Some signs of Spring

I have just been looking at my grandson's blog. He is a toddler. How quickly they seem to grow up! Unfortunately I only see his progress through his blog ('managed' by his mother). My other baby grandson I have a lot of contact with, and he is also developing apace. Although there is a big gap between him and his older brother (nearly 12), he does seem to be 'led on' by him. The older boy was doing animations on the computer, and one could see how much this baby - not yet a year old - was appreciating it and thrilled by it. Of course, he is also intrigued by the repetitious screen-saver scene on my computer of 'Spongebob Squarepants'.

It is great to see signs of spring at last after a very cold and wet winter for Canterbury. September is nearly here, with all the birthdays including mine (71). But the world as a whole seems to be going deeper and deeper into a winter that will be like the one in Narnia, never ending and ever worsening. The spring will only come when people the world over face up to the fact that we are too many using too much profligately - that while we look for solutions in science to create a more 'organic' global civilization, we must try to tone down the passion for cultural identities, our inflated expectations, our pseudo-individualistic refusal to accept democratic diciplines, and look more to the common good.

And above all, we must get rid of all ideas that there is some other world besides this that has a 'Big Cheese' in it that can save us (if we put enough faith in it), giving us a 'ticket' to that other world while making demands on this world that have almost nothing to do with preventing the collapse of global society and its environmental support systems - worse, some of those 'demands' even promote that collapse.