It’s already been more than 2 months since we joined the effort to “Log off of what’s easy and log on to what’s right”, and I still feel like there’s so much catching up to be done. Some of the things that Jaime and I have done as a part of this don’t seem particularly noteworthy to me, such as shifting more of our fruit and vegetables to organic ones. Others sound maybe a bit more interesting, such as buying fair-trade chocolate for the first time.
We rarely buy chocolate at all, but this year I wanted to buy some to share on Valentine’s Day and was committed to buying fair-trade, even if that meant paying a lot more for the chocolate and then paying extra for shipping for ordering them online (we haven’t seen any fair-trade chocolate in any of the stores we frequent). I was happy to know that the people who harvested the cocoa in that chocolate got a fair price for their work and glad to be able to relate part of that story with my coworkers when I shared some of the chocolate with them.
But apart from these and a few other things that we already knew about and could implement quickly, most of the process for us has had to do with trying to research and learn about the things we buy and how they are produced so that we can buy the right ones, or the best that’s available. We’ve been basically holding off on buying a number of things (such as jeans, shampoo and underwear) until we can do some more research and we’ve been realizing that this research can often be hard work. I have a hard time finding the time to do the research, but I am hoping that once we’ve done the research and know where to get the stuff from, then buying the right stuff will become a simple part of our routine (at least for those things that we need to buy repeatedly).
One thing that’s been really helpful and encouraging throughout this not-so-simple process has been knowing that we are not alone in our attempts, that we are joining other people in doing this, and being able to share stories and resources with them. Truly living out the gospel is not an easy thing to do, but being able to share the burden with a community of God’s people makes it much easier to carry.
- Lidia
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