Barry Lopez

#RESIST

July 28, 2019

“Wealth is Wasted on the Wealthy”

“Beware Billionaires in Philanthropic Clothes”

-McKinley Lentz, 21, Greenbay, Wisconsin

#FreeSpeach

‘Since oney is what it is, I do not deny that you may be worthy of all praise if you light your cigarettes with it. That would show you had a deep, pure sense of the ontological value of the dollar. Nevertheless, if that is all you can think of doing with money, you will not long enjoy the advantages that it can still obtain.’

-Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

And…

Even where totalitarianism has not yet completely wiped out all liberty, men are still subject to the corrupting effect of materialism. The world has always been selfish, but the modern world has lost all ability to control its egoism. And yet, having acquired the power to satisfy its material needs and its desire for pleasures and comfort, it has discovered that these satisfactions are not enough. They do not bring peace, they do not bring happiness. They do not bring security either to the individual or to society. We live at the precise moment when the exorbitant optimism of the materialist world has plunged into spiritual ruin. The result is an agony of ambivalence in which each man is forced to project upon his neighbors a burden of self-hatred which is too great to be tolerated by his own soul.

-Thomas Merton, The Living Bread

 

In that place where there are shadows may I bring light. – St. Francis

 

‘The lies we tell are like toys,

easy to break. Like gardens

where we play hide and seek,

and, in our excitement, make a sound

so people will know where to look.’

-Rilke, Collected French Poems

Barry Lopez:

We reject the assertion, promoted today by success-mongering bull terriers in business, in government, in religion, that humans are goal-seeking animals. We believe they are creatures in search of proportion in life, a pattern of grace. It is balance and beauty we believe people want, not triumph. The stories the earth’s peoples adhere to with greatest faith–the dances that topple fearful walls; the ethereal performances of light, color, and music, the enduring musics themselves–are all well patterned.

We feel cold.

Our goal is simple, we want our country to flourish.

 

Morality & Compassion

October 25, 2016

[Photo: San Juan’s/Lopez Island, Washington]

“How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.” 

Barry Lopez, “Arctic Dreams”