Article May 25, 1998 Issue

It's not the end of the world

There's no need to escape the world.
Your prayers contribute to its improvement.

By Zoë Landale

I remember sitting  during the 1960s in a hippie van with purple shag carpet softening the walls, and talking with a woman about the Bomb. "I'm terrified," I said. "It seems like the world is totally falling apart. The only solution I can see is to move somewhere really far away and homestead. You know, grow our own vegetables, be as self-sufficient as possible." There was something about the anonymity of our conversation—I had never met her before—that enabled me to speak up. Truly I hadn't realized until that evening how much the world situation panicked me.

In the soft glow of the van's low-voltage lights, the woman leaned forward and began talking. What she said was to the effect that even if nothing she nor I did could change the world situation, we might as well live our lives as richly and with as much grace as we could.

I found what the woman said comforting, but the world was a fearful place. The only way I knew to make it safe was to make it small and cozy. I became a commercial fisher, which took me way out on the ocean. I even tried to have flower boxes up north on our forty-foot troller. The wind blew the tops of the flowers off.

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