I can remember a time when I felt optimistic about a good many things. Life in general wasn’t bad at all. It was the time of the ‘swinging sixties.’ It seemed to be an age of achievements. The Berlin wall ‘came down’, Martin Luther King had a dream that encompassed everybody. Oppression would be a thing of the past. Things were changing for the better, boundaries were being pushed. There is nothing wrong with pushing boundaries so long as they are justifiable and acceptable. As a woman there were still things I couldn’t do like being a coal miner or taking out hire purchase without my husband’s permission but in general I was hopeful about the future.

Quite early on I found that living with Faith only enhanced that feeling of hope. I discovered that Faith was compatible with the world I was living in. Ethics, morals, call it what you will have been pretty standard throughout history, I believe they are God given and part and parcel of what we are meant to be.

People throughout the ages are no different than we are today. Basically we are no better or worse. We may have different emphases but we still need somewhere to live, enough food to eat, our families around us and we don’t want war. The basics haven’t changed.

When I look back and I do that a lot now that I have a lot to look back on, something of that optimism has gone.

The world today seems to be rather too concerned with change, an ever increasing cycle of change. Sometimes change for change’s sake. Now I know life doesn’t stand still and I’m not against change. In many respects it’s a good thing. Look at the world of communication and the field of medicine, just a couple of examples. Increasingly though it’s as if we are being compounded to make change. Cynically, that might have something to do with commercial interests. Of course there wouldn’t be commercial interests if there weren’t any consumers! I’m reminded of what Samuel Johnson said about his time: “The age is running away with innovation.” So I guess I’m not first to feel this way.

There is however, a trend connected with change and I call it the capital ‘I’ syndrome. Me and everything to do with me has become all important. It’s not selfishness and it’s not self centredness it’s just simply ‘I’.

The ‘I’ syndrome is never content. It strives for more and more. In itself this again isn’t a bad thing. But why do we need a new car every year? Is it a matter of life or death whether we’ve got the most up to the minute hoover or our ready-cooked dinner can be micro-waved in 5 minutes instead of 10. Why are we so concerned with style statements?

One of my friends who had just acquired a rather expensive house in a rather select neighbourhood said of his neighbours “Just look at this. They’re nearly always empty all day long. The people that live in them have to work really long hours just to pay for then. What’s the point of that – working so hard to keep your house empty?”  No doubt, if asked they would say they’re enjoying a comfortable life style. Have they really got the time to use their acquisitions to any great effect or really enjoy them?

The ‘I’ factor has become an important force in peoples lives, so much so that basics are being forgotten and life is being lived at such a fast pace it’s becoming fragmented. It isn’t really working to our benefit either individually or socially as a whole.  Depressive illnesses are on the increase and some of our children seem to be almost feral. ‘Happiness’ is eluding us.

We have I think, veered off at a tangent from aspiring to the life that God intended us to lead – ‘He made us in His own image. ‘For the past decade or two we have attempted to sublimate ourselves to a parallel with God. The ‘I’ cannot accept God’s authority.

What’s the answer?

My Faith has always included hope. God had a plan for us and I cannot see Him letting go. Not just yet anyway. I believe that we are body and soul. We are so concerned with the body, the ‘I’, the ‘have’ that we overlook - the soul, ‘the have not’ spiritually that is. The soul part of us needs looking after too.

We need to redress the balance.                                 

A true Faith as in the Holy Catholic Church, does all these things. It acknowledges God’s authority, guides our living and gives us hope of an everlasting life.

It is compatible with the modern world. It always was and always will be. But it will never be known by sitting on the outside looking in.

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