my recycle bin got recycled

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A few weeks ago, I set out one of our recycle bins for the last time. We had two bins: one for paper products, and one for everything else. That week, instead of setting my two bins side-by-side I left the purple, store-bought bin stacked on top of the official city bin. You may have guessed that the purple bin went into the truck to be recycled.

It was time. I probably bought that bin in college, or more likely, I borrowed it from my parents 15 years ago. I used to keep my camping gear in it in the back of my Bronco II. More recently I kept charcoal in it in our back yard. Finally, starting to wear out, it became the paper recycle bin, now it will be something else for someone else. Proving once again that all that we seem to posses is not our own.

This is not a lament along the lines of the Lemonheads, "Stove," I don't miss that recycle bin at all, so far. I was just a funny thing to me to walk out and see that my recycle bin had been recycled. The container of a useful environmental process had become recycled itself.

It is my job to pay attention to outward and visible things to point to inward and spiritual graces. The church word for that is sacraments, and it is what we do when we break bread and share wine. It's what we do when we pour water over a person and see them washed clean, and born to a new way of being. Without taking that to an extreme (sometimes a cigar is a cigar) I do pay attention to the outward and visible signs that come across my path. I often ask people what their tattoos mean, and that generally leads to meaningful conversations. Other times the answer is simply, "I thought it was pretty."

There is something to recycling that goes beyond the management of waste. Care for the environment is part of our calling as Christians, we are called to be stewards of creation. Recycling is an exercise in realizing the preciousness of life, the gift of our very existence. It reminds us that we are together on a beautiful planet, and the way we live and use resources actually matters. It can be a point of reflection leading us to ask, "What are the spiritual dimensions of ourselves that have worn out and are ready to be recycled into something new?" "What images of God are ready to be tossed and recycled because they cannot contain the vastness of God?" The deeper truth is that there is no container for God, and as long as the sacraments keep us looking beyond, further, toward something greater, we're okay. But sometimes the containers we have been carrying stop working, and it's time to recycle and allow God to do a new thing.

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