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A clarion call for tolerance, respect and love

 

Nothing in recent decades has been quite like the wake-up call we’ve been hearing recently.  Coronavirus brought the world to a virtual standstill and it’s effects are still ongoing.

 

Prior to the pandemic, around the world people have been dying in wars, from hunger and disease, from abuse, from people trafficking and modern forms of slavery.  They have also been dying from depression, drug overdoses and suicide.  In addition we have been losing species at an alarming rate and the planet itself is dying. And yet, we were not paying sufficient attention.

 

Waiting and not knowing in a time of chaos

Waiting is not something many of us are good at, and we don’t like uncertainty.  Yet this is where we are, and it’s uncomfortable and monotonous.  We can do little but wait - for lockdown to end, for testing for all, for a vaccine to be discovered and universally made available, and for the economy to get back on its feet.  None of us knows how the chaos we find ourselves in will turn out, whether life will ever return to so-called ‘normal’, and what the long-term implications of a world turned upside down may be.

 

Life is always uncertain, but we can remain hopeful

‘When you are strong and healthy,

You never think of sickness coming,

But it descends with sudden force

Like a stroke of lightning.

 

When involved in worldly things,

You never think of death’s approach;

Quick it comes like thunder

Crashing around your head.’

                                         Milarepa

 

HOPE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS

 

The world is in shock, much of it in lockdown and curfew.  After devastating fires in Australia, floods in many parts of the world, and a massive infestation of locusts in East Africa, we now have a global epidemic of coronavirus spreading exponentially.  Much we’ve taken for granted is disintegrating and our way of life can no longer be as it was before.