I've had a very difficult time wrapping my head around the scope of this oil spill in the Gulf, and what it's reverberations will be.
"Better eat fish now," my friend Elizabeth said at lunch the other day. "We won't be able to get any soon."
I look at the pictures, at wildlife stuck in the muck, and the mass destruction of ecology and life that is a holocaust. You can visualize how big the impact of the BP oil disaster on your home-town area here. A big, dark spot, huh?
And then yesterday I get an email from a young woman - Cathy DePasquale - who I met on a wintry evening at Books of Wonder three years ago, commemorating the life and work of my Gran.
She writes: I was thinking about the oil slick and a memory of your grandmother's wrinkle in time came to me. I haven't read it in a long time so I can't be very specific. I remember the good witches telling Meg to look at the Earth and when she did she saw these dark spots on the Earth which were caused by IT. And now we have that dark spot. Just a thought, sometimes writing, which is aimed a larger issues like Madeleine's is prophetic.
Cathy, you blew me away. We have a physical, visual manifestation of IT right now, and, like the threat of nuclear bombs in the 1950's, we feel afraid and powerless. At least I do. Can we take comfort in the message of A Wrinkle in Time? Is faith enough? Is being true to our creative selves enough?
"Who have our fighters been?” Calvin asked.
“Oh, you must know them, dear,” Mrs Whatsit said.
Mrs. Who’s spectacles Shone out at them triumphantly, “And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.”
“Jesus!” Charles Wallace said. “Why of course, Jesus!”
“Of course!” Mrs Whatsit said. “Go on, Charles, love. There were others. All your great artists. They’ve been lights for us to see by.”
“Leonardo da Vinci?” Calvin suggested tentatively. “And Michelangelo?”
“And Shakespeare,” Charles Wallace called out, “And Bach! And Pasteur, and Madame Curie, and Einstein!”
Now Calvin’s voice rang out with confidence. “And Schweitzer, and Ghandi, and Buddha and Beethoven, and Rembrandt and St.Francis!”
It has to be enough. Our creative selves keep away the demons of apathy, and if we succumb to that wet, cold, blanket, no change will happen, no lights will shine, there is no solution, and nothing will ever get done.
But I'm preaching to the choir here, n'est ce pas?
