Anticipation

  Much of the community that I participate in is anticipating the visit of Pope Francis with great hope.
This year's record heat during June, July and August along with the drought and the accompanying wildfires have brought home to people like never before the dangers inherent in a shifting climate. The inability of Congress to work together to address the issue in concert with other nations creates a cloud of despondency that has been steadily drifting toward national despair. Then along came Pope Francis with his down to earth way of speaking truth and his willingness to wade right into the world of power and money politics. His courage is inspiring people to consider hope again. The impact of his actions and speech is seen inside and outside the Catholic Community. People of faith from widely different religious traditions seem to be claiming Pope Francis as a prophet of hope in a time when doom is frequently peddled from every media outlet. He challenges people on both sides of the political debate as he encourages people to consider that there may yet be a way out of the mess we are in. Some critics believe Pope Francis has not gone far enough. (I am thinking of Ilia Delio for example). But I think that this Pope is creating a bridge between old ways of thinking and the new. He still speaks 'traditional Catholic' but he does so while acting in ways that show people how to integrate current thinking into the tradition. 
"We are connected!" he says over and over again. "Everything is interrelated." Pope Francis is calling to people to look at the world from a different perspective. Away with reductionist thought and its mechanical way of looking at the world as if humanity and all of nature were made up of distinct and replaceable parts. The new paradigm is holistic -- a view that alternative medicine, systems thinking, and field theory have been demonstrating for some time now. We are in fact connected. We need to behave differently now that we know this.
Pope Francis is willing to speak to the United States Congress and the General Assembly of the United Nations because he knows that unless men and women everywhere begin to work as one people, related and connected to each other in everything that they do, the crises we face in our world today can only get worse. He is intent on getting nations to make real and reasonable commitments when they gather in Paris later this year; commitments that will address climate change and alleviate the suffering of people who are already being hurt, displace or dying as climate disasters increase.

What we do matters not only for our own lives but for all the lives that are interconnected across space and down through time. Love, gratitude, simplicity, charity. If we live our lives with these principles life will be much better for ourselves and others as well.
I will keep my fingers crossed, hoping and praying that this Pope can inspire the leaders of our nation to action for the common good.