The Wisdom of St. Anthony: Who is Mad? It is Time to Stop Line 3!

“A time is coming,” said St. Anthony the Great, “when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, “You are mad; you are not like us.”

Although the Egyptian monk uttered those words in the 4th Century, they are as relevant and prophetic today as they were in his time. Today, in my home state of Minnesota, dangerous industrial activity — in the form of Enbridge’s Line 3 — is legally allowed, while resistance is criminalized. This is sheer madness.

Wild native forests are being torn asunder across Indigenous lands and the Mighty Mississippi River — under whose pristine waters the pipeline is being buried — is being imperiled. This destruction is permitted for the singular purpose of allowing a foreign corporation to extract oil from the toxic tar sands of Alberta and then pipe it across 1,100 miles of North Dakota, Minnesota, and Indigenous lands to the shores of Lake Superior where it will be placed in tankers and exported abroad. Once in foreign lands, the crude oil will be burned and its noxious fumes and carbon dioxide will clog already polluted airs and pour into an already overheated atmosphere.

All while the gallant men and women who are protesting and seeking to halt this insanity are being detained, arrested, and jailed. It is not they who are mad. It is the system that is allowing our beautiful planet to be destroyed under the guise of “legal activity” that is mad.

It is time for the rest of us to wake up, take a stand, and stop this madness.

Jack Uldrich is an author. His forthcoming book, The Rise of Generation RE, is due out in 2021. He is also the author of these other Medium articles: A Pilgram’s Plea: Don’t Desecrate the BWCA and The Ecological Crisis is a Spiritual Crisis.