Saturday, August 10, 2013

Conversation #2 ~ What is my faith in the future? (pp. 66-73)

The picture above illustrates an article about Houston's plan to make landfills extinct in the future.  Margaret Wheatley mentions (on page 69 in Turning to One Another) ...
"industries that work in concert so that the waste of one becomes the resource of the next (which is how nature does it)."
What do you think Wheatley means when she asks us, "What is my faith in the future?"  She also asks several additional questions:
  • Are we able to live a life that has meaning for us?
  • And to help others live good lives?
  • How do our needs and behaviors affect others — those in our own families, and also in our global family?
  • What's keeping me from being who I want to be?

4 comments:

Shirley said...

I hadn't given much thought to my faith in the future until the arrival last year of my first grandchild. He has brightened not only my present, but has given me a welcome reminder of hope of the future.

Zorro said...

I don't have much faith in the future. The will to change is not a part of our vision. Our materialism, over-use of the world's resources, and our huge population growth makes the future seem impossibly bleak to me.

AuntyDon said...

For me, the two most important paragraphs in this conversation on found on page 70, "And it is how we can restore hope to the future. It is time for us to notice what's going on, to think about this together, and to make choices about how we will act. We can't keep rejecting solutions because they require us to change our behavior," and on page 71, "The future comes from where we are now. The future won't change until we look thoughtfully at our present. We have sufficient human capacities -- to think and reflect together, to care about one another, to act courageously, to reclaim the future. These great human capacities moved into action are what give me faith in the future."

Notice -- think -- make choices -- act, all wrapped around caring, courage, and standing together to change whatever part of the universe we can, this is what we are designed to do.

The poem by Ben Okri haunts me. I see the need for me to become more active in working to change racial attitudes. The verdict in the George Zimmerman trial affected me more than I thought it would. I don't know how I am going to proceed yet, but I do know I have to do something.

Shirley said...

Please keep us posted on what you decide to do regarding the sickening outcome of the George Zimmerman case. It is another of the situations in which I feel despaired, but helpless to do anything productive.