(This blogging is a funny thing. In a way I’m recycling myself. Back in Christmas, 2004, I wrote a little piece that - with minor editing - seems very appropriate today.)
It was only a couple of months ago, seemingly, that we were watching, shaking our heads to try to absorb it, as we left the twentieth century. We were wondering if the Y2K bug would end civilization, or would at least massively disrupt communications. To this day, it’s undecided whether the scare was totally unwarranted or whether the massive preparations and retrofitting that took place saved us. Either way, the scare brought front and center to all our minds the interconnectedness of the world, as nothing had done before.
I am old enough to remember the first communication satellites that first made possible instant two-way communication between continents.
I remember the first pictures of the earth taken from space. (It may be hard for my younger friends to realize that there was a time - in our lifetimes - when no one had ever seen a photo of the earth as a full sphere. The closest we had, till then, was high-altitude shots from balloons or airplanes.) And I remember those shots of the earth as a lovely blue-green marble in the depths of space, taken by Apollo astronauts circling the moon, with the cold dead moon as foreground.
Because of the Y2K scare, the TV networks had arranged to follow midnight, into January 1, 2000, from the International Date Line in mid-Pacific all around the world, and so we watched community after community worldwide as it celebrated the new beginning. To my knowledge this had never been done before, and has not been done since. For that one moment we were well aware that we were one family on one earth and would live and die as one family, regardless what we might think of one another.
We were still in a breathing space, then, too. The long hostility of the Cold War was over and we had not yet embarked upon new crusades. Under the surface the animosities and ambitions and plotting were boiling, but for the moment things were relatively quiet. (But not entirely quiet. There was a scare that terrorists would try to disrupt the millennium celebrations, remember.)
The years since seem a descent into darkness. Yet as I told a friend recently, psychologically as individuals we have to face our darkness, accept it, incorporate it, even honor it, before we can be whole. Perhaps it is also true for us as communities, and is true for humanity as a whole. In that case, the present darkness can be made to serve our greater growth.
And how do we do that? I can think of a few things that WON’T do it:
blame
hatred
intolerance
self-righteousness
victimhood
yearning for revenge
And a few that might:
acceptance
forgiveness
self-responsibility
tolerance
understanding
One thing about life, it always presents new challenges!
August 28th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Dear Frank DeMarco:
I love your list and am writing to personally thank you for offering a perfect marriage between faith, well documented psychic phenomena, and Science.
The question I have is this: Do you have a fiction department? And if not, why not. Because I would love to read more quality fatansy/thrillers which you’d be perfect for.
Sincerely,
Stephen Hurley, OFM
September 2nd, 2006 at 12:05 pm
‘ello!
Yes! Ditto on what Stephen said.
I would love to read more fantasy/thrillers of this variety! (Yes, okay, I’m a budding writer myself…let’s just get that right out there in the open right away 
I was just wondering to myself recently how little fiction there is on these subjects - the What Dreams May Come’s and the Jonathan Livingston Seagulls seem to have gone out with the 70’s… There’s a TON out there of non-fiction in this area of interesting - a veritable explosion! But where’s the fiction?
The power of the story is so compelling… it allows you to suspend your own beliefs and judgements for a while and place yourself in the shoes of the characters…and feel what its like to be them, from their point of view, for a while. No apologies, no explanations, just plain experience - but not your own. A very valuable teacher for helping one get out of their own box.
I was, by the way, raised on Jonathan Livingston Seagull. My mom read it to me before I could even really understand what she was saying, and it was the first book I ever read on my own. I have a ton of copies, one of them signed…and still believe to the core of my being in the power of a story.
*hugs!*
- Dawn