Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

Year 9-5

Stephen Harper doesn’t get it. He thinks it’s business as usual. He doesn’t understand that we live in new times that yesterday’s answers don’t work anymore. His loyal lackey Jim Flaherty is also of the old school: they reduced the GST by 30 percent, from 7 to 5, increasing its administration cost from 28 percent to 40 percent. Still they want more cuts. In their book Government is bad: long live their ‘free market’ god, whose prophet was Milton Friedman, and whose faithful followers were Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. All three promised to show the world the way back to freedom and prosperity; all three said that government was the problem and privatization the solution!

Now with the Collapse of 2008, economists are switching gods: John Maynard Keynes is king of all whose bible says that massive government intervention can put us back on track.

But is it too late for that also. Both assume that, because population, resource extraction, and available energy grew throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the economy can continue to grow in perpetuity. That was never possible. Yet the people in power still think that all they need to do is come up with the right mix of money, market forces and government regulation, and, pronto, all will be well again. No one considers that Earth’s supplies of fossil fuels, topsoil and water are limited, and that someday soon the lack of these resources will drastically reduce economic activity.

To me what old-school Harper and new school Obama are trying to do looks like an exercise in futility. Welcome to a ring-side seat watching the battle between the Ottawa-based free marketers and the new-to-the-game Washington state controllers over who is capable of restoring perpetual growth. I bet that neither can win, because we have reached a significant physical obstacle to growth—Peak Oil—that spells ruin to all economic philosophies that fail to take this new reality, of living in new times, into account. New times call for cooperation, for getting on board together, for unity and consultation.

P.M.Harper is exactly the opposite. He wants confrontation, he thrives on strife. He is at his best when cutting down others. His mean streak is no more evident then when the times cry for compromise, something he is unable to do. George Bush is also of that sort. When asked last week whether he had made any mistakes, he was still unable to see that Iraq was wrong, that tax cuts for the rich were criminal, that his refusal to work with the UN on Climate Change was being out of touch with reality. Stephen Harper is playing that same tune, in part because he is too much a Mike Harris, evident also when he hired former Premier Harris’ chief of staff and having several of his cronies in cabinet.

So what then should happen?

New times call for new approaches. From now on, whether we like it or not, we must have coalition governments. Europe has always had it. There the division between rich and poor is not nearly as stark as it is in the English speaking world, where, somehow proportional representation, a much more democratic system, has never caught on.

By now we know that Dion is a dead duck. He is a decent man, who tried his level best to sell Canada on the dangers ahead, and failed because he is no salesman. To tell people what is the rational thing to do, is not good enough. They have to be persuaded through eloquent arguments, as the President-elect did in his campaign to get the nomination and win the presidential campaign although Barack Obama’s boastful oratory will obviously backfire. Harper with his whale-size ego deserves harpooning. Without real friends, lacking goodwill, he has become a liability.

Here is my Christmas wish. I hope that Harper also will be replaced during the next 7 weeks. I sincerely hope – but do not expect- that the new leaders will tell the nation the true score. The true score is that we live in new times, where the old remedies do not work anymore. We see it in the USA where, with trillions of government moneys pumped into the economy, matters are getting worse. Money is at the heart of the trouble, and more money will not set matters aright.

A consensus between all parties, Conservative, Liberal, NDP, the Bloc and the Green Party, has to be formed to devise an entire new way where we can live within the means of nature. We can no longer force a finite nature to accommodate our infinite wants.

That’s why our challenges go far beyond the economic problem. Harper’s simplistic answers to the most complex situation humanity is facing are totally out of touch.

Year 9-4

Last week in the magnificent new Guthrie Theatre complex in downtown Minneapolis, on the shore of the Mississippi, I saw ”Shadowlands,” a play based on the life of C.S. Lewis, the well-known author of the Narnia Series, and, among others, the book “Mere Christianity”, first aired as a series of broadcasts for the BBC in 1942.

The performance itself is deeply personal, portraying C. S. Lewis’ agony watching a long and painful illness unfold in the life – and subsequent death – of his dearly beloved spouse. With 53 presentations from November 1 through December 21, judging by the one I attended, some 50,000 will see this moving show. I wondered how this distinctly Christian theatrical production would fare in a much more secular – and bigger- city such as Toronto.

I was struck by the enduring nature of its message that to love at all is to be vulnerable. It made me think how each of us will suffer personally through sickness and death but also how we all communally will be affected as our beloved easy-money prosperity turns into a painful illness of an economic nature, a transition from a supposedly healthy financial state to a sickly recession, so severe that even the Queen has wondered why nobody has seen this coming.

Just as in any serious illness massive doses of medicine are administered, so in our current economic malaise mountains of money are injected, trusting that more liquidity will cure the curse. Also, just as in all human cases, life may be extended, but the end can only be postponed, in the same way I am afraid, we are witnessing the passing of post World War II capitalism.

You probably have never heard of Herman Daly, a former economist with the World Bank. In his “The No Growth Society” he describes and advocates a steady state economy, rather than perpetual growth, which is impossible in a finite world. Yet Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and his pals are doing everything to pump up growth, because our economic system depends on it, and falls without it.

In a recent article Dr Daly states that the current financial debacle is really not a “liquidity” crisis, as Washington maintains, but a crisis of too much money, as much as 20 times, relative to growth of real wealth. He writes that “the value of present real wealth is no longer sufficient to serve as a lien to guarantee the exploding debt.” In other words, the security on which the liabilities are based is far smaller than the moneys loaned on it.

This is all too clear in the US where, in many instances, the mortgages are higher than the value of the real estate, not only on residential properties, but now increasingly on commercial and industrial buildings as well. The banks are waiting to lend money until debt is reduced to its proper value, even though they could charge high interest rates, but to give out loans under those conditions would impair their precarious position even more.

There is something else happening as well. We are approaching or perhaps have already exceeded “The Limits of Growth”, the title of a book published by the Club of Rome in 1972, referring to the bearing capacity of our planet. Pumping trillions into the banking system actually means that real physical growth is making us poorer, not richer: it inevitably will lead to super inflation.

In addition we not only face the nearly impossible task to maintain a decent standard of living, without further burdening the next generation with massive increases in debt, but we also must confront the immense challenge to keep the economy and our lives on an even keel without further harming the environment while simultaneously repairing the damage done by soil erosion, pollution, Global Warming, and learning to cope with the arrival of Peak Oil and other commodity shortages by switching to renewable energy. The current crisis cannot be solved unless we deal with these gigantic problems.

As far as I can judge, none of these factors are sufficiently recognized by the idol worshippers of Perpetual Growth who downplay the increasing scarcity of natural resources and the possibility of disastrous Climate Change.

All this brings me back to “Shadowlands,” which, in the global context, is a condition of great economic uncertainty. We will only emerge from this gloominess into the Light if we live ecologically responsible. This means that we have to test all our actions with four criteria in mind: (1) nothing ever disappears, (2) everything is connected to every thing else, (3) there is no free lunch, (4) nature knows best.

Year 9-3

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

That’s how Michael Pollan starts his book, “In Defense of Food.” He continues, “That’s more or less, the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.”

Why is eating so complicated today? Why do we need a book – a best-seller even – to tell us what we have to eat? People throughout history never had that problem. I think the reason is that, ever since we have become dependent on a food production system more concerned with the appearance of food and long shelf life than nutritional value, we have had trouble sorting out the very basics of life, not only food, but the essence of what our existence is all about. Pollan suggests that we go back to the way our great-grandparents ate. Perhaps we will be forced to.

Sorry to sound somewhat self-righteous by using my own diet as an example, but that’s the only one I know. So what do I eat to be fit enough in my four-score years to bike or run an average of 10 km per day?

We have oats for breakfast, prepared in a slow cooker the night before. In the morning I add frozen blueberries and ground-up flax seeds. At coffee time I eat some cooked beans, pinto, black, white, or brown. For lunch we have, three times a week, a salad-mix with an egg, chopped up carrot, onion, garlic, kohlrabi and cabbage, plus cherry tomatoes and cooked red beets, with a lemon-olive oil dressing; twice a week a potato meal with some vegetables, most of it home-grown; on Saturdays spaghetti and lots of sauce and on Sundays just a plate of soup. For supper I have one slice of home-made pumpernickel bread: a mixture of bran, 7 grain cereal, molasses, rye flour and water, with a bit of butter and honey. For snacks some roasted almonds, whole milk yogurt with maple syrup both home-made and occasionally some dark chocolate. That’s it.

No meat.

So, even before I read Pollan’s common sense book, we followed his rules: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” He also writes in his introduction that “eating a little meat isn’t going to kill you, though it might be better approached as a side dish than a main.”

Good food and happiness go together. Here’s a line I found somewhere else: “Happy people spend a lot of time socializing, going to church and reading newspapers — but they don’t spend a lot of time watching television”. That too fits us. We often visit our extended family: this column comes from St. Paul, Minnesota, where our youngest daughter lives.

That some 40 percent of people are now either overweight or obese is a clear sign that something is wrong in society. When I grew up nobody dieted. I never saw runners in the streets in those days, nor were there weight-loss clinics. Everybody walked and biked and ate real food. Of course, there were a few overweight people: my father was one. He smoked. We all did. I quit in 1959. There was a little ditty in my youth which said “you’re not a man if you don’t smoke”. My father, a small factory owner, traveled each day by car – perhaps that’s why he was overweight – to sell his products. It was my daily job to buy 2 packs of 20 cigarettes and one box of 10 cigars, which served as an introduction in his approach to his clients: a good prospect a cigar, the lesser ones a cigarette. He died of lung cancer at 78.

Back to “In defense of Food.” Writes Pollan: “You are better off eating whole fresh food rather than processed food products.” His main point is that, if we are concerned about our health, we should “avoid products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a strong indication it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.” And where is the real food found? “Shop only at the outer parts of the stores, where the vegetables are displayed and fruit.”

“Eat in company”. When I grew up, and when our five kids were at home, we always ate as a family: meal times were social events as well. And more. Writes Pollan: ”Food is also about pleasure, about community, about family and spirituality, about our relationship to the natural world, and about expressing our identity. As long as humans have been taking meals together, eating has been as much about culture as it has been about biology.”

Affinity to nature comes from growing your own: no food is better and tastes better: it makes food spiritual, something to pray for, something to give thanks for, something to delight in, a rare ray of hope in troubled times. So “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.”

Year 9-2

We all have seen these tremendously long trains stacked with doubled up containers, most of them originating in China. That sort of transport may soon stop. It’s the money matter that may halt this.

The growing financial crisis is hampering world trade as shippers also of dry-bulk goods such as grain and coal, worry that importers won’t be able to pay for the goods they receive. This may result in food and energy shortages next year. Because of this sudden curtailment in cargo transport, rates for the biggest dry-bulk ships have plunged to an average of just $5,611 per day, compared with $166,377 a year ago. No wonder ship owners are laying up their ships rather than operate at a loss, adding to the international trade troubles.

There are still Three Auto Dinosaurs out there who will go the same way as their pre-historic namesakes who expired when their ferocious appetite could no longer be satisfied: they simply starved to death. The so-called Big Three are following a similar path as the fuel their pre-historic machines require is disappearing. The employment loss there and millions others related to it – one in 5 jobs is connected to the CAR in one way or another- will mean the death of the great American Dream with disastrous consequences especially for such cities as Detroit, Lansing, Windsor and Oshawa.

Food could well be next on the misery menu. As farmers have trouble getting bank credit for fertilizer, seed, fuel and more, the net effect will be lower planting of key grains even as world inventories of these cereals hover near historic lows. Bloomberg reports that global stocks of corn, wheat and soybeans are the second lowest they’ve ever been since 1974. Already the bank crisis threatens next year’s crop in Russia, where the head of the Russian Grain Union says, ‘Many farmers probably won’t be able to borrow money for the spring sowing.’ Russia happens to produce 9% of the world’s wheat, and that in a world where the five-year average growth rate in grain demand is 2.6% per year.

It seems to me that the global economy as we know it is finished. The meeting of the G20 in Washington did nothing to solve the problem caused by the tsunami of borrowed money. The naked reality is that the world’s buyers of last resort, the American Consumers, are suffering from a severe debt hangover that will keep them hung-up for a long time, perhaps permanently. The American “consumers”, having gorged themselves on the output of Asian factories in exchange for paper promises, have gone on a permanent shopping strike, which will foster a financial typhoon in China, where its restive population, both broke and hungry, might start another revolution. After all, that’s how the Commies there got into power.

In short: the “Real Estate Economy” is reeling; the “Financial Economy” is faltering; the “Consumer Economy” is crashing; and the “Service Economy” is disappearing. Now that the tentacles of the Credit Crisis have ensnared every sector of the world’s markets, a Global Depression Economy is unavoidable.

Welcome to a new world in need of new thinking. Think the US – wanting our oil and water – occupying Canada. Think war-time conditions. Think rationing. Think frugality. Think barter. Think making meals from home-grown food. Think thinking out of the box, as the improbable and even the impossible become the imperative.

Actually bad times can be good for us. We’ll have more time for reading newspapers and books, more time for exercise, more time for family life, more time to implement the 100 feet diet, eating from our own garden, more time to talk to, and help others.

Wartime in Europe actually improved health and mortality rates. Less economic activity gives cleaner air and force people to work closer to home and in the home. Manufacturing of the future may be more like a cottage industry, bringing to mind the title of Schumacher’s book of the 1960”s, “Small is Beautiful.” Neighborhood stores will see a revival. Local retail (and its support structures) will return.

Bush, last week, made a pitch for market Capitalism. He has been wrong so often, that now nobody pays any attention to him anymore.
Will Obama be better? He will preside over the potential restructuring of all our systems, some of them in ways he and his supporters have not even imagined, with central powers waning, and local autonomy on the rise, as each region will strive for self-sufficiency.

Welcome to a new world. Of course we leave the old world reluctantly, as a new world is forced upon us swiftly and radically with the collapse of our money economy. What we leave behind has been part of ourselves. It’s painful to be forced to die to one life, before we can enter another. Yet this experience is essentially a fortunate one, because we can be ourselves again, no longer forced to conform to a model imposed upon us by The Consumer Society that literally is threatening to consume everything including ourselves.

Year 9-1

“Christian Church lives by God’s word, even on homosexuality”.

I challenge the accuracy of last week’s headline, because God’s Word is bigger than the Scriptures alone.

For the last 23 years I have written in my almost undecipherable long-hand scribbles a daily meditation based on the lectionary (prescribed yearly bible readings), some 400 words on weekdays and double that length on Sundays.

For this purpose I also consult other religious sources, one of which is the so-called Belgic confession, dating from 1566, before the Enlightenment clouded the religious scene. In connection with God’s word it says that “we know God:

First by the creation, preservation and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a most elegant book, in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God, his eternal power and divinity, as the Apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20: all these things are enough to convict men and leave them without excuse.”

That last lines suggest to me that the opposite is also true: those who regard creation as God’s work of art and live ecologically responsible, earn God’s grace.

This confessional statement continues: “we know him,

Second: He makes himself known to us more openly by his Holy and divine word as much as we need in this life, for his glory and for the salvation of his own.”

From this I conclude that God’s Word is two-fold, of which Creation is the most prominent, something the church usually ignores.

Creation-care makes sense, because it deals with the place where we live now and where we will be forever according to the Apostles’ Creed, which states: “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the Life Everlasting.”

Based on the primacy of the Created Word, I believe that where there are discrepancies between the Written Word – the Bible – and the Created Word – call it observed reality – the Created Word wins, of which the Creation Story, as told in Genesis 1 and 2, is a striking example.

We must not forget that the Bible is, in many ways, a product of inspired human action. It was, in its present format, constituted by the men – no women there, of course – at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. The basic message of the Bible is that God created the world, that the human race took the wrong road, and that Jesus, God’s son, made it possible to go the Right Way again: it’s not a text book for science, history, or sexual orientation.

In John 3:16 Jesus says that God loves his cosmos so much that he offered his most precious possession, his only son, to die so that this well-ordered universe, where the plants flourish and the trees thrive, where the whales frolic and the humans are privileged to dwell and grow grapes and make wine that gladdens the heart, can again become pristine. Jesus died for everything created, including the human race.

I have read that homosexual situations occur among plants and animals, so it is not surprising that this same condition exists among humans. This makes sense because my deeply Christian homo-sexual friends tell me that they were born that way, which leads me to conclude that homosexuality in a monogamous relationship is not a sin.

What is sin is driving a car and switching on a light. That might surprise you because nobody can avoid doing this, yet by these actions we pollute and sin against the third commandment which reads: “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.”

Polluting offends God’s holiness because it destroys what he called good seven times in Genesis 1-2. We now face the consequences of these sins.

Romans 8:18-25 gives a moving account how creation is suffering from our cruel treatment and looks forward “with eager longing, with neck outstretched” to be liberated from the destruction we, polluting people, have imposed upon her. Creation looks for that same freedom, that same redemption, that Christians desire, which means that human deliverance and the deliverance of the environment go hand in hand, are two sides of the same coin, that you can’t have one without the other.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was hanged by Hitler in April 1945, wrote in an essay called “Dein Reich Komme” (Thy Kingdom Come) that God, Humans and the Earth are inseparable: “To think otherwise is Christian Secularism, a renunciation of God as the Lord of the Earth.”

Jesus told us to “Seek ye first the Kingdom.” This means that our first duty is to seek the wellness of creation, not exactly something the church in general sees as a priority. For the church to be Christian it must prepare its members to live so that when God’s Kingdom comes – the New Creation – the transition to that perfect state will be a natural next step.

That kingdom has lots of room, also for homosexuals, also for all of us who try to minimize pollution, but I am pretty sure that it has no place for people who pollute for the sole purpose of procuring a profit.