A
collaborative
project with support from the Sisters of the Holy Names
Dedicated
to the mission of education. Within this mission, we
promote justice and create community.
The purpose of this website is to offer educational and informational
resources in support of our SNJM commitment to becoming a transformative
presence in the world.
A recent headline in the paper read: "Modern life is
hastening human evolutionary pace," but the question
must be asked, "What kind of evolutionary advance is
modern life hastening?"
We see in the Prologue to The Earth Charter a description
of what modern life is hastening: "The dominant patterns
of production and consumption are causing environmental devastation,
the depletion of resources and a massive extinction of species.
Communities are being undermined. The benefits of development
are not shared equitably and the gap between rich and poor
is widening. Injustice, poverty, ignorance and violent conflict
are widespread and the cause of great suffering. An unprecedented
rise in human population has overburdened ecological and social
systems. The foundations of global security are threatened.
These trends are perilous - but not inevitable."
Indeed, these trends are perilous but they are not
inevitable.
Over our long evolutionary journey, we humans have learned
how to harness and tame the powers and energies that are at
work in the outer (material / physical) world but we
must now learn how to harness and tame the powers and energies
that are at work in the inner (psycho-spiritual) world.
Evolution's thrust from now on must be in the cultivation
of that inner (soul) landscape, in the taming of our hearts,
in the curbing of our appetites, and in the harnessing and
cultivating of those vast spiritual powers of which we humans
are capable: capacities for love and compassion, for balance
and restraint, for reverence and awe, and for justice-making
and peacemaking.
Sister Mimi Maloney SNJM, Sister Katherine Gray SNJM
Letter to the Editor
The Olympian, June 2009
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