The Spirit Survives

by Margaret Lathrop

Throughout the tumultuous story of the human race, across the multiple millennia, that part of the human psyche we would define as being of the spirit has somehow endured.

There have been many times and there will be many more yet to come when history has inflicted such grievous wounds upon that spirit that it has gone almost dormant.
But like the desert rose, when circumstance brings a change for the better, it blooms again.
Like the mythical phoenix, the human spirit rises from its own ashes.
Always we recognize the manifestation of man's innate spiritual capacity in his ability to perceive and appreciate beauty, his ability to experience compassion and to manifest that empathy in altruistic deeds, even self-sacrifice.
And finally, the presence of the spiritual side of our nature is expressed through creativity and the urge to create, to take the raw clay of our existence and form it into something that is beautiful.
Even when times were darkest there have always been some among us whose heart could soar across the heavens on the wings of some lonely raptor.
Always there have been those who never entirely let the songs of their spirits go still. Always when life seemed its most desolate there have been those who paused to look up and see hope in the far off fire of the stars.
Knowing history as well as I do, it's safe to say that life has always been precarious. Life can change in the blink of an eye.
What with wars and famines and the sudden eruption of disease and every sort of weather one can imagine, we have always been challenged and often we have been, at least temporarily, defeated.
Climate change itself is nothing new. It has had a major impact on human history for as long as earth has been a home for living creatures.
In many ways, it's amazing that we have endured as long as we have. And yet our human spirit has learned to sing, to dance, to laugh, to love and to create and appreciate beauty.
There is no doubt in my mind that we will continue to do so regardless of what the future may hold.
We will never be content to just survive. Even if only a few of us do so, all of us will benefit when the few look up at a star-studded firmament and experience a sense of profound wonder.
Many may pass a flower growing through a crack in the pavement, but if only one of us pauses and is touched by its beauty, it will assure that the human spirit will not perish. The lone singer on a barren hillside under a rain-drenched sky will be the one who keeps the flame of our spirit burning bright.
We are bound together by the common warp of our human nature. And through that warp runs a golden light that can never be extinguished. It is the eternal flame of the Divine Spirit that manifests itself in the creature we call "man."