Another poem by Steve Taylor gives a positive slant on worrying times; it is in the nature of things that systems grow, flourish and then begin to outlive their time, to be replaced by the new – there is always the bright new beginning.

How can our lives have meaning
when we’re living through the end times?
How can we find fulfilment
with catastrophe hovering us?

Why should we keep building
when structures are collapsing all around us?
Why should we keep trying to contribute
when nothing may remain to receive our gifts?
Why should we keep striving
when our goals seem to be dissolving, like mirages?

But look inside yourself – can’t you feel your soul aching
with a new yearning for change?
Can’t you feel the impulse to surrender
to a transcendent new goal, that is rising like a wave?

Our personal goals are fading
so that a collective cause can take us over
as we turn to face the end times.

Our vision is becoming clearer,
our minds becoming more focused,
against the background of the end times.

The superfluous is being stripped away,
our lives are being pared down to their essence
by the urgency of the end times.

This isn’t the time to be despondent,
but the time to transcend fear
and abandon every doubt and inhibition.
This isn’t the time to sleep
but to redouble our efforts to awaken –
to harness every quantum of our latent higher selves
and send out waves of transformation into the world
so that the darkness and chaos of the end times
can give birth to a new beginning.

Featured image by John M / Light at the end of the tunnel, via Wikimedia Commons