On an unexpected meditation…

This summer, I participated in a training program to become a Laudato Si’ Animator, part of the Laudato Si’ Movement, born from the urgency of the climate crisis as articulated in Pope Francis’s encyclical called Laudato Si’. As part of the program, we were asked to complete a written meditation, imagining the youngest person we were close to could write us a letter as an elderly person. When I first picked up my pencil to write it, I anticipated writing something like a thank you letter — like, Thank you Dad for doing everything you could do! But that is not where my pencil took me. This weekend is the first meeting of the Laudato Si’ South Philly Circle, meant to work toward more emphatically and urgently living the message of Laudato Si’; and, in anticipation of that first meeting, this is that letter, from my young son to me.

…

Dear Dad,

There’s not an easy way to say this.

It wasn’t enough.

I saw that you tried and loved that you tried, but it wasn’t enough. I am old now, and my lungs are deep black bags from air gone rancid. My skin is yellowing from the burden of ultraviolet rays shattering the atmosphere, trapped like dangerous rainbows bending from the Earth’s surface to its cloudy canopy. Dad, you tried, and Mom tried. People tried. We all know about the trying. We still find small paper brochures in the garbage piles advertising green cleaners and reusable water bottles and sustainable food delivery. We don’t laugh at you, but in hindsight it does seem strange that the answer was more consumption. But, we don’t laugh. We also built part of the garbage heap. And, like I said, we know you tried.

But it wasn’t enough. And we are suffocating.

Do you remember the walks in the forest we would go on? The way the tall grass would bend in the wind. I remember marveling with you about how plants can grow on the top of large rocks and eventually, over time, the roots crack through the stone and crumble the rock into dust. I remember how you spoke so honestly and vulnerably in the forest because I was young and you knew that I would embrace it, that the garbage of the world hadn’t yet seeped between my eyes to make me see things in black and white: how you would hold my hand in one of yours and touch the tips of the tall grass with your fingertips and say how you hoped heaven was just like melting into the bend of the tall grass; how you hoped eternal rest was deep in the earth amongst the roots birthing new life.

We do not go outside much now. There are forests still, on the outskirts of the cities — way past the suburban sprawl that bisected animal migration paths and disrupted rain runoff. Many of the houses now are empty. But, strangely, the plants have not reclaimed them: the walls are bleached and bare. The plants have lost that resiliency we once marveled at in the western Pennsylvania forest. It is too hot, now, too dry, and too unpredictable for roots to take hold, for the leaves to spread and catch the bits of sunlight that make it through the smog. There are entire subdivisions of homes like skeletons, abandoned when it became too burdensome to transport resources to this network of sprawl. Those of us who are still here have crowded into the city. It is the only place left where water can be rationed reasonably.

We expect our grandchildren to be the last generation on the planet. Perhaps a few people will find safe haven further inland for another hundred years — likely the folks who built fortunes on oil and misinformation, coal and head-in-the-sand denialism. But, for most of us, the oceans have risen too high to know what comes next. The weather patterns have changed, and food production has proven difficult. Difficult, that is, for most of us. Money still buys things, like the highest ground and climate-controlled agriculture.

Dad, I know you were meticulous about recycling and biking to work. It was nice. But, it wasn’t enough. You probably knew it wasn’t enough, but couldn’t think of other ways to make change. The future seemed far away, I imagine, and you thought you were doing all you could do. Maybe you thought the future would appreciate these small sacrifices.

We do not talk about the future now. We do not plan, and we have lost the hope of reversing the devastation. We want only to know who will be the last. And we keep hoping it will be us, that we will not have to see another generation bear the burden of our inaction. Like you, we could not muster the courage and brilliance to calm the seas and cool the air. And we are dying — we call it exctincting. Like self-aware dinosaurs, we wander around, waiting for the end.

Yours,

until the end…