Mary Thorne reminds us of our past and asks if we have the wisdom and commitment now to choose for the long-term common good.

Remember the significance and excitement of the moment when 1999 ticked over into the year 2000? In Aotearoa New Zealand, many stayed awake to watch the sun rise on a new millennium. Then, weary from our celebrations, we spent the first day of 2000 watching television coverage of neighbourhoods, like our own, marking the occasion. We listened to people expressing their dreams for this new millennium. They spoke of peace and justice and a fair go for everyone. It was a moving expression of our nation’s shared values, this heartfelt belief of so many ordinary New Zealanders, that in our wonderful country we wanted things to be better.

Nineteen years later, the new millennium a distant memory, those values of peace, love and fairness were shockingly violated by an act of violence against people praying peacefully at the Friday prayer services in two Christchurch mosques. New Zealand people responded with an outpouring of grief and loving support.

Now, as the first anniversary of the Christchurch shooting passes, we are challenged again. This time by a viral sickness that is sweeping around the globe in a devastating way. Our capacity to act in solidarity for one another’s wellbeing is being tested. We encourage one another to choose and act kindly and wisely. As our contacts and activities are drastically curtailed, humans across the face of our planet have unprecedented time and opportunity to reflect deeply. We stand and look at trees, birds and sky.

Communicating a New Vision

Using the technology of our time, we check on each other: “How are you going?” We have a sense that this crisis requires us to make hard, brave choices that will determine whether millennial dreams of transformation and renewal will finally be fulfilled. Commentators have talked of a portal to a different future in which some of humanity’s excessive and destructive behaviours will have been left behind.

For dreams and visions to be translated into reality,we must make clear, intentional choices. The struggles and self-discipline we needed to get through Lockdown may be good practice for choosing well in the future.

I am reminded of Elizabeth Strout’s words in the novel Olive Kitteridge: “Some skin that had stood between himself and the world seemed to have been ripped away, and everything was close and frightening.”

Perhaps a heightened sense of our vulnerability, interdependence and connection might change our choices and make us brave enough to allow psychological barriers to thin and become permeable, even disappear altogether.

Knowing Our Reality

In order to make good choices, we need to be aware of our own reality and how that reality colours our view of the world. We must also be acutely attuned to a bigger picture — to what is happening on a planetary scale.

The exhortation to “know thyself” is fundamental to choosing wisely. As a mature theology student in the 90s I was excited to learn about contextual theology. I learned that just as a fish has no concept of water that is the milieu in which it swims, my female, Pākehā, middle-aged, financially secure self can be entirely unaware of the biases, prejudices and blindness inherent in my perceptions and thinking. I learned that the factors and processes implicit in my decision-making needed to become explicit if my own aspirations to contribute to a just society could be met.

There is no shame in acknowledging the limitations of my own voice. It ought, however, to demand a certain humility and sharpen my ears to hear other voices more carefully. Firmly grounded in my values, I must look up and out to see the wider view. I must pay attention to the issues that our Earth grapples with and choose to act for justice and a sustainable future.

Our Reality Is This Planet

Behind, beyond and woven through the present COVID-19 pandemic is ecological crisis. This is the issue that must shape our choices if we are to pass through that portal into a new and sustainable way of living on this planet.

Human consumption is out of control and the present experience of a worldwide pandemic may be the catalyst we need to hasten change. Our only option is to reduce pressure on our finite planet. The experience of rapid action, firm discipline and unified purpose provides us with the knowledge and the perspective we must now apply to an even more grave situation.

Call for Brave Choices

COVID-19 elimination and recovery budgets are, of necessity, very large. As a nation we have a moral and economic duty to direct this stimulative spending towards projects that are in line with the bigger picture of global environmental crisis.

The urgency of the need to respond to widespread hardship and loss of livelihoods can tempt us to revert to the status quo. We all speak of resuming some sort of normality but we must employ huge courage and wisdom in order to envisage and work towards a better future. Choices about how to create employment, rebuild industries, restore export markets and support our social structures must all be made in a way that serves the long-term view.

Recovery programmes do not have to be “either/or” — either economic benefit or ecological well-being. Proposed projects include energy, housing, transport, forestry, water upgrades.

We can achieve optimal outcomes when economic and environmental ends are combined to achieve the best of both. Job-rich, climate-friendly approaches will lead to healthier futures.

Choosing for the Common Good

The thing about choices, of course, is that to choose anything requires us to forgo other things. To move at all is to abandon the status quo. There’s the rub! It feels rather scary. It was so easy, on the cusp of a new millennium, to hope and dream of a better future. We have shown ourselves and the world that here in Aotearoa we can be decisive and brave and united. Now is the time to believe strongly that we are a people who can continue to make choices for the common good.

Hopes and dreams are entirely necessary to inspire us and summon us forward, but choices require action.

Later this year, when levels of Lockdown are reduced, our country goes to the polls to elect our government. This is a time when we have a responsibility to think deeply about policies that are in accord with our values and will help to achieve planetary good in the long term. We have to resist the temptation to maximise our own benefit or focus on single ideological issues. We claim our identity as decisive, brave and connected.

Our Values Assist Our Choices

We stand on the values of our faith traditions as we intentionally make and speak of brave choices. Christians are now in the season of Pentecost which joyously asserts that new life springs out of what looks like unmitigated disaster. RENEWAL — and we are part of it.

We choose awe before the incomprehensible creative energy and love that is our God.

We choose gratitude and love for our wondrous planet and its air and water and soil and vegetation.

We choose respect and care for all life in its myriad forms that it may flourish into future millennia.

We choose to relinquish fear and live in hope, simplicity and compassion.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 249 June 2020: 4-5