Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C *Alternate* Second Reading

I asked Daniel whether he felt hopeful about the state of the climate movement. In response, he offered a story.  Just the day before he was canoeing on the Delaware River with his then two-year-old daughter, and they capsized. “I grabbed my daughter. She was all right, so we began swimming to shore, he recalled. … “There was a moment when I worried that we wouldn’t get to shore because we just weren’t getting there fast enough. Fear was setting in.” … Daniel said he realized that worrying about the outcome wasn’t helpful and wouldn’t change his actions anyway. … “There’s only one thing to do.  I am going to swim to shore,” he told himself.

“That was it, so, that’s how I feel in terms of where we are.” He added that one of the things he’s learned from climate colleagues in the Global South is that they are not burdened by the mythology common in US movies and novels, where an individual hero saves the entire universe against all odds.  He said it has helped him psychologically to realize he can’t carry the weight of the whole world on his shoulders. That’s unfair and unrealistic. All any of us can do is keep swimming, doing our part to reach the shore.

The words of Eileen Flanagan.