Honesty, Courage, and Resilience - Classical, Jesuit, and Calvinist Conceptions of Virtue and Education for Sustainability

Sep 29, 2026

Personal reflections on extreme weather and climate vulnerability frame an argument for resilience grounded in virtue and education. The author links reactions to a review of Bill McKibben’s Oil and Honey with quantitative climate risks and the limits of individual action. It emphasizes communal, cooperative preparation—“anywhere with a strong community”—and rejects post-apocalyptic fantasies as distraction from a slow, destabilizing apocalypse. The text then turns to democracy, community, and humanism as a Jesuit contribution to civic life.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryReligion & Spirituality

FormatDOCX

Pages18

Reading Time45 min

AccessFree to download

Honesty, Courage, and Resilience

Extreme weather and personal vulnerability

Climate change urgency and limits of individual action

Resilience through community and cooperation

Democracy, community, and humanism

***DRAFT*** Honesty, Courage, and Resilience Classical, Jesuit, and Calvinist Conceptions of Virtue and Education for Sustainability I am a Midwesterner, having grown up in one of Chicago’s northwest suburbs and having lived now in the Cincinnati area since 1984. I have seen extreme weather from a very early age, including tornados, blizzards, hailstorms, and, above all, thunderstorms that can make your heart skip a beat. Aside from the general inconvenience and occasional terror of driving in snow, I have loved it all, especially the thunderstorms. I used to look forward to thunderstorms when I lived in the woods in southeastern Indiana, just outside the Cincinnati metropolitan area. I would sit on the ground on a steep hillside I had cleared when we first moved there and watch the clouds roll in and the breeze increase and cool, the leaves dance and fall, the birds chirp and caw, and the smell of the air change to something moist and alive. I’d sit there for the first minutes of the bracing, cooling rain, raising my arms skyward, peering straight up into the falling rain, and then duck under cover and watch the storm with gratitude and ecstasy. I love extreme weather. Or rather I did. I can’t much enjoy it anymore. I live in the city of Cincinnati now and have for the past eight years. I sat in my backyard almost four years ago now and watched a thunderstorm roll in. At first, I enjoyed it as usual as the air came alive and the birds and squirrels darted nervously about. I welcomed the first drops and then still sat there as it built to a torrent, still enjoying it, perhaps—what with the devastating storms we have had the past few years—with a bit more of an edge than usual. Only a bit. But then a crack and thud. I passed through the gate into the front yard to find a limb from our large silver maple, poised like a wrecking ball over our house, sitting on the ground. No damage had been done, or at least not much. Five years earlier, a neighbor’s tree had come down in a storm and crashed into and through our roof. But we had been in Paris when it happened and friends dealt with most of the damage before we even got home. This, though far less serious, had happened right before my eyes and in the midst of my revelry. Something I had been reading earlier in the day shaped my reaction to the storm. It was a review of Bill McKibben’s most recent book, Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist by Verlyn Klinkenborg. Klinkenborg ruminated on McKibben’s remarkable ability to give people the bad news, including the news that personal sacrifices (driving a Prius, pushing for bike lanes) would do little to avert the coming catastrophe because we faced issues far bigger than what individual action might change. McKibben elsewhere boiled our circumstances down to three numbers, the 2 degrees Celsius beyond which climate change would bring near certain disaster, the 565 gigatons of carbon we might yet put in the atmosphere and still avert the worst, and the 2,795 tons of carbon in the proven reserves of fossil fuels that energy companies fully intend to exploit. Klinkenborg explained that McKibben’s facility in delivering bad news is that he “remembers what it is to be naïve” and can deliver the news with no hint of cynicism or impatience with ignorance, indeed with the tenderness we might keep in mind in our own teaching. So perhaps my reaction marked the end of my naivete and a recognition of my willful ignorance. Who really believes the energy corporations--and those whose wealth is embedded therein—are going to write off $20 trillion in assets? I do not think that is quite it, however. I would not protest my naivete or, rather, my self-serving belief that somehow these things will not touch me directly. But I had been an early adopter of the global warming concern, as far back as 1990. Behind that, I’ve been an environmentalist for as long as I can remember, gut-punched by evidence of the relentless degradation of the envi

FAQs

What triggers the author’s shift from enjoying storms to recognizing vulnerability?

A thunderstorm episode in Cincinnati is described alongside reflection on climate urgency and the limits of individual coping. A prior reading sharpened the author’s awareness of willful ignorance and personal exposure to broader harms.

How does the document use McKibben’s ideas to explain climate action?

It cites McKibben’s ability to deliver disturbing facts without cynicism, arguing that individual sacrifices alone will not avert catastrophe. The narrative also references specific climate numbers to convey scale and urgency.

What does the document recommend for preparing for a precarious future?

It stresses building strong communities and relying on resilience and cooperation. The text argues that audiences should “live anywhere with a strong community” and that such communities must be actively constructed.

Sep 29, 2026

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