A Reflection on Interlinked Moments
It was, as they say, a news-filled year last Friday, February 28.
Agreements honoured since the end of WW II, the “Rules Based International Order” were trashed in the oval office and relayed on our T.V. screens. Two small men haranguing a courageous Ukrainian president. I agree with Tom Nichols, writing in the Atlantic, that it was one of the most grim days in the history of American diplomacy.1
This jarring event, occurred on the edge of Lent which begins this Wednesday March 5. Lent encourages us to change our ways, to “rend our hearts”. As Kate Bowler says, Lent is
“the season of ash, grace, and realizing we’re all held together by duct tape and whispered prayers”.2
Lent calls us to open our lives to tenderness and respect, to deeper change, and wider horizons. One Lenten practice that calls to me this year, is to prayerfully discern the amount and the way I follow political news.
In this, I take guidance from Krista Tippett:
I can’t count the number of people I’ve encountered across the last weeks who … are deleting apps, limiting their consumption of news, boycotting or disrupting the barrage of information overwhelm. I’m beginning to see this as a spiritual discipline for being alive in this time. It is not to be confused with disengagement or passivity. It may be an essential tool for sanity, and a key to discerning and sustaining a sense of agency for the time ahead.3
I hope a support in this discerning will be this RNDM Canada Blog. Launched three years ago, on March 21, 2022, we have contributed a steady stream of reflections from a variety of people, and from diverse perspectives and places on planet earth. In an increasingly shaky world, we still practice a truth we saw when we began:
“In a time of destruction, create something: a poem, a parade, a community, a school, a vow, a moral principle; one peaceful moment.”4
Please add to the conversation by leaving a comment in the section below.
Which brings us by a circuitous route to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards, on February 23, and Jane Fonda’s acceptance speech:
Have … you ever watched a documentary of one of the great social movements, like apartheid or our civil rights movement or Stonewall, and asked yourself, would you have been brave enough to walk the bridge? Would you have been able to take the hoses and the batons and the dogs?
We don’t have to wonder anymore because we are in our documentary moment. This is it. And it’s not a rehearsal.
… This is big-time serious, folks. So let’s be brave. … We must not isolate. We must stay in community. We must help the vulnerable. We must find ways to project an inspiring vision of the future. One that is beckoning, welcoming, that will help people believe. To quote the novelist Pearl Cleage … ‘on the other side of the conflagration, there will still be love. There will still be beauty. And there will be an ocean of truth for us to swim in.’5
An ocean of truth to swim in! In a world made dangerous by so many lies those are waters for which I long.
1 Tom Nichols. “It Was an Ambush: Friday marked one of the grimmest days in the history of American diplomacy.” The Atlantic. February 28, 2025. Accessed at: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/ukraine-us-relations-trump/681880/
2 Kate Bowler. For more see: https://katebowler.com/seasonal_devotional/the-hardest-part/
3 Krista Tippett. “The Wisdom of Pulling Back from the News: Finding light in the fragments”. The Pause. Substack Feb 22, 2025. https://onbeing.substack.com/p/the-wisdom-of-pulling-back-from-the
4 Maxine Hong Kingston. Gratefulness.org – https://gratefulness.org/ – WORD FOR THE DAY – 03/12/22
5 Jane Fonda. February 23. “Stirring speech at SAG Awards. Exactly What She Said” By Scott Stump. https://www.today.com/popculture/awards/jane-fonda-sag-awards-speech-rcna193446
Veronica Dunne is a Sister of our Lady of the Missions (RNDM), who has primarily worked as an educator and counsellor in institutional and community based settings in Canada. She has also served with the RNDMs outside of Canada in Senegal, Peru, and Aotearoa New Zealand.
A 2002 Doctor of Ministry graduate from the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto School of Theology at the University of Toronto, she subsequently served as director of the Doctor of Ministry program at St. Stephen’s College at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Her current research interests are in eco-theology and cosmology, and their intersections with indigenous cosmologies and spiritualties.
She presently serves on the RNDM leadership team in Canada.
Thank you, Veronica! You describe most accurately the present scene in our world. One that we neither desire nor want to duplicate. It is like diplomacy has been tossed out and ignorant behaviour has replaced the international order once acknowledged and practised. How sad! No wonder people are deleting apps and disengaging. They have had enough of the foolishness. However, we must still cling to truth and support the most vulnerable. May our Lenten efforts lead us to discern and sustain a healthy sense of agency.
Thanks Veronica. Like yourself, I seek groundedness in this time of chaos.
This quote from Gandhi is helping me: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.”
Thanks, Veronica, for this most validating reflection! I especially am moved by the Krista Tippett quote, as I am one that frets about disengaging and I am comforted to read her take on it as a conscious spiritual practice. Much to ponder…
Thank you Veronica… In some ways it feels that we are drowning in an ocean of lies so the challenge to trust in what is on the other side of the conflagration is an ongoing call to hope.
Thanks Vee for encouraging me on the path of shutting off the negativity and overwhelming despair evident in so much news. I saw the Jane Fonda moment and was uplifted. There she was still fighting the good fight so to speak, well into her eighties. She has been in the middle of so many momentous uprisings, speaking truth to power and taking the blows and still she rises. May I be as brave.
Thanks Veronica. I agree with the need to discern the time spent following the news, taking in enough it be informed and remain hopeful and not so much as to be overwhelmed and depressed.