It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the state of the world and to feel helpless. There’s not much any single individual can do. A starting point is to see how the world works through the eyes of the disadvantaged, the poor, the marginalised and those most impacted by climate change. When leading sixth year Quo Vadis pilgrims on a three-day hike over the mountains, there was an implicit understanding. ‘I’ am not there yet until ‘we’ are all there. No matter how fast or athletic a person was, the pace had to accommodate the weakest. We would often stop to wait for the stragglers who were finding it difficult to climb the steep sections and then continue only after they had recovered. While the stronger may have been frustrated from time to time, there was an invaluable lesson. We walked as a community where people watched out for one another. We weren’t in competition. We were in empathetic solidarity. This experience mirrors our better nature.

Excerpted from Reimagining Religion by Jim Maher SJ (p.116)