ADOPT A STREET
#carbonfastforlent
You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should last, that the Father may give you whatever you ask Him in My name. John 15:16
Jesus didn’t just pray for fruit in our lives, but for ‘Fruit that will last”. How do we as activists keep on fighting the structures and powers of this world? Thomas Merton has some challenging words:
“He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas. There is nothing more tragic in the modern world than the misuse of power and action.”–Thomas Merton
If we do not find ways to feed our souls then we can become angry, aggressive and burn out. How do we find an energy that comes from love of creation and not hatred of those who are damaging God’s world? We may have the answer but we can become part of the problem.
One way to feed your soul is to think local as well as acting globally. Find a small part of God’s earth that is meaningful to you – a local street , a local park or stream. And act together with some friends or family to clean it up, pull up weeds, plant indigenous plants and make a difference locally.
“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul” Voltaire