Spirituality in a Civil Society

"Perhaps every generation believes that it has reached a turning point of history, but our problems seem particularly intractable and our future increasingly uncertain.

Many of our difficulties mask a deeper spiritual crisis. During the twentieth century, we saw the eruption of violence on an unprecedented scale. Sadly, our ability to harm and mutilate one another has kept pace with our extraordinary economic and scientific progress.

We seem to lack the wisdom to hold our aggression in check and keep it within safe and appropriate bounds. The explosion of the first atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki laid bare the nihilistic self-destruction at the heart of the brilliant achievements of our modern culture.

We risk environmental catastrophe because we no longer see the earth as holy but regard it simply as a  'resource'. Unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that can keep abreast of our technological genius, it is unlikely that we will save our planet.

A purely rational education will not suffice. We have found to our cost that a great university can exist in the same vicinity as a concentration camp. Auschwitz, Rwanda, Bosnia and the destruction of the World Trade Center were all dark epiphanies that revealed what can happen when the sense of the sacred inviolability of every single human being has been lost."

I guess this is the "core business" of the 3 ngo's I've founded so far - Open Family, Emerald Hill Mission, Father Bob Maguire Foundation - i.e. the sacred inviolability of every single human being.

Like the Socceroos, showing 'form' in the face of more mature opposition, lots of ordinary men and women are doing extraordinary things.

Read this letter from one, Geoff Le Serve.

"G'day Father Bob,

I thoroughly enjoyed your show on SBS with John Safran. I found it very entertaining and was something to look forward to watching every week. It was a great series.

I am organising a fundraising event in my home town of Leongatha for an agricultural school in East Timor. I visited East Timor last year and visited this little school by chance and though it was a wonderful project to help out. I was just typing some things in google to see if anything came up on advertising of the night.

I have Rod Quantock doing a comedy show in Leongatha as an opener then a small presentation of the Timor Dairy project and an auction of agriculture products to finish off the night.

So I typed "Quantock Timor" in google and your site came up in the results! And I noticed a play on mannix by Rod Quantock. So I thought I just let you know about what I am doing. 

I have attached a recent newsletter and document on the project. The website is Timor Dairy. Would you be able to mention the fundraiser on your website? Any help you could give would be fantastic."

That's feeling East Timor's pain and sympathising in practice. Read my Podcast Forum for more evidence that the "sleeping giant" of civil society may well be waking. Bob.

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[dante]

shepherd Bob'
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