Of handwipes and hallelujahs...

I am beginning to feel like an alien in my world... the only living human being who doesn’t routinely use sanitizing hand wipes on her shopping cart. From Sam’s to Ingle’s to Bed Bath and Beyond (I”ve always wondered where beyond was in that name), there are dispensers at the door of sanitizing wipes for your hands and the carts. Grizzled old timers and young trend setters alike stop to conscientiously wipe themselves down, free themselves from germs before they enter the hallowed germ free halls of shopping.
I know, I know... I hear the nurses and doctors reciting the statistics of germs passed along on our hands, flu and other nasty bugs we can pick up on those shopping carts. But the truth of the matter is we are surrounded by germs everywhere. Sometimes I think it was God’s way of making sure our immune systems developed as they should. And other days, I admire the marketing ploy that has convinced us to buy all these little plastic canisters full of individual wipes to preserve our health. What happened to soap and water and common sense? Just because it is new and improved doesn’t mean it is better and worth it.
The real reason it bothers me so, though, is the implications of this cleanliness ritual. We no longer seem to trust our world, its ability to nurture us, to care for us, to provide what is needed. Our bodies have become not temples for God’s spirit but fortresses to be defended with hand wipes. Our companions in Sam’s are not neighbors but potential sources of illness and disease. Those who don’t step up to the plate, or the wipe dispenser, are viewed with disdain.
Somehow we humans can take a perfectly good creation and ruin it with overuse. Antibiotics... literally a life saver... we use them too much and suddenly the germs they destroy adapt and are immune to its effects. Immunizations... again life saving possibilities until we begin giving all newborns a plethora of shots for diseases before they leave the hospital. Food... once a delight and a pleasure, is now seen as a controlled substance. You can’t eat too much or too much sugar or too much fat. Food became fast, we slowed down and we became fat. It wasn’t the food’s fault.
God created this world and pronounced it good. We have forgotten that, I think, because we have isolated ourselves from this world. Sitting in air conditioned houses with all our windows closed, riding in air conditioned cars with our windows rolled up, riding through our neighborhoods instead of walking, buying food that we did not grow from countries far away, avoiding the eyes of those we pass by, living in places where ambient light wipes out starlight. We have forgotten how to walk barefooted on the Ground of our Being and we are the poorer for it.
So I will continue to pass up the hand wipes so generously offered and take my chances. I will celebrate the world around me as a good and precious gift not as a field of germs and death. I will eat with a grateful heart and grow as much of my food as I can. I will be sensible about my health but not obsessed with protecting my body. It is a temporary creation anyway. I will remember that God created this world good and so it is... good and beautiful and bountiful. And I will give thanks for all who share this blue space jewel with me whether they sanitize their hands or not. They are my neighbors and as I love God, so do I love them. Now if you all will excuse me, I am going to go play in the dirt a little while and sing hallelujahs while I pick bugs off my potato plants, pull weeds in my flower beds, muck the stalls and swat flies. Have a lovely day in this world of ours... germs and all.