Lights Go Out in London
I was planning on doing this posting on Ghandi’s principle of Swadeshi, the use and service of our immediate surroundings over those more remote or foreign. This principle of starting with the local first applies to economics, politics and even religion.
I better understood what Swadeshi meant when I was writing the “Conversation with Mahatma Gandhi and St. Ignatius of Loyola on nonviolence and sustainability” for the Peace and Justice Studies Association this week at Marquette University.
I thought of this principle this morning as I was driving my wife around for some medical appointments. I have been doing that for friends recently but today needed to do it for my local family, my wife. I had this chance to practice Swadeshi .
In considering this thought I sensed our dependence on outside resources, for food, energy and life. I thought about Gandhi’s statement of how he was not against technology but trying to establish how we use technology is just as important as our goal using it. I started to think how dependent we are on technology, especially electricity, when the lights went out.
When our electricity went down for a few hours tonight, not only the lights were out but our internet, home phones, refrigeration, TV and much more were out.
Being spoiled by electricity being steady the last few years we were unable to find our flashlights or other non-electrical resources. When the electricity finally went on it was only about ½ hour before it went down again, this time only briefly.
We have moved far away from the principle of Swadeshi. As I sat in the dark tonight all I had left in the darkness was silence and prayer. I realized more deeply the need to make my life less dependent on outside resources. For when the lights go out there is no need to stop everything.
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