To Make the World Whole

By Eileen Dooling, Executive Director

Posted on 6/15/2017

Years ago I read about the “butterfly effect,” the theory that the flap of a butterfly wing in Tokyo may affect a tornado in Texas. As I thought about it, I understood that small events in one place can have a much greater effect somewhere else, and small events now may impact events at a later time. Somehow this reverberates in my head lately as the environment continues to be under siege in our country.

Removing the protection of endangered species, proposing drastic cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, approving the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement — all are not only unwise, in my opinion, but they also speak of our own arrogance about the human place in the global community of life. And this is where the butterfly effect kicks in. A decision now will affect whom? When? Do we not see ourselves as inextricably linked to the rest of life? Do we honestly think we are the center of creation? Can we put our confidence in ourselves when we come and go, live and die, and even the work of our hands does not outlast the rocks on the Mercy by the Sea shoreline? The decisions currently being made are not self-contained and finite. Rather they have implications elsewhere and further down the road.

The Sisters of Mercy have “denounced” the withdrawal from the International Climate Agreement and have asked the President to re-consider while calling upon Congress to take the leadership in reducing carbon emissions. I fear deaf ears.

Where do we lovers of the environment go? How do we heal the world with so much stacked against us?

Omid Safi (whom I have quoted before) writes: “We have no choice … but to save the world from our own selves. We are, ironically, the cause of the breaking and just might be the channel of healing. … To make the world whole we have to become healed, become whole.”

Remember that butterfly effect? Safi identifies where it matters: “Our well-being and the world being well are linked together. To tend to our own inner lives is not selfishness; it is wisdom, it is essential, and it is unavoidable.” If we become whole, will we contribute to the wholeness of this world? And if we are healed, is it possible that our world will be healed as well?

I have faith in those butterfly wings, flapping in Tokyo, sending energy and healing into this troubled and disappointed heart. And I have faith in our human community that one act of kindness, one positive action, one tending to the inner life will ultimately contribute to the wholeness of our broken world.

May it be so.