Editorial - Don't waste a crisis
04.02.2009
What is going to happen this year? What has happened to you already? I hope it was something good. A friend of mine heard this comment, ‘Don’t waste a crisis.’
When I was in the seminary one of the priests on the staff loved to explain to each class that the characters for the word ‘crisis’ in Chinese characters were ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity’. So how are you going to handle your next crisis; or your first crisis?
The environmental issue in the world is a crisis that provides us with the opportunity to reassess our place in the world. We are suddenly aware that we can’t plunder the earth indefinitely. Our relationship with God is evolving to embrace a new understanding of our relationship with Creation.
People ask, ‘How did it come to this? What has gone wrong?’ I can provide an explanation, not from my own knowledge but from the insights of others who are more far-seeing than myself or most people. And it is their gift to us for the world.
The way we have defined ‘good’ in our lives has had a big influence in what has happened to us. The ‘good life’ we know now is not sustainable as we have understood it, we simply don’t have the resources. We might try to define ‘good’ again according to the gospels. What an opportunity to do something new!
Fr Gary Walker
TFE@columban.org.au
