Further adventures…

Week two begins – it is hard to believe that just last Monday I was waking up from long travels and such. The speed of travel makes it hard to grasp that one has traveled a long distance. I do notice that it takes time to adjust to things like time zone changes and climate changes. But I’m feeling a bit settled by now.

This is a view of the monastery. It is a strange building to photograph because its on a hillside and the “front” faces down hill. So from the uphill side one gets uninteresting pictures of roofs… from downhill it is hard to get perspective without going “over the hill” as it were. But you see on the right side the lovely common room with its great bow of windows. A sunny room filled with light.

Of course I still read the news from the US and it is quite distressing. The willingness of politicians to say things that I don’t believe they can believe is disheartening. The political situation in South Africa is fragile at best – but I have the sense that here things are trending better. This is a young democracy that started in incredible hopefulness led by great leaders like Nelson Mandela. Sadly, I think George Orwell could have written the script that came after Mandela – in fact I think he did… But now perhaps a new script is coming into play.

In the US however, a script based on Orwell’s 1984 seems to be in use – where words don’t have set meanings and facts are transient. Without something changing its hard to imagine how the US moves forward. For South Africa forward options are abundant, but all involve spending and the government, at various levels, has little money (and much of that is poorly spent).

Climate change is the big cloud, not too be too clever, hanging over things. Drought is still a big deal in South Africa and, as in Southern California, it seems more likely that it is becoming the “normal” condition. That means that adequate amounts of safe water will become terrifically expensive. Its clear that too much of the world depends on the US for leadership. And for the time being, the US is failing at that.

I keep asking myself as a person of faith what should I think and do? We are not called to live in fear and worry – in fact those are things we are specifically called not to live in. But at the same time we are not called to live in fantasy that somehow God will intervene and fix whatever bad things we face. The temptation is to look at the scale of problems and simply resign – its too big, we can’t fix it, lets just ride along… And I can’t see that as the plan Jesus would choose.

I don’t have any big answers, but I think that is the point. The answers are small. We make peace where we can. We live in harmony with the rest of creation where we can. We build relationships with our brothers and sisters where we can.

And we keep a dream alive of what this world could become – a place, as Martin Luther King described – where all God’s children can play together.

The problem with dreams is you have to have both the dream and nightmare in view – they don’t separate. And if you take one without the other you leave reality and enter fantasy. So my dystopian view of the political world is good and healthy as long as it is joined by a Utopian view to balance.

Anyway – enough rambling… I’m on to utterly mundane Monday things… hanging wash out to dry and then perhaps a trip into town… life is good.