Our children and grandchildren will live in a future that we are now creating. So why aren’t we trying to leave them a more livable world? Perhaps we find it hard to believe in a future other than the one toward which the momentum of global forces is driving us.
Our personal futures increasingly seem like footnotes to the universal collapse in the midst of which we live.
“Think globally, act locally”. In other words: “Don’t ignore the reality that our ship is heading toward the rocks, but keep carrying out our duties like they matter. As we act in the local arena of our own lives, we can remember that our lives are a part of a greater whole. Perhaps the hands on the tiller have been ours all along.
We can encourage ourselves to be both modest and courageous. Modest: because we acknowledge that our individual lives are only a part of a greater whole. Courageous: because we dare to devote our efforts beyond our own small, anxious individuality.
Some of the neighbors we are encouraged to love live on our street, and some are not yet born. Most probably feel unloved.
Could we be trying too hard and from the wrong part of our being–as if love were a quality of our individual minds and hearts, generated and ignited by our own efforts? Love feels best when it feels like rain falling from the sky.
As John Lennon (and all the world’s spiritual traditions) proclaim: “All there is is love”. And since there is nothing outside of Love, love cannot be a quality that one person is better at than another–as one may be taller or smarter than another. Love cannot be an outcome of genetic inheritance or individual effort. Love, like the rain, falls on all who stand beneath.
People who are more loving are those who turn their parched faces to the sky, cupping their hands and lifting them brimming to their lips. Appreciating what has been given, they share their good fortune with others.
In the hands of such lovers, rests the hope of our world.
Over the Rainbow: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bFr2SWP1I)
Raindrops Falling (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT1HCQcSHW0)