The old Lego which gladdened the hearts of two generations until winding up color-sorted in my parents' garage are on their way to new adventures.
We took them today to a thrift shop where, we hope, they'll introduce a whole new series of kids to the endless possibilities of original Lego.
If my heart is heavy, it's because it's full!
Up again, another record year, and we know mitigation efforts will be reduced in the coming years... It's hard not be disheartened, and to harden one's heart in reaction. What can be done?
I have the privilege of teaching a course on religion and ecology next semester. I haven't taught that class in five years, and more than global annual temperature has changed. We've had four years of decisive response to the climate crisis. But the class starts the day after the inauguration of the new-old president, and as he signs a sheaf of reactionary executive orders many of which will promote the climate crisis-denial shared by his gang of thugs.
This iteration of "Religion and Ecology" will explicitly engage Buddhist perspectives, and they may help us keep our hearts soft. As I've worked out the syllabus, I've made more central than in any past class how we'll be building a community through shared practices.
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Another new year. May it pop with profound pleasures like this ocotillo we spotted in dry wintry Borrego last week.
But for this of all years, the lessons of the 20th century now a quarter century past, I wish (and resolve!) that we be lights to each other, that we not lose our way in the rising darkness.
