Reaching Into The Future

There are those well-balanced people whose emotional lives never vary. They are never wildly optimistic nor are they agents of gloom. And then there is the rest of us. Sometimes we are delightfully happy, and sometimes we know that disaster is just around the corner. Julian of Norwich was famous for saying “All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” But I wonder if she ever had a bad day or even a nasty hangnail. Sometimes perpetual optimists just get it wrong. Pliny the Younger is said to have told the citizens of Pompeii to have no fear, and the next day Vesuvius erupted burying the entire city.

Is there any perfect condition to which we might point, or even a perfect vision of what might be? For the next few paragraphs let me put on my preacher’s stole and suggest that the future is not just a dream to be cherished, but a reality to be created. Jesus held out a vision of the way God orders affairs in the heavenly dominion. And he prayed,
”Thy Kingdom come
Thy will be done on earth,
As it is in heaven.”

But what if the divine Kingdom to which Jesus pointed is not a place at all, let alone a quasi-real existence somewhere out there designed for those who qualify, or are qualified by God, to live forever and ever and ever? What if the Kingdom to which Jesus alluded is a vision of the way life might be ordered if that divine dream could somehow be brought into the here and now?

Jesus’ ministry was spent training a group we know as his disciples, whose task would be to reach into that dream in the mind of God where the hungry are fed, the sick healed, and the outsiders are welcomed, where justice is the watchword and peace the operative condition, where the physical world is cherished and no one is left out. The task laid on his followers was to reach into that vision and bring a handful of it back into the present.

Now allow me to descend from the pulpit and offer mundane examples of what this might mean.

What is your image of having a well-formed slim body, and a mind to match? How might you reach into that vision and bring back a good handful of it into the present? The answer lies not in some fanciful dream, but how that future reality shapes what you are doing in the here and now. So you watch what you consume, and eat only those things guaranteed to help you control your weight. In that future, now brought into the present, there are more salads than there are Big Macs and french fries. In that future there is a vigorous exercise program, good books and solid educational opportunities. Your life is then will be shaped by the vision of what you want to be—in body and mind.Whatever you dream about doing or becoming, it starts be taking courses in preparation, and learning the necessary skills now.

And what is your vision of a perfect nation that now may exist only as a hoped-for reality? Might it be one where everyone has adequate health care and the opportunity for a good education? Might it be a nation where wealth is shared and strangers welcomed, where minorities of all kinds are included and nobody is homeless and must sleep on the streets, where justice prevails, where the natural world is cared for, where peace is the consistent reality, where economics is secondary and human values primary?

How would such a world be actualized? If that is your vision, your task is to reach into that future and bring back into the here and now whatever you can. The name of that activity is ‘POLITICAL ACTION.’ It is the only way to actualize the vision. Only as those who imagine such a world strive to establish it in the here and now,

If, however, your vision of a perfect nationn is one where the rules guarantee that thr icch get richer and the poor are abandoned, where strangers and other nobodies are walled out, where health care is a right if you have enough money, and the potency of our weapons defines our international reputation, then your political work will take a very different shape. What vision will prevail? We will get a pretty good idea following what happens on the second of November.