Long Term
I always want everyone to win. Not just the favorite. Not just the underdog. Everyone. Have fun, compete, get your best time, make friends! It drove everyone in my house nuts during the Olympics. When someone came out of nowhere. Or set an Olympic record. Or learned a new way to pole vault or throw a heavy ball or swim 1500 meters and changed their sport forever.
It’s the same with states or cities or countries. It’s all meaningless really. We are all on the same big blue marble. What right does anyone really have to live in Springfield Ohio? Weren’t Moundbuilders and Algonquins living there before the area was taken and the land privatized? Or what about the coasts? And why can’t just anyone move to a Greek island? Do people with generational wealth really work harder than the billions of people hustling to pay rent and their cell phone bill? Are people in my neighborhood more clever than my friends in Uganda?
We are all one. All with the same needs. And the same type of dreams. A cute, loving partner, a safe home, enough money to buy food and clothing and entertainment. A satisfying job. Friends. A nice walkable neighborhood- whether urban or coastal or some other landscape.
Working together for the common good seems to be a concept that is fading away, even as its importance increases. Where do we even start? Renewable energy? Plastics? Sustainable food sources? Water, internet, basic health care and education are basic human rights. There is no practical reason that any of these things should be privatized and monetized by corporations or across boundaries.
The eight million unauthorized immigrants in this country - the ones without some kind of legal temporary status - are for the most part working, doing jobs that no one else wants to do, filling in the gaps of our declining workforce. Very detailed information about immigrants in the US is in this article by the Pew Research Center.
It is going to take a quantum leap in imagination in order to begin working for sustainability and for the long term. I see patients from all walks of life, from all cultures, from many areas of the world, housed, unhoused, from Kansas City or Chillicothe or Uganda. And all I see is a health problem to address. A human being to treat. Someone to learn from and to teach.
When we frame all living creatures as equal, when we work for the common good and the long term, when we see resources as renewable and not scarce, when we are calm and open and curious, that’s when we can start to make good decisions.
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. John 13:34
Every single other.
Holy One, open our hearts. Let us feel your love for us, and for every one of our brothers and sisters around the world. Amen
Brandon is a member of Peace Church and is increasingly grateful and reasonably hopeful.