Thought for the week: Abigail Maxwell hopes so
‘Hope has always required faith.’
My young Friend asked me, do I have hope for the future? I was silent. With the ozone not fully healed, chemicals bioaccumulating, CO2 emissions continuing, and trillions of plastic particles in the oceans, why do we not despair?
At the end of February, I stood on an iron bridge by a cherry tree. It seemed bare from a distance, but up close I saw buds of leaf and blossom on each branch. Two weeks later I saw blossom showering pollen into the wind. I am with the tree in the eternal present, perceiving its isness. It simply lives. I am fully myself, Light integrated and expressed in a human body, part of a World.
Sometimes I am like this in the supermarket, open to the full range of feeling as well as the task in hand, able to exchange a few words at the checkout. I am like this when my Meeting is still, accepting the flow of experience, being with each other. Words may disturb me: resistance arises and I am divided. For years I sought safety in illusory normality, dimming my light, suppressing joy as well as fear.
I could answer my Friend’s question from that conventionality, but it might not convince them. I wanted to speak from Light, and felt doubt. I stumbled out a few words – all I could say I believe. Climate change, pollution, war, extinction and exploitation crowded my mind. Humans are capable of so trashing our planet that it is no longer a home for us, or anything else.
My hope is in that Light which is in everyone, and in the efforts people make to let it shine. If Quakerism dies there is Vipassana, Buddhist meditation, Sufism, Franciscan mysticism, and a host of psychological tools or New Age-ways to free the human spirit. Everywhere people come alive. Hope has always required faith. George Fox was eighteen when his world went mad with war, twenty-three when he saw the ocean of light, twenty-eight when he saw a great people to be gathered.
Fear of death, pain and uncertainty drive the accumulation of power, money and privilege. Humanity is perverted, with beautiful creativity, knowledge and engineering skill producing weapons for dominance, control and destruction. The human population grows, and so will the human economy. But human creativity mitigates the damage we do: we use wind and solar power as well as fossil fuels, and the EU may shift subsidies from animal husbandry to cultured meat. Human creativity promotes extracting, trashing and dumping, but also a saner use of resources. If I suppress my terror and despair, I only succeed in dimming my joy in wonder and beauty.
The Light in me wants to relate to others as whole human beings. I know this is infectious. I know appreciation helps humans grow and mature, because it has blessed me. There was an ocean of darkness in me, and the light and love of others flowed over it. I hope in my young Friend. I hope the love of God in each human being, faltering or fiery, will nurture the life of the world, before it is too late.
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