Two Minutes

They told us to be at the Binghamton Forum Theater at 10:30am to register, even though the meeting didn't start until 12:00. Perhaps they wanted to be ready for long lines. When I got there at 10:35, I walked through an empty foyer to the registration table and picked up my armbands: a red one for admission and a yellow one with my speaker number on it. They gave me an instruction sheet for speakers and directed me to the theater. With and hour and a half to wait.

I left the theater and walked toward Court Street, past the barricades empty of protesters. Police officers stood in small clumps, dressed up with no one to warn, talking about the weather. I found a favorite coffee shop and did an hour's worth of work before walking back to the Forum at noon.

As I passed through the foyer this time I picked up the three information sheets about this public meeting. I figured I needed something to skim during the forty minutes of opening remarks before the open speaking session.

The US EPA had set today as one of two dates for "stakeholders" (people affected by the potential gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale under our neck of the woods) to offer their opinions and viewpoints to EPA officials. Having a flexible work schedule allowed me to be present for one of these meetings, so I had registered for one of the two-minute speaking slots by which I might personally address the EPA. I had prepared my remarks, rehearsed them until they came to one minute and forty-five seconds (better not to get cut off), and brought them folded neatly in the books I carry with me everywhere. I was ready to offer my thoughts on whether the EPA should allow the harvesting of natural gas by hydrofracturing ("fracking") in New York.

As I stood in the foyer scanning the documents prepared for the speakers, I realized that the EPA had not come to hear our positions on fracking. Their purpose here was not to hear "for" and "against" positions on fracking. Instead, the EPA was soliciting comments, concerns, and suggestions about the methodology of an imminent study on the relationship between fracking and drinking water. The comments I had prepared totally missed the mark. (So did ninety percent of the speakers' comments. Consciously or unconsciously, the vast majority of the two-minute tirades urged the EPA toward or away from hydrofracking, but did not address the question the EPA had asked.)

I stood in the foyer in a crisis. Did I have anything useful to say to the EPA? What did I know about methodologies for studying fracking and drinking water? Why shouldn't I just go home now and get other stuff done?

Having made the thirty-minute drive into town (and found a sweet parking space), I didn't surrender the opportunity immediately. While the opening remarks of the EPA officials and the moderator droned through the theater, I meditated on the EPA info sheets. They sought input on methodology, research design, and testing sites. Testing sites.

We're in the "stewardship season" for most Christian congregations. "Stewardship" to most pew-sitting Christians means "how much money should I give to the Church?" or "how much money do I have to give back to God?" But a broader understanding includes the question of how I can use all the gifts I have been given to serve God and neighbor. Whenever we find something within our "possession," Christians ask, "How can this be used to bless someone else?"

The Spirit gave me a flash of insight as I stood in the back of the Forum. I could not offer scientifically informed input on the design of the fracking and water study. But I could offer them my land.

I sat in the theatre seat and hastily rewrote my two-minute speech. I described our parcel of land, its unique hydrological qualities, and its proximity to likely gas drilling sites. I told this EPA panel that if that sounded like a good place to study, they could come and use our property. I even offered to make them coffee and a strawberry rhubarb pie when they showed up. And I was done with more than thirty seconds left on the clock.

I went to the coat check to pick up my bag (security is everything, now), and before I could step out the door a young lady by the name of Shelley introduced herself to me.

"I'm a science writer from Fortune 500," she said. "I'm interested in what you said back there, can we talk more?"

Her evening would be taken up by these meetings, so we would have to talk the next morning. I remembered that I had agreed to cook breakfast at home the next morning, so scheduling a meeting with a journalist in Binghamton would endanger domestic tranquility. In another fit of Spirit-led insight, I offered Shelley to join us for breakfast.

She accepted, and we set breakfast for nine-thirty, late enough that our household would have a chance to advance its appearance at least a little above our normal pajama-and-slippers late breakfast attire. Thus it was that on Thursday of last week we entertained a Fortune 500 journalist from Manhattan with scrambled eggs, homemade biscuits, bacon, and coffee. It was another chance to offer what we have to others, by food, fellowship, and an opportunity to see the landscape that will be most impacted by whatever gas drilling happens.

All because I stuck around for two minutes and offered what I had.

The EPA hasn't called yet, but it's a federal-level government agency. We need to give them time.

~emrys