Christmas Blessings
And 10 worthy non-profits working for a better world...
Yesterday morning I received a perfect Christmas gift. I went out on my bike for a long, easy ride (something I really miss on a boat). Temps were in the low 40s. There was no wind. Rays of sunlight filtered through a gauzy layer of cloud. Most important—and this was the astonishing gift—there was almost no car traffic. No impatient, angry, commuters squeezing past me to save a few seconds. No imperious SUV drivers making a point of nearly pushing me off the road with their wing mirrors. No hotheads throwing trash at me. It was cycling in another, entirely peaceful, dimension. My body worked itself into that endorphin zone where the mind is diamond clear, and you experience the sheer pleasure of muscle, sinew, and lungs hard at work. Turns out that Christmas morning is the perfect time to ride a bike on roads that are usually busy, contested, and dangerous.
One of the things I love about being on a bike when the roads are peaceful is that it is highly meditative. I rarely complete a solo ride without some new insight or idea. I am not religious, or a believer in God. I am not a fan of commercialized Christmas. But I am a believer in Jesus as a revolutionary, and, given the day, my mind meandered in his direction.
Love one another.
Forgive one another.
Help one another.
To imagine a world where these values are universal is to imagine a world that is very different, and quite beautiful. This sort of imagining makes me smile and brings me hope.
Every year, at this time, I send whatever I can to support well-run organizations that are working effectively to move us toward a more equitable, merciful, livable world. It won’t be a surprise that I tend to focus on climate, biodiversity and our broken relationship with animals. In case you are looking for worthy causes, here are the 10 organizations on my list this year:
Christmas-Time Reading:
Despite my atheism, I find Pope Francis to be a humane and inspired thinker. His Christmas message this year touched on a critical foundation for a better world that I have mentioned—the need for humanity to somehow transcend war and violence:
The Door is open, the door is wide open! There is no need to knock on the door. It is open. Come! Let us be reconciled with God, and then we will be reconciled with ourselves and able to be reconciled with one another, even our enemies. God’s mercy can do all things. It unties every knot; it tears down every wall of division; God’s mercy dispels hatred and the spirit of revenge. Come! Jesus is the Door of Peace.
Often we halt at the threshold of that Door; we lack the courage to cross it, because it challenges us to examine our lives. Entering through that Door calls for the sacrifice involved in taking a step forward, a small sacrifice. Taking a step towards something so great calls us to leave behind our disputes and divisions, and surrendering ourselves to the outstretched arms of the Child who is the Prince of Peace. This Christmas, at the beginning of the Jubilee Year, I invite every individual, and all peoples and nations, to find the courage needed to walk through that Door, to become pilgrims of hope, to silence the sound of arms and overcome divisions!
That would be a good Door to walk through, indeed. And it is always worth revisiting Pope Frances’ 2015 urgent call for humanity to treat our planet and all its other species with care and mercy.
Speaking of. Our treatment of farmed animals, and the physical and mental pain we inflict on them, is appalling and indefensible. And a searing indictment of human indifference. But incremental progress in 2024 to reduce (some) suffering is worth applauding:
Progress for factory-farmed animals is far too slow. But it is happening. Practices that once seemed permanent — like battery cages and the killing of male chicks — are now on a slow path to extinction. Animals who were once ignored — like fish and even shrimp — are now finally seeing reforms, by the billions.
It’s easy to gloss over such numbers. So, as you read the wins [I list], I encourage you to consider each of these animals as an individual. A hen no longer confined to a cage, a chick no longer macerated alive, a fish no longer dying a prolonged death.
I still think that Nobel prize winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer, who escaped Hitler’s Germany, has it right in his observation that “In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis. For [animals], it is an eternal Treblinka.” But the arc of the universe IS bending. Just very, very, very slowly.
It is a season of hope, so it is worth reading how Uruguay became a model for the transition to carbon-free energy:
Just 17 years ago, Uruguay used fossil fuels for a third of its energy generation, according to the World Resources Institute.
Today, only 2% of the electricity consumed in Uruguay is generated from fossil sources. The country’s thermal power plants rarely need to be activated, except when natural resources are insufficient.
Half of Uruguay’s electricity is generated in the country’s dams, and 10% percent comes from agricultural and industrial waste and the sun. But wind, at 38%, is the main protagonist of the revolution in the electrical grid. But how did the country achieve it? Who were the architects of this energy transition?
Read on. It is an instructive and inspiring story.
I wish everyone peace and joy. I’ll be heading back to Laughing Gull in January.
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