Confronting Life After Doom with Resilience

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog are likely aware that I am a big “fan” of Brian McLaren. In a March 2017 blog post, I placed him on my list of “Ten Most Admired Contemporary Christians,” and he is on my list of “Top Ten” theologians and/or philosophers by whom I have been influenced.*¹

Beginning with McLaren’s book A New Kind of Christian (2002), the first of a trilogy that was significant theology written as novels, I have read many of McLaren’s fifteen sole-authored books and learned much from them.

In a March 2018 blog post, I made extensive reference to his 2006 book, The Secret Message of Jesus, in which he emphasized that the Kingdom of God is more about society than about individuals.*²

That emphasis on the Kingdom of God being primarily about human society in the present world rather than the heavenly realm where individuals are transported upon death is a major reason many contemporary conservative Christians do not regard McLaren highly.

Brian (b. 1956) first wrote about the growing global ecological crisis in Everything Must Change, his 2007 book which I finished reading in June 2008. I thought it was so significant that in 2020 I placed it on the list of my favorite non-fiction 21st-century books.*³

Since I don’t include more than one book by the same author in my list of favorite books, I have replaced McLaren’s previous books in the list just mentioned with Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart, which was published the middle of last month.

McLaren’s Life After Doom is essential reading for all of us who know about and care about the future of life on planet Earth. On the dust jacket, environmentalist Bill McKibben says this book is as “rich and thoughtful as all of Brian McLaren's work, but with a particular urgency!” I fully agree.

Early in “Welcome to Reality,” the second chapter, McLaren succinctly sets forth the diagnosis of the predicament he examines throughout the book: “Our global civilization as currently structured is unstable and unsustainable” (p. 23).

Some scientists and eco-theologians, especially William Catton, Jr., and Michael Dowd, have made this same diagnosis.*⁴ But this is the first time a major Christian writer has analyzed that predicament so thoroughly and so clearly—and with a pastor’s heart.

Throughout this challenging book, McLaren explores four possible scenarios for the years ahead. In the second chapter, he calls those scenarios 1) “Collapse Avoidance,” 2) “Collapse/Rebirth,” 3) “Collapse/Survival,” and 4) “Collapse/Extinction.”

Since it is clear that he thinks only the last three are feasible, at the end of the first chapter he warned his readers that the following chapter would be “rough sledding.” Then chapters three and four are “pastoral” in nature: he helps his readers face the fearful future in ways that are not debilitating.

How can/should we live life after doom? In the fourth/last part of his book, McLaren elucidates what he calls “a path of agile engagement.” Michael Dowd’s emphasis on “post doom, no gloom” provided helpful light for these dark times. McLaren’s last chapters are even more beneficial and encouraging.

In chapter 17, Brian repeatedly stresses that despite all the ugliness, “beauty abounds.” In the next chapter, he cites and heartily agrees with the words, “It is a magnificent thing to be alive in a moment that matters so much” (p. 224).

Chapter 19 emphasizes the need to live with the dream of the kingdom of God which is “not a destination after death: it is the higher, bigger, vaster, deeper way of life here and now” (p. 236).

The following chapter is “Find Your Light and Shine It.” If we do that, even in this time of doom, we can have “an abundant life, a meaningful life, abounding with beauty … whatever the future may hold” (p. 249).

“Whatever you do, it matters.” Those words (on p. 253) are the crux of McLaren's final chapter, which closes with 15 numbered paragraphs expounding that basic assertion.

So, even if we are—or because we are(!)—living life after doom, let’s live resiliently, not giving up, giving in, or giving out. Paraphrasing Maya Angelou, let’s do the best we can until we know better—and then, let’s do better!

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*¹ I first published that list in my book subtitled The Story of My Life from Birth until My 82^nd Birthday (2020).

*² That emphasis was also the title of  #7 in my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2019).

*³ In the 2023 updated version of my life story book, I replaced McLaren’s 2007 book with Do I Stay Christian? which was published in 2022.

*⁴ In Appendix 1, McLaren lists what he considers the five best books dealing with “our predicament.” The first is William Catton’s Overshoot (1982)—and “The Most Important Book You’ve Never Read,” my 2/23/23 blog post, is about Catton’s book. Then McLaren gives Michael Dowd’s videos as the first of the five best video/audio resources. Many of you will remember that I have written about Dowd several times, the first being in my 1/25/22 blog post. McLaren mentions that Dowd was his friend who died while he (Brian) was writing this book.

 

Praise for the Pope

Like most of you who read this blog, I am not a Roman Catholic, but I have considerable appreciation for Pope Francis. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in 1936, ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1969, and elected Pope in March 2013. He chose Francis as his papal name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi. 

Pope Francis speaking at the Vatican on 10/4/23]

There are many reasons to praise Pope Francis. For example, just nine days ago (on 10/4/23), the Pope issued an “apostolic exhortation” under the title Laudate Deum (=Praise God). That document, which can be read in full here, was directed “to all people of good will” and was “on the climate crisis.”

Last month, I read much of Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis’s encyclical officially published by the Vatican in 2020 on October 4, the feast day of Francis of Assisi. While there was much good and important content, I was somewhat critical of it as it seemed to be lacking specificity or concreteness.

This month’s new document, however, which is a commentary on Laudato si' (=Praise Be to You), the Pope’s major 2015 encyclical on the environment, is generally quite specific and concrete. In the second paragraph of this recent “exhortation,” the Pope says:

…with the passage of time, I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.

Over the past twenty months, I have cited Michael Dowd and others who have spoken warningly about collapse, but here is a clear statement about that fateful future by the Pope.**

Also, an Oct. 4 Vatican News article (see here) states that in Laudate Deum the Pope “criticizes climate change deniers, saying that the human origin of global warming is now beyond doubt.”

Early this month, the Pope convened the three-week General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican, sometimes called the Super Bowl of the Catholic Church. It drew bishops from around the world to discuss hot-button issues.

Some of those issues are whether priests should be allowed to get married, if divorced and remarried Catholics should receive communion, whether women should be allowed to become deacons, and how the church will handle matters around the LGBTQ community.

It remains to be seen how, or when, these contentious matters will be resolved, but for those of us who are egalitarians, the Pope’s willingness to consider such matters is certainly praiseworthy.

Sadly, many USAmericans have little praise for the Pope. Politics takes precedence over their religious faith. Or for others, they hold to an outdated, conservative Catholicism and are, literally, more traditionally Catholic than the Pope.

According to an Aug. 28 APNews.com post, “Many conservatives have blasted Francis’s emphasis on social justice issues such as the environment and the poor,” and they have also branded as heretical his openness “to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive the sacraments.”

As an example of politics taking precedence over the position of the Pope, consider the contrast between Francis’s recent “exhortation” regarding global warming and U.S. Catholics.

The Pope, as well as the preponderant majority of climate scientists around the world, emphasizes that “the human origin of global warming is now beyond doubt.”

But last month, Pew Research Center (here) reported that only 44% of U.S. Catholics say Earth is warming mainly due to human activity—and of U.S. Catholics who are Republicans or lean Republican, only a strikingly low 18% think that global warming is human-caused.

In response to such criticism, the Pope has called the strong, organized, reactionary attitude of some Catholics in the U.S. Church “backward,” and has stated that their faith has been replaced by ideologies.

Francis reminds these people that “backwardness is useless, and they must understand that there’s a correction evolution in the understanding of questions of faith and morals” that allows for doctrine to progress over time.

Such progressiveness is one of the main reasons I have praise for the Pope. His deep concern for the future well-being of all people around the world has led him to claim that a correct understanding of Catholic doctrine allows for change over time.

Would that all Catholics, and all Protestants as well, could embrace these progressive ideas of the forward-looking Pope.

_____

** With considerable sadness I am sharing the news that Michael Dowd (b. 11/1958) died on October 7 as the result of a fall in a friend’s home. More information about his death and memorial service is available here. 

The Most Important Book You’ve Never Read

Perhaps I’m mistaken, but my guess is that none of you regular readers of my blog have ever read William R. Catton Jr.’s book Overshoot. I read it for the first time this year (and plan to read it again). I wish I had read it forty years ago; it is, truly, a book of great significance. 

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change was first published in 1980 and is still in print. (I read the Kindle version of the 1982 paperback.) Eco-theologian Michael Dowd, whom I have referred to repeatedly, says Overshoot is the most important book he has ever read.

All of the first part, “The Unfathomed Predicament of Mankind” can be read on Amazon.com’s webpage (see here). There the author asserts, “Today mankind is locked into stealing ravenously from the future. That is what this book is about.”

Catton (1926~2015) goes on to state that “contemporary well-being is achieved at the expense of our descendants.” He then says,

A major aim of this book is to show that commonly proposed “solutions” for problems confronting mankind are actually going to aggravate those problems (p. 3).

At the end of the first chapter, the author declares, “This is not a book to be read either casually or passively.” Indeed, it is not.**

Catton explains the circumstance and consequence of what he calls “new ecological understandings.” This is summarized in Table 2 (on p. 71) in Overshoot (pasted here), and I encourage you to read it carefully. 

Having watched several videos by Dowd and having read the illuminating books by Ophuls and Catton, I have, reluctantly, adopted the first position, that of realism.

The second of the five “labels” is perhaps the only one that needs some explanation, although the position it designates is widely held. The term “cargoism” is based on the “cargo cults” in the Pacific island societies, especially the pre-literate Melanesian peoples.

Whatever was needed was “miraculously” brought in on European cargo ships. In a similar manner, many contemporary people have “faith in science and technology as infallible solvers of any conceivable problem” (pp. 185-6). Thus, such faith in sure-to-come technological solutions is called cargoism.

Perhaps the most common position for socially aware people is the third one. They realize there is an environmental problem and so they seek to do something (or many things) to address the problem. But such actions don’t solve the deep, underlying predicament; it is merely cosmeticism.

Some people, though, just completely disregard the “circumstance” and the “consequence” as described by author Catton, and this widespread position is called cynicism.

Many other people, and perhaps this is the largest group, don’t just merely disregard but actually deny both circumstance and consequence. This is the position of ostrichism.

So, here are the questions I leave with you. Which of these five terms best describes your present position? If you don’t hold to the first position (realism), are you satisfied with your current stance and would you recommend it to others? Why or why not?

Of course, many of you may think all this is too painful to think about—and I certainly understand why you may feel that way. But refusing to think about the issues is, in effect, “ostrichism.”

As for me, I want to continue advocating realism, believing that that is the best position for promoting both a social conscience and mental health for oneself as well as the optimal future for humankind.

_____

** Three times in the first chapter, Catton makes reference to Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (1977) by William Ophuls, whom I introduced in my March 1 blog post. 

See here for helpful biographical information about Catton. 

Apologies to the Grandchildren

As many of you know, I have seven grandchildren. The oldest celebrated her 38^th birthday in January, so I have been a grandfather for 38 years now. In 2022, two of my granddaughters became mothers, so now I also have two precious great-grandchildren, the first born a year ago last month.

I have been thinking about my grandchildren in a new way because of reading two books written to or for grandchildren. Those books are closely related to my January 28 blog post.

Larry R. Rasmussen’s book The Planet You Inherit was published last year. Its subtitle is Letters to My Grandchildren When Uncertainty’s a Sure Thing. I had the privilege of writing a review of that book for The Englewood Review of Books, and you can read that review here.

Rasmussen (b. 1939) is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics, emeritus, at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Among his published books are Earth Community, Earth Ethics (1996) and Earth Honoring Faith (2013).

It is no surprise that the letters written to Eduardo and Martin Rasmussen Villegas (b. 2015 and 2018), his two grandchildren, are primarily related to his many years of ecotheological teaching and writing.

While the letters clearly express the writer’s love for his two young grandsons, it will likely be 2035 and beyond before they will be able to comprehend the meaning and significance of those letters.

Maybe, though, the writer’s intention was to say important things to us adults who read those letters now, as well as to Eduardo and Martin, who will be reading them much later.

One of Rasmussen’s most important letters is titled “Responsible by Degrees,” written in August 2020. There he broached the possibility of “widespread civilizational collapse”—and asserts that “we know we must put an end to a growing, extractive economy running on ecological deficits.”

Rasmussen, though, has hopeful views about humanity’s ability to confront the current and coming ecological crisis effectively, and those views need to be pondered thoughtfully.

Still, this challenging book written for the author’s young grandsons needs to be balanced with careful consideration of more realistic views about what is most likely to occur in Eduardo’s and Martin’s lifetime.

William Ophuls’s Apologies to the Grandchildren is a 2018 book of essays, the first one bearing the same title as the book, which does give a more realistic and less hopeful view of the current ecological crisis.

(I first learned of Ophuls, born in 1934 and with a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1973, from the video by Michael Dowd that I introduced in my January 28^th blog post linked to above).

Ophuls begins his essay with stark words: ”Civilization is, by its very nature, a long-running Ponzi scheme. It lives by robbing nature and borrowing from the future, exploiting its hinterland until there is nothing left to exploit, after which it implodes.”

He continues by saying that civilization “generates a temporary and fictitious surplus that it uses to enrich and empower the few and to dispossess and dominate the many. Industrial civilization is the apotheosis and quintessence of this fatal course.”

He goes on to write these blunt words to the grandchildren, “A fortunate minority gains luxuries and freedoms galore, but only by slaughtering, poisoning, and exhausting creation. So we bequeath you a ruined planet that dooms you to a hardscrabble existence, or perhaps none at all” (p. 1)

What Can We Say/Do? While I would like to embrace Rasmussen’s hopeful view, I have become convinced by Ophuls and by Dowd—as well as by William Catton, whom I plan to introduce in later blog posts—that my grandchildren and their children will experience a world of increasing gloom.

Perhaps there is still time for necessary changes to be made, but that is doubtful—and there is little evidence to indicate that such changes will likely be made. Perhaps, sadly, little can realistically be done other than to offer deep apologies to the grandchildren.

Yet, surely, we can work toward pushing the impending collapse farther into the future and encourage the grandchildren to find ways to flourish now in the present, regardless of what looms in a future that, unfortunately, may not be as uncertain as Rasmussen thinks. 

"Memento Mori" for the World?

In this year’s first blog post, I wrote some about the ancient idea of memento mori. (If you didn’t see or don’t remember that, click here.) Now, referring to some of my most important posts from 2022, I am wondering whether memento mori can apply to the world, not just individual people. 

Once again, I am linking to significant ideas of Michael Dowd, by whom I have been significantly influenced.* In December of last year, he posted a new YouTube video titled “Sanity 101.” The full version (here) is over 90 minutes long; the “Cliff Notes” version (here) is 30 minutes.

At some point, I encourage you to listen to one or both of those videos, which have the subtitle, “Living Fully in an Age of Decline: Essential Wisdom for Hard Times.”

While still fully affirming the reality of overshoot and the collapse of what he calls TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it), his emphasis in this new video is “post doom, no gloom.”

Dowd’s main point is that we humans today should not deny what we find disturbing or frightening but fully accept reality. In his opinion, formed by extensive reading of scientists and informed thinkers, the predicament of overshoot and collapse of the world’s civilization is certainly real.

So, acceptance of reality means making the most of the present rather than holding on to hope of change for the better in the future. Accordingly, he speaks pointedly about hopium, that is, holding on to false hopes that prevents us from accepting reality.

Memento mori for us individuals means that we live as meaningfully and as purposefully as possible now, fully realizing that we will die at some point in the future.

Rightly understood, memento mori is not a morbid dwelling on our approaching death, whenever that may be, but a healthy emphasis on living life to the fullest today, and every day.

Perhaps this significant idea needs to be applied more broadly: since the collapse of the world as we know it is inevitable, we need to make our existence in this world now as meaningful as possible, living in this post-doom time with no gloom.

This is a fruitful way for us older people to think. But what about our grandchildren (a disturbing matter I plan to write about next month)?

In spite of all I have learned from Michael Dowd, I have a couple of lingering questions/criticisms of his central emphases.

1) He repeatedly talks about the collapse of more than 100 civilizations in the past, emphasizing that the current industrial civilization’s collapse will be similar to those. But it seems to me that his point would be made more strongly if he talked more clearly about the uniqueness of TEOTWAWKI.

None of the collapsed civilizations of the past were as global in scope as the impending collapse, which could—and likely will!—mean a “mass extinction.” According to National Geographic, there have been five mass extinctions in the history of the earth; the sixth has already started.**

The Nat Geo article says the sixth mass extinction may occur as soon as 2260; Dowd says it is most likely to occur in this century. so why, I wonder, does he repeatedly emphasize the collapse of human civilizations in the past 4,000 years, none of which, obviously, led to mass human extinction.

2) Dowd repetitively emphasizes the futile nature of all human efforts to prevent collapse. All current attempts to stem global warming are based on the belief—or at least the hope—that that activity can and will result in reversal of collapse. Dowd refers to all such efforts as hopium.

But even if all human actions are insufficient to deter mass extinction, which they probably are, surely that doesn’t mean that concerted efforts would not postpone that fate to some extent, and maybe even significantly.

Concern for my grandchildren and now for my two great-grandchildren, makes me want to do more to help push as far into the future as possible what might well be sure mass extinction.

If we take seriously memento mori as individuals, we still do what we can to postpone our death, which is sure to occur at some point.

Similarly, if we apply the concept of memento mori to the present world civilization, shouldn’t we wholeheartedly do all we can to delay the coming collapse/extinction for as long as possible?

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* Last year I mentioned Dowd in four blog posts; the first times are here and here.

**The last mass extinction occurred about 66 million years ago, long before the first civilization of homo sapiens, which began less than 4,500 years ago. 

Overlooking Overshoot

As most of you know, I am a big admirer of the Christian group known as the Bruderhof and am a regular reader of Plough Quarterly, their excellent publication. However, I have both appreciation for and some serious questions about their Summer 2022 issue titled Hope in Apocalypse. 

“Hoping for Doomsday”

Peter Mommsen, the great-grandson of Eberhard Arnold (1913~82) who was the founder of the Bruderhof, is the able editor of Plough Quarterly. I have often been helpfully informed and challenged by his perceptive editorials.

I was dissatisfied, though, with his six-page editorial in the current issue of Plough. It is titled, “Hoping for Doomsday: The times are troubled. That’s why we need the promise of apocalypse.”

While Mommsen writes some about the possible disastrous effects of climate change, he seems to think that it is less a threat to humanity than the potential destruction of earthly life as we know it because of nuclear war.

After briefly looking at those two apocalyptic threats, he writes,

one day homo sapiens will go extinct, with or without our help through carbon emissions or nuclear war, and the game will be over. At least that is what current scientific models foretell. Perhaps it will be at the next round of global glaciation, predicted in a hundred millennia or so . . . .

What he goes on to say in that paragraph is what I learned in the 1960s. But, and this was my dissatisfaction, he makes no reference to what some scientists (and others) have said in recent years about ecological overshoot.

In passing, Mommsen does mention Don’t Look Up! the movie I wrote about in my Jan. 25 blog post (see here), but he makes no reference at all to the frightening phenomenon of overshoot.

Ecological overshoot occurs when human demands exceed what the earth’s biosphere can provide through its capacity for renewal. According to some ecological scientists, the industrial world is nearing the overshoot apex and will soon begin to collapse, an irreversible phenomenon.

For a good introduction to this matter, see Michael Dowd’s video Overshoot in a Nutshell: Understanding Our Predicament and also YouTube talks (such as this one) by William Rees, professor emeritus of British Columbia University. These articulate what some scientistic models are now foretelling.

(Rees, b. 1943, is primarily known for creating the ecological footprint concept. Wikipedia, here, gives a good, brief introduction to Rees and his academic work.)

Mommsen’s failure to make any reference to the concept of ecological overshoot and the work of thinkers such as Dowd and Rees is a major deficiency in his editorial.

Why is Overshoot Overlooked?

A main reason is doubtlessly unawareness. In spite of valiant efforts by Dowd, Rees, and others to warn us of the perils of overshoot/collapse, there is little public awareness of that real and present danger.

My “Google alert” for overshoot in recent weeks has yielded surprisingly few “hits.” There are some pertinent articles found at EcoWatch (such as here), but these important essays are read by relatively few people.

Most, I’m afraid, don’t know (and don’t care?) about what is likely to happen before the end of the present century.

But some are aware (to varying degrees) of overshoot but find the idea unbearable. Some who do know at least something about overshoot just don’t want to think about it, because it is too upsetting to consider.

Perhaps a major reason overshoot is overlooked by many, especially serious Christian thinkers such as Mommsen, is that the possibility of such is unthinkable.

Earlier this year, Brian McLaren’s new book Do I Stay Christian? was published. While he does not say a lot about overshoot, he does mention the concept and makes a passing reference to Michael Dowd.

The seventh chapter of McLaren’s scintillating book deals with “Christianity’s great wall of bias, which includes the “tendency to reject anything that doesn’t fit in with our current understanding, paradigm, belief system, or worldview” (p. 67).

Perhaps this helps us understand Mommsen’s lack of serious attention to overshoot.

Much more needs to be said about this—and I plan to write at least a little more about it soon.

Is There a “World without End”?

Since watching several of Michael Dowd’s videos last month (and writing a bit about Dowd on Jan. 25) I have been thinking much about the end of the world as we know it—and about the traditional Christian belief in a “world without end.” Is it possible to affirm both?

The Traditional Christian Belief

There is little doubt that from New Testament times until the present Christianity has asserted a firm belief in a “world without end,” that is, the reality of an eternal world that in every way surpasses the present physical world in which we now live.

The New Testament says, “Unto [God] be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen” (Ephesians 3:21, KJV). Based on these words, the Catholic and some liturgical Protestant churches regularly sing the Gloria Patri doxology: 

As the “world without end” is understood as the abode of those who have received the gift of eternal life, the Apostles’ Creed ends with words affirming belief in “the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”

And the Nicene Creed, which is also regularly repeated in public worship services of many churches, ends with these words: “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.”

Even those of us who grew up in non-liturgical churches, belief in “eternal life” and Heaven was central to our understanding of the Christian faith. But that basic belief seems to have been weakened, neglected, or even denied (in practice if not in words) by “progressive” or “liberal” forms of the faith.

For example, in spite of his dire prognostication about the coming ecological crisis that will most likely result in the end of the world as we know it, Dowd, an ordained Christian minister, says nothing (at least that I have heard) about even the possibility of life beyond death.

The Problem of “Evangelical” Over-emphasis

Those who grew up in conservative evangelical circles, as I did, know how strong the emphasis was on “soul-winning,” that is, getting people “saved” so they would go to Heaven when they died.

During my boyhood years, pastors and especially traveling evangelists would regularly emphasize the Second Coming of Jesus and the concomitant end of this present world, focusing on the reality of “the world without end.”

These same emphases became even more pronounced in conservative evangelical churches after the publishing of Hal Lindsey’s bestselling book The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970.

And then from 1995 to 2007, the Left Behind series of sixteen books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins was highly popular and influential in evangelical circles.

But all of this emphasis on the “end times” was usually accompanied by a marked lack of interest in the plight of people living in the world now. Hardly any emphasis was placed on social issues such as war, systemic racism, poverty, destruction of the environment, etc.

The Problem of “Liberal” Under-emphasis

Although the roots go back much farther into the past, from the 1960s on “progressive” or “liberal” Christians placed more and more emphasis on the social issues of the present world and less and less emphasis on the idea/hope of a coming world without end.

The apocalyptic ideas/beliefs of the conservative evangelicals were mostly ignored, or even scoffed at by many liberals. Of primary interest and importance was the formation of a “beloved community” here and now and being on the right side of the arc of the universe which bends toward justice.

The coming of an ideal society, the Kingdom (or Kindom) of God, was a strong hope for the future of humankind on this earth.

How utterly sad it is if, as Dowd and many liberal Christians (as well as most people without any religious faith) acknowledge, all we can do now is to serenely accept the coming demise of the world with no hope for the future either on this earth or in a world without end.

Is there not some radiant center position between the two extremes?

A Longer Look at the Serenity Prayer

In my previous blog post, I recommended watching Michael Dowd’s 25-minute YouTube video titled “Serenity Prayer for the 21^st Century.” Since watching that video a couple of weeks ago, I have been thinking more about the serenity prayer and I invite you, too, to take a longer look at it.

Looking at the Serenity Prayer

In its shortest form, the serenity prayer consists of three simple petitions, artistically presented as follows: 

As you probably know, the serenity prayer is the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) prayer recited at the end of each AA meeting.

AA.com also has a link to a 12-page pdf titled “Origin of The Serenity Prayer: A Historical Paper.” In spite of similar statements made by various people, the conclusion is that American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892~1971) penned the prayer in its present form.

Even though Niebuhr’s prayer is universally known as the serenity prayer, it actually includes petitions for three things: serenity, courage, and wisdom. It is also noteworthy that serenity is linked to acceptance. Denying or struggling against the inevitable always destroys serenity.

This prayer, though, asks God for courage and wisdom as well as serenity, so perhaps it should be called the serenity/courage/wisdom prayer. Indeed, Niebuhr’s main intent may well have been a call to courageous action, rather than a serenity that fails to work for necessary changes in society.

Looking at the Longer Serenity Prayer

In the above-mentioned video, Dowd emphasizes the next three lines of the serenity prayer that, he says, a lot of people don’t know:

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace,

These are good words. Regardless of what we have faced in the past or are going to face in the future, living and enjoying one day/moment at a time is truly the pathway to personal peace.

Those words of Niebuhr written in the early 1940s are similar to the emphasis on mindfulness by Thích Nhất Hạnh, the venerable Vietnamese Buddhist monk who died on January 22. He taught,

When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace and love.

These words by Thích Nhất Hạnh, as well as the three lines in the serenity prayer that are not widely known, do nothing to help solve the crisis of global warming or the likely collapse of industrial civilization. But they do help us to live calmly and at peace in spite of looming crises.

Looking at the Longer Serenity Prayer

The longest version of the serenity prayer as given on the website of Alcoholics Anonymous (and elsewhere) includes all of the lines cited above followed by these words:

Taking, as He did, this sinful world
As it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make things right
If I surrender to His will;
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life
And supremely happy with Him
Forever and ever in the next.
Amen.

These final lines of the serenity prayer regularly spoken by AA members are even less widely known than the three lines mentioned in the previous section—and are not mentioned by Dowd at all.

What does it mean to be “supremely happy with Him [God] forever and ever in the “next” life? And how come Dowd, an ordained Christian minister, didn’t mention these words at all?

From New Testament times on, Christians have affirmed the reality of a coming “world without end.” Why is that emphasized so little in so much of contemporary Christianity? This is what I will continue to ponder as I prepare my next blog posting. 

Facing the Grief of Looking Up, Looking Forward

Don’t Look Up has been a much-viewed, much-discussed movie this month. There has been a wide variety of comments about that Netflix film both by “professional” movie critics and by amateur reviewers (like me). Unlike some of the professionals, though, I think it was quite significant. 

The Grief of Looking Up

Don’t Look Up is ostensibly about a huge (the size of Mount Everest) comet which is on track to crash into the earth about six months after when it was discovered by a grad student at Michigan State University. She and her professor seek to warn the world of the coming disaster.

Their message of impending doom, however, is not well received. The media is more concerned with the latest news about celebrities and the President is more concerned with the upcoming election and the breaking news about her own personal scandal.

Additionally, wealthy capitalists seek to take advantage of the looming catastrophe for economic gains. And then soon numerous science (comet) deniers emerge, rallying under the cry “Don’t look up!”

Even though that is what the film is about on the surface, it was produced as a satire about the current crisis of climate change (better labeled as global warming).

A large segment of society—politicians, capitalists, media personalities, and many of the general public—is like the science deniers in the film, but their rallying cry for maintaining the unsustainable present is “Don’t look forward.”

The Grief of Looking Forward

In the past couple of weeks, I have learned of, and been challenged/shaken by, Michael Dowd. A constantly evolving thinker, Dowd (b. 1958) is an American progressive Christian minister (ordained by the UCC) and an “eco-theologian.”

His recent work has been focused on the worldwide ecological crisis, which he is certain will lead to TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it).

My initial introduction to Dowd’s alarming thought was through two thirty-minute YouTube videos produced in November 2021: “Collapse in a Nutshell” and “Overshoot in a Nutshell,” both having the subtitle “Understanding Our Predicament.”

In addition, I watched (and recommend) Dowd’s 25-minute video, “Serenity Prayer for the 21^st Century: Pro-Future Love-in-Action,” produced in June 2021. According to Dowd, “the serenity to accept the things I cannot change” includes, or is primarily, TEOTWAWKI.

I have many questions and reservations about Dowd’s disturbing message, but what he presents is certainly something that all of us critical thinkers must take seriously—and his suggestions on how to deal with the grief of looking forward may well be very valuable for us all.

So, What Should We Do?

Whether Dowd’s dire analysis is completely correct or not, of greatest importance is to realize as fully as possible that the ecological crisis is much more critical than most people, probably including most of us, have acknowledged.

The result of unchecked global warming is not just one problem among many equally serious social problems. Indeed, it is not a problem that will likely be solved; rather it is a predicament from which there is likely no escape.

If humankind, probably in this century, will likely experience a collapse of civilization as we know it, what should we do? Dowd’s advice is to work through the stages of grief, accepting what is most probably inevitable, but still living each day with joy and thankfulness in spite of the looming doom.

He emphasizes the need for “adaptive inattention” to the crisis, seeking the well-being of people now. We can seek to be agents of calm amidst the coming chaos.

While the film Don’t Look Up doesn’t deal directly with the grief of looking forward, the final prayer at the “last supper” of several of the characters in the movie is a good one for us to pray at this critical time:

Dearest Father and Almighty Creator, we ask for your grace tonight, despite our pride; your forgiveness, despite our doubt. Most of all Lord, we ask for your love to soothe us through these dark times. May we face whatever is to come in your divine will, with courage and open hearts of acceptance. Amen.

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** Even though he is an ordained Christian minister, Dowd says nothing about what Christians have affirmed for 2,000 years: the coming of a “world without end.” I am planning for my first blog post in February to be about that.