(Watching The Sheep: Photo: Fanny, Lulu, Red, Simon)

Maybe the children will save us. Perhaps there is a God, after all. Maybe he will save us. Or maybe we are on our own and we will have to save us.

The biggest issue of the coming year and perhaps every year of the rest of my life is not Donald Trump and the presidential election. I read and hear so much about climate change that sometimes, I don’t hear it all. I can’t absorb the enormity of it.

But what could be more important? This is the future of our home, the earth.  One way or the other, Donald Trump and his impeachment will soon be history. The rituals and war games of the angry old men are out of time, ghosts of the past, they are already fading away.

Our planet was supposed to be forever.

Pope Francis calls the earth our sister. Love our sister, he says, and save her.

In the Kabbalah, God warns the people that if they don’t love Mother Earth and care for her, he will abandon them, and they will be punished by a world uncared for or protected.

I’m not a particularly religious person, but I love this story. There’s something to it.

Day by day, I am coming to believe this warning and prediction. We are living it. Why wouldn’t God forsake us after what we have done to his wondrous creation? Why wouldn’t he walk away from people who rape and despoil their own and only home and drive the animals to distinction?

I should say now that this is not a gloomy piece of writing, because I am not a grim human being. But I am an older person, and my time is closer than farther away.

I am full of hope and excitement; I believe good things are happening and will continue to happen. We cannot know the future, good or bad.  That is my sincere belief, and all of the bad news thrown at me and you every day will not shake me.

The earth is bleeding, more and more every year, and yet we live in a great cloud of criminal greed and denial.  I will not get to see the outcome of this ultimate drama; it will fall to the next generation to wake the world up or face the awful consequences.

I feel a moral obligation to my daughter and granddaughter to try to leave them a better life, and I have already failed in this way: the earth is turning on us, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

This is the drama of 2020, not our politics and squabbling and petty bitter divisions. The spiritual challenge for me is how to deal with so overwhelming and urgent a catastrophe in 2020 and beyond.

None of us – not me, not anyone reading this, not anyone alive, will avoid the consequences of the damage we have done to our home, our sustenance. If God is really seeking to punish us, he is making his point.

As the New  Year approaches, I’m thinking about how I will deal with this in a positive, not grim and angry way, and how I will feel about it. I’ve retired from depression and lament. Argument has no place in my toolbox.

I know how I feel about politics; I am at a loss sometimes about how to think about Mother Earth.

It is pointless for me to get angry and point fingers, and even more futile to think I can do much of anything about it. We, humans, are tragically flawed, I can’t see a way the people of the earth will rise, come together, and save our planet. We are too short-sighted, too comfortable, too ignorant, too greedy.

We seem to share a gene for myopia and self-destruction.

It may already be too late. The poor, of course, are already feeling the brunt of the climate disintegration, isn’t that always the way? Watching the news from Australia, or California, or New Orleans, or Puerto Rico, or Japan,  I am reminded that no one will escape.

This problem is much too big for me to tackle. I am helpless and hopeless in the face of it. I am humble and paralyzed,  waiting for a leader to appear that I can follow. I fear for the dogs and the donkeys.

But hiding doesn’t seem right either.

I am late to this awakening; I am taking the small micro-steps that I can receive: thinking about driving, buying water in aluminum,  recyclable cans, thinking about how best to heat our home. I have lived a life of material privilege.

I’ve always had what I needed to live. For so many people, those days are already past.

I’m late to this, confused.  I’ve been hearing the alarms for years but only recently realized I must do something other than shake my head and mouth platitudes.

Humans are not often blessed with foresight. We react when we have no choice, and often rise above our expectations. If the young humans of the earth get together, as they are beginning to do, anything is possible.

I know what I don’t want to do.

What I don’t do is become enraged or depressed or despondent about it. I read a lot of history, and I understand that humans are often short-sighted, greedy, blind, and without empathy or compassion. We are more than capable of destroying our home; we are, in fact, well underway towards doing it.

So the question becomes: what do I want to do?

I write about small acts of kindness, this year; I will focus on small actions of environmental responsibility, acts of love for Mother  Earth, our sister. I will pursue my life with vigor – my writing, my love, my photography, my good works. The best I can do is live a meaningful and compassionate life.

Perhaps I can lend a hand to the young, I can offer what I have and share what little wisdom I’ve gleaned.

Will I ride horses? Give up my car? Throw out the beautiful wood stoves that have given us such warmth and comfort? March in protest? Knock on doors? I’ve done it before. I can do it again.

I cannot alter the fate of humanity, or the dire illness of the earth. If I dwelled on that or took it on, I’d go mad. In our world, it is the children who are speaking the truth and calling out to us, but big money makes more big money, no matter what we are caught in their grip. Is a revolution in the making?

Will I be marching in this revolution, hauling my bum knee and my insulin needles, asking some young warrior to help me tie my boots?

Someone like me needs a leader I can follow; I cannot be any leader in saving the world. Day after day, I see those images of the fires and the storms and the heat and the floods, and I can hardly believe the fearful and incomprehensible human response.

I need to understand what it is that I can do and what it is I can’t do and won’t do. My prayer is that compassion and morality and love will conquer. If not, God’s prophecy in the Kabbalah will come true, and we will be abandoned to our fate.

Pain and disappointment and sickness are not choices; they are the realities of life. Suffering and gloom and hopelessness are choices, and I choose not to suffer or live in despair.

The task is to be able to look in the mirror and like what I see. I don’t need the blogosphere to love me or approve. I have to like myself.

In my helplessness, there is peace of mind and freedom. In blaming others and pointing fingers, there is emptiness and hopelessness.

When there is nothing you can do, you are free to do something. And something is better than nothing. And who knows? History is full of mysteries and miracles.

So where I am right now is this: I want to face up to this universal moral and literal challenge more directly and thoughtfully.

I can’t swallow doing nothing. I don’t want my life to end in that way.

I want to figure out what my part is and do it. I want to do this with grace, honesty, and humility. My granddaughter is just beginning to pay attention to me. I want her to know that I did care.

I don’t know about God, but I’d like to believe in him when it comes to Mother Earth. Let’s stay he did create the earth. Let’s say the Kabbalah is right, and he warned us to care for our home.

The force that created the Earth can destroy it or bring back to health and life. He might forgive us for our indifference and callousness. He could if he wanted to. I imagine he’s done it many times before.

Wouldn’t it be something if he took me off the hook?