“We Were Made for These Times” By Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Pat McMillan,  Elena Garcia, Bridget Mary Meehan,  Bob McMillan
Ordination of Elena Garcia (This was second reading at Ordination Liturgy)

 

 A reading taken from Clarissa Pinkola Estes:

My friends, do not lose heart.  We were made for these times.  I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered.  They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now.  Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.  Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times.  Especially do not lose hope.  Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times.  Yes.  For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world.  Do not focus on that.  There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be.  Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails. 

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.  Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely.  It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward and enduring good.

The reason is this:  in my utter most bones I know something, as do you.  It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to earth, who you serve, and who sent you here.  The good words we say and the good deed we do are not ours.  They are the words and deeds of the one who brought us here.  In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall:

When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt.  But that is not what great ships are built for.

These are the inspired words of Clarissa Pinkola Estes.