by Andrew Stephens-Rennie

This oil slick, it’s making me sick.

Six weeks of seepage on the seabed and where are we at? Where are we now, and how, tell me how, will we recover from this ongoing abuse, corporate greed and misuse of a creation once called good.

I know what you’re thinking, and y’know, it’s got me thinking about what’s under the hood of my car, the gas it’s drinking, and these Canadian sands in the tar. No matter what I do, it’s complicated and I’m implicated in this spill, as much as BP and as much as you.

Say you don’t know, but all of us, we got something to say, something to do, and something large to fess up to.

Say you don’t drive, but it’s the streets you walk, it’s the stores you shop, it’s the wax coating your big box grocery store fruit and the plastic bag you put it in.

Speaking of. Where’d that apple come from? Eden aside, stumbling on your organic pride, if it ain’t from here, and it ain’t from near, what d’ya think you’re saying with that Chilean label stuck to your table?

This drilling and spilling, a product of greed, of our endless need for more from the store to clutter our floors and walls of our newly-painted halls with the latest fashionable decorations.

A declaration is what we need, to reduce the seed of this need for speed and the deep-sea trouble it’s gotten us in. The assumptions we carry are false indeed, that we own the deed for this land-under-water and the oil in the rock.

But the oil’s not there man, it’s just not there. And we’re talking about more than the grease in your hair or the petroleum jelly advertised on the telly, sitting in your medicine cabinet too.

The oil, it’s everywhere, not just in the sands off the coast of the States, it’s on your hands, your dirty, greasy bloody hands while we’re playing with the fates of a thousand different species, the lives of the deep seas and the health, wholeness and shalom of the whole.

I’m not saying, but yeah, I guess I’m saying that it’s all connected, and we’re all infected. Here I am lamenting the death blows to the health of those created in God’s own image. We’re all connected, but when you’ve got deadbeat execs and mercenary pricks calling the shots, it’s no wonder what kinda mess we’re in.

Say the technologies get better, but I think it’d be better if you focused your attention on crisis intervention, and the dirty laundered money you’ve been spilling across the gulf. Drilling deeper, our abilities weaker to stem the flow of incompetence and incoherent chatter.

Andrew Stephens-Rennie

Andrew is a writer, dreamer and organizer with a keen interest in developing leaders in faith, compassion and justice.

He currently serves as the Director of Missional Renewal for the Anglican Diocese of Kootenay on the unceded territories of the Sinixt, Syilx, and Ktunaxa nations. He previously served as the Director of Ministry Innovation at Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver, BC.

Andrew is cofounder and contributing editor at www.empireremixed.com, and co-editor of "A Sort of Homecoming: Essays Honoring the Academic and Community Work of Brian Walsh" with Marcia Boniferro and Amanda Jagt.