Saturday night for Earth Hour we held a community game night during Earth Hour. Have you ever tried playing Balderdash by candlelight? It was not always easy to read the cards but we had a great time and are considering shutting off the lights once a month for a similar evening. We realized that this was a wonderful way to slow down and enjoy community and would highly recommend it not just to save energy but because of how it can foster relationship. Maybe we should all invite our friends over for a candle lit games night and see what happens.
Unfortunately looking out over Seattle it did not look as though many others joined us in this venture. However even a few lights turned off can make a difference.
Filed under: Community, Friends, celebration & recipes, family, life | Tagged: Community, Earth hour, family, life, lights out
I wondered if doing this one night a week would be an effective energy savings … either in our bill or as a way to reduce our carbon footprint or both? We didn’t do anything special. But I’d like to … next week.
Sonja,
Doing it once a week would be even better. I am not sure that you would see any impact on your electric bill, unless you usually have a lot of lights on and if we do it alone then it probably will not have much of an impact on carbon footprint either but if you can work to get your friends & acquaintances to do this too than over a period of time it could have quite an impact on carbon footprint. Hopefully next year there will be even more cities & families around the world taking part in Earth Hour and as something like this gains momentum it can really make a difference – another kind of mustard seed planting!
Christine
I love your ideas Christine and it sounds like you all had a lot of fun while doing your part to tread lightly on God’s good creation! Here in Hong Kong? I was not aware of anything happening here although I’m sure a few people took part. But this is “The City of Light” with nightly displays of colored and flashing lights all up and down most of our major buildings on both sides of the harbour. There has been discussion here about how to use less electricity but not much has really been done. Now we discover that all those wonderful florescent light bulbs are dumping mercury into our landfills!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7431198
http://www.besmart.org/hazwaste/business/bulb.html
Hmm, seems this is all much more complicated than we first thought. But every little bit helps and, as Christians, we have a mandate from God to care for the whole creation!
Blessings!
Andy,
No one ever said that this would be easy. I remember reading an article once that talked about how at the beginning of the 20th century the car was seen as saving our cities from the horrors of horse drawn vehicles – the enormous piles of horse manure that accumulated. There is always an up and a down side to any solution. Maybe that’s why we need to look at ways to simplify our lives so that we use less of everything.
Amen! Christine – Simplifying our lives is the first step. As Christians this should be a natural step since the more complicated our lives, the more distracted we are from God. I just found this poem I wrote several years ago, not sure of the exact context but confident it related to my observations of life in the “big city” (Hong Kong in our case).
I titled it, Walking Away:
each step a statement
determination, drive
fuel for each forward motion
one hand clutching planner
the other fixes cell phone
tight to the ear
beyond the extremities
lurks another story
undocumented by flattering resume
eating away at the fabric of living
anxiety, fear, loneliness
soul food consumed in lethal doses
each determined step
one further from the One who beckons
“come to me all who are weary”
striving toward his goal
rest is elusive
“perhaps later” he mumbles
stumbling further into darkness
Andrew F. Wade