Cook County News Herald

Can we use this crisis to find a better way?


As our perspective on “normal life” is drastically changing, we are living a paradox. While we cooperate to isolate ourselves, we are protecting our neighbors. By disconnecting from normal contact, we are sacrificing our ease and convenience in order to unite as a community and truly “Love our neighbors as ourselves.” My distress in recent times has been over the adversarial plague that has impaired our thinking. We have misplaced our ability to see value in differences and be open to what we might be missing in our certainty. As our social interactions are changing, perhaps we can also transform our view of each other and what makes life meaningful and worthwhile.

If out of this crisis, we can seize this opportunity to rekindle our humanity and replace divisiveness with compassion, we can find our way through disagreements with the lost art of taking kind exception. With that in mind, I’d like to share a piece of writing that provides hope amidst despair and a new perspective on what might come from healing more than just our bodies.

“And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently. And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal. And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.” Kitty O’Meara

Randy-mon Voeks, Tofte

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