In Part 1, our topic was borders.

Now we turn to another kind of boundary: limits.

Take us, human beings, as an example. We are mammals. We bear live young, little creatures that are totally dependent on others — incapable of doing the basics necessary for survival (parents know what I’m talking about). But we are also homo sapiens. That is, we are the creatures who were created to live not by instinct alone, but by sapientia, or wisdom. With the capacity to learn wisdom and with opposable thumbs, we are highly adaptable to our habitat and equipped with an extraordinary capacity to use tools and transform our habitat, as well.

What the wisdom of my Christian tradition tells us about limits boils down to this paradox: We are fundamentally creative, and yet we only flourish within limits.

What the climate change debate (and the 350 campaign in particular) is putting back on our radar is what we should have been recognizing all along: that there are limits to human existence.
1) We cannot survive exposure for extended periods of temperatures above 50^o C or below 0^o C.

2) We need food and water – after just 3 days without water and our system starts to shut down.

3) We are land creatures who use lungs to draw oxygen from the air. We can swim and even use tools like a snorkel or scuba to stay submerged underwater for a spell, but we are bound to live on land (not too high though, as if we were birds) and not under water (like fish).

Now here’s the kicker that sets the stage for the current conversation about climate change and limits:

4) We cannot consume and produce rightly, nor “till and keep” the earth well without knowing how to hear YES (“You may freely eat of every tree of the garden…”) and NO (“but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” Gen. 2:15-18).

The Creator God, the human creature, the garden, the Yes and the No. Limits.

Now, I’m suggesting that limits are not the same as borders. They don’t just happen to be there (i.e., real yet arbitrary).

Limits–remember the scene in the garden–are those features and aspects of human life that make possible human survival and flourishing. They make our lives more human, more related, and more at home in this world.

Borders separate and imply competition – a zero-sum game between individuals, groups, and countries. Limits join us through mutual endeavor (the Yes) and renunciation (the No). By living within our limits, we become aware of the fact we are created to co-operate and con-viver: to live together in a garden.

Everyone knows we live in a world with borders. The issue of climate change poses the question: Are we ready to learn again what it means to live within limits? In a world of full of borders and in need of limits, it is important the we notice the difference between the two.

Borders are there to be “crossed” or even transgressed. Limits are there to show us the way.

….more later on practicing limits….