For a time / I rest in the grace of the world, / and am free.
– Wendell Berry, “Peace of the Wild Things
We live in a time when a warm, sunny day in early spring may actually be cause for alarm. The scientific evidence for human-induced climate change is as clear as a blue sky above. The devasting impacts are already felt in hurricanes and wildfires. Such flooding and burning are only precursors. We humans have imperiled the future for all life unless there are transformative changes, including in our governments and economies.
Yet, it is also true that more humans than ever before live in relative peace. Scientific and medical breakthroughs not only lengthen but improve the quality of our lives. There have been advancements in rights for people of color, children, and LGBTQ+ communities.
Referencing these positive realities, Gareth Higgins does not deny scientific claims or systemic injustices. Higgins points the reader toward the choice to tell “the dominant, diminishing stories” or “the biggest story there is—the story of the evolution of love” (How Not to Be Afraid, 36). Higgins writes, “It is important not to deny these truths: that by many measures, the world is getting better and that expanding circles of sympathy mean that more lives are considered worthy (19).”
I think of “expanding circles of sympathy” like a small pebble dropped into a pond. A small act can have wide impacts.
***
Here were the dominant stories on the news this morning. The madman in Russia tilts the world toward nuclear war. Wildfires in New Mexico have been fanned by uncharacteristically strong winds. Reproductive rights are endangered in the heat of partisan politics. Inflation has soared to record levels and hurt the ones who have the least.
Yet, my morning also included a nose kiss from my four-year-old daughter under her quilt, the dribble of syrup down my six-year-old’s chin, and the puppy’s wet nose tickling the neck of my nine-year-old as he collapsed to the floor in giggles.
“When despair for the world grows in me,” wrote Wendell Berry, “I come into the peace of wild things.” When I am afraid for the future, I focus on children, especially my kids. When I am fully present with them, I have more courage to embrace that bigger story of love. To put down my iPhone and reach out to hold hands around the kitchen table.
Embracing this time with my kids, I find that, when I venture into the word, I am more open to expanding my circle of sympathy for more people, including those with different opinions and beliefs.
***
In the movie Don’t Look Up, Meryl Streep is a crass, philandering President of the United States who is obviously based on Donald Trump. She even wears a red baseball hat at her campaign rallies. Jonah Hill plays her hapless son and campaign manager as if he were spoofing Trump’s sons on Saturday Night Live.
The Trump-like supporters are one-dimensional. They close the door in the face of their adult children who believe the comet is real. They wave signs and mindlessly chant, “Don’t look up! Don’t look up!”
While the movie is satire, filmmaker Adam McKay wanted to address the widespread denial of climate change, particularly among American conservatives. But I question the effectiveness of the portrayal of Trump supporters if indeed the goal is to change their minds. Few people are convinced if they are mocked and belittled.
This is never to excuse “the dominant, diminishing stories” that are part and parcel of today’s Republican Party, such as the explicit ties to white nationalism. But we can “look up” for a bigger story, a more nuanced and expansive version shared by more of us. No one is one-dimensional. We all have joys and sorrows, disappointments and dreams. Many of us love our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. We need more conservatives, as well as people of all political stripes, to do more to curb climate change and give future generations a chance to survive.
I try to remember that I, too, have much to learn.
***
My two sons had Earth Day off from school. It was their idea to pick up trash along the main road in our neighborhood. I readily agreed, thinking this would be a good learning experience for them.
While I managed our excitable puppy on the leash, the boys worked together to deposit beer bottles and potato chip wrappers in a plastic trash bag. Walking this road, I was surprised by the amount of litter I overlook while driving by. There was a lot of work to do.
After picking up several pieces of trash, my sons wanted to linger by the edge of the woods and study the trunk of a tree. They began poking a stick in the grass for insects. I found myself growing more impatient than our headlong puppy. And just as snappy. I told them we needed to get moving. Hurry up!
“Dad, don’t you know?” My kindergartener replied, “If you hurry, you never get anywhere.”
Well, damn. What could I say to that?
Thomas Merton wrote to a young peace activist: “Do not depend on the hope of results. Face the fact that your work will apparently be worthless and even achieve no result at all…you will start to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.” My sons embodied this truth. The point was not how many pieces of trash we could collect, but how we could connect to our local environment and to one another. And this connection cannot be rushed.
Unlike a filmmaker making a statement about climate change or parent who wants to impart a lesson to his kids about Earth Day, children rarely approach an experience with a preconceived agenda. I wonder if that’s why spiritual teachers across the millennia have counseled us to become more like them. Meister Eckhart, a monk in the Middle Ages, claimed that, “If I were alone in the desert and feeling afraid, I would want a child to be with me. For then my fear would disappear, and I would be made strong.”
The crises of the larger world seem overwhelming. Despair for the world grows in me. It’s tempting to check out or become numb. But I want to live out of a story that is stronger than fear or cynicism—the story of the evolution of love. As Emily Dickinson put it, we have “narrow hands / to gather paradise.” With my kids, I want to linger under yet another maple tree, craning my neck to see the sunlight filtered through the leaves. Drop one more pebble into a pond.
***
My phone buzzed on my afternoon walk. I stopped to check a breaking news update. Across the street at the park, a mother read a picture book to her two young songs. I happened to look up from my phone as the younger child popped a Goldfish cracker into his mother’s mouth. He left his little fingers on her lips and she pretended to chew them, gumming them gently. The child’s laugher rippled in the sunlit air and I gave myself over to my own giggles.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman serves as poet pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, NC. His fourth book, Gently Between the Words, was published in 2019.