"On Hallowing One's Diminishments"

 

"One might say with the Buddhists, that this is an important form of "mindfulness" and try and cultivate the inner posture in which such consciousness can be relatively sustained. Consulting the dictionary I find that for the word "hallowing" the following definitions are offered: 'make holy or set apart for holy use, consecrate; to respect greatly; venerate." It was a new and most encouraging idea to me - that one's diminishments could be "made holy," "consecrated," "respected greatly," even "venerated."

I saw that the first step for me in learning to "hallow" the progressive diminishments in store for me was deep-going acceptance. But the acceptance would have to be positive, not a negative one, if it were to be a real hallowing. I must learn to do something creative with it." *

On her blog “Casaubon’s Book,” Sharon Astyk writes:

“[W]e can come to recognize that sometimes, the point is not whether we can alter events, but how we face them. We can find meaning, even when we cannot change things, in our ability to shape the meaning of things - to do right, even when the right thing is not enough, to face even very hard times with courage and honor, even though it won't make the hard times go away to do so.

Yungblut was writing about Parkinson’s.

Sharon is writing about peak oil, water depletion, and climate change.

We can fight and rail against the things in life that feel so unfair. We can slip into pretending they don’t exist. We can give up in despair. Or we can turn around to face that horror and work to understand why it is so terrifying and how we can face it with honor.

What we are facing are the consequences of our own past actions and decisions. Initially we were unaware of what was happening, but now we know. We have been using up our natural resources and now they are running out. We have exported our style of living through movies, television, and other media. Now people around the world want to live like Americans do. But the reality is that Americans can no longer live as Americans do. The longer we delay making the necessary changes, the harder it will be to face them.

Previously, we did not think of what we were doing. Now we have come up against the reality of our actions. We can postpone what needs to be done or just make token efforts at making some changes. If we fail to make the big changes—the challenging changes—our children and grandchildren will have to try to inhabit a world terribly different from the one we were so privileged to enjoy.

If we can hallow our diminishments, we will find some benefits—a sense of community, a sense of family, a sense of having tried to do the best thing when we realized we had done some of the worst.

If anything in what I have written here strikes a cord, please read Sharon's blog entry "On Hallowing One's Diminishments." She speaks the truth with humanity and eloquence.

* “On Hallowing One's Diminishments,” by Quaker writer John Yungblut