Contentment

Every grownup knows that there comes a time in your life when you just have to settle for what's offered and make the best of it. It's not exactly that you bury the idealism of your youth, that drive to make a difference in the life of the world, that deep desire to be different from all the others who clog up the system with their unimaginative lives, and their whining, and their selfish exploits. It's not exactly that you give in. But you reach the realization that there's very little else to be and do. And you're not as exceptional as you used to think you were.

That's when the time is upon you to buy a riding mower and spend your free time circling your grassy lawn on it, thinking about crabgrass, and dandelions, and all the myriad other threats to your dreamy idyll. It's not that you ever say to yourself, "Okay, I officially declare that I am part of this world's problems now and no longer in search of solutions." That never happens. But the Bilco door needs painted. The shutters need scraped and repainted, too. The gutter needs cleaned out--again. And the more successful you become, the smaller your world, the more insular.

It's not that you stop caring. It's just that imaginary problems begin to obscure the real ones. And the real threats to a happy life--things like jealousy, and bitterness, and nursing old wounds, and comparing yourself to other people--they go unchecked, while all the supposed threats are hunted down like Osama bin Laden.

As I meditate on the life of the world, I'm beginning to believe that the date is late, time is fearsomely short, and the only work that truly matters now is the most urgent work of restoring the planet for future generations. My particular issue is opposition to Marcellus shale drilling, and I have decided to don my clerical collar and show up at all the protests, to write articles, to publish treatises, to enlist the faith communities to find their voice. There are a thousand ways to throw one's life back into the fray...but that is where Life calls us, to the fray. The way of contentment always entails a cause, a purpose bigger than oneself, a deep sacrifice. In some circles they call it a cross, but it's not limited to any religious tradition. It's a universal truth: new life only comes from death.