Goodbye old friend

Driving through the Appalachians on my way towards Colorado was kind of a sad experience. It was kind of like saying goodbye to an old friend, and not knowing when I'll see them again. I'll miss the Mountains of the east coast and their rustic beauty. The mountains in Colorado might have grandeur, but these mountains have a quieter beauty, less startling and surer.


I listened to a sermon on the drive back about repetition by Nathan and Winn at DCF. Downloading podcasts is really a great way to pass the time during a drive: they help focus your thoughts from useless and self glorifying daydreams to practical musings. I was thinking about the Church and how when it formed it was Christians gathering together, encouraging and strengthening each other and praising God with whatever means they had necessary. Now many church gatherings are no more than a “seeker friendly” rock concert with an alter call. People go once a week for their good music and hopefully entertaining 45 minute message and go on their way. I hope in our effort for Sunday services to be applicable to the Christian and the Non Christian we aren’t preparing wimpy Christians because seriously, who wants to give their life to Christ if all they see is wimpy Christians?


On another note, I’ve been thinking a lot about alternative energy after hanging out with my roommate Bill for a bit. While alternative energy sources are a GREAT idea, I think they’re a bit of a radical first step. Instead of jumping straight to installing solar panels on our houses I think we need distance ourselves from our addiction and dependence to electricity. I’ll start with the why, and then the how:

In order to live sustainable you are going to have to make sacrifices. A current solar panel will max out at 175 watts during peak sun. Assuming 12 hours of daylight and that you put 5 of these panels on your roof, that’s 10,500 watt hours/day or 10.5 kilowatt hours/day. Compare that to the average American household usage of 600 kilowatt hours/day and you’ll see that it looks nearly impossible to go completely solar without making life changes.

So what kind of changes am I talking about? There are easy ones and harder ones! First! Turn of the lights! Check your weather stripping on your doors, windows and outlets! Use energy efficient light bulbs! Use a clothes line instead of a dryer! Use a fan instead of the AC! Keep the door closed on your refrigerator! Manually open and close your garage door! I think before anybody drops $20k on a solar system for their house, they should try to see if they can drop their electric bill to at least 300 kilowatt hours/day.

I think that’s enough rambling for one blog post. Sorry!
-mike