What in the world are we doing?

Reading this post from Musings of a Discerning Woman reflects my own fear about what’s happening in the world and phrases perfectly my question “What are we doing to this gift of life that God has given us?”

With everything that so desperately needs doing in the world, our governments are spending billions on war and weapons. If we consider what transformation that money could bring if spent on education and on the environment – well it makes me weep and despair.

The natural world seems to me so tightly bound up with our spirituality and our experience of God. This Holy Week of Easter takes us through agony and despair to the unbelievable hope of the Resurrection. How can we open our earth and its people to resurrection?

These stricken lands! The green time of the year
Has found them wasted by a purple flood,
Sodden and wasted everywhere, everywhere;
Not all our tears may cleanse them from that blood.

The earth is all too narrow for our dead,
So many and each a child of ours – and Thine
This flesh (our flesh) crumbled away like bread,
This blood (our blood) poured out like wine, like wine.

From Sacrament, by Margaret Sackville