Well, congratulations we made it! When 2017 began, there were a great many people who wondered if the man who was waiting to be sworn in to the most powerful office in the world would take us down a path of mutual self-destruction. While it has been an amazing year, our worst fears have not come to fruition. 2017 may go down in history as the year that a narcissist drove us all to distraction, but the doomsayers’ predictions that, “the end is nigh” have not come to pass. I suspect that pessimists of all sorts have been predicting the end of the world since the world began. So, on this the last day of this very strange year, we greet one another in the same way as our ancestors greeted one another: “Happy New Year!” and even as we bid one another a Happy New Year, we know that the forecast for the coming year looks bleak.

There is little doubt that 2018 will see the continuation of the abuse of our planet. We humans will go on burning the stuff that we know full well is causing climate change that will have catastrophic effects on the environment. Species will continue to become extinct. Peace in the Middle East is more elusive than ever. Most of us aren’t expecting a lull in terrorism anytime soon. The mess in Syria will continue to be a mess from which refugees will continue to flee. The flow of refugees will continue to expose the racist underbelly of far too many cultures.

The madman in North Korea and the narcissist in Washington will continue to taunt and threaten one another, while the world wrings its hands. Nationalism and tribalism isn’t going away in the New Year. Indeed, we all know that the most powerful office on the planet is in the hands of a man whose ignorance knows no bounds. The prognosticators, the talking heads, the prophets of our day are warning of a new and frightening Cold War that will continue to threaten our way of life. The poor are still with us. Despite all our technological advances, despite our proven ability to feed everyone on the planet three times over, men, women, and children continue to starve to death in all sorts of places all over the planet. We also know that basic human rights that we take for granted like clean drinking water are denied to far too many communities in this country, a land that actually contains one quarter of the world’s fresh water. We know that the rich keep getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and the middle-class is disappearing, and we know that money can’t buy us happiness. Yet, in the midst of all these obstacles we continue to bid one another a Happy New Year. Even though we know that the folks we are wishing a Happy New Year will continue to face not only these obstacles but the realities that illness and death will no doubt touch their lives in some way or another, precisely because illness and death are part of life. Continue reading →