The Last Decade: Earth Day 2021

Think back one year, when wearing masks, not eating out, not going anywhere, not shaking hands, not giving hugs was unfamiliar. Now it’s just another day in paradise.

By April of last year, a global pandemic had shocked our sense of reality and isolated us in our homes and remote offices. Except for the essential workers with no remote office where they could hunker down and attend Zoom meetings. The idea of what essential work looks like fell like an anvil on the public psyche.

Nurses, teachers, delivery drivers, grocery store clerks, public service workers — the army of people who contribute to each one of us making it through another day — quickly felt if their work is essential, the worker, at best, is a commoditized laborer. Not essential at all, but a part to be replaced.

So many faulty assumptions, blind spots, and stark realizations so rudely and suddenly thrust upon us — the unwilling, the disbelieving, the despairing — by an unseen virus.

Global change is not always incremental, nor will it come as we might expect — an important lesson for us now.

Human Flourishing and Our Place in This World

…Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood