"call from the future"

don't make fun of me, but i happen to have a free subscription to oprah's magazine. ok, go ahead and laugh, but she's got a good zine going, and i've become a fan.

this month features some short articles on global warming and the like by a swath of authors. most i enjoyed, but i particularly appreciated a piece by barry lopez entitled call from the future.

i recommend checking it out as a quick read, but some highlights:

instead of the numbing rhetoric of "us" and "them," we will have to invent a new kind of "we." it's the "we" already welling up in many of us, born out of empathy, out of genuine love for each other and the Earth, and out of sober assessments about our predicament. it's a grittier, less jingoistic "we," born of hard work.

what we need is uncommonly mature people. a kind of courage is required we've not seen before, that "we" in us that wants to make a simple bow of recognition, without judgment, toward all other people caught in the same travail, and then simply to start the work.

theoretical and philosophical, yes, but that's how i do things.