In my first blog posting dated January 4th, I introduced you to a JPIC Discernment Tool – a Franciscan JPIC Examen. In the second posting, on January 15th, I presented the first step of the Examen, gratitude, which encourages us to live with and pray out of an ‘attitude of gratitude’. The second step of the Examen moves us outward to an awareness of our world so that we will know where to bring justice, promote peace and care for creation.
 | "awareness" My journey into awareness began when I was eighteen years old. That is when I left home and attended the University of Victoria to study biology - specifically ecology. |
| Knowledge grew into an awareness that God is everywhere – If God is everywhere, then all things spring from God’s love. In effect, we are enveloped in God’s loving embrace. |  |
 | The interconnectedness of all things and all people - the diversity seen in creation intricately woven together as a web of life – was so awesome to behold. |
| And at the same time, the fragility of that web was made apparent. Everything that we do has an effect on something someone somewhere. We do not live in a vacuum. Photo:T.J. Watt |  |
| Moving to a bigger city, I was introduced to homelessness and poverty. I could see how greed, and our human desire to accumulate as much as possible as fast as possible, destroyed God’s creation and left people reeling. Our current economic structures appeared to be designed to encourage us to accumulate more, to own the biggest, the best, and the newest commodity, to be efficient without consideration for how our energy |  |
systems, for example, might detrimentally affect people’s wellbeing or the health of the environment. If you could not keep up with the ‘race to own and accumulate’ because of your limitations (mental and physical health) or your status in life (colour, creed or sex), then you would be left behind perhaps even abandoned on the street. Advertising suggested we could not live well without a particular car, gadget, vacation, etc. I did not hear the message that God’s bounty is enough – that if we live in a system built on caring and cooperation, on equitable distribution of needed resources with the understanding that all people and all systems are interconnected then we would thrive.
| Time passed.  | Eventually, I married and had two children. Being a parent in a nuclear family in the country of Canada, in the province of British Columbia in the city of New Westminster in a local church community increased my awareness of the interconnectedness of people and all creation – the need to care for one another and for all that we have been given. |
God looks at the Earth and sees the great diversity of the world, the goodness of all creation and the different people who live in the world today.
Ask for the grace to look at the world as God does
– to see the world in its infinite goodness,
diversity and interconnectedness.
– to see the world in its infinite goodness,
diversity and interconnectedness.
Do you see the beauty of creation and hear the cries of the earth and the cries of the poor?
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