by Lerrill J. White
Board Member, PCNSR

On behalf of the Board of the Pastoral Care Network for Social Responsibility, it is my privilege to write our March Newsletter.  As I have reflected on all that has transpired over the past year, I struggle not to feel overwhelmed.  I am also mindful that there is much that has never reached the consciousness of our nation.  Perhaps that is a blessing in disguise.  Still, I face gnawing questions that spring up from the shadowy areas of a collective numbness.  Given our present context and the tenor of our times, I'm actually surprised that questions manage to surface at all.  But I am grateful for them, as they make good companions on the journey.

There has been an outpouring of editorials, articles and commentaries until I have grown weary of reading newspapers, become suspicious of newscasts, and avoidant of e-mail attachments.  What's it all about?  What meaning am I to make of the events of the past six months or even a year?  What's the larger context into which all this needs to be put?  Last evening, as I was taking my walk I noticed several crocuses blooming.  They looked a little anemic, but their effort was laudable.  At least they were doing something creative.  They were reminding me of new life and adding some color to the world around them. I was grateful for them and decided they too would make good companions on the journey.

As pastoral care providers we have been pressed into venues and arenas for which none of us was adequately prepared.  How could we have been?  But, we carry on, attending to the broken and wounded, the traumatized and the dying.  We move from critical debriefing to counseling to crisis intervention at a moment's notice, wondering when it will slow down, if ever.  In fact, we don't know what the future holds.  We have no way of knowing the long-term or permanent affects of election 2000, of the events of September 11, 2001, or of the Enron debacle.  What we do know is that life has changed, and in the process, we have been invited to rethink our basic assumptions, to review our core beliefs, and to seek communion with a God larger than our prejudices, our stereotypes, and our limitations.

Thirty years ago, Matthew Fox observed, "Every cultural crisis produces corresponding spiritual crises."  His observations in his Preface and Introduction to On Becoming a Mystical Musical Bear are eerily current. His critique of privatized spirituality, privatized morality, and privatized religion is as relevant today as it was in 1972.  The desperate need for cultural, corporate, and communal accountability is still with us.  We wrestle with the vacuous nature of perception, with the meaninglessness of platitudes, pseudo-piety, and photo-op religiosity.  We face pressure to march lockstep with a particular power block's agenda both globally and domestically, under the threat of being labeled "enemies of the state."  The mentality that "more of everything is better" continues to consume us.  We continue to horde nearly half of the resources of the earth even though we are only 5% of the total population of the world.  Somehow, we have failed to understand the realities and choices that lie before us.

Matthew Fox spoke eloquently, rationally and passionately about the essential nature of our spirituality.  He reminds us that spirituality is about being spirited, about being fully engaged with fife, about being alive to all the possibilities created by God.  He challenges us to choose to five life with all the vastness of the Giver of Life.  Spiritual living calls for action in all of life's arenas - we are to be activists in social spheres, in political spheres, in corporate spheres, and in institutional spheres.  We must embrace the responsibilities of our prophetic voices, we must be political and social witnesses to God's justice, we are called to pay the price of peace-making in our world.  Only then will we be truly spiritual.

Those involved in peace-making, social justice and ecological concerns have long used the motto, "Think globally, act locally!"  Unfortunately, people don't seem to be sufficiently motivated by that motto.  It requires too much of us, it is still overwhelming - in spite of its simplicity and truth.  Margaret Mead suggested that by changing the consciousness of one woman, you also changed the consciousness of one man.  The implications of that construct reside much closer to home.  If we truly believe in a God of love, peace, compassion and justice, then our sacred charge is akin to the educational model that says, "Each One Teach One."  "Go into all the world and teach the good news to the whole creation," one person at a time.  It begins with you and me, today.

God bless you,

Lerrill J. White

Return to Newsletter Main Page