Our only hope

A radiant morning opens a gorgeous new age. The wars are over, the prisoners freed, the children are singing and playing in beautiful garden playgrounds, the world is alive and thriving in joy. The knowledge of anything else is long forgotten.

Maybe that's a 100 years from now!

Stop. Wait. Before you flip on another day's sad news, which the media feeds us daily, hourly, seducing our minds in the way a drug dealer sucks in a new customer, consider for a moment there is a "more excellent way." *  

There is an antidote to the global virus of hatred and fear that has infected us all. While it seems the world has gone pica, which is a distorted sense of real nutritional need which creates an addiction to the very thing causing an illness, there is another way, a simple solution.  But, as anyone who has ever attempted to change an unhealthy habit knows, it may be simple, but it isn't easy.

While the body may actually be starving for a nutrient, pica causes an addiction to the very condition that is causing the need.  An anorexic will have a strong aversion to food, people who are allergic to wheat will crave bread, children who are malnourished for calcium will eat lead based paint.

Has the world become addicted to war and the unimaginable, unwatchable, news coming out of every sector of the planet? Is that addiction leading us away from a healthy response which would heal our world. Are we, the blind codependent victims of violence, becoming its perpetrators through our vacuous complicity?  

There comes that moment in spiritual awakening when you realize you are completely powerless against the furious winds of hatred storming the planet, degrading the quality of life everywhere. People have forgotten it is evil to kill, steal, lie, covet, curse, disrespect your parents, violate the sacred rights of another; and trespass on the hearts, minds and pocket books of others, abuse animals and the earth, cleverly manipulate and devise complex psychological strategies and methods to control the minds of innocent victims by the predatory capitalist marketplace for selfish gain.  Who has not been touched by this, infected, weakened, stung in some way? 

The global agony is so vast, so out of control, you realize anything you could possibly ever do wouldn't so much as make the slightest difference in tipping the planet back onto the axis of sanity.  But, to do nothing feels like the most ungrateful response to this great gift of life from our loving creator. 

The call to "fight the good fight" has never been more urgently needed.  It is heard in our on-going  reach for global peace, humanitarian feeding and clean water projects throughout Africa, lobbying in Washington for the ever expanding rights and recognition of the diverse groups of the American population which fragments further each year, the desperately needed environmental efforts and scientific search for clean energy, and the loud cry of the innocent victims of tyranny in the Middle East and the Ukraine. The call is pounding in the hearts and minds of every conscious human being. 

It is a global call to arms, heard by each one of the 7 billion (and rising) to work, dream, create in whatever way one is able to leave the world better than the place they found it.  If we each did this, things would change in a moment, in a single second of time. But, the task is overwhelming, and the path is dark and overgrown.

To love is the only way out of this nightmare. It is "the good fight." And, it's not a Hallmark card. It's not romantic. It's not sentimental and it's not weak. It is the ultimate power of the universe. It's just too bad the word itself has been so degraded in meaning. It too has been corrupted as has everything else that's beautiful and sacred.

It is the power of God in your imagination, in your dreaming, praying, and in genius visionary planning.  It is the light of divine wisdom streaming into your mind and then down the 100 yard line into your well barricaded heart. It is hope, and is often born out of a form of righteous indignation, a passionate cry to God for mercy, for help, for redemption, for healing, for enlightenment, for life - again and again and again until finally the creaking rusty ancient steel door of your precious sacred heart begins to slowly budge open.  

You might push against it with all your might for a long time until a single thought flings it open. You suddenly awaken and are enlivened by the awareness that you are loved and you are loving and there is no one there who judges, condemns, or punishes you. There is only love, flowing like a crystal clear river, inviting you to flow with it. That love, like a radiant sunrise within your being, is the antidote to everything that haunts and spoils life on our once beautiful planet.

It is the hope for the children, for the aged, for the prisoner, for the animals, for all of life. It is the only hope. And, it is not of our own making, our own doing. We cannot roll away that massive stone gate opening into heaven from within our own hearts, unless we ask the angels to help us. Unless we are completely in tune with God whom we encounter within our most sacred chamber, we are powerless. 

This is that great moment of grace. Only God can open our hearts. We can only ask, and wait. As one waits in a Japanese garden for the master to invite him into the tea house, we wait for God's angel to unlock the gate to our hearts.  There is no other way, but it is the only way.  And, even that way is easy. All we have to do is simply ask and it is done.  Period. From that moment on, all of our power is hinged to our intention to love, to remain in perfect union (communion) with divine love within us.  If we don't have time to meditation or pray formally, the intention alone is sufficient to keep the heart open and flowing with the love light of the divine, making us powerful enough to reverse all that plaques the world.  

And, just in case we have forgotten what love is, I'll close with the immortal words of St. Paul:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, 

but do not have love, 

I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy 

and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, 

and if I have a faith that can move mountains, 

but do not have love, I am nothing. 

If I give all I possess to the poor 

and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, 

but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient 

Love is kind 

Love does not envy

Love does not boast 

Love is not proud 

Love does not dishonor others 

Love is not self-seeking 

Love is not easily angered

Love keeps no record of wrongs 

Love does not delight in evil 

Love rejoices with the truth 

Love always protects  

Love always trusts 

Love always hopes 

Love always perseveres
Love never fails 

But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put the ways of childhood behind me.  For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthinas 13, NIV)