Hope for the New Millennium: A Reflection
Philomena Marie McCartney, OP
The Nature of Leadership, by Stephen Covey, A. Roger Merrill and Dewitt Jones is one book that evokes a hope for the new century. These authors articulate the essence of leadership in great simplicity. They provide an experiential journey of the principles of nature that revitalize the wisdom of principle-centered leadership. They call leaders to be open, seek wisdom, ask the hard questions and ponder deeply. My hope is that all leaders in this millennium will one day be open, seek wisdom, ask the hard questions and ponder deeply.
Another book is Seeds of Hope. A revised edition of the 1989 release, it includes selections from the full spectrum of Henri Nouwen's works. Following the title page is the passage from John 12:24: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” My hope from this little book is that we befriend aging, illness, and even death. Nouwen relates how, after having a near-death accident, not one friend expressed that his return to his old life was not necessarily the best possible outcome. He laments the fact that no one wrote, “To have been found not ready to be completely united with the Lord to whom you have given your life must have been a disappointment. As your fellow traveler, I welcome you back into the struggle of life.” He concludes that “the countless liturgical texts about our eagerness to live with God in eternal joy and peace are obviously not expressing our true desire.”
Nouwen admits he was not any different in his thinking after this experience but it raised this question for him: “Have we lost contact with one of the most essential aspects of our creed: the faith in eternal life?”
How much fear, anxiety and pain would dissipate if we were able to befriend aging, illness and death! How much more energy we would have for new ideas, for vision and for mission! We would not deny the condition, but perhaps, we could celebrate aging, cope gracefully with illness, and welcome the moment that leads another or oneself into eternal life.
A third book, which even travels with me, is Maria Harris’ Proclaim Jubilee! The hope that I glean from this book is that we adopt the spirituality of jubilee for the millennium—a spirituality that calls us again to find our soul, a soul that enables us to forgive ourselves and others, a soul that allows us to practice sabbath, thus becoming counter cultural, less frenzied, learning to be present to the moment and to be appreciative of the privilege to begin a new millennium.
Finally, a recent novel entitled The Looking Glass, by Richard Paul Evans, emanates for me the hope that, in this new millennium, all of us will one day be able to see the divinity in ourselves, the reality of who each person in our world is. It challenges me to see how worthy each person is to be held, trusted, cared for, honored and graced. This includes the homeless ones sleeping on our city streets and the children crying on the garbage heaps in other lands. The most successful and financially secure can't be forgotten nor can the widowed, penniless woman holding her dying child in tired arms. Would that we as a people could see the divinity in them, worthy of love, of gentleness, of grace and of sharing.
These are my hopes for the new millennium. I will not live to see these hopes realized but I will commit myself to enable possibilities for some semblance of each to rise up and be nourished.