Reflection
How do we hold both the magnificence and tragedy of the world, as if we stand at a threshold with Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings, looking in two directions? …How do we find the way if we can’t see around the bend? …In our time of disturbance and radical change, we are crossing a threshold, a portal, or an unseen bridge from one world to another. It could be said that the bridge is either collapsing beneath us, or being made as we walk together.
Geneen Marie Haugen, Wild Faith
Prayer
Show me your ways, O God, teach me your paths.
Psalm 25:4-5
Action
Consider our present situation. In your view is the “bridge” collapsing or offering a new opportunity for a better future? What are the positives you see? How can you help to make them a reality?
Suggested Reading
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12:
What we are living now is a place of metanoia (conversion), and we have the chance to begin. So let’s not let it slip from us, and let us move ahead.
Pope Francis
We know we will not be the same after this pandemic. How wonderful would it be if, at the other end, we were on our way to being more caring for our neighbor, more committed to the future, more responsible, more understanding and more focused on the common good?
Susan Rose Francis
Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.
Joseph Campbell
In normal times, the rippers hog the media spotlight. But now you see regular Americans, hurt in their deepest places and being their best selves. Everywhere I hear the same refrain: We’re standing at a portal to the future; we’re not going back to how it used to be.
David Brooks
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.
Arundhati Roy
We need to recognize a new locus of power and it’s us. Nobody is going to solve this for us. This is our moment to really come together.
Jamie Metzi
Future generations, if there is a livable world for them, will look back at the epochal transition we are making to a life-sustaining society.And they will call this the time of the Great Turning.
Joanna Macy
We stand at a critical time in Earth’s history, a time when humanity will choose its future…we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth Community with a common destiny.
Earth Charter