It really is an appropriate theme for this quarter. For the newsletter and First Thursdays it is a new beginning. Up until now, I have basically been responsible for both; with of course, some help from my friends. With this quarter, we are making a significant change. Others are taking over this responsibility. I was asked how I felt about giving it up. My only desire was to be able to continue writing this series of articles: with that I feel wonderful.
The newsletter/First Thursday is just one example of “new beginnings” for IMAGO. Starting with a major planning session last summer, interest has grown. Our workshops, work on a neighborhood demonstration project, the “In Communion with the Earth” presentation, library, and office work are all being shared more and more by other people. I’m a little scared “letting go”, but the changes are thrilling.
It’s especially exciting because of the urgency. Watching the damage being done to our beautiful Earth and the real possibility of it not being able to sustain human life much longer is sobering. If IMAGO can just affect a few of us to: 1. live “lightly on the Earth,” and 2. realize it is a more exciting way to live, joined by many others, we just might have an Earth that human generations following us may be a part.
Sr. Miriam Therese MacGillis, who will be here to do a workshop for us on March 26th and 27th, feels that the human being, in terms of evolutionary development, is undoubtedly a glory of the universe, but also has been its destroyer. Our cultures have encouraged us to misuse our planet, to see ourselves in a position to dominate, to tame, and thus, to destroy. She sees our hope in a spirituality that affirms our human rootedness in the larger evolutionary journey of the Earth.
This spirituality sees the revelation of the divine written into the fabric of the natural world. It directs a reinterpretation of our culture that then fosters a lifestyle that heals and sustains and is truly obedient to the belief in the sacredness of the Earth, the Universe.
We need a new beginning. Not going back to the “dark ages,” but rather using our knowledge, science, and technology constructively. It reminds me of the issue in Cincinnati around what to do with our trash. We have the technology to incinerate it. We also have the technology to recycle it. Incinerating will still use landfill, just less, while also polluting the air, soil, etc. Or we can recycle, which we also have the technology to do. But, we will have to change. We will have to separate the trash we produce in our homes — aluminum, glass, paper, etc. We will have to buy less prepackaged goods, use fewer plastics or move to recyclable plastics. We will need to stop using Styrofoam products. We may just have to use less “things.”
To do this, we have to think differently. We have to develop a pride in putting out a small amount of trash, and even that being recyclable. People take pride in the way they take care of their cars, children, homes. We need to take pride in the way we take care of the Earth and its people. That’s the new beginning.
Easy it’s not, not right now. I find it difficult just keeping under two trash cans a week; then there is sorting out the glass and aluminum and paper, there’s getting it to a recycling center; this not to mention all the other changes that I need to make. It all seems so overwhelming. It is only when we take pride in caring for the Earth and its people, only when it has status will it come easy to us, to other people. Now we need to struggle with it, hoping that our struggle will help give it the status it deserves to make caring for the Earth easy and exciting.
It is the hope in this new beginning and our part in it that really makes IMAGO’s new beginning exciting.
rjamesschenk.org 