A View From the Window
by Betsy Toll
Gardens are awash in dizzying colors, blossoms shower down from
the trees like snow, and a hundred shades of green greet the morning.
Bright wildflowers wave on the hillsides, spring runoff cascades
down mossy rocks, and the sound of flowing waters fills the forest.
Such is the news from Earth this spring.
Elsewhere, other sources offer a starkly different picture: war,
pollution, corruption, terror, outrage, oppression, and destruction.
The images overwhelm us, and breaking our spirits, they limit our
thinking, define our reality, and strip away hope.
“... Living Earth is rooted in the conviction that
in the practice of balancing, we become whole.”
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Holding paradox
The profound dilemma is that both accounts are true. Our task is
to somehow find balance, to hold each deeply, yet neither more deeply
than the other. If our lives are to have meaning, we cannot turn
away from suffering or from responsibility, but we must also embrace
grace, goodness, and beauty as well.
Practicing balance
Living Earth is rooted in the conviction that in the practice of
balancing, we become whole. Our coalition work opposing war, our
summer picnics, our support for families downwind of Chernobyl and
for young women in Vietnam, are all part of this balance.
Community potlucks with home-cooked foods and fresh ideas, Sunday
gatherings for quiet reflection, the retreats, workshops, actions,
and celebrations—all elements of becoming whole, living the
values of interconnection and interdependence.In community, we become
better able to actively address the grave challenges that threaten
the world.
Equally importantly, in community we strengthen our awareness that–
despite the daily headlines—the will to goodness and the fragrance
of peace are blooming everywhere, like tiny spring blossoms bringing
their beauty to impossible places.
The heart of the matter
This is the heart of Living Earth. In times so rich with potential,
it is urgent that all who long for peace and dream of another world
join together.
Together, we nurture those blossoms, hold those visions, build
connection, and begin to create that other world, the world we know
in our hearts and in our bones is possible.
Betsy Toll is Executive Director
of Living Earth. Contact her at Betsy@LivingEarthGatherings.Org
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