Let Me Walk in Beauty

O Great Spirit,
whose voice I hear in the winds
and whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me.
I am small and weak.
I need your strength and wisdom.

Let me walk in beauty
and let my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears grow sharp to hear your voice.

Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people.
Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock.
I seek strength not to be greater than my brother or sister but to fight my greatest enemy, myself.

Make me always ready
to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes So when life fades as the fading sunset my spirit may come to you without shame.

-Chief Yellow Lark

This is one of my favorite entries in the book, “God Makes the Rivers to Flow,” by Eknath Easwaran, a book which I found by accident in a book store and which has become kind-of like my bible.

Thinking about this planned daily blog over the course of the next weeks of fasting, I thought I’d begin with this poem. The words are powerful, and the spirit of respect for the earth and a higher power seem completely appropriate to this particular action, this historic action.It really has become historic. Well over 1,000 people are not eating tomorrow, from all 50 states and 14 countries, as an act of hope that our country and our government will change course soon and become not an obstacle to the world’s efforts to address the climate crisis but, instead, a leader.

Just today, we heard from a woman by email telling us to include an additional 39 people from her church in the count of those fasting. It’s certain that there are similar groups like this that we just haven’t heard from, so it’s entirely possible that two or three thousand fasters is a more accurate number.

And there are about 125 of us who will continue fasting after tomorrow, some for two days, some for a month, some, like myself, for weeks with no set ending date.

I’m apprehensive, sobered and excited all at the same time. I know from past experience on long fasts that there will be moments, many of them, where I will question what I’m doing, moments of weakness when all I will want to do is follow my natural instincts and eat.

But I also know that during those times I will look for and find strength and inspiration, the courage to continue, as I think of all those people all over the world who “fast” not out of choice but because of a supremely unjust world economic order. I will think about the many, many more who will go hungry, become refugees, homeless or die as a result of the massive disruption of human society climate change will cause all over the world if the worldwide movement to slow, stop and reverse global heating is not successful.

There are some hopeful signs that this action is going to be noticed. I was interviewed by CBS Radio this evening, and they indicated they’ll be running short clips of the interview tomorrow morning. C-Span told me on Friday they’d be covering our press conference live. A story has already been published in the National Catholic Reporter. And there are other signs of press interest.

Finally, September 4th is here.