Beyond Here Be Dragons

There is a great loneliness of spirit today. We’re trying to live, we’re trying to cope in the face of what seems to be overwhelming evidence that who we are doesn’t matter,
that there is no real hope for enough change, that the environment and human experience is deteriorating so rapidly and increasingly and massively. This is the context, psychically and spiritually, in which we are working today.
This is how our lives are reflected to us. Meanwhile, we’re yearning for connection with each other, with ourselves, with the powers of nature, the possibilities of being alive.
When that tension arises, we feel pain, we feel anguish at the very root of ourselves, and then we cover that over, that grief, that horror,
with all kinds of distraction – with consumerism, with addictions, with anything that we can use to disconnect and to go away.
We’ve been opening ourselves to the grief, to the knowing of what’s taking place, the loss of species, the destruction of the natural world, the unimaginable levels of social injustice and economic injustice that deprive so many human beings of basic opportunities. And as we open to the pain of that, there’s a possibility of embracing that pain and that grief in a way that it becomes a strength, a power to respond. There is the possibility that the energy that has been bound in the repression of it can now flow through us and energize us, make us clearer, more alive, more passionate, committed, courageous, determined people.
--John Robbins
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q: How do you get a nun pregnant?
A: Dress her up as an altar boy.