Making a bigger mark

I was buying a plane ticket today when the very kind ticket agent asked me if, given how much I fly, I wanted to participate in their program to reduce my carbon footprint. As always, for me, one thought leads to another.

What would the world be like if we spent as much time worrying about our spiritual footprint as we did about our carbon footprint? What if, while we work so feverishly at reducing our environmental impact on our world we spent an equal amount of effort to increase our spiritual impact? If we felt as much responsibility to each other as we do to the oceans, the skies and the climate?

For me, my spiritual footprint is not about God or religion (though it could be about that too), it’s about contributing good where I can. As those of you who read this blog know, the situation of sexual violence in the DRC has been uppermost in my mind for quite some time.

Part of the reason why I am so preoccupied with the women and girls of the DRC is because of the absolute silence of the world community in the face of the greatest sexual violence ever. If the rebels and militia in the DRC were burning forests or killing endangered species, I suspect the response would be very different. PETA, Al Gore and David Suzuki would be protesting – formally and informally – at every possible level. Instead, after 12 years of ongoing violence, our leaders remain mute as women and girls are being destroyed. How is it there is no organization called People for the Ethical Treatment of People?

The situation in the DRC (and Sudan and Zimbabwe) is much like the climate challenges we are facing. For years environmentalists looked to the world leaders to demonstrate leadership on the issue and when none was forthcoming, they rallied at the grassroots. They burned the urgency of the situation in to the consciousness of everyday people. We recycle, we compost, we use reusable bags and we celebrate when merchants decide to charge for the use of plastic bags. Now, world leaders scramble to catch up with the grassroots movement so as to be seen to be caring about an issue so important to the ‘common people’.

So how do we set the grassroots on fire about the DRC? We must, for their sake and ours, find a way to have more and more people seized with the issue so that leaders will be seized. Nine months in to this fight (which is nothing compared to many how have been fighting this fight for more than a decade) and I am more convinced than ever that the only way politicians will pay any attention to this issue is if we force them to.

And one of the ways we put their attention on the DRC is to expand our spiritual footprint. The fire raging in the DRC isn’t going to destroy the landscape. It is destroying something much more valuable – the human spirit. When we choose to raise our voices for the victims and survivors of femicide we allow kindness and compassion and action to take up more and more space in our world and force the darkness to recede inch by inch.

Every life has equal value. When our leaders are wrapped up in announcing stimulus spending, taking curtain calls on economic updates or even smiling for the cameras on date nights, it is our job to remind them of that. When we increase our footprint, we can force them to increase theirs.

Reducing our carbon footprint is sexy, alluring and a call to action.

So is expanding our spiritual footprint.