Commonweal News - Winter 2016

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUSTICE EDITION

D E C E M B E R 2 0 16

Dear Commonweal Friends, As you read this, the United States presidential election is, presumably, over. As I write, the outcome remains in doubt. Commonweal is not a partisan community, but our values hang in the balance. No matter the outcome, we live in perilous times. The center cannot hold, as Yeats said. The voices of the right are ascendant right now, in the United States, Europe, Russia, the Philippines, and other countries. Strident nationalisms arise as desperate refugees storm frontiers around the world, fleeing wars, gang warfare, hunger, climate change, and all the ills of our time. Anxiety, depression, and anger are not my friends in these times. I seem to be so constituted that I see more clearly when my mind is calm. When my mind is clear, I can see what I can change and what I cannot change. I believe the things I cannot change are part of a lawful unfolding of history and, indeed, a lawful unfolding of the universe. This does not make me a fatalist. I believe my efforts—and those of countless millions of others—to move the arc of history toward justice are part of this lawful unfolding of history and the universe. If my best efforts do not result in the outcome I hope for, I have done my best. I leave the rest in the hands of whatever we want to call the great historic and cosmic processes of unfoldment.

Whatever happens in the election, the Great Work, as it is called in the mystical traditions, remains the same. My yoga teacher’s teacher, Swami Sivananda, was a physician and a large forceful man. He had an ashram in northern India that I visited once. In front of the ashram was a pillar of stone that said (in my memory):

Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Nurse the sick. Visit the prisoner. This is divine life. This has always been the Great Work. The Great Work is forever work of skillful compassion—of wisdom, compassion, and dedication—the work of head, heart, and hands. This is the work Commonweal has done for 40 years. It stretches out before us for as long as our community of service proves useful. One could even say it is a work to which some are called to consecrate a life.

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