This has been a summer like none other. The world is full of doom, destruction, and agony given to us in living color, compliments of the media. Most evenings, as I tiptoe to the tv and gingerly tune in to CBC’s The National, I ask myself, “Why am I doing this”? As much as I want to learn what’s happening in our world, usually, I shield my eyes from the plethora of horrors unfolding on the screen. By now, we know the routine by heart. Hundreds of forest fires are blazing across Canada, the United States, and parts of Europe. Floods rampage through cities and towns. Haiti is torn apart by earthquakes. Tornados blitz the Florida coast. The fourth wave of the global pandemic is rearing its destructive head. To add insult to injury, Prime Minister Trudeau has called a federal election for September 20th, seemingly oblivious to the fact that neither disgruntled Canadians nor screaming opposition parties want to go to the polls.
Lately, to save my sanity, I’ve been turning off the nightly litany of a world falling apart at its seams. I hear myself sighing, “Where are you, God”? In the silence, the answer appears. “I’m right here beside you; I am with you always”. Always? Yes, God always is living in us, beside us, and among us, even amidst the devastation we humans have created. My faith tells me that this is true, and I believe it, but the road ahead looks ominous.
“God always is living in us, beside us, and among us, even amidst the devastation we humans have created”
We don’t need to spend our time looking back to why the world has arrived at this juncture. What we need is for the governments of the world and rich countries to lay down their arms and stop the proliferation of weapons. Furthermore, we need people to live simply in harmony with Mother Nature to counteract climate change. Until then, we’ll muddle along until we learn to subdue our great big egos which urge us to be something, to know something, and to have everything.
-Sister Jean Moylan, csj