Will we ever learn?

Did you know western black rhinos are extinct?

To think that in my life time I have witnessed Man utterly annihilating God's creation. I know God is going to create a new heaven and a new earth but that doesn't mean we should accelerate the process by wiping out the one given us.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed at how cruel mankind is and how unpredictable the currents of life can be. I read about the Al-shabab attacks in Kenya, the likelihood that the ravaging effects of commercial fishing will destroy all seafood by 2050, cognitive impairment in a couple's marriage ('It was challenging for.. me to accept this imposter...who wasn't the person we knew'), and I did the depressing fin de siecle Hopkins poem Spring and Fall for tuition on Monday.

 Spring and Fall:

                to a Young Child

   Margaret, are you grieving
   Over Goldengrove unleaving?
   Leaves, like the things of man, you
   With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
   Ah! as the heart grows older
   It will come to such sights colder
   By and by, nor spare a sigh 
   Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; 
   And yet you will weep and know why.
   Now no matter, child, the name:
   Sorrow's springs are the same.
   Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
   What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
   It is the blight man was born for,
   It is Margaret you mourn for.

I keep imagining myself in years to come, sitting by the bedside of my child. Her warm head, hair tangled because like me she rarely combs it, against my belly, stubby brown fingers running themselves across the pages of a picture book.

'What is this one Mum?'

'Which one, darling?'

'This one.'

'That's an elephant, they were big and you could see them from space, and they lived in families just like us. When someone in their family died they got sad, and they recognised each others' voices.'

'You could see them from space?'

'Mmmhmm'

'But right now, right at this minute, there aren't any on earth?'

'No, they disappeared with the rhinoceroses and the dolphins - you remember talking about the dolphins?'

'Sometimes I have dreams where the dolphins are my friends.'

'I'm so sorry.'

I feel like there is so much to mourn for my heart cannot begin to cry.