Climate Action Teams: CATS Must Be Passionate & Deep Enough

Olympian Fields of Action Post #16.2

CATS Can Make Us Passionate

Climate Action Teams or CATS not only are essential to helping The Climate Movement become big and broad and active enough. They are also vital to helping the Climate Movement achieve our second characteristic/imperative/goal, being passionate enough.

CATS are places where you have permission to be passionate; even more so, where you need to be passionate. CATS need to be places where you can let your passion out or see the passion of others and experience your own, where you can touch and tap into the deep places that sustain your passion. Passion helps you to be your fullest self, to be fully alive by faithfully living in and living out your values. Climate Action Teams are where you can let your passion and those of your teammates motivate you and spur you to consistent bold action.

Our CATS provide us the relational connection we need to play our part in overcoming climate change while creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything. And a vital part of this relational connectedness is passion.

Finally, being a part of a Climate Action Team can help prevent our moral passion from devolving into arrogant self-righteousness or, even worse, prophetic narcissism.

Ours is the greatest moral cause of our time; our Major Goal is profoundly ambitious, even audacious; our Movement will be the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world; our cause is just — deeply so.

But all of this does not make us morally superior. In fact, to really own all of this is to become chastened in the face of the challenge, in the recognition of our complete and total inability as individuals to do anything about the climate crisis on our own; becoming a part of this great worldwide movement should humble us to our very depths.

We achieve greatness through humility. It is one of the keys to our attaining greatness together.

CATS Can Make Us Deep

CATS help us to be deep enough, our third characteristic/imperative/goal.

Only with depth of commitment will we get ourselves out of this mess. It is the L-word and our other Movement Values that will provide the depth we need. And it is in our CATS where we can say these words out loud, where we can intentionally tap into and claim their power.

As CATS we are together because of who and what we love, and love is the heart from which justice springs.

• We are together because we are a moral movement, because we strive for justice: to stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better.

• We are together because we affirm the Better Future Covenant, that we are to make and leave a better world for today’s children and subsequent generations.

• We are together to name who we are fighting for because we love them.

• We are together to create a safe and supporting place to become what we were meant to be, to play our part in the greatest moral cause of our time, to make a difference and create a better world, to love and be loved.

• We are together to make hope happen and our future come faster, all out of love.

Now, not to scare anyone off and leave the wrong impression, as I said in an earlier post about the Movement as a whole, Climate Action Teams will not be goopy all the time, continuously emoting, sitting in a circle sharing our feelings. Action-types like me will be running for the exits.

But just as athletic teams are powered and motivated by their emotions and feelings even as they simultaneously keep their wits about them while they implement their game plan, so must we strive for such a game-winning balance, playing it cool as we take the winning shot and jumping for joy as it swooshes through the net.

Love isn’t just feelings, or even the deeper emotional component of love. Love is action. Love is also a wellspring for our humility. Love is doing what’s best for who and what you love. From deep within yourself love takes you out of yourself to nurture, protect, and defend your beloved. That is the essence of love, and it is more than deep enough to see us through. Join us!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in our CATS Subseries. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.