Wide not narrow

It is easy in the situation I am in to not have at the fingers access to world news and events. I find the media very heavily American with news sites having more story on the happening in the land of Trump than the rest of the world. While I know this country limits the news and web searching, it still to be creates a rather odd narrow world. It reminds me of when living in Japan, the American teachers who I worked beside, presented their world view as if their country is the main and dominate in all of the world. To the point that my country was not known or said to come from the same island as Australia.!!! 

Each week on abc news I do enjoy looking at the week that was in “pictures”. Normally there are photos from around the world recording intimate moments on journalist journeys. I enjoy this connection to the rest of the world, even though a very small moment of connection, it is that connection….. 

This image of Pope Francis really took me, I stared at it for a long time. While we have words of wisdom, a deep living example of what been christian is, what holding the catholic church looks like. In this moment of connection, it was the through the colours, pure in heart yet darkness around. Face unseen leaving this image to be that of any man, even Jesus himself. 

Its a reality check really, as so often it seems that we define ourselves as the norm of the world and grade everyone else accordingly. Resulting in enhancing our notion of self and diminishing that of the rest of the world. While we live in a world that is so self focus, this only enhances that culture that seems to caught like fire! 

“And all men kill the thing they love, 

By all let this be heard, 

Some do it with a bitter look

Some with a flattering word

The coward does it with a kiss

The brave man with a sword!”

(The Ballad of Reading Goal, Oscar Wilde) 

This poem written over a century ago is sort of relevant today! Its like the killing comes in gift - wrap and perfumed mask, in enchanting guilt-free varieties, delivered with a pure white toothy smile and prediction of material salvation. Betrayal gets absolved as the consumer age replaces conscience with craving and duty with self devotion. Even with our beloved Earth and the future of humankind on knife edge balance, our killing feels strangely like a bargain. 

Its aimed squarely at the things we love, today’s big guns pound away from under the camouflage of normality. Greed, discontent, false needs and compulsive desire deal a mortal kiss. Anything still breathing can be clubbed with bloated egos, inflated expectations, grandiose entitlement and a near zero attention span. 

Its not hard to believe that consumer culture of today world is a second rate religion. I see the impact on the third world country from that of the first. I witness the joy that small things bring to those who know not what is inside the gift wrap rather happiness is the gift wrap. Sitting in lecture on Saturday about Vietnamese culture, younger generation praising their kindness, gentle approach, honesty yet forget to look out the window to the smog of pollution, smell of no waste system or rubbish left at the foot where you pass. The cry of the people who don’t fit the norm, who are behind closed walls as they challenge the norm. The elderly who watch the rivers grow black, the paths change with more cars, less bicycles and a town of unfamiliarity lays before them as they move to the outskirts. There a lack of love for the earth that provides, for the air that sustains and for the materials that continue to give life. 

While I sit typing, check for news reality is that “carry on normal” in the face of a global emergency with climate change, global warming, habitat destruction, extinction of species, loss of diversity, pollution, deforestation, land degradation, ocean depletion and lets not start on the water situation….. it is hard to miss the evil, or at leas the madness. Spreading poverty, growing inequality, collapsing health while obesity epidemic climbs…. 

Need I write more of what we already know! With a culture like this, who needs enemies!! 

If we look at wisdom figures, this image of Pope Francis holds all them together. Buddha called for spiritual advance society that imbued depth of character and full aliveness by way of selflessness, harmony with nature, liberation from worldly desire and contemplation about truth and reality. Thomas More preached for a morality centred society with no money, no private property, six hour working days and no need for lawyers!! Pope Francis himself has spoken timeless about the implication of culture on the world, we have Laudato Si to guide us, we have endless quotes and homilies we have an example before us. 

Despite everything though we are on a collision course which we find ourselves marshalling a new generation. Still in the wings, they speak in different voices to the goal of a post consumer culture founded on socially, ecologically and existentially sustainable values and lifestyles. Nature has lost patience with our illusions. Time no longer our ally. The Age of idealism has forced itself upon us. 

In reality, we gladly die for the things we love!