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At a small book release event Saturday Night, I shared the following remarks: Thank you for coming. This is a great turnout! This gathering reminds me of a story: After church one Sunday morning, a mother commented, "The choir was awful this morning." The father commented, "The sermon was too long."
Their seven-year-old daughter added, "But you've got to admit it was a pretty good show for a dollar."
So, I hope this turns out to be a pretty good show for free tonight! For nearly 30 years, I’ve felt like I lived with my feet in 2 different worlds: People in my professional world didn’t seem too interested in issues of faith. People in my faith community didn’t seem very interested in the environment. This didn’t make sense to me. For one, I thought that man’s creativity was one of the great evidences that humans were not just simply the products of blind evolution. On the other side, very few of my Christian and Jewish friends seemed to be very interested or concerned with environmental issues. They were quick to label these left-wing issues, without spending very much effort in seriously considering the merits, mandates or methods of environmental stewardship. So tonight, whichever camp you are in, I thank you for coming. And I want you to consider that the camp you are not in may have some rational ideas that are worth considering. You know, this whole image of a strict dichotomy between these two groups is patently false, anyway. A 2005 Harris Poll found that 74% of Americans felt that “protecting the environment is so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high, and continuing environmental improvements must continue to be made, regardless of the cost.” In 2008, the US Religious Landscape Survey showed that 83 percent of Americans identify themselves with one or another spiritual faith community. 78 percent of these folks consider themselves Christian. So do the math: if ¾ of all people are green, and likewise over ¾ of people believe in God, then a great majority of us believe in both. So the perceived and much ballyhooed divide simply doesn’t exist. We are just uncomfortable talking about one issue or another, depending upon who we are with at any given time. So in the fall of 2006, I began to wrestle with this disconnect, and the idea of writing a book came to mind. Now mind you, I had never written anything beyond proposals and reports. I’d never written a published magazine article, much less a book. The odds of me getting a book published were incredibly slim. I know, because I have met hundreds of aspiring authors who may never be published. That’s why I am completely convinced that this is a God thing. Not a true believer? Let me tell you a couple stories and see if you can understand my hypothesis. I told few buddies of my idea early on. One of them, Gary Rehnberg said that I needed to talk to a long-time friend of he and his wife Kathy’s. Her name is Penny Whipps, and she used to live in Sisters. Penny was absolutely invaluable. Early on, she spent an hour on the phone with me, talking me through the entire process, telling me to: • get a trusted group of brutal critics
• don’t write the whole book; write the outline and a couple chapters to go into a book proposal
• go to a Writers Conference
• get Sally Stuart’s Christian Writers Market Guide book
• and get an agent
So thank you, Gary for that pivotal introduction! Shortly after that, I told my friend Rob Bearden about the idea. In a flash, he was on it! “Mike, I’ve got two people you need to talk to: John MacMurray and Randy Alcorn. I go to church with these guys.” John is the phenomenal photographer who took most of the pictures you saw as you came in tonight. You can see and purchase John’s phenomenal work at www.creationcalendars.com Randy Alcorn is one of the most successful Christian authors in the US, and he lives here in Gresham. He has written fiction books books like Safely Home, Deadline, Dominion and his newest, Deception. He also is well-known for his non-fiction like The Treasure Principle and Heaven. Since he is so popular, he has great demands on his time and has very sophisticated people and systems in place to keep him from being overwhelmed by wannabe authors, people exactly like me! But for some reason, he agreed to meet me back in the Spring of 2007. Another God thing. As we talked about the issue of environmental stewardship and the lack of emphasis in the contemporary church, he said something very inspiring. This stalwart of the right to life movement said: “Mike, I don’t care if something is right-wing, left-wing or in the middle. That doesn’t matter to me. What matters is if it is biblical and true. If it is, then I support it, regardless of the politics”. We should all be so brave. As we wrapped up our meeting, Randy said, “This is the right topic, and the right time. I just have one question,” “Am I the right author?”, I asked. “That’s the question”, he said, pointing at me. A couple months later, I asked if he would read the first couple chapters I had written, rewritten, and polished again. He said he would. 2 weeks later, I got an incredible email. He told me the story of being seated next to a man on the plane with my manuscript on his lap, ready for reading. The man explained that he didn't think much of Christians. "Why is that?", asked Randy. "For one thing, Christians just don't care about the environment", the man replied. Another God thing. Later in the summer of 2007, I asked him to consider writing the foreword and he graciously agreed. Another God thing. Thank you Rob, for introducing me to John and Randy. This book would not have happened without your help. Once Randy agreed to write the foreword, I had the credibility that would get the attention of agents and publishers. In the fall of 2007 I was scheduled to go to the Glorieta Christian Writers Conference near Santa Fe, NM. The week before the conference, Penny Whipps sent my book proposal to a friend of hers, a fellow named Bill Jensen from Eugene. Unbelievably, Bill was going to the same conference, at the same time, and on the same flight! We met for the first time at the airport, and thought I was instantly attracted to this gregarious guy who had a million stories, I didn’t really know who he was until we arrived at the Conference. I found out that Bill Jensen is one of the top literary agents in the country, and knows EVERYONE in Christian publishing. We hit it off instantly and he and I and Teresa Evenson, also from Eugene, would go on hikes in the hills at the end of every day. All the aspiring authors at the conference were clamoring to get a few minutes of his time, and I was hiking with the guy. Along one of the hikes he said, “Mike, I really want to do this book”. OK, so when does a rookie author get a brilliant agent to make a move like that? Only when it’s a God thing. One more bit of unbelievable trivia. Like I said, Bill and his wife Shiela live in Eugene, and attend First Baptist Church. When I mentioned to my daughter Brooke that I was meeting this guy, she said, “Dad, does he have a daughter named Rachel?”. Turns out that he does. “Well,” Brooke continued, “When I was working at First Baptist during college, Rachel Jensen was one of the middle school girls I mentored. I’ve been to his house and I’ve even met Bill before.” OK, so tell me that’s not a God thing! Once Bill was onboard, the book took off. He sent the proposal out to publishers around Thanksgiving of 2007 and by January 2008, we had three offers. How rare is it for a first time author to have multiple offers? I think it is pretty rare…and weren’t it not for all the other miraculous events that have happened along the way to remind me that I am not in control, I could get a big head. We were thrilled to select WaterBrook, a division of Random House, the largest publishing house in the world. WaterBrook was convinced that Gardening Eden would have some crossover potential – it wouldn’t be limited to the Christian marketplace. Thank you Bill for your advice, support, encouragement and the steelhead we caught on the Willamette the morning we then headed over to Autzen to see the Ducks crush the Huskies 44-10. Now that’s a beautiful day! As we consider the responsibilities and rewards of living an environmentally aware life on this planet, I think its important to remember that the lifestyle decisions that we make here in the US affect not just the environment, but other people, as well. I titled Chapter 8 “Creation Care as Compassion”, and it tells 3 stories of how our choices affect real people in Nigeria, West Virginia and Guatemala. I want to tell you one story of writing this chapter. The date was May 1, 2008 and I had less than a week to turn in my completed manuscript to the publisher. I was starting to panic – there was so much research to do to tell the stories I wanted to include! So I sat down to write a story about coffee. I wanted to show how fair trade organic coffee could be a choice we could make that would help the land and farmers in Central America. I called up Sustainable Harvest, a local coffee importer here in Portland, located right here in this building. I explained my book and angle to Adam McClellan. He realized that I was looking for a faith story. He told me that he had recently had a conversation with a guy in Kansas named John Fawcett who was working in Guatemala to import fair trade coffee, and in his conversations with John, Adam had learned that John’s motivation was Christlike compassion. So, Adam gave me John Fawcett’s cell phone number. I called John up. He told me how he had traveled to Guatemala as part of a Kansas church work crew who travelled to help install a water system for a very remote village called San Lucas Toliman, a mile above sea level on the shores of a lake in Southern Guatemala. While there, he had been taken by the amount of erosion and pollution that was being caused by the coffee plantations on the slopes around the village and lake. While there, he also met Felipe Castro, a local coffee farmer who was trying to farm ecologically with mixed species to hold the ground in place, provide shade and use no chemicals. As John & I talked, I said that Felipe seemed like an amazing guy to buck the trend of all the other farmers and worked to establish a growers coop that would bring a higher prize for the farmers who grew coffee in a more sustainable fashion. “Well, you know”, John said; “Felipe has a cell phone, you could give him a call.” And so I did. Less than a minute later, I am talking to a man who is in his coffee plantations weeding and interplanting , and turning his compost pile. In a period of 45 minutes, God gave me experts on the topic from Portland, Kansas and Guatemala! For more info on Kapeh-Utz, go to www.kapeh-utz.com. Well, in addition to the stories I have told you, I have been the most blessed of men, because of the support I have received along the way. I will undoubtably miss some people, but I want to take the time to thank a few folks: My awesome wife of 30 years, Vicki is first on my list. My daughters Brooke & Maryn have demonstrated to me me what it is like to have the pride and respect of your children. Kevin Relyea has been my trusted advisor for 28 years. I also want to thank Mike Faha and the GreenWorks gang, My new colleagues at the City of Gresham and my brutal editorial Committee, and some of you guys were harsh!: Jonathan and Amber Huwe, Mike & Cindy Heilman, Ben Burns, Welby O’Brien, Craig Holmes, David Browning, John MacMurray, Randy Alcorn and Kevin Relyea. Here’s my final word. Thanks one and all for coming, and this would not have happened without you and some divine intervention. I would love for you to read the book and give me honest feedback, both positive and negative. I also encourage you to go to my website: wwww.michaelabbate.com where you can find my blog, speaking appearances and opportunities to interact. I hope this book will help you in your life journey. |
