Monday, June 27, 2022

Continuing

 I generally do not open emails first thing in the morning. I will, however, do a quick check just to make sure there is nothing critical going on since I do not keep my phone by my bedside at night unless Tyler is away. Yet, this morning, I did open an email from First Sip. In it, I believe I found a dependable compass for how to go forward. I love the word magnificent, and I need to bring it back into my vocabulary. Tyler and I have been watching the Netflix series, "Our Great National Parks" narrated by Barack Obama. It is a beautiful, hopeful look at our magnificent planet. Great hope can be found when people work together to stop plundering and begin to preserve and restore. Even in the midst of a drought and climate change, I have reason to believe that the beauty of God's creation will endure.


"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
  
~ Howard Zinn (1922-2010)
First Sip      





 
 
image: Sonoma State University, June 2022

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