Are We Being Good Ancestors?

Hello friends, the Season of Creation spans 34 days. It began Sept. 1, the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. It concludes Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology. It started in 1989, when Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I proclaimed Sept. 1 a day of prayer for the environment. Just months after publishing his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si, on Care for Our Common Home,” Pope Francis formally added the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation to the Catholic calendar. Could churches be doing something special, or other religious organizations, in these difficult times? Maybe one could walk neighborhoods with many religious groups. Here is a poem that I hope reflects some of these pressing concerns, from my upcoming collection “Interbeing.”

“Are We Being Good Ancestors?”
(title from Underland, Robert Macfarlane)

As my days decline,
I wonder with sadness about our progeny.

Will the approaching end of our species
make survivors wonder where we put them?

Will they be careful not to touch tons of nuclear rods
buried beneath our once-beautiful earth?

What puzzles me in this scenario
is our inability to remember forward

by a century or so, like remembering
about the Model T or the first flight.

Avoiding the final catastrophe
is like defying death.

Can we examine fears of losing children
in the ultimate disaster of our making?

Do we cling to blessed forgetfulness
to make present life bearable?

Or will we find the courage
to work against the greenhouse end,

and become the caring ancestors
in the memory of generations to come?