Posts from — September 2008

I often have to remind myself to adopt an “attitude of gratitude” yet last Friday gratitude washed over me like a gentle river. These were my thoughts:

I wear glasses. What if I had to – somehow – invent glasses, then manufacture the lenses and the frames in order to see?

What if I had to pave the road before I went any place? Or invent a car? Or a bicycle? Or mold tires?

What if I had to grow all my own food before I could eat?

Or when I want to make a batch of cookies, what if I had no tried-and-true recipe book?

What if I had to churn the butter, gather the eggs, grind the flour, distill the vanilla, make the baking powder, cobble together an oven, mold a pan, find a source of energy, and go to the river for water?

The answer, of course, is that I’d have to do without. A cornucopia of wonders that I just take for granted wouldn’t exist.  [Read more →]

I found this video meditation on forgiveness on YouTube. A little “me” oriented, it is fundamentally correct and soothing.

Forgiveness is so vital to living a happy life. Resentment is a concentrated poison that leaches into every corner of a life. We cannot be fully alive as long as we hold resentments and unforgiveness.

Yet forgiveness is not necessarily as “easy” as this video makes it out to be.

Make no mistake – forgiveness is not a simple intellectual act. True forgiveness is an emotional transformation. The ability to forgive terrible harm comes through grace. You may be taken through profound changes.

First create the intention to forgive, then pray for guidance to be led to those experiences, thoughts and feelings that will transform you and allow you to forgive.

Just watching a video will not necessarily transform your inner landscape. Yet it may help you to begin thinking about who you need to forgive and how to go about it.

And that is a beginning.

Dear God,

Is there someone against whom I am holding resentment?

Create within me a desire to let go of it.

Guide me to healing and complete forgiveness.

For both the world and I deserve the peace that deep forgiveness brings.

Thank You,
Amen.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Then came Peter to him, and said, lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.” Matthew 18:21,22

There was a saying in the nineteen sixties: if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. This remains true.

I would take that a step further: If you are not part of the spiritual solution, you are not only missing the point of being here on earth, you are missing out on the opportunity to feel a real sense of purpose and genuine joy. [Read more →]

If you hear anyone complaining about the mess that’s going on now, ask him or her this:

“Did you vote in the last election?”

If the person didn’t, don’t shame him, but say: “Well, we need your vote this year and every year if we want to create a better world.”

In the last federal election (2006 as of this writing) only 40% of the American electorate voted. That means that that the Republican party achieved its “majority” with only 20% of the vote. (The 20% of the American public that thought President Bush was doing a good job.)

So if you aren’t registered – do so this week. God cannot help you if you will not take responsibility, use your talents, and do what you can do.

God works through you. So study the candidates and the issues. Think about who Jesus would vote for.

Would he vote to exclude? Would he vote to take from the poor and give to the rich? Would he vote to build a wall to keep others out?

Or would he vote for inclusion, for public schools, for fairness, for jobs, for social justice, for working together cooperatively to raise us all up, not just those at the top?

Would he be in favor of revenge and perpetual war?

Or would he promote a message of forgiveness and peace?

You know the answer.

Being a Christian is not just about your interior world. It’s about contacting God’s goodness on the inside and then acting in alignment with that goodness on the outside.

We each have a responsibility to make the world a better, fairer place for others. We each have a responsibility to be aware and to act on that awareness.

Yet, even from a purely selfish point of view, we cannot afford to leave “the usual suspects” in charge and unattended.

“Doth not he see my ways, and count all my steps?” Job 31:4

“The profit of the earth is for all.” Ecclesiastes 5:9

“The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruit.” 2 Timothy 2:6

“Why stand ye here all the day idle?” Matthew 20:6

Prayer To Be A Transformer

Dear God,

I am one person,
Yet I am the world.

Through my consciousness
You transform the world.

Through me, truth is spoken.
Through me, wrongs are righted.
Through me, bravery survives.
Through me, a free spirit lives.
Through me, compassion has a voice.
Through me, love prevails.

I am a force for good.

Today, I give myself over to this calling,
And to You.

I am Your love incarnate.

I am an instrument of healing.

I am a force for good.

And so it is.
Amen.

All across the Internet people are expressing anger over the proposed bailout of the CEO’s and financial institutions that have been responsible for the current mortgage crisis.

Yet neither the meltdown nor the bailout are isolated incidents. Both are logical consequences of what has been the (primarily Republican) plan to privatize gain and socialize loss.

We have been steadily moved toward a reality in which everything that makes a profit will be held in private hands by an elite few while all losses – or unprofitable sectors – are to be foisted onto the back of the lower and middle-class taxpayer.

This brand of toxic capitalism is no better than feudalism.

How has this happened?

[Read more →]

Ariel Dorfman was the cultural advisor to Chile’s socialist President Salvador Allende. He was forced to leave Chile in 1973 after the U.S.-backed coup by Augusto Pinochet and the death of President Salvador Allende.

As a result, Ariel Dorfman’s life was shattered. He lost his friends, his way of life, his country.

His response was to write about the issues of his life: alienation and loss. Painting all-too-real pictures of social injustice, he became one of South America’s most respected novelists.

Yet Ariel Dorfman says he will never again be entirely healthy as a result of what happened to him on September 11, 1973. His task, therefore, continues to be to take the shards of his life and build something else with them.

His hope now is that perhaps he – and Chile – have something to teach the U.S. about our own shattering experience of September 11, 2001. Watch an interview with him here:

http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/videos.html?id=739099976

People are shattered in different and terrible ways.

Some experiences are intensely personal while others are shared calamities.

Many in Galveston have just had their lives shattered due to Hurricane Ike. Others had their lives shattered long ago due to personal illness or injury. Still others – too many – have been shattered by war, atrocity, loss and displacement.

Some – perhaps all – could be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a type of anxiety disorder. It can occur after you’ve seen or experienced a traumatic event that involved the threat of injury or death.¹

Until recently it was not understood and there was no effective treatment.

Now there is evidence that, by using a technique that did not exist in 1973, recovery is possible.

[Read more →]

We are such verbal creatures. We have so many ideas and opinions. There is so much we long to do and be.

Yet to accomplish our dreams and goals we must be empowered.

There are many paths to empowerment, yet the essence of empowerment is knowing what and who we are and to think, speak and act in harmony with what we are.

To know who and what we are we must take time to be still, to just be and get in touch with the truth within us.

Today, for a moment, be still and feel the power and love that lives inside you, that is you.

Be still and get in touch with who you are, what you believe and the power to speak and live your own truth.

Be still and allow that awareness to well up within you.

Put your hand on your heart and ask, “What does my spirit love?”

Be still and wait for the answer. When it comes, speak it.

Own it.

Honor it.

And do this practice often.

It is through stillness that we come to know what we need most to thrive.

And that, like a flower, we are enough just by being.

Dear God,

Help me to just be awhile.

And let that be enough

For I am enough.

Amen.

The Mahatma considered the following traits to be the most spiritually perilous to humanity. Read them carefully. Can you think of examples of where or when you have seen these traits expressed in our society by our citizens? How about by those who run our corporations or our politicians?

• Wealth without Work
• Pleasure without Conscience
• Science without Humanity
• Knowledge without Character
• Politics without Principle
• Commerce without Morality
• Worship without Sacrifice

These traits seem, to me, to be widespread in our society. Yet, do we want the consequences that seem to accompany them?

If not, the antidote to ailing spirits and a troubled society would appear to be the practice of their opposites:

• Wealth through providing real service, not just through things like manipulating stock prices
• Pleasure that has a conscience, that is aware others are not so fortunate and does not victimize
• Science that operates with a view toward compassion, not just experimentation for its own sake
• Knowledge that is learned as a function of building character, not an assemblage of vapid soundbites
• Politics that is based upon moral principle, upon the concept of compassionate service and justice
• Commerce conducted with for the good of all with an eye to fairness and morality
• Worship that includes spiritual practice, sacred service to others and an attempt to live Christ’s teachings

Quotes from Mahatma Gandhi:

Gandhi in London in 1931

“Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man. ” [Read more →]

“We are human only through the humanity of other human beings.” – Nelson Mandela

“We live in a world where men and women and children are being brutalized in certain countries with their leaders standing by and not doing enough to help.” – Kofi Annan, Former U.N. Secretary-General

“We have a very divided world, a very fearful world, a world very conflicted and so, so unfair.” – Mary Robinson, Former UN High Commissoner For Human Rights, Former President of Ireland

2008 is the 60th year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The preamble to the 30 articles which define basic human rights states:

All human beings are born with equal and inalienable rights and fundamental freedoms. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations has stated in clear and simple terms the rights which belong equally to every person. All United Nation countries have committed themselves to these principles. These rights belong to you. They are your rights. Familiarize yourself with them. Help to promote and defend them for yourself as well as for your fellow human beings.

The 30 declarations are: [Read more →]

“Help me be the living water of forgiveness, God. In the name of Jesus Christ I pray. Amen.”

It’s September of 2008 and I’m feeling very hopeful about the future of our country because so many people of faith have embraced Barack Obama.

Many have recognized that the policies of the Bush administration, in their essence, have been anti-Christian. (Really, now, would Jesus have started a war in Iraq?)

Still, as with everyone else, we must forgive those who deceived us, including President Bush who will, “strut out of office leaving the nation in roughly the same shape as a toddler leaves a diaper,” to paraphrase the editor in the June 2008 issue of Vanity Fair.

Because even when the current administration leaves office, we will not be out of the fire and we cannot waste any more energy on reciting the president’s ”sins” as they are endless.

We are called, instead, to forgive and visualize healing for the nation and the world.

Bin Laden’s Driver Tortured and Scapegoated

Yet, while I’m no longer angry about the mindless damage inflicted upon the country and upon Iraq, a story from a couple of weeks back about bin Laden’s driver being made a scapegoat for 9/11 made me flinch.

The man, whose name is Salim Ahmed Hamdan, has a fourth-grade education and was described during his trial as a “more primitive (Bedouin) person” who didn’t even believe in bin Laden’s ideology, but drove for him for the paycheck.

Of course he was tortured, to get a confession.

Yet, really, what did that driver do that most of us have not done? He went along with a powerful and wealthy person who was calling the shots.

His crime is that he didn’t try to stop anything. He just let things unfold and kept his eyes on his own small picture, his paycheck.

Who do you know who doesn’t do that?

Who pays attention, doesn’t close his eyes and speaks up when a wrong is about to be done even if it means he’ll lose his job, be shunned, threatened or even killed? [Read more →]