Metanoia: Our Stories and Yours

These are some of the stories of how JEM friends and associates have been able to live into new realities. We'd like to include your story too. Email JEM with the stories of how your eyes have been opened to new economic understandings and how that has shaped your life and that of your community.

Do a "Metanoia Stories" category search for these and more entries as they roll in.

Rick Zemlin: Living More Simply: One Person's Journey − and Budget

Rick ZemlinIs it possible for us as individuals in the USA to maintain lifestyles that are economically just and healthy for ourselves and for the whole world or are we doomed to be over-consumers of the earth's resources simply because we reside in an over-consuming country? That is a question that has dogged me for over two decades. This essay describes some of my wrestles with this question, outlines my guiding philosophies and personal challenges with regards to money and spending, and quantifies my current personal consumption.

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Ed Lucas: Stiffneck vs. The Spirit: A Suburban Metanoia

Ed LucasIf, in retrospect, a person's first thirty years aren't deemed a waste, they must then be the best teacher. The household my father provided was stable in the ways he intended, and he often reminded me of how little upheaval and instability there was in our lives. It was quite a conservative and sheltered setting where the world was "out there" and we were to be glad that it did not intrude on our lives "in here." No one ever really taught me to consider whether my daily life had anything to do with the plight of others. I was to be content with my boring life because it was better than that of so many others. There was a distance between me and the rest of humanity that only delayed the time of reckoning when I found I was part of it too.

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Karen Holmgren: All Things Are Connected

Karen HolmgrenI grew up at a time and in a place where there were woods and a swamp to explore right behind our house. Some of my fondest and most vivid childhood memories are of the times spent looking for snakes, turtles, and salamanders, falling in the pond while trying to catch a frog, picking bouquets of violets for my mother, collecting red and gold leaves for an art project, or just sitting on top of the Big Rock contemplating life. As an adult I retained that basic love for Nature, but it was hardly in my awareness most of the time.

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