Going to Seed

I don't know about you but some days I feel like I'm in the hand-basket, you know, that hand-basket in which our parents always said the world was going to hell.  What is going on? 

For many years I have been repeating a little phrase about the times in which we live - "the individual rationalism of The Enlightenment is going to seed." The revolutionary ideas of Descartes, Rousseau, Locke, Jefferson, and others have been parsed, twisted, and perverted so that individual appetites are consuming the common good of people and planet. The same can be said for the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, Lao Tsu, as well as other prophets and sages. 

There also seems to be a toxic convergence of this demise with modern technology that only amplifies the perversion. With the Internet and "social?" media we have created a forum where every opinion, regardless of its origin, is presented and received as fact. Anybody with a computer or smartphone can slander, smear, and deceive with autonomy and, if desired, anonymity. To some degree we are all complicit in this demise. 

Sometimes when I face the empty page for this weekly blog I seem to have no words of encouragement and so I rely on others to encourage and inspire me. Today my wife Peg shared the following from her Facebook feed and I offer it to you:

  

Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.  ~ L.R. Knost

It's true that when something goes to seed what remains are the seeds. So what we must do in the seeming chaos in which we find ourselves is look for the seeds of love, compassion, dignity, respect, honor, and mutual forbearance that are around us and, more importantly, within us. Once we discover these seeds we need to intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally nurture them into the next Gospel, the next Enlightenment, the next embodiment of One Eternal Presence - one seed at a time.