"Do You Suffer from N.D.D.?"
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Rev. Lou Nyiri
Genesis 1:1-5, 26-31; 2:15-23
June 6, 2010

Do you suffer from NDD?
What exactly is NDD?
Let’s investigate using a little Q & A or question and answer:

If you read the following on the shirt of your friend who has a gardening addiction – “Weed it and reap” – and don’t quite understand it or get it right away then you might suffer from NDD.

If you don’t think it’s the least bit odd that our youth nowadays play a video game on the Nintendo Wii to get their exercise that simulates they are running outdoors, then you might suffer from NDD.

If you’re someone who knows that –  Pikachu, Prinplup,  Squirtle, Blastoise – are all Pokemon yet don’t know that  – Tsuga Canadensis or Kalmia latifolia –  the eastern hemlock and the mountain laurel are our Pennsylvania state tree and flower OR  that Bonas Umbellus is Pennsylvania’s official state game bird  – the Ruffed Grouse – then you might suffer from NDD.

If you are of the generation that had just enough of a taste of the great outdoors that you know what you’re missing though you’re too busy these days to get back into nature and enjoy the calming presence of the creation around you then you might suffer from NDD.

If you’re in the medical profession and you’ve noticed more and more youth entering your practice with broken arms not related to falling out of trees but from soccer or lacrosse or some other sport injury then you might have a realization of NDD.

If you turn on the nightly news or open the newspaper and you hear about the Gulf Coast crisis and that oil spill and you think to yourself, now what in the world does this have to do with me or why are they harping on this issue again or you think to yourself only in terms of who is to blame or maybe the thought running through your mind is how is this going to affect the price of my favorite seafood dish -  rather than thinking about what kind of havoc it’s creating in the eco system, then you might suffer from NDD.

NDD is a term coined by Richard Louv (pronounced Loov) in his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods and stands for Nature Deficit Disorder.  He came up with the term, he said, to describe an environmental ennui (or boredom) flowing from children's fixation on artificial entertainment rather than natural wonders. Those who are obsessed with computer games or are driven from sport to sport, he maintains, miss the restorative effects that come with the nimbler bodies, broader minds and sharper senses that are developed during random running-around at the relative edges of civilization.

Louv opens the book by sharing the following two quotes :

• The first is excerpted from Walt Whitman’s poem There Was A Child Went Forth –

There was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of
the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf,
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there--and the beautiful curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads--all became part of him.

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him;
Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple-trees cover'd with blossoms, and the fruit afterward,
and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road;

• The second is from a 4th grader in San Diego, CA –

“I like to play indoors better ‘cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.”

"It's society's whole attitude that nature isn't important anymore," said Mr. Louv, who at the time was 56, with two sons age 17 and 23.

As faithful people – as Christians – we are in agreement with Mr. Louv and we are called by a higher power to believe otherwise. 
WE are compelled to believe that nature is important.
WE are compelled to believe that the environment is important.
WE are compelled to believe that God calls us to care for and about the creation.
WE are compelled to believe that God calls us to be caretakers – stewards of this Big Blue Marble – as my Saturday morning child hood television show by the same name taught me to affectionately call this great planet Earth we make our home in and inhabit.

You see we learn some great things this morning from our texts:

We learn that God claims ownership of All God has fashioned.
“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…” (Genesis 1:1-5)
What a magnificent theme on which the Bible begins.
Creation is linked to a Creator.
A universe is fashioned in which there is plan, purpose and direction.
Behind the majestic panorama is a Creator-God who can mold a world out of seemingly nothing.

This claim of God’s ownership is implied in the fact that God is Creator!
We may own legal rights to a plot of land.
We may utilize for ourselves every good gift God has provided, though nothing permits us to pronounce “It is mine!”
For the earth and all things on it belong to God.
What we could say is this,
“What we have and who we are is God’s gift to us.
What we do with what we have and who we are is our gift to God.”
The creator is owner.

And we live in a universe which has a stamp of quality on it.
Nothing fashioned by God is evil in itself.
Creation is good.
“…And God saw that the light was good…” (Genesis 1:4)
“God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good…” (Genesis 1:31)

And we have a responsibility to the Creator and the Creator’s creation.
While we do have freedom – I believe it is a freedom within limits.
It is as one Biblical scholar has said,
“Freedom is having the choice to say, you mean I don’t have to do all I’m free to do.”
What is all around us is not a right, rather it is a gift.
And gifts are to be treated with gratitude and reverence and care.
It could very well be that at the end of this life, one of the questions God asks us in our exit interview is, “What did you do with what I gave you?”

AS the crowning moment – as the pinnacle of God’s creation – we have responsibility.
We have a divine command. 
“God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”  (Genesis 1:28)

The first words spoken to human beings are about their relationship, not to God, but to the earth.
It’s interesting to note that from the beginning God chooses not to be the only one who has or exercises creative power.
God has been the sole initiator, though once the invitation is issued; God establishes a power-sharing relationship with human beings.
These words constitute a sharing of the exercise of power (dominion).

A study of the verb have dominion (rahdah) reveals that it must be understood in terms of care-giving, even nurturing, not exploitation.
As those who have been created in the image of God, we are called to relate with the nonhuman as God relates to us – with great care and concern toward well-being.

The command to subdue the earth (kaybahs) focuses particularly on the task of cultivating the earth – a difficult task in those days.
While this verb may involve coercive aspects in interhuman relationships, no enemies are in view here.  Remember – the creation is good.
Subduing more generally involves development in the created order.
It offers to us human beings the task of bringing the world along to its fullest possible creational potential.

In Genesis 2 we read about how God wanted to create a helper for Adam.
The word for helper is actually two Hebrew words ezzer + kenegdo.
Ezzer means ‘strength’ and Kenegdo means ‘eye-to-eye.’
Both carry a sense of mutuality and reciprocity.
What God desires for Adam is someone who will be in a relationship with him whereby both parties give and receive eye to eye strength.
It’s mutual and reciprocal.
It’s something that allows for growth so that each partner becomes all God has created them to be.

This is the kind of relationship God calls us to with ourselves; with each other; with God and with the creation.
We are called to live in such ways that our relationship with each other; with ourselves; with our God AND with the creation all live up to the potential God intends for them.

In a sense, God has established a relationship with us human beings in such a way that our decisions about the creation truly count.
The question becomes then, “What influences our decisions?”

So let’s go a little green here – and by this I mean let’s go both green in making environmentally friendly choices AND in the process we might save a little green in our wallets too.

Here are five easy, eco-friendly decisions we can make that will help the environment and our wallet as together we seek to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rejoice as stewards of God’s Creation:

•  Filter Your Own THEN Bottle it Alone – Consider using a reusable water bottle (like Nalgene) and a water filtration system in your home.  For about $70.00 you can purchase a water filtration dispenser system and enough filters for one year (like Brita) that fits in your refrigerator (each filter processes about 40 gallons or 2 months worth of water).  By refilling a reusable bottle you’ll save big-bucks over the course of a year.  At the time I wrote this a case of 35 – 16.9 oz. bottles of water at our local grocery store was on sale for $3.99 – this is roughly 4.5 gallons – so if each water filter processes 40 gallons this is roughly 10 cases of water you will buy for each filter – which means one filter keeps 350 plastic bottles out of landfills or having to be recycled or even produced in the first place – Now let’s go into the money aspect of it:  that’s $3.99 per 35 bottle case – which is $39.90 you’d pay in bottled water to get the same amount from one filter – keeping in mind that the total system will cost you around $70.00 to filter water for a whole year – well, if my figures are correct it pays for itself in two filters.  And I just learned that you can recycle those Brita filters too – go to the following website link for details: http://www.brita.com/support/filter-recycling   (Another reason not to use plastics is that all plastic manufacturing is petroleum based so it’s oil based.)

•   Fuel while it’s Cool…When you hear it Stop Avoid the Urge to Top - Cut down on gas emissions, which fill the air we breathe with ozone (smog) and contribute to global warming, simply by avoiding buying gas during the heat of the day, since heat increases evaporation.  And evaporated gas is gas you pay for but don’t get in your tank.  AND when the gas pump stops avoid the urge to keep topping off – each time you squeeze the handle you emit more and more gas vapor into the ozone.  (Here’s a freebie – before you remove the nozzle from your tank, rotate it 180-degrees and you’ll most likely deposit another half cup of gas into your tank that would otherwise be a freebie for the next customer.)

•   When You’re Late…Don’t Overnight the Freight - Avoid Overnight Shipping – Selecting ground transportation rather than rush delivery, will cut down on fossil fuel use and pollution.  Overnight shipping burns the most fossil fuels per item. In fact, ground shipping tends to be six times more energy efficient than air.  Also, because airplanes release their greenhouse gases way up in the atmosphere, they tend to do more damage than gases emitted at ground level, at least as far as global warming is concerned.  By avoiding overnight delivery you’ll also save you a bundle of money, since companies add a hefty price for the service.   In our harried society, it's easy to forget about Mom's birthday, until the last minute – the next time you forget Mom, order the gift and mail it ground transport then call her to tell her how much you love her; that she can be expecting a great gift from you in the next few days; AND the most important gift you wanted to give her couldn’t be wrapped because it’s a hug so you decided to call her and spend some time chatting on the phone.

•   Paper, Plastic…How ‘Bout Neither – get some of those nylon or recyclable material bags from your local grocery store and use those the next time you go shopping.  I know that at Kennie’s Supermarket they give you a 5-cent discount per bag. 

•   Leaky is Sneaky – Fix that leaky pipe or faucet, and you'll be amazed at how much water you can save.  We've all ignored those small, slow drips from a bathroom faucet or kitchen thinking, “how much water does it really waste?”  When you factor in the steady, 24/7 dripping over any length of time and all the faucets dripping elsewhere in your neighborhood, the country, the world, you’ll see Leaks really do matter.  If you use the Drip Accumulator calculator on the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Website, you'll see that a single slow leaky faucet dripping 30 drops per minute wastes 3 gallons per day, or the equivalent of 27 baths per year. The USGS also estimates that many of our toilets leak approximately 22 gallons of water per day.  That’s water you’re paying for that you don’t use!  So one easy eco & wallet friendly thing to do:  fix that leak.

Folks, those are just 5 ways we can Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rejoice as stewards of God’s Creation.
I know there are more out there – I encourage us to share our ideas with anyone who will listen – after all what do we have to lose?

So, how about it?
Are we going to continue in our N.D.D.?
Are we going to take seriously our divine call by God to care for the Creation around us?

The choices we make will tell.
The choices we make will tell.

Amen & Amen. 

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