Nevertheless

Dear Friends,

First, let me recommend to everyone the fascinating and ever-evolving resource that is the Council on the Uncertain Human Future which Sarah Buie introduced briefly in group last week.  It is a site to spend some time on; there are many engrossing films and offerings.  We also spoke of a current year-long series, Dharma Dialogues, a program of the Natural Dharma Fellowship, whose first speaker was Joanna Macy: a delightful beginning.  You can register any time and see the whole series of presentations either live or on recordings later.

When we think about events in the world that distress us, like Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, Congo, the Amazonian rainforest, the oceans, and an ever-increasing list of etcetera's, including poverty, discrimination and violence right in our homes and communities, -- well, it's an impressive list.  It's the stuff that sells papers, and TV time, and gets clicks, and deserves our attention and compassion and activism both inner and outer.  But no matter what we do, it's not going to solve things.  The trouble around Russia, for instance, has been here a long time, even longer than the United States' own imperialism and wars of aggression.  "The poor you have always with you," as a young Palestinian pointed out two millennia ago.  It's not going away.  Climate change?  Not going away.

I wanted to say a few words, then, about our lack of efficacy.  Because, if you stop one war, another springs up.  Feed one hungry mouth, and another opens in starvation.  Save an endangered bit of rainforest, and the fires soon engulf a thousand times as much.  All the good efforts of Mother Theresa, like those of many hunger-relief programs, could be said to have come to nothing, since there are more hungry folk in India than ever before.  A doctor "saves someone's life," but the person dies soon enough anyway, after a few decades at most.  There is no efficacy, apparently, if we think in terms of long-term outcomes and deliverables.

Nevertheless.

We do what seems good, not because we think it will solve the problem forever, but in the certainty that events will often defeat us.  We do what seems good, because the giving itself is good: whether it's a matter of giving  food or care, time or talent or treasure.  When I worked in Mother Theresa's Home for Dying Destitutes in Calcutta, this got very clear, this nevertheless.  The response of the dying people to a bit of (from a certain standpoint) ineffectual human touch was convincing.  There is a blessing in the giving and receiving of gifts, regardless of outcome.

Ukrainian culture and language will no more disappear than that of Tibet.  But the way they live on, and the territory, will change.  That is their nevertheless: their insistence on the beauty of their own identity and offering to the world.  It is impossible to persist, and impossible to surrender.

Today, we'll gather our disparate energies and invoke, with the solstice, the powers of resurgence and hope.  We'll send our collective gift Ukraine-ward, with leftover light for the healing and empowering of all the earth.  I was at a friend's funeral yesterday, and hard by the open  grave were these untended, unintended snowdrops.  How right for Paul, I thought.  Here they are for you, too, with their in-spite-of-everything promise.

with love,

Michael