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Grandmother knows a wasteland when she sees one

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At 101, my grandmother’s life spans one of humanity’s greatest and darkest centuries. Along with the wizardry of telecommunication and weather satellites, antibiotics and robotic surgery have come weaponry, worldviews and lifestyles that are intrinsically opposed to life — human and otherwise. Evidence of all this can be found in many scholarly studies, or from reading the newspaper. Better yet, just ask my grandmother.

One of 12 children born to newly- immigrated parents from Caserta, Italy, my grandmother Pasqualina grew up in a world centered on the family, St. Anne’s Parish, and uncomplicated labors that had little to do with gas-burning engines or manmade chemicals. The world of her youth produced a generation like no other, one in sharp contrast with our age of techno-isolationism and gluttonous uses of the gifts of creation.

No government agency or celebrity had to tell my grandmother the benefits of reuse and recycling. But today, the men and women who run our nation’s solid-waste landfills are feverishly teaching that waste reduction is absolutely critical for extending the life of our municipal landfills and protecting our water supplies. All this because today’s Americans are the most wasteful people on the globe.

The US Environmental Protection Agency puts it bluntly. “The United States leads the industrialized world in (solid waste) generation, with each person in the United States currently generating on average 4.5 pounds of waste per day … Germany and Sweden generate the least amount of waste per capita for industrialized nations, with just under 2 pounds per person per day.”

While the good news is that the United States claims the lead in recycling, thanks to the efforts of government intervention and education, a nagging question remains: How did America fall from blessed frugality to sinful over-consumption? If you ask my grandmother, she’ll say it’s because America has become a nation that takes too much for granted — one that seeks in physical consumption what it lacks in the fulfillment that comes only from God.

My grandmother has strong opinions on such matters. Some of her greatest frustrations with our hyper-speed world are sometimes seemingly small — what many of us take for granted — like gas-powered lawn mowers, leaf blowers and weed-whackers, all of which spew into creation a significant amount of pollutants and noise. These concerns are also shared by the EPA, which reports that unlike automobiles, such devices rarely have any pollution-control mechanisms. In fact, operating an average four-horsepower lawn mower for one hour produces about as much air pollution as driving an average automobile for 200 miles.

It’s no wonder that today’s environmentalists join my grandmother’s lifelong appreciation of manual tools. Push mowers (which some say give a better cut), old-fashioned brooms, rakes and clippers are not only quiet, but also promote physical exercise. And at 101 and still going strong, my grandmother has something to teach this current generation about the benefits of physical labor.

Yet such labor we resist. We are, after all, a culture clutching firmly to the promises of the Enlightenment. We believe that better living is to be found solely through human will and reason. Yet the very real health- and pollution-related issues discussed above — and many, many more — are caused by such a glib belief that life ultimately can be lived on our own terms. Contrast this to families of my grandmother’s youth, who lived presupposing always that God was the Creator and we, His creatures, will do well to live by His wisdom.

And so they went about their years tending gardens and preserving tomatoes and string beans and plums. Raising chickens provided eggs and meat. Potatoes would stay fresh all winter in a barrel in the dirt-floored basement. And without phones — cellular or otherwise — neighbors and families knew instinctively the right times to stop by on Sundays after Mass, sit under a grape arbor, or feast on cherries fresh off the limb. In one way or another, they would relish the love of neighbor, of family, and of course, the provider of all blessings, the Trinity —the supreme model of harmony and relationship, whether between individuals, between cultures, or between humanity and the rest of creation.

Certainly, the early 20th century wasn’t always idyllic or painless. But that’s the point. While there is so much good that human reason has brought to light, many of the conveniences we’re told today to buy, use and discard are quite often at odds with our mental, physical and spiritual health. Moreover, parasitic secular philosophies that have attached themselves to the modern world are too often at war with God, with community, and with human life.

And so it is not surprising that having witnessed the great spectacles of the past century unfold in her daily newspaper, my grandmother has concluded that in her 101 years she’s seen more lost than gained whenever human reason is detached from the truths of faith.