Not everything can be saved

For an optimist the idea that not everything will turn out fine is a challenging one. I am constantly looking for new ways round situations, trying to develop, include, grow, or save. I can’t help getting involved!

Recently I watched the David Attenborough documentary ‘Extinction – The facts’ it was not easy viewing, but is also a ‘must see’. It highlights the current global situation in which hundreds of thousands of species live on the knife edge of extinction. The scale of destruction and the enormous change of attitude and action needed at local, national and international levels is staggering, and clearly, not everything can be saved. However, there was something striking in the tone of this program – so much IS lost – so much WILL BE lost – but there is still HOPE. All is not lost.

Hope differs from optimism in this way. Optimism can be squashed by the harsh reality – what is there to be optimistic about? Hope, on the other hand, reminds us that there is time and that time is NOW, it reminds us that even the smallest person, the smallest and weakest community group, can make a difference. We need to see things differently.

Not everything can be saved. But much can.

FINDING GOD IN ‘ON-LINE’ MEETINGS

In the time since our lives have been dominated by COVID19 many of us have had to hold a great variety of meetings using social media. It never failed to amaze me at the way we were able to meet across thousands of miles thanks to the gift of the internet. I recently took part in a group in which some of the participants were at home, others were at work and several others were sitting in a cafe drinking coffee. The sharing was deep and heartfelt despite the unusual circumstances in which it took place. From time to time someone would pass through the scene moving from room to room or, in the case of the cafe, from table to table. I had a strong sense of the presence of God and was grateful that God could be found in so many different places.

Weeping with and praying for Beirut

We greeted the news of the terrible explosion in Beirut with shock and deep sadness. Lebanon is already stretched at full capacity in dealing with Covid-19 even as infections continue to rise. How tragic now to mourn almost one hundred and forty lives lost, perhaps more, and to deal with more than five thousand injured people. We weep for you and pray for you dear people of Beirut.

Speaking a new language in our Covid19 world

We are all getting used to the challenge of living the strange ‘new normal’ that is allowing us to plot a delicate chart between everyday life and Covid19. Our new way of interaction consists of things like face masks; hand sanitizer; social distance; work from home and a good deal less close interaction. I have found myself reflecting on how things have changed having recently crossed the globe in order to return to my community. How well ‘social distance’ expresses it – we have been forced to keep our distance, to be more formal in the way we relate to each other, to be masked and sterile. If we are not careful our new normal could turn into a new strangeness, or worse still, a mutual suspicion. This strikes me as extremely sad. I have discovered that there are ways to bridge this distance and that it is still possible to communicate a smile and a friendly demeanor. We just have to try a little harder and make more effort to communicate that we are still friendly and personable. I think it’s worth it for all of us, for the sake of healing and for the sake of the future.

Some thoughts on discernment – 1

I have recently been running a series of online workshops on discernment and thought I might share some of the thinking and concepts. If you are interested in joining this series follow the link to sign up: Online Discernment Workshop

What is Discernment?

It is hard to sum up in just a few paragraphs! There are many books written on the topic and many different perspectives. Within the church the word gets used in a variety of different ways. (We use the language of discernment to mean particular life choices; or sometimes people talk about being ‘in discernment’ as though it is about the process of formation for religious life or priesthood.)

What I am writing about is not that time of choosing a state of life (although that may be part of it), but rather something of the personal relationship between ourselves and God.

This personal relationship with God is a real relationship, and one which brings with it joy, delight, attraction, responsibility and choice as it deepens. This movement or Desire towards God is at the heart of discernment – we are talking about orienting our life towards God in a way that brings us a deep inner sense of connection and joy.

Any re-orientation of our life will involve decisions and choices – perhaps when we are looking at discernment it is important to see the centrality of everyday choices in shaping our lives. We make many choices every day – some we recognise as significant, others seem minor, but we never really know until much later which will prove to be significant – the time I leave the house to go for a walk might determine a chance meeting; the comment I make in a conversation might affect someone else’s decisions. Life is not made up solely of big decisions, but of many everyday occurrences in which God is present.

Entering more deeply into this relationship with God involves the choice to orient my life in such a way that I can respond more freely to God’s prompting. St Ignatius, at the start of the Spiritual Exercises proposes the Principle and Foundation; a recognition that every moment, every conversation, every experience is a gift and an opportunity for encountering God, and I am invited to respond.

The Principle and Foundation

The goal of our life is to live with God forever.

God, who loves us, gave us life.

Our own response of love allows God’s life to flow into us without limit.

All the things in this world are gifts of God, presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily.

As a result, we appreciate and use all these gifts of God insofar as they help us develop as loving persons. But if any of these gifts become the centre of our lives, they displace God and so hinder our growth toward our goal.

In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance before all of these created gifts insofar as we have a choice and are not bound by some obligation.

We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one.

For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God. Our only desire and our one choice should be this:

I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening his life in me.

George Floyd: We hear you, we are listening and we will learn

Along with countless others around the world I was shocked, distressed and outraged at the tragic death of George Floyd. Calls for justice and calls for change echo from person to person, from city to city, and from country to country. To say ‘Black lives matter’ is to understand that all lives matter and, at the same time, to acknowledge that some lives need protecting more than others. George Floyd’s life was cruelly taken too, too soon. His death has called us all to account and to stand on the side of those who suffer because of discrimination, racism and injustice.

Every small space is significant, and part of ‘our common home’

By Margarita Byron fcJ

A few days ago I was reading the daily email from Richard Rohr where he quoted from the theologian Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam:

“In the second chapter of the Gospel of John, there is a verse that the disciples attribute to Jesus as he drives out money lenders and sellers of sheep and cattle from the temple of Jerusalem: “Zeal for your house will consume me” [John 2:17). Prior to that verse Jesus tells those who are despoiling the holy place: “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” [John 2:16]. . . .

Today, we could, and probably we should, understand this ‘house’ as our common planetary home. ‘ “

Here in London we have just completely renovated our house – literally, the building – so as to make it functional for our new spirituality centre and as a home for the FCJ sisters living and ministering from there.  We have tried to construct with a ‘zeal’ that is economical, apostolic and ecological.

And now we are looking at our very small and very precious garden space.  This small parcel of land is ‘part of our common planetary home’.  How shall we use it and ‘share’ it?

Well, for those who spend time in our retreat centre, it will be available to them – a little haven in our London streets.  Hopefully people walking along the road will be able to see some of its colour and smell various perfumes.  The people living in the flats to our east  will enjoy the contribution we are adding to their efforts or create a flower patch in a corner of their asphalted entrance area.

But, not only will visitors enjoy our garden.  We’re making sure there will be plants that will encourage butterflies and bees to find refuge and safety in the garden.   Water for birds, seed when necessary.  And care that every thing will flourish as far as possible so that we may even have plants that we can give away.

And, of course we ourselves will delight in the beauty we can see, will gather flowers occasionally, will enjoy the herbs that we will grow in raised beds along the side of the building and will rejoice in the peace and creativity that our common home is offering us.

Food, packaging and home-growing

by Miriam for the FCJ Young Adult Network

An awareness of the gravity of today’s cultural and ecological crisis must be translated into new habits LS#209

Following EcoMagis last summer, I had begun to think more about the food I was buying in terms of where it came from and how it was packaged. I’d made small steps of making some things which come packaged in plastic, like hummus and bread, and buying lose vegetables and fruit where possible. However, this is easy to do when it is just me.

When lockdown came into force, I was with family. Suddenly my parents went from having three people in their house to five. How could we feed five people when all the major supermarkets had no available delivery slots and how could we avoid the excess of packaging that often comes with deliveries?

On special occasions, before lockdown, we used to buy food from the local farmers market. This involved a break from routine, a special trip, and we saw this as something which was “too hard” to do on a regular basis. Lockdown has prompted us to shift beyond the usual routine, to rethink our habits and find a new solution.

We are thinking carefully each week about what we order, planning meals in advanced, and making more things from scratch. Now it is normal to see sourdough proofing in the kitchen, biscuits baking in the oven, and someone scrubbing soily potatoes.

Lockdown also prompted us to spend more time doing things together and with the sunny weather this has been mainly in the garden. There were a few things that we were finding impossible to get delivered without plastic packaging, like salads and small tomatoes. We investigated how we could grow these ourselves and it turns out that you can repurpose almost any container as a planter so long as you drill holes in the bottom to allow drainage. The salads have been the first to spring up and we have each enjoyed watching them grow from their tiny seeds.

As we look to the future, the next step for us is to begin to make the same change of habit for non-food based items.

LS – Laudato Si’

http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html

Ecological Living – Learning new skills

by Christine for the FCJ Young Adult Network

In the recent months I have been reflecting on the way living a more ecological lifestyle requires an openness to learning new skills, and to letting our learning shape our previously held (but not very thought-through opinions).

This is most evident to me when I witness my sister-in-law running her cloth nappy business; the model of her business is to be a supplier of many different brands and products and, most importantly, to be available to talk through how the products work, and their various merits. After a good, informative chat what may seem overwhelming, “too gross”, or too burdensome becomes a real option for care-givers.

The insight for me is that the learning we need to do is not just about understanding the different impacts of our actions or how to compare different alternatives for impact. It is also about learning about what it is like to live different, more ecological choices; this kind of learning often makes ecological choices feel much more accessible and realistic.

In order to do this, we need to practice talking about these choices more freely without making others feel judged or shamed. Not every lifestyle change is immediately available to all people for a variety of reasons, so for me the biggest challenge is how to encourage change with the urgency it requires, while being sensitive to this reality. The cloth nappy business model of sharing experience and information, while leaving choice up to the care-givers to find a way that suits them, feels like a good starting point!

 LS #211 A person who could afford to spend and consume more but regularly uses less heating and wears warmer clothes, shows the kind of convictions and attitudes which help to protect the environment. There is a nobility in the duty to care for creation through little daily actions, and it is wonderful how education can bring about real changes in lifestyle. Education in environmental responsibility can encourage ways of acting which directly and significantly affect the world around us, such as avoiding the use of plastic and paper, reducing water consumption, separating refuse, cooking only what can reasonably be consumed, showing care for other living beings, using public transport or car-pooling, planting trees, turning off unnecessary lights, or any number of other practices. All of these reflect a generous and worthy creativity which brings out the best in human beings. Reusing something instead of immediately discarding it, when done for the right reasons, can be an act of love which expresses our own dignity.

LS #212. We must not think that these efforts are not going to change the world. They benefit society, often unbeknown to us, for they call forth a goodness which, albeit unseen, inevitably tends to spread.

LS – Laudato Si’

http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html

Time to Heal, Space to Breathe – Laudato Si’

by Nicole Piscopo  for the FCJ Young Adult Network

In what simple practical ways are you living with a greater awareness of the environment and our connection to it?

Right now I don’t really feel I’m doing anything in particular for the planet. But I saw a picture a while ago that right now, our planet is breathing. It’s taking a break from all the pollution we throw at it and hopefully taking time to heal.

LS #18. The continued acceleration of changes affecting humanity and the planet is coupled today with a more intensified pace of life and work which might be called “rapidification”. Although change is part of the working of complex systems, the speed with which human activity has developed contrasts with the naturally slow pace of biological evolution. Moreover, the goals of this rapid and constant change are not necessarily geared to the common good or to integral and sustainable human development. Change is something desirable, yet it becomes a source of anxiety when it causes harm to the world and to the quality of life of much of humanity.

Times like these show us that we’re not as in control as we think we are. We’re all vulnerable and at nature’s mercy. And we realise how important the things we take for granted are.

I think it’s especially important to check up on people and their mental health because we’re all going through a tough time, and we have to take care of each other.

LS #147. Authentic development includes efforts to bring about an integral improvement in the quality of human life, and this entails considering the setting in which people live their lives. These settings influence the way we think, feel and act. In our rooms, our homes, our workplaces and neighbourhoods, we use our environment as a way of expressing our identity. We make every effort to adapt to our environment, but when it is disorderly, chaotic or saturated with noise and ugliness, such overstimulation makes it difficult to find ourselves integrated and happy.

LS – Laudato Si’

http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html