her patio. She rushed into her home and discovered that murky water was also surging through the front door.

She was trapped. She soon realized that her mattress was the only thing that would float. She grabbed her ladder and climbed up onto the mattress, paddled into her kitchen and got herself some juice, cheese and raisins. She had a just little bit of each every morning, and in the afternoon, when she felt hunger pains, she tried to ignore them. It wasn't much food, but it was enough.

When she was asked if she ever felt like nobody was going to come for her, she said that she just knew somebody would eventually find her. When asked how she kept her spirits up as she floated through her demolished home, she admitted that she was an avid fan of HGTV.

As she floated through her ranch home, she realized that not much could be saved.

So she started to mentally redecorate. She imagined herself replacing her Formica counters with marble, and her carpeted floors with hard wood. As she envisioned her transformed home, she said to herself, "Ohhh, that looks pretty good."

Later, as she reflected on her eight days of redecorating she said, "I was motivating myself." She held onto hope by dwelling in possibility.

Although many of us haven't braved such extreme circumstances — all of us feel helpless from time to time. Here are a few ways to coax hope from hopelessness.

Focus on the Cans

In every circumstance — even the most difficult ones, there are things that we can do, little things that can make a big difference. When we can't actually change our circumstance, we do well to adjust our perceptions and expectations.

Louann Mims may have survived the flood simply because she kept her mind focused on what she could do instead of what she could not. Even from her soggy mattress, she could make decisions about how to ration the little food she had and she could take concrete steps rooted in her goal to survive.

Sometimes we have ambitious goals — we tell ourselves, for example, that we'll write an entire paper this evening. Or we plan to file our taxes in a stretch of two hours. But then, our throat begins to feel a little scratchy, and our head is begins to pound. After a quick online search we diagnose ourselves with the Bubonic Plague and resign ourselves to bed for the next week.

Instead of becoming overwhelmed by goals that were too large to begin with, we can focus on the things that we can do in any given situation. Maybe we can't write an entire research paper in single sitting, but could we write a few pages? Could we tackle 500 words? By focusing on small, manageable goals we're better able to stay focused. After tackling the small ones, we often find the courage to take on the larger ones.

Laugh at Yourself

After surviving her ordeal, Louann Mims was able to laugh at herself. During those long days of floating on the mattress, she comforted herself with the thought that if nothing else, her raisin, cheese and orange juice diet would help her lose a few pounds. When she had a physical, she chuckled at her own disappointment over the fact that she hadn't lost an ounce.

Our own lives offer lots of opportunity for humor. For me, this ninth month of my second pregnancy has vacillated between comedy and a tragedy. Recently, I was juggling several work deadlines. I really wanted to chip away at them, but there was an unanticipated glitch in my plan — my 5-year-old daughter was home sick with a cold. Not a sleepy kind of cold, of course, but the less preferable wide-awake needy strain. For about 48-hours, she summoned me to her bed every ten minutes with a shrill, "MAAAA-MAAA." She was like an alarm clock set to snooze; only I never could find her "off" button.

In light of these interruptions, I had to adjust my expectations. I decided to try to focus on something I could do instead of all those things I could not do. I prepared a bill for the mail, feeling relieved that I was at least accomplishing something. But as I headed for the door, envelope in hand, I looked down and saw that I had neatly affixed postage stamps to both the upper right and left corner of the envelope.

As I stared at that envelope I began to laugh — for the first time in a few days. It was like taking a deep breath after several shallow ones. As I gently pulled one stamp off, I reminded myself that as long as I can keep laughing at myself life will always be amusing. Then, I flipped the envelope over and realized that not only had I used two postage stamps, but I had attached them to the bottom of the envelope.

Open Your Eyes

Louann Mims kept hope by seeing possibilities where others would only see murky water. Often, the more painful life becomes, the more prone we are to retreat into ourselves and to see only our own difficulties — they can obscure our view of all that is hopeful.

But as we open our eyes and see what surrounds us, we are sometimes able experience bursts of gratitude, even when we feel most hopeless and alone. Sometimes, when we really try to see what surrounds us, we find little things to rejoice in. Today I bought a latte at a coffee shop. As I waddled down a busy downtown street, freezing wind whipping my hair, I kept glancing into that coffee cup. The barista had managed to create a fernlike swirl in the froth — turning a mere latte into drinkable art. That little spot of beauty and the warm coffee in my hands helped as I struggled against the wind and my late pregnancy breathlessness and aches.

Learn to Sit

Louann Mims was forced into a kind of stillness that few can imagine. But stillness is something we all need more of. As Mother Teresa wrote, "We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature — trees, flowers, grass — grow in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence ... we need silence to be able to touch souls."

As we struggle to find our way through situations that make us feel helpless, we need to take time to rest in God. Those silent moments can become a source of strength and clarity. As it says in Isaiah 30:15, "In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength."

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Take the best medicine of all for what ails you -- laughter:

"A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon
without springs--jolted by every pebble in the road."
~Henry Ward Beecher
"Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects."
--Arnold Glasow
"Laughter is by definition healthy."
--Doris Lessing
"If somebody makes me laugh, I'm his slave for life."
--Bette Midler
"The human race has one really effective weapon,
and that is laughter."
--Mark Twain
"What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul."
-- Yiddish Proverb
"Laughter is an instant vacation."
-- Milton Berle
"Laughter is the shortest distance between two people."
-- Victor Borge

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the
heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time
to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a
time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a
time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. (King Solomon)

NOTICE: The jokes published in this list were either submitted
directly to 'Thought & Humor' or are, we believe, in the public
domain. If you think that we have published a joke without
giving proper credit to its author/owner, please let us know
and we will provide appropriate credit in a future mailing.





===============



Four important things to KNOW:

1) For ALL (Americans, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Hindus,
Buddhist, Asians, Presbyterians, Europeans, Baptist,
Brazilians, Mormons, Methodist, French, etc.) have sinned
& fall short of the glory of God.

2) For the wages of above (see #1) are DEATH (Hell, eternal
separation from God, & damnation) but the Gift (free & at
no charge to you) of God (Creator, Jehovah, & Trinity) is
Eternal Life (Heaven) through (in union with) Jesus Christ
(God, Lord, 2nd Person of The Trinity, Messiah, Prince of
Peace & Savior of the World).

3) For God so greatly loved & dearly prized the world
(Americans, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Hindus, Buddhist,
Asians, Presbyterians, Europeans, Baptist, Brazilians,
Mormons, Methodist, French, etc.) that He even gave up
His only begotten (unique) Son, that whosoever (anyone,
anywhere, anytime - while still living) believes (trust in,
relies on, clings to, depends completely on) Him shall
have eternal (everlasting) life (heaven).

4) Jesus said: "I am THE WAY, THE TRUTH, & THE LIFE.
No one (male/female - American, Muslim, Jew, Catholic,
Hindu, Buddhist, Asian, Presbyterian, European, Baptist,
Brazilian, Mormons, Methodist, French, etc. ) comes (arrives)
to the Father (with GOD in Heaven) EXCEPT BY (through)
ME (no other name).

This wonderful loving GOD gives you the choice - - -
(Rev. 3:20)

{Please note that church membership, baptism, doing good
things, etc. are not requirements for becoming a Christian -
however they are great afterwards!!!}


Jesus said, "Wide is the gate and broad is the road that
leads to destruction (Hell, damnation, eternal punishment),
and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow
the road that leads to life (Heaven, eternal happiness,
forever with God), and only a few find it. --Matthew 7:13-14




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Soli Deo Gloria...
________ "E-Mail Newspaper (Free4u)" _________
References gleaned for great humor & information: Merry Heart,
Thomas S. Elworth, Funny List, MeMail, Daily Dose, Joke of the Day,
Kim Komando, MIKEY'S FUNNIES , The Daily Tease, Crosswalk.com,
CLEAN LAFFS & Gophercentral.

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But indeed for this purpose I have raised you up,
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Name may be declared in all the earth. Ex 9:16


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