9/23, on the way home

9/23—On the way home (there was no WiFi on the train, so couldn't post this until now)

We just passed through Toledo, Ohio on the way back to Chicago, where I will change trains and head south to Omaha before turning west again toward Denver. It is a beautiful day. The sun is up, the sky is blue, and we are passing through fields of corn and past lush, green farmsteads. On the rights side of the train is a gigantic materials reclamation facility; there are huge piles of metal and other materials.  On the one hand, it is good to see the effort being made to reclaim and recycle.  On the other, those piles are a sobering reminder of the sheer amount of resources that we consume. And ALL of those resources are finite. Will we succeed in figuring out a way to live sustainably on the earth, or will the future be inevitably characterized by the progressive depletion of resources and wars over what remains until there are few or no humans left? We often hear talk about “saving the planet”, but the planet will remain long after we are gone; it will eventually find a new equilibrium point, and life itself will go on.  It is not the planet per se that we need to preserve, but the ecosystems that currently support human life. 

Of course, we know that human life on this earth will end some day. That may be in a hundred years or a hundred thousand years. From the perspective of cosmic time and scale, the difference is hardly significant. What is significant, it seems to me, is that whether it is a hundred or a hundred thousand years, we human succeed in realizing our calling to be the conscious manifestation of love in the universe, i.e., whether we learn to revere and to cherish the mystery and the miracle of life in all its magnificence, in all of its mystery, in all of its beauty as well as the incredible privilege of being consciously aware of it all and to know that it is not in length of life nor the amount of resources we consume nor it attainment of material comfort that “abundant life” as Jesus called it is found, but in the privilege and joy of sharing, for a time in the beauty and the mystery, as our native brothers and sisters say, with “all our relatives”.

Ironically, and tragically, the consumption-oriented, fossil-fuel driven, industrial way of life we have developed and embrace over the last couple of centuries has steadily distanced us from the wonder and beauty of our earth at the same time that it is steadily destroying it. But the Spirit is alive, is moving, and is at work to open our eyes and our hearts and to awaken us to that reality. Our ears are being opened to the groaning of the Creation, and we are beginning to hear and to respond. I believe that the People’s Climate March this past weekend was a small manifestation of that movement of the Spirit which is happening all over the globe in ways both small and large. Do you not see? Do you not hear? I am doing a new thing, says the Spirit. Watch and listen.