Trash Talk

This afternoon I made an oath between me and the earth.

I was making my way up the last hill on my return from a sunny Fall run. It was not one of my finest running hours, but it was time spent outside -- brightening, connecting, mind-wondering time with myself.

Since the outside workers strike this summer in the city of Vancouver, garbage has crept far, far away from trash cans and can’t seem to find it’s way back home. And, now that Halloween trick-or-treaters have wandered through the neighborhoods there are little Lay’s chip bags and Coffee Crisp wrappers everywhere.

Mess has always equaled stress to me, so I decided to start picking some of it up. I’ve resolved to pick up 1 piece of garbage every time I go outside. But there is something noteworthy about picking up one piece of litter: once you start, you can’t stop. This, and it seems like just the right thing to do.

I’ve been thinking about “the right thing to do” since listening to a Jean Vanier interview with Shelagh Rogers of Sounds Like Canada (CBC radio 1). Vanier said, “I am somebody who does something because I feel it is right. But there is no plan. It is just that it is right and that is what I will do.” He talks about the beginning of L’Arche. L’Arche is a community, now all over the world, of people living together in community with people with developmental disabilities. He said that as he began by living with just two people with disabilities he had no idea he was sitting on a gold mine. Vanier is a large voice of peace and hope in our world, and it seems that this action is linked to simply doing the right thing.

Our actions of goodness, though they might be small and seem insignificant, may one day grow legs on their own and walk about spreading peace and beauty all over the place. I want to be a part of a movement like this, even if, for today, it just means I’ll pick up a few pieces of trash in my East Vancouver neighborhood.