How are you making sense of the world we inhabit? Are you minding your mind? Are you hopeful in the face of the addiction of our species to fossil fuels?

Sick already of this post? That’s absolutely your choice. Each of us is taking care (or not) of the ecology of our mind. This is turns influences the part we play in influencing the ecology of the planet.

My colleague and friend Annette Smith gave me the chance of some continuing professional development (CPD) today. She pointed me to a podcast with Brian D McLaren called “What’s the problem with hope?” which considers his new book called ‘After Doom’.

Brian, from Florida, is a former English teacher, a theologian, and activist. From listening to him, I would describe him as a very thoughtful, knowledgeable, measured, kind and gentle soul.

His podcast reminded me of the wonders of how we make sense of ourselves and of others and the world around us – something that develops as we grow older.

I made notes as I listened. It was hard not to type up a full transcript of what he had to say. It all mattered to me. Anyway, my task here is to try and share with you some nuggets from my hour of CPD:

“We need a kind of activism that has a very long event horizon” which acknowledges there aren’t quick fixes and we are up against power and money.

In his book he describes the four future scenarios he believes we are facing with a collapse of the world’s ecosystem as we know it:

🔴 Collapse Avoidance (before the environment collapses our civilisation will collapse)

🔴 Collapse Rebirth (we learn our lessons during a civilisation collapse and rebuild an ecological civilisation)

🔴 Collapse Survival (some of us survive civilisation collapse)

🔴 Collapse Extinction (we throw the earth’s environment out of balance leading to the sixth mass extinction)

This, from a vantage point that “most of our religious institutions are captive to money…the money to be gained by fossil fuels … just accepting that money is god”

So where’s the hope in this you ask?

He quotes former Czech Republic leader President Havel – “Hope is not the certainty that things will turn out as we wish, hope is the conviction that some things are worth doing no matter how they turn out’ and that kind of hope is what keeps us going, whatever the opposition”.

Consider not only the storms of extreme weather – “I think we should expect that there will be storms running through individual nervous systems… a storm of anxiety, a storm of fear, of dread; and then we think maybe our politicians will get together, and then we look at our politicians and we just feel sick to our stomach”

“When people become anxious enough, a significant percentage of people just want an authoritarian leader to come and fix everything … it draws us all into an authoritarian fantasy.”

The parable of the rich fool is not just relevant for individuals but “becomes a mirror for our civilisation”.

Be a hopeful activist!
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