Global warming

Carbon dioxide levels continue to increase, followed by rising temperatures around the world.

Sea levels are rising as ice melts, droughts are spreading and storms are getting stronger, leading to catastrophic floods.

And it is not just the weather that is affected.

Coral reefs are bleaching and dying, leading to a depletion of sea life.

Forests are drying out and burning. Rivers are drying up and aquifers are being pumped dry.

Wildlife species are dying and going extinct, never to return.

And this is just the beginning.

If the ice on Greenland and Antarctica melts, say goodbye to coastal cities and low-lying areas like Florida.

If mountain glaciers melt, rivers will disappear. There will be millions of climate refugees.

Avoid depression and despair

Yes, the data and climate models lead me to depression and despair.

But spiritual writers warn us that despair is a temptation from the devil, who tries to get good people to give up the practice of virtue.

Likewise, communal despair leads to political paralysis as good people cede the political arena to selfishness and greed.

"Depression is our enemy because it leads to passivity which leads to a lack of action, which means you lose what you care about," warns Jay Inslee.

He's the governor of the state of Washington and a leader in the fight against global warming.

Any action will do, "blogging, tweeting, talking to your neighbor, voting, anything," said the governor. "Any action you take is good for you and your mental health."

And, I would add, your spiritual health.

Rather than seeing our time as the worst possible days, Inslee, like Winston Churchill during the Second World War, thinks the opposite.

"These are the greatest days," Inslee argued.

"There's no other time in the history of our species where so much was at stake, where the whole shooting match was at stake, where the whole future of all multiple generations are at stake.

"We are the luckiest generation in human history to have something that is so meaningful to fight for," he said. "That's a blessing.

"That's what I wake up in the morning thinking. I wake up feeling great. I hope everybody else does, too."

Stepping up to fight

Like the "Greatest Generation," which responded to the challenge of fascism, those living today are called to respond to the challenges of climate change.

If we do it, history will extol us. If we fail, future generations will curse us for ushering in a new dark age.

Winning the Second World War took individual sacrifice, governmental action and technological innovation.

Likewise, winning the war against global warming will take all three

As individuals, we need to accept a simpler lifestyle with a smaller carbon footprint.

We need to support government programs like the Inflation Reduction Act, which, despite its name, is really a series of programs to limit climate change.

Our most creative minds have to focus on new technologies that will help us eliminate fossil fuels, the principal source of greenhouse gases.

The Volts podcast

Volts describes itself as a podcast about leaving fossil fuels behind.

It is unflinching in its realism in the face of global warming, yet it is also hopeful in its examination of the technological innovations that can help us reduce our carbon footprint.

Roberts, the host, interviews analysts, technologists and politicians about the transition from fossil fuels.

On the podcast, Inslee spoke of the innovative programs his state has enacted, making it a leader in responding to climate change.

He is now fighting a ballot initiative funded with $5 million by Brian Heywood, a hedge fund billionaire who wants to roll back the State's efforts.

Other Volts episodes look at battery technology, upgrading the electrical grid and alternative sources of energy, as well as the political strategies needed to get them implemented.

Volts goes into geeky detail in a way that is understandable and entertaining.

It is inspiring and hopeful to listen to so many smart and dedicated people grapple with the science and technology of responding to global warming.

The Lord is with us

Yes, the devil is working hard to lead us to despair over global warming, but the Spirit is also alive in many dedicated people doing exciting work in response to climate change.

"Fear not," the Lord says in Isaiah, "for I am with you."

• First published in Religion News Service
• The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit priest, is a Senior Analyst at Religion News Service

When we hear of children killed unrepentantly, for example, human rights routinely denied, the cooking of the world locked in, and nations entrusting power to wilful children.

How do you deal with such a dark vision?

After the ABC's of self-care have failed us, we may have tried the D's - denial, despair, disengagement, drink, or determined getting on with it. (The last, though commonly written off, is often surprisingly effective).

Some of these approaches involve shutting our eyes, some going around the abyss, some sinking into it, and others marching through it.

Another path is discernment.

It encourages us to stay with the pain of those suffering unjustly and with the recognition of all our own evasions and illusions until we hit the bottom, and there, perhaps find possibility.

It is summed up in a line from a play by Samuel Beckett, the master navigator of despair: ‘I'm still alive. That may come in useful'.

Once we have opened ourselves to bear the weight of the world and have recognised our own posturing and insignificance, we are open to wry laughter and to look for angles.

That kind of discernment, of course, has roots in Christian faith.

It takes us through the tragedy of Jesus' execution that cancelled all hopes invested in him, invites us into the divine comedy of his Resurrection, and offers a path to follow of compassion for Beckett's vagrants.

For Beckett, Christian faith was a step too far. His gift was to explore faith's lack. But his compassionate entry into the depths of human darkness in search of a glimmer of light offers a way for all of us to consider. What do you think?

• Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.
• First published in Eureka Street. Republished with the author's permission.

Like many people of my generation, I read the newspapers and magazines I wish to read online. If it sits behind a paywall (The Times, for example) then I don't read it.

Actually, I tell a lie. There is one publication that we do subscribe to - First Things - a magazine from the United States which deals with religion and the public sphere.

It is also available online, but I only really read it in hard copy - there is still something about the tangible, crinkly, foldable, rollable magazine that cannot be replicated on a screen.

Anyway, after a two-month US summer hiatus, I was pleased to receive the September issue of the publication last week in my letter box.

I have a set order in which I read its contents, and the large articles I leave until last. So it was only a couple of days ago that I read the lead essay, entitled "Dying of Despair".

It was written by Aaron Kheriaty, an Associate Professor of psychiatry and director of the Medical Ethics Program at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine.

It details the disturbing trend in the USA of increased suicide and drug related deaths, such that, for the first time since the 1930s, overall life expectancy in the USA has begun to decline.

(We have detailed this in a number of posts over the last few months: here, here and here.)

Kheriaty notes that Angus Deaton, a Princeton economist who won the Nobel Prize for work on the intricacies of measuring human wellbeing, has called the increasing numbers of Americans dying from alcohol, drugs and suicide, "deaths of despair".

Linked to this, depression is now the most common serious mental or medical health disorder in the USA (and the leading cause of disability worldwide). Continue reading

• Marcus Roberts has just started a new job teaching contract law at Auckland University.
• See also: 606 pairs of shoes arrive at Parliament, as radio hosts open up about suicide.

For counselling and support

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• The Lowdown - visit the website, email team@thelowdown.co.nz or free text 5626 (emails and text messages will be responded to between 12 noon and 12 midnight)
• SPARX - an online self-help tool that teaches young people the key skills needed to help combat depression and anxiety.

The simple notion was that neither God, nor anyone else, can save you if you simply give up, despair, make yourself impossible to reach.

Most often in the popular mind this was applied to suicide. To die by your own hand was seen as despair, as putting yourself outside of God's mercy.

But understanding despair in this way is wrong and misguided, however sincere our intent. What's despair? How might it be understood?

The common dictionary definition invariably runs something like this: Despair means to no longer have any hope or belief that a situation will improve or change.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which sees despair as a sin against the First Commandment, defines it this way: "By despair, man ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins. Despair is contrary to God's goodness, to his justice - for the Lord is faithful to his promises - and to his mercy."

But there's something absolutely critical to be distinguished here: There are two reasons why someone might cease to hope for personal salvation from God and give up hope in having his or sins forgiven.

It can be that the person doubts the goodness and mercy of God or, and I believe that this is normally the case, the person is too crushed, too weak, too broken inside, to believe that he or she is lovable and redeemable.

But being so beaten and crushed in spirit so as to believe that nothing further can exist for you except pain and darkness is normally not an indication of sin but more a symptom of having been fatally victimized by circumstance, of having to undergo, in the poignant words of Fantine in Les Miserables, storms that you cannot weather. Continue reading

• Ron Rolheiser OMI is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio Texas.

For counselling and support

• Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 any time
• Lifeline - 0800 543 354
• Samaritans - 0800 726 666
• Chinese Lifeline - 0800 888 880
  (for people who speak Mandarin or Cantonese)
• Youthline - 0800 376 633, free text 234 or email talk@youthline.co.nz
  (for young people, and their parents, whanau and friends)
• What's Up - 0800 942 8787
  (for 5-18 year olds; 1 pm to 11 pm)
• The Lowdown - visit the website, email team@thelowdown.co.nz or free text 5626 (emails and text messages will be responded to between 12 noon and 12 midnight)
• SPARX - an online self-help tool that teaches young people the key skills needed to help combat depression and anxiety.

My initial reaction to that question was somewhat confronting.

Besides the "Francis factor", I saw very few signs of hope in the Church.

This response was probably strongly influenced by the heart-rending stories of pain, suffering and broken trust that have been told by survivors at the hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

So I began anew to seek out the signs of hope.

Two areas that both the Church and the world are willing to name and address, are the evil of human trafficking and the ecological crisis. The Good Samaritan Sisters share concerns and hope for both areas.

Recently the Vatican sponsored a conference in Rome, authorised by Pope Francis, which was a collaboration between the British government and police and the Catholic Church, to address the evil of human trafficking which extends across all country boundaries. There, the heroic work of religious women was named and acclaimed.

The conference called on all politicians worldwide to give this issue greater recognition.

Soon afterwards, the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, announced that the US State Department is planning to work with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to map and co-ordinate the Church's efforts on a global basis, to help combat the crime of human trafficking. Continue reading.

Mary McDonald is a Good Samaritan Sister who has worked as a teacher, principal, facilitator and consultant in education for many years.

Source: The Good Oil

Image: Catholic Religious Australia

Despair clutches our throat and what's left of our heart cries out to a silent God. Our only comfort is the words of Butch Cassidy to the Sundance Kid: "Don't worry. The fall will kill you."

It happened to me last week. It had to do with my wife and Alzheimer's and poop — here, there and everywhere.

I didn't like cleaning it up, and when Vickie expressed her frustration by again resisting my help, I blurted out, "What's the matter with you? I'm trying to help you!"

And when the poop on her bare feet spread into other rooms like vandals, I yelled, "You're killing me!"

I wiped my hands on my pants, hugged Vickie, and said, "I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that."

I knew my anger was awful and the weight of anguish made me woozy so I hugged her some more to squeeze the fear out of both of us.

After I bathed us both with a hand-held shower spray like circus elephants, I wrapped Vickie in her friendliest PJs, placed her in the embrace of the recliner in the family room, and turned on "Ellen" who was talking like an adult to Sophia Grace and Rosie.

I went upstairs and closed the door of our bedroom. I tried to take three deep Andrew Weil breaths, in and out, in and out, but blew up on the second exhale. "God," I yelled, 'you're an —hole! An —hole! You know that?!" I grrrrd fiercely.

I suppose my scream was a projection of my own guilt, but so what, it got the poison out. Continue reading.

Michael Leach edits the Soul Seeing column for National Catholic Reporter, and is the author of Why Stay Catholic? Unexpected Answers to a Life-Changing Question. His wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer's ten years ago.

Source: National Catholic Reporter

Image: RandomActsOfMomness