Friday 17 May 2024  Dreaming of a Harmonious Earth

Brian McLaren shares his vision of a restored Earth where humans live equitably with the Earth, other humans, and the more-than-human world:  

This is my dream, and perhaps it is your dream, and our dream, together: that in this time of turbulence when worlds are falling apart, all of us with willing hearts can come together … together with one another, poor and rich, whatever our race or gender, wherever we live, whatever our religion or education. I dream that some of us, maybe even enough of us, will come together not only in a circle of shared humanity, but in a sphere as big as the whole Earth, to rediscover ourselves as Earth’s multi-colored multi-cultured children, members of Team Earth.  

I dream that the wisdom of Indigenous people, the wisdom of St. Francis and St. Clare and the Buddha and Jesus, the wisdom of climate scientists and ecologists and spiritual visionaries from all faiths could be welcomed into every heart. Then, we would look across this planet and see not economic resources, but our sacred relations … brother dolphin and sister humpback whale, swimming in our majestic indigo oceans, with sister gull and brother frigate bird soaring above them beneath the blue sky. We would see all land as holy land, and walk reverently in the presence of sister meadow and brother forest, feeling our kinship with brother bald eagle and sister box turtle, sister song sparrow and brother swallowtail butterfly, all our relations.  

In my dream, the reverence we feel when we enter the most beautiful cathedral we would feel equally among mountains in autumn, beside marshes in spring, surrounded by snow-covered prairies in winter, and along meandering streams in summer. In my dream, even in our cities, we would look up in wonder at the sky, and a marriage between science and spirit would allow us to marvel at the sacredness of sunlight, the wonder of wind, the refreshment of rain, the rhythm of seasons. At each meal, we would feel deep connection to the fields and orchards and rivers and farms where our food was grown, and we would feel deep connection to the farmers and farmworkers whose hands tended soil so we could eat this day with gratitude and joy.  

In my dream, our life-giving connection to each other and to the living Earth would be fundamental, central, and sacred … and everything else, from economies to governments to schools to religions … would be renegotiated to flow from that fundamental connection. In my dream, we would know God not as separate from creation, but as the living light and holy energy we encounter in and through creation: embodied, incarnated, in the current and flow of past, present, and future, known most intimately in the energy of love.  

Read this meditation on cac.org.

Brian D. McLaren, Life after Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart (New York: St. Martin’s Essentials, 2024), 248–249. 

Wednesday 15 may 2024  A Heart-Centered Revolution

The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us? —Dorothy Day, Loaves and Fishes 

Authors LaUra Schmidt and Aimee Lewis Reau consider the impact of a heart-centered revolution made possible through our connection to one another:  

We can experience joy, love, and beauty on this planet, even as it changes around us. To do this, we have to build personal and collective resilience—an ability to find equanimity in unpredictable times and as the suffering around us increases. We do this not by avoiding the Long Dark but by facing it, moving with it…. 

Connection has the power to ground us when the world is chaotic. Connection gives our lives meaning and offers joy, even in the dark [of the unknown]. We can then invest ourselves into meaningful action—the kind that promotes relationship and regeneration. Meaningful action can be a salve for painful feelings like ecoanxiety, ecodistress, climate grief, and overwhelm because meaningful action isn’t dependent on outcomes…. We do [this work] because it’s what needs to be done. It’s generative work, and it fills us with purpose.  

It also lays the groundwork for a heart-centered revolution. In this revolution, we center relationships, connectedness, and love in times of suffering and disconnection. We open to our interconnectedness with all beings and make decisions based on compassion and insight instead of egocentric motivations. The heart-centered revolution is brought about by our inner equanimity and our love for each other, ourselves, and our planet as a whole. Instead of thoughtless and selfish actions, we reinvest ourselves with an understanding of the consequences to the larger world…. 

The calling of the heart-centered revolution is to find opportunities to cultivate a truly just and life-centered world, even if we never see it come into existence. [1]  

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis writes of the solidarity necessary to transform our culture and our world: 

In order to live a moral life, a good life, an ubuntu life, we must commit to a life of love that means seeing all the things. See your neighbor suffering and do something about it.… 

Friend, you are the only one standing where you stand, seeing what you see, with your vantage point, your story. You are right there for a reason: to have, as my dear friend Ruby Sales says, “hindsight, insight, and foresight.” I want us to learn to see, with our eyes wide open, how best to be healers and transformers. I want us to really see, to fully awaken to the hot-mess times we are in and to the incredible power we have to love ourselves into wellness…. 

I want us open to revelation, not afraid of it, and open to the ways that it will provoke us to believe assiduously in how lovable we each are, and in the love between us and among us because, actually, believing is seeing. [2]

[1] LaUra Schmidt with Aimee Lewis Reau and Chelsie Rivera, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: Ten Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2023), 11, 12. 

[2] Jacqui Lewis, “Apocalypse Now: Love, Believing, and Seeing,” Oneing 10, no. 1, Unveiled (Spring 2022): 44–45. Available in print and PDF download. 

Read this meditation on cac.org.

Tuesday 14 May 2024   Love Is Stronger than Hope

Our great mistake is that we tie hope to outcome. —Cynthia Bourgeault 

Brian McLaren suggests a continuing source of hope not dependent on the outcome:  

If we can see a likely path to our desired outcome, we have hope; if we can see no possible path to our desired outcome, we have despair. If we are unsure whether there is a possible path or not, we keep hope alive, but it remains vulnerable to defeat if that path is closed.  

When our prime motive is love, a different logic comes into play. We find courage and confidence, not in the likelihood of a good outcome, but in our commitment to love. Love may or may not provide a way through to a solution to our predicament, but it will provide a way forward in our predicament, one step into the unknown at a time. Sustained by this fierce love (as my friend Jacqui Lewis calls it), we may persevere long enough that, to our surprise, a new way may appear where there had been no way. At that point, we will have reasons for hope again. But even if hope never returns, we will live by love through our final breath.  

To put it differently, even if we lose hope for a good outcome, we need not lose hope of being good people, as we are able: courageous, wise, kind, loving, “in defiance of all that is bad around us.” [1] …  

We feel arising within us this sustained declaration: We will live as beautifully, bravely, and kindly as we can as long as we can, no matter how ugly, scary, and mean the world becomes, even if failure and death seem inevitable. In fact, it is only in the context of failure and death that this virtue develops. That’s why Richard Rohr describes this kind of hope as “the fruit of a learned capacity to suffer wisely and generously. You come out much larger and that largeness becomes your hope.” [2] … 

Hope is complicated. But … even if hope fails, something bigger can replace it, and that is love. [3]  

Choctaw elder Steven Charleston places love at the center of our hope. 

The key to stopping the environmental apocalypse is not science but love. For decades now we have been staring at the scientific reports. They have not sufficiently inspired us to change our apocalyptic reality. But where science has failed, faith can succeed. We must help humanity rediscover [Mother Earth], their loving parent, the living world that sustains them. We must help them feel her love just as we show them how that love can be returned. And it can begin by gathering people around two simple questions: Where were you in nature when you experienced a vision of such beauty that it took your breath away? And how did that make you feel? If you can answer those two questions, you are on your way to meeting the Mother you may never have known before. [4]  

Read this meditation on cac.org.

Monday 13 May 2024  Welcoming Reality

Brian McLaren offers the phrase “welcome to reality” as a helpful acknowledgment of the devastation and uncertainty that the increasing climate crisis brings:   

Our global civilization as currently structured is unstable and unsustainable. Ecologically, our civilization sucks out too many of the Earth’s resources for the Earth to replenish, and it pumps out too much waste for the Earth to detoxify. Economically, our civilization’s financial systems are complex, interconnected, fragile, and deeply dependent on continual economic growth. Without continual economic growth, financial systems will stumble toward collapse. But with economic growth, we intensify and hasten ecological collapse. In addition, our global economic systems distribute more and more money and power to those who already have it, creating a small network of elites who live in luxury and share great political power, while billions live in or near poverty with little political power…. As we face increasing ecological and economic instability, social unrest and conflict will also increase.… [1] 

Welcome to reality.  

That simple phrase … helps me slow down for a few moments and acknowledge that we do know some things with high levels of confidence. (For example, we know carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere trap heat; we know water melts at 32 degrees Fahrenheit or 0 degrees Celsius; we know several different ways to produce electricity.) But about other things, we have much less certainty. 

When I say “welcome to reality,” I am saying, “Welcome, self, to reality, both what I know and what I don’t know.” And I am also saying, “Welcome, reality, whatever you are, both known and unknown, into my awareness.”  

To hold both knowing and unknowing in a delicate, dynamic, and highly creative tension … that is one of the primary skills we will need if we want to live with courage and wisdom in an unstable climate, whatever scenario unfolds.  

We need to face what we know. And we need to face what we don’t know. Only what is faced can be changed. That is why I say, and I hope you will join me, welcome to reality. [2] 

Father Richard describes how contemplation helps us meet and welcome reality:  

Contemplation is meeting as much reality as we can handle in its most simple and immediate form, without filters, judgments, and commentaries. Contemplation allows us to recognize and relativize our own compulsive mental grids—our practiced ways of judging, critiquing, and computing everything—as well as blocking what we don’t want to see.  

This is what we’re trying to do when we practice contemplative prayer, which is why people addicted to their own mind and opinions will find contemplation most difficult, if not impossible. No wonder it is so rare and, in fact, “the narrow road that few walk on” (Matthew 7:14). 

When our judgmental grid and all its commentaries are placed aside, God finally has a chance to get through to us, because our narcissism and pettiness are at last out of the way. Then Truth stands revealed! [3]   

Read this meditation on cac.org.

[1] Brian D. McLaren, Life after Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart (New York: St. Martin’s Essentials, 2024), 23–24. 

[2] McLaren, Life after Doom, 34.  

[3] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Yes, And…: Daily Meditations (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2013, 2019), 391.