Feeding the Children

God moves through our hearts and hands to reach our precious brothers and sisters in need.  This video speaks for itself.  It will break your heart but open your soul.

from the website:
http://lifetoday.org/outreaches/mission-feeding/

The generous will themselves be blessed, 

for they share their food with the poor.

—Proverbs 22:9 (NIV)

Hungry children need the nutritious food mixture specially formulated for them in Mission Feeding. It’s filled with the vitamins, minerals and proteins that can restore them to health in less than 6 months. I like to say, “There’s a blessing in every bowl.”

It’s the answer for children before they spiral further and end up at a malnutrition clinic. (And I know for a fact all the clinics are currently filled to capacity.)

Mission Feeding can change the lives of these desperately-hungry children the day we begin feeding in their villages.

Your gift sends food to where it’s needed most. Supplies from our latest campaign have been effectively used, and the mission workers are anxious to hear that we will continue feeding every child depending on us.

In the next few weeks we must raise the additional funds necessary to continue feeding over 400,000 children in Angola, Mozambique and South Sudan for the next six months – especially in Angola where drought is having a devastating impact.

Over 400,000 mouths to feed! It’s a big challenge to be sure. What they cannot provide for themselves, you can. Today, I’m asking you to give your best to help support the life-saving work of Mission Feeding and ensure we can feed in areas of greatest need.

Dollars for votes

It's long been no secret that our country has slipped under corporate control. When you unravel the unmitigated and limitless power of the corporation to not only invade third world nations, exploit their fragile economies, and ecosystems, destroy whole cultures in the name of economic growth, there is even something else perhaps more incidiousness. For the mainstream this has gone unchecked.  

Today there is a virulent, rampant situation that was unimagined by our founding fathers. It is the power of the banking system to support the wealthy, unblancing an egalitarian people-driven, people-based democracy. Warning against the dangers of a central bank to our fledgling democracy, Thomas Jefferson, feared a centralized bank would give the wealthy more voice, consequently undermining the voting power of the individual. Despite his urgent pleas urging our country not to allow the then Bank of England, unfortunately his warning went unmet.  The long term result has been a slow eroding of the original egalitarian vision for this national. 

Today, our government remains closed for business yet another day because two very strong factions in Congress debate an already legalized national health care policy. I wondered how our corporations had actually voted in terms of contributing who would comprise these two politial parties. Backed by corporate campaign contributions those elected are those very people butting heads this very day in Congress. Their decisions, or lack therof, will determine both the immediate future of our nation, and perhaps even the emminent future of the global economy.

The results were not what I thought I would find.  I expected to see mammoth campaign donations to the Republican party by big business, and lesser donations to the Democrats. I was surprised to find more was given to the Democrats. However, much of those donations were from people-based organizations which seemed to have more clout than the corporations. That was a relief. Maybe the system isn't as broken as I thought.  I hope this is the case. 

However, it was sobering to realize how much money is given to campaigns by corporations. It seems it's the dollar power of the corporation that is determining who gets elected and who doesn't.  It has almost become a situation that you really are casting your vote when you spend your dollar, perhaps even more so than when you actually vote.  This makes Jefferson's fear a reality.  The rich are the ones voting.  It's the board room, rather than the voting booth, that is determining who gets elected, not the old guy in the homeless shelter or the single mom in the suburb or even the millions of hard working, exhausted middle class Americans. 

Rather than a democracy, have we become a market-driven government? Are we now government of the corporation, for the corporation and by the corporation?  It seems we have is a corporate-heavy free market that drives our government, unbalancing the entire system.  Rather than a people-driven democracy, or even republic, we have a market-driven government chosen by the voting power of a corporate democracy rather than a people-based democracy.  With the passage of a law that recognized a corporation as a "person" with an equal right to vote as an individual, you are actually voting when you spend a dollar wherever you spend it. Clearly, only those who have dollars can spend them and the more you have, the more you spend.

Admittedly, I was uninformed on so much of this, but am making a point to wake up and become informed. There's no excuse for ignorance. Our free education system in our country was designed to create an informed population so their votes would be made from informed individuals.  In short, the hope was that the population would be wise enough and knowledgeable of the facts well enough  to make intelligent voting decisions.

Today, people snooze in front of their television whether or not they know it. because it is well known that the television emits alpha waves which induce a hypnotic state. Obviously, corporations know this and capitalize on it by running compelling, psychologically targeted advertising late at night, to hypnotize us and direct our purchasing choices.  Have we become a nation of zombies driven to participate blindy in a system that feeds off us and controls Congress and the world? I realize what this sounds like and you might even wonder why is something like this on a sweet little Tiger Lilies blogsite that purports to raise the spiritual consciousness of the masses toward enlightenment and ideall closer to a collective ascension?

The first rule of life is to become free of any oppressive forces, toward autonomy, self government and the total liberation of the human spirit.  The story of Moses leading the people out of Egypt is the archetypal story for the human race.  Jesus build his entire spiritual liberation on that archetypal story.  Today, we need to follow that story line to the next level.  As long as we are trapped in the matrix - so to speak - we are not free.  when we realize this, as i think we are collectively doing on a massive scale, I think we will take back our country and that will free the world also.  it will also feed and clothe the children in our country and the third world.

This would build a wave of sytemic change.  The unbalanced system we have now is not due to malevolent forces by either Democrats or Republicans or even bipartisanship itself. Rather it is due to our blind nonparticipation or taking responsibility of become informed. Isn't this own non watchfulness or lack of mindfulness over our own complicity with the whole game corporate business is playing here and globally.  While we sleep Rome burns.  

So, I share the above video to offer you one place to turn for some information and possibly just one place to start to help you wake up.  It is the morning coffee for governmental and economic mindfulness.

Water into Wine

Wateraid's U.S. website: 

http://www.wateraid.org/us/the-water-story

As we view our beautiful, crystal blue Earth from space, the one thing that is the most noticeable is the abundance of water on our planet. More than 71% of earth's surface is covered by oceans.* Life on our planet is believed to have begun in the ocean and life for the newborn begins in his own private ocean within his mother. Water incubates life on almost every level of life.  

Spiritually, water was the element used to initiate one into a new life, a spiritual life, which for Christians was Baptism, for Jews it was the mikveh, a ritual bath designed for the Jewish rite of purification**; and for Hindus it is to the Ganges where they are cleansed of their kharmic cycles in an annual Kumbh Mela festival***

It is life's most necessary element. More than food, shelter or even safety, it is water that sustains life.  

It's most interesting that Jesus ministry begins with His baptism by John the Baptist and that new converts to Judaism first go through a mikveh. Jesus used the image of water, flowing as a river, to symbolize life in the Spirit. It is the Spirit that brings life and it flows, fresh and life giving, always from the source. He told his followers, and everyone else for that matter, if they would follow him, he would  lead them to a river that springs up into eternal life.  He likened God's life giving Spirit to wine.  It too is flowing, crystal clean with a transformative essence. We know that wine certainly changes us - albeit temporarily - making us giddy and happy, briefly. It is fluid, with anti-aging and even some healing properties, and to further use his analogy, it comes from the "true vine," which is God.

Our lives would be changed as we are transformed, awakened, enlightened by God's spirit, and Jesus used the images of water being changed into wine as an example of how our lives would be restored, enlivened, joyously healed when we sipped of God's great spring of Spirit. He even takes the analogy to an incredibly profound level by suggesting that once we are "wedded" to God, our ordinary lives will be profoundly changed as water is changed into wine.

How does anyone do that, really?  How do we respond to God's invitation to drink His "wine" and become healed and whole? Responding to God's invitation to drink wine is allowing God to open our hearts, to become compassionate, and then to step into a higher level of being, a state of being compassionate.  When we are compassionate, we find a greater ability, a freed up nature, to want to help others, to show others the same love that we feel.  So, Christians found themselves going to the baptismal font to ritualize their newfound experience of being reborn, changed forever, by the power of God's spirit, God's "wine." It's this wine that invokes compassion in us.  I don't think we need to go looking for it because it's right there, scripted on your own human heart, but we can respond to it and it is in that response that we change.  By acting on our compassion, we are inviting God's Spirit - his Wine - to flow into us and that is what changes us.  And, it makes us sublimely happy, as well. What if we listened with to our compassion to revisit a planet more than 70% covered with water that desperately needs our compassion. Could we change that water with God's "wine?"

Water should not be a luxury for anyone, since there is so much of it to go around. Like air, it should be available to everyone, everywhere. And, not only for those who live in industrialized nations where the water is purified, but for all people, animals and plants, everywhere. Even as the planet languishes with a sick fever due to a global inflammation of our making, the polar ice caps are melting, and rising levels of water are threatening coastal cities, and still the poorest of the poor are thirsty.

Their thirst is our thirst.  If we turn away, we are diminished by an unquencable spiritual thirst, a sense of separation and lonliness, perhaps the worst kind of poverty.  If we respond to our hearts to compassionately give them water, clean up their polluted rivers and streams, ensure clean sewer services, our hearts open to God who responds to our compassion with an increase in His water supply in our lives, in the living presence of His Spirit, which refuels our lives expoentially.  

Today, I offer you Wateraid and invite you to consider how giving to the children in a far off region of the world, helps you.  It's obvious what it will do for them. What will it do for you? By giving water to those languishing without water, you are opening your heart to God, who will fill you with His Spirit, joy and power, new wine for this time and place. Your compassion is the ultimate baptism and the ultimate sacrament of God's presence among us.  

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*      "Salt water oceans make up 71% of the Earth’s surface, which the other 29% made up of the Earth’s continents and islands. But there are also freshwater lakes and glaciers that cover the Earth’s surface.
        Of all the water on Earth, 97.5% is contained within the oceans, while the remaining 2.5% is freshwater lakes and frozen water locked up in glaciers and the polar ice caps – almost 69% of the fresh water on Earth is ice." Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/65588/what-percent-of-earth-is-water/#ixzz2hhryyWLo

**   "The mikveh is a ritual bath designed for the Jewish rite of purification. The mikveh is not merely a pool of water; it must be composed of stationary, not flowing, waters and must contain a certain percentage of water derived from a natural source, such as a lake, an ocean, or rain. Both men and women have used the mikvehfor ritual purification."  (http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/mikveh)

***  Hindu devotees believe that by entering the mighty Gangees river during the religious festival, the Kumbh Melathey, they are cleansed of sin and freed from the karmic cycle of rebirth. The bathing takes place in an area known as the Sangam at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers "and a third mythical waterway called the Saraswati." Known as "Mauni Amavasya," the ritual bathing day is the "most auspicious" in the month-long festival which takes place every twelve years. 

Compassion

There is always an "I" in the "we."  We are comprised of seven billion individual selves. That's why in my previous blog I said that the whole is only as strong as the weakest one.So what is the gel, the glue, the cohesive factor that makes seven billion individual selves one massive body, one whole? 

Oh, sure, I could say, it's "love," whatever that means, really. Love has become an overused, misunderstood and vaguely untranslatable word.  I don't think we know really what love is.  I think we sense its coming, its being near, its sweetness, its tenderness, its sheer vulnerability and power, and yet we reach to hold it, grasp and keep it, and poof, it's gone.  It may linger for a little while, touching down like a hummingbird on your patio flower. But, have you noticed, it doesn't stay around like the squirrels or ducks.  It doesn't stay because we are incompatible with it.  All things in nature are drawn to their own, to that which energetically matches or resonates to themselves, as in, "birds of a feather flock together."  

While love might be the glue, and since there's relatively little love in comparison to the need for love in our heavy, dark, world today, the glue has to be something else.  And, that glue is very real and very much the cure for the whole world. It's compassion, the ability to suffer with another.  

Since we're all prison cell mates on this planet, trapped in a dense atmosphere of pain, control, oppression, greed and absolute competition for the best seat in the house, or for the biggest piece of bread, or the largest crumb on the ground, we all labor and groan together in one sad song to the universe. Yet, even the most hardened cell mates in a prison grow to have some compassion for another prisoner who is unfairly mistreated.  Why is that?  Really, in this competitive race to simply survive, why is there any altruistic compassion out there at all? Why would a beggar share his gleanings from a local dumpster with another, knowing he will have to go and climb through another garbage for something to each later?

I think it's because in our individual projection, we see ourselves in others, we mirror ourselves back to each other, as in "I see me in your eyes." So, we also can feel another's pain because it triggers our own memories of pain or our own current pain.  While this on some level would be diagnosed as a kind of narcissism, it's really not. It is some kind of gift that allows us to grow, to heal, to come together. I think it's a divine gift, imbued in our original creation, a source for spiritual growth and a guarantee that somehow we will heal ourselves.  I think the fact it's there points to the promise that there is hope. 

When I first saw the picture I ran yesterday of the child and the vulture, my heart was torn in pain.  I sobbed and, as you read, the photographer himself was so saddened by what he saw in the Sudan that the pain of it led him to end his own life. (it was also stated that he also suffered intermittenly with a bipolarity.) "What a sensitive soul," is what I thought, "a man so in touch with his own inner suffering that the scene he photographed triggered it."

I thought about the photo until a kind of pervasive cloud came over me, a lingering profound sadness that nothing could uplift. It's not just the child's terrible situation, her pain, her terrible hunger, and the predator waiting for his food also.  It became for me an iconic photo.  Aren't these two images - the vulture and the starving child - symbolic, deep, powerful, evocative images of our own inner human condition?  Aren't we all in the same condition as that poor starving little girl?  Isn't there a hurting, wounded inner child in us, not to use an overused description of the inner "self,"  your own piece of the "we"?

And, the vulture, we could say it's the ego or the multinational corporations, or evil itself, that's out there thieving whole nations and peoples. Or, we could say in more benign language, it also has a role in our spiritual evolution by providing the very suffering we need to become aware of our incomplete inner self that remains broken off from the whole, separate, detached, lingering and laboring in an agonizing, silent lonliness.  It serves to begin the birth pains of our eventual individual and then collective awakening and birth. 

In that photo, it's a symbol of the war, of the genocide that was happening in the Sudan then, and today is in Syria and Somalia.  It is the ultimate evil because it is abused and broken human innocence, steeped in ignorance of its own wounded nature that has become prey and then predator itself. In its blind fury and inner numbness, it becomes controlled by the forces of fear which induce a spiritual coma of need and lack strong enough, spiritually blinding enough to stalk the weakest among us, the spiritually starving soul of an abused and neglected little one. Even if this baby girl lived, (and I pray she did) how good would her self esteem ever be?  Could she, with parents who would most likely have lost her if the photographer hadn't chased off the vulture, ever feel the love she would need to give her the strength and personal power to face down the human vultures in her world? In her world?  In the Sudan?

The point is, this picture stings my heart until tears wash my soul, because something in my own soul resonates and can feel that little baby girl's pain. That child is me and it is that recognition that stirs a sense of familiarity, of knowing this child's pain and of wanting to reach out and scoop her up in my arms and take her home and feed her, bathe her, dress her, hold her, heal her, sing to her, make her safe, feed her soul until she is laughing in the sun, playing on a lush green lawn with other little children. And, on rare moments, she may look up at me from her play with a deep, inexpressible knowingness, of remembering, and then joyfully return to play.  She is me.

She is you, also.  She is in you.  As you see this inner scene, as you watch as the photographer watched, will you also chase off the vulture, your own unhealed part that stalks your own inner child?  Will you chase it off?  

As we wake up to this very real human condition which is in all of us, every single one of us, we become more honest with ourselves and consequently more honest with everyone else.  It is in that honesty that we will find our compassion and when we find our compassion we will begin to heal ourselves and the world.  Because, Christ said, "whatever you do for the least of these, your brothers and sisters, you do for me."  (Matthew 25) And, Christ is one with that inner child, that abused, neglected inner self.  As much as she is me and she is you, Christ is also one with her and you and me.  It is our a priori condition.  It's the way we were made and while it is today not fully realized, the seed hasn't grown into a great acorn tree yet. In that possibility, there is hope.

But, at first we cry. We cry, sobbing rivers of salty tears until we realize we are weeping for our own broken, starving inner child as much as and in symphony with this most precious little human jewel crumpled in the dark Sudanese dirt. And, as we realize and chase off the vulture, something in us changes us forever.  We find our inner hero who will let nothing stop him or her from saving that child and all children, all suffering everywhere.  

In that there is some glimmer of hope because, as we love another, we heal our own brokenness and love ourselves and as we love this way, with honesty and compassion, we meet Christ who is indelibly one with our own authentic self. It is Christ, who is the powerful spirit, the logos, the road less traveled and yet the only way to our fullfillment of beinghood.  We are made in God's image and the Christ spirit is God's very spiritual power to raise us up, grow us up, and teach us and heal us with authentic love.  This is the hope that one day "we" will be a whole, fully healed, one, in which everyone is full and shining in the light of empowerment and enlightenment.  

I realize that is an awesome, gradiose vision for us today.  It is a banquet for a starving child, but in it contains the promise that things are not going to stay the way they are forever, that there really is a new heaven and a new earth because, quite simply, it's written in our very nature. In our tears today are the seeds for our joy some day.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

                         Photo by Kevin Carter, South African photographer. 

"Vulture Stalking Child," Kevin Carter's picture of a starving Sudanese toddler stalked by a vulture, won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1994. Later that year he ended his life because the terror of the consequences of war were unbearable for this sensitive and brilliant photographer.*

"This image of an emaciated girl collapsing on the way to a feeding centre, as a plump vulture lurked in the background, was published first in The New York Times and The Mail & Guardian, a Johannesburg weekly. The reaction to the picture was so strong that The New York Times published an unusual editor's note on the fate of the girl. Carter said she resumed her trek to the feeding centre. He chased away the vulture. Afterwards, he told an interviewer, he sat under a tree for a long time, 'smoking cigarettes and crying.' His father, Mr Jimmy Carter said, 'Kevin always carried around the horror of the work he did.' - The New York Times." Source: Sydney Morning Herald Saturday 30 July 1994.

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You've heard it said that the human race is only as strong as its weakest link. There are no words for this terrible scene.  I pray with all my heart that somehow this little child survived. Maybe she's alive today, more than 20 years later.  Maybe she is also driven to care about other poor little children around the world.  Or, sadly, maybe her fate was the same as millions of starving children around the world.  They don't make it.  They are nameless, neglected, starving and sometimes left to die in the dirt, forgotten as if their brief interlude on Earth never happened. In this case, the child was not far from the feeding station where her parents were getting food and the photographer did chase off the vulture and that the little girl did find her way to a feeding station.  

Tragically and terribly, this is only one image of one child. How many others are there? 

So often our heart strings are pulled by pictues like this and in desperation we want to help.  We want to do something to help this child and millions like her.  While it would be wonderful to right now donate to an international fund to help the starving, poor and desperate people, that isn't the whole solution, as you know.

While this little child was suffering in agonizing starvation, there were corporate CEOs who run the world's multinational corporations sitting down to five course dinners, living fat off the land.  They're not the least bit concerned about children dying in the dirt.  Out of sight, out of mind is their excuse for their crime against humanity.  It allows their greed by blinding them to whatever empathy, compassion or even the tiniest hint of humanity remained in their cold money-obsessed hearts. They don't feel the least bit accountable or responsible for what their soul-less corporations do out there.

When I hear - which it seems it's everywhere these days - about the "beast" of Revelation, I can only think that we allow it free access to ravage the planet because we don't recognize it. It deceptively cons us. It stalks us all by feeding us one single little lie.  It negotiates for a place to prey on the world's most vulnerable by convincing us that it's doing good for us, good for the poor, good for the world.  So, we allow** corporations to go into poor countries, set up factories and sweat shops, leaving ruined communities, social structures broken down, another kind of ugly poverty, wasted lives, wasted Earth resources, as people produce items no one needs, in their wake. The undisciplined beast does it in the name of "economic growth." That's the buzz word the beast utters and we all jump with glee thinking that this oil company or that footwear corporation is actually going to employ thousands of people and help the poor.  But it only leaves them all more impoverished while it also pollutes their water, poisoning their land and farm animals with toxic chemicals, and stealing the lives of their children.  

And, that's only the first layer of the whole problem.  In the first world nations where children like this little girl are not seen, we forget that just because we can afford steak, we could save our money, eat a lot less, and somehow create a wave of compassionate human beings who stand up against the corporations that have literally completely filled our plazas and malls, lining our streets.  

In fact, no one even thinks twice of going to any one of them anymore.  We want to save a dollar so we go where things are cheaper.  We forget that not so very long ago, we went to the local grocer, who we all knew.  We did business locally and stopped feeding the mega corporations, who by the way, now are legally allowed to donate to campaign elections.  How is the individual voter going to compete for his voice to be heard when mega corporations can fund a campaign and put their corporate friendly candidate in office?  

It's indeed a beast, beyond our wildest imagination.  And, there isn't anything anyone can do about it, unless - and this is just a wing and a prayer - we all put these little ones in front of our human eyes everyday and stretch our minds in search of ways to help them.  

I for one, cannot eat knowing that a little one like this is starving.  We could all do with a little less, and we will be unable to afford as much as we used to purchase if we refuse to support corporate outlets, just for starters.  

I guess it has to be grass roots.  First, we wake up, then we do something.  While our hearts are moved to feed the starving people, we have to stop feeding the corporations.  Think about that the next time you go to the grocery story or buy new sneakers.  Then, you will see for yourself the hugeness of the problem.  Maybe you can still find an independent grocer or shoe store.  But, it would be great if we could do this before those small businesses are run out of business.  At the same time, we need to pass some serious legislation, but my heart sinks at the enormity of this, and all the while doing whatever you can to make your life count as your vote to find and help and feed the little ones dying somewhere.

*  Two months after receiving his Pulitzer, Carter would be dead of carbon-monoxide poisoning in Johannesburg, a suicide at 33. His red pickup truck was parked near a small river where he used to play as a child; a green garden hose attached to the vehicle's exhaust funneled the fumes inside. "I'm really, really sorry," he explained in a note left on the passenger seat beneath a knapsack. "The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist." (from "The Life and Death of Kevin Carter," essay by Scott MacLeod, Time's Johannesburg bureau chief at the time of Carter's death.)

** We allow corporations free access through "free trade," which doesn't regulate international trade well enough and we fail to have a strong control managing and overseeing - which we should be able to do as a democratic nation - our government's blanket permission to allow corporations to do business in the third world)

Chasing the Dawn

Climb every mountain,

Search high and low,

Follow every highway,

Every path you know.

Climb every mountain,

Ford every stream,

Follow every rainbow,

'Till you find your dream.

A dream that will need

All the love you can give,

Every day of your life 

For as long as you live.*

Finding our way through a dark, damp, dense woods of confusion and complicated misinformation is truly a nightmare of the spirit. Words or lyrics of old songs, wisdom from past ages, sometimes slip into consciousness to guide us.  Certainly, these are a dark age, a terribly dark age, and I think that anyone who is even the slightest bit honest has found their own complicity with the dark forces that have fouled our global community. 

Today, as I struggled with an unkind comment from someone regarding the film "Thrive" which I posted on Tiger Lilies a few days ago, I slipped back into a state of wondering, "am I right about this, or wrong?"  Honestly probing my own conscience for any false or misinformed motives, I returned to the awareness that sometimes there isn't a lot of company when you're out on a limb.  Maybe you have to sound the ram's horn to see who out there thinks, feels this way too.  When you do that some of the reply may not be what you want, but you will hear some of what is out there nonetheless - either resistance or agreement.  If you listen carefully, you'll also hear a lot of fear, frustration and even anger, often directed at whoever is asking the question, which, in this case, was me.  Then, you weigh even the education and wisdom of both responses and go back into the cave to evaluate them, measured against what you know intellectually and intuitively.  

So, in case you're wondering where all this is going, let me begin in the beginning. In traditional religion, simply, we were taught that "God" was out there somewhere and He would judge us by our actions.  We were consequently taught a list of good and bad actions by which we would be judged.  And, just in case we failed to follow and obey them and didn't reap the benefits or punishment of our action / non-action in this life, "God" would catch up with us when we died and the appropriate punishment would be justifiably applied to our lifetime crime. And, then there is even that overarching caveat that we pray for forgiveness for "those things we've left undone."  So, it seemed no matter what we did or failed to do, meaning what we were blind and unaware of, we were going to find ourselves in a position of judgment and needing divine forgiveness. 

This created fear and trembling in our hearts and was so thoroughly cemented in our young psyches that even to this day the deeply rooted message still informs us, or I should say still informs me.  This suggests that by total obedience to authority, which - like the age old "divine right of kings" - has somehow been divinely conferred on whoever is our authority, requires from us complete obedience and submission to that authority.  We have been taught to be obedient slaves and loyal puppets.  What if we don't obey?  What if we reject authority and follow our own inner knowing? Who can we trust?  Is our priest, or boss, or president or corporate CEO divinely right? Will we be punished after this life? Are we to fearfully obey even the Old Testament or the New Testament or the Quran? This is not an easy answer.  As much as I study Jungian psychology, Gnostic scriptures, the earliest writings and teachings of the Church (to which our blessed Protestant reformers did not have access), the liberation of the deep inner authentic self which is God's image born and wedded to us, I still struggle with the possibility that we could be wrong, that I could be wrong.  This worry clearly translates into my work - or occasionally lack thereof. It is something I struggle with daily.

So, that's the sum of what is western civilization's psycho/spiritual quandary resulting in a kind of status quo.  Simply, but just a jumping off point, to demonstrate the sheer depth and power of the control which has enslaved our minds, challenging even the minds of those who are wise enough to know the difference and yet wise enough to question even the new reality.

Lately, I found a book - yes, literally found it - on my long walking trail. Two copies had been left on a park bench in both English and Spanish, clearly intended or someone to pick up and read.  That day, I had been deeply immersed in my long struggle for authentic "beingness" seeking a productive and honest way.  I had already come to realize that the teachings of the Church were off (with all due respect yet with sincere admission).  Lately, I had also become angry due to my never ending state of confusion that simply led nowhere.  That frustration was beginning to boil over affecting all my relationships with family.  I wanted so badly to take a step in some direction, but each step only brought me to another cliff of unknowing.  I couldn't leap because I knew that there was something flawed in the river below. So, an ordained ministry was out.  Sadly, that meant I had to find a new way - a new wine for that old wine skin. History has taught that those already deeply embedded in an existing institution or structure rarely are willing to exchange that security for the uncertainty and lack of security in a possible new one.  What would it take for me to also make that shift?  

I am like everyone else.  I am scared of the past but even more afraid of the future.  If we stay on the course we're on, it seems clear that things are not going to bode well for us.  It is clearly and obviously the closing of an age.  But, alone, singly, to make that step out was terrifying.  How much time do I have before taking a complete financial leap?  Is there anyone else out there who thinks like this?  How would I find out, how would I coax others out of their comfort zones to explore the questions that haunt me?  

And, that's where the journey begins - finding the first ray of the rainbow I was seeking.

So, I was on this long walk and found a book about the history of Christianity (beginning with the Old Testament).  While I already know "Church History" I sensed a calling to pick it up anyway and uncover what "the Spirit" is saying to me.  I'm fairly sure God is well aware of my inner struggle for truth and direction. At first I thought the book may have been a kind of religious propaganda piece for some fringe religious group, but as I read it, it was clear it was very well researched, intelligently written and seemed to be without any bias.  I followed the history through to the Reformation before putting it down.  I wandered around for a few days thinking about the extreme sacrifice of some of the early protestant reformers.  I weighed in on their thesis and concurred they were right - for their time.  I ached at the degree to which they suffered for that timely rightness (i.e. burning at the stake.)  I even reflected on the fact that "my" church, the Anglican Church, once burned Joan of Arc at the stake.  But, that may be nothing compared to what the Catholic Church did, but that was a long time ago.) So, what was the message here for me?  Is it the prophetic cost of stepping out in a new direction that will challenge everything as we know it?  Or is it about having the courage to persevere to the next level of human spiritual evolution?  So, OK, I thought, let's assume it's both.  The question still remains, what is "IT"  that we're seeking, that we're needing to find so desperately.  What is the truth that is staring us in the face and then once we know that truth and are 100 % sure it is the truth, what do we do about it?  

The old Rabbinic style of teaching is to teach by asking the question and following wisdom to the answer.  Wisdom, for me at least, comes as little rays of light, little inner nudgings, pearls found on park benches on a walking trail.  

I think the underlying ground has to be a sincere search.  When you are certain that your intentions are pure, as I am sure mine are.  At least I'm sure of that - even if that's all that I'm sure of.  I think you can develop an inner knowingness, a sense of what is true and what is fear, following love or fear. In fact, one morning, while I was in a prolonged state of confusion, feeling actually depressed about the whole thing, I stumbled over a sentence that said, "Love will lead you, fear will stop you,."  My heart leapt.  "Yes, that's true!" I thought, recalling the essential teaching of the beautiful Course in Miracles. 

So, what am I afraid of and where is the love?  That was freeing, enlivening and kept my spirits up long enough to travel a bit further down the way.  I realized the terrible dark power of fear.  It will kill your spirit, brow beat you enough to be someone's slave and even cause you to lose your dream and abort your journey. However, some of us are luckier than others because we simply cannot abort the journey because there's absolutely nothing to fall back on. 

Anyway, at this point of the journey, I am only identifying and following these threads of light  While they may just be that - a single ray of light - rather than the whole dawn, it seems they are the only way to get to the new Renaissance and on into the future that is calling to us, begging us to be born. 


*Lyrics by Rodgers and Hammerstein for Sound of Music musical, 1959.