Peace of Christ

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give

you. I do not give to you as the world gives.

Do not let your hearts be troubled and

do not be afraid."

            - John 14:27

  

 

Peace is so close to love.  It is an inner space, a quiet, fluid place, like a tranquil lake in the early morning.  It is still, perfectly still, yet so alive.  It is the breath of divinity entering and living in your soul.  It is a state of mind, of being.  It is Heaven and it is grace.  That's all.  And, yet, it is everything - the entire universe in a single breath. 
 

Peace is a miracle.  We cannot give it to ourselves.  The best we can do is invite it, wait for it, prepare for it as we prepare for a guest, set the table, prepare the wine and food, and open our hearts. We can pray for it and hope for it. 

When peace comes, we will know it is the presence of divinity in our human lives. It is the magic of the universe in our presence and nothing else matters - not then, nor ever. And, suddenly, we are awakened to something so much more wonderful than anything we'd known before and so grateful for the presence that reaches into us and draws us closer to ourselves, igniting a love beyond this place and time.

Peace comes with the message that we are loved beyond our wildest imagination and that we cannot earn it nor chase it away. We need not worry so much, or strive so much.  Sadly, we measure ourselves by perishable standards and miss it all while we are pursuing the world's so very temporary values.

 

When we honor ourselves and each other, the earth and all of life, when we stand in the midst of life, honoring it all, cherishing the air we breathe, we are on the threshold of grasping a scent of that great peace that only the divine can give us . . . and the world can't. 

It is the whole reason for being alive - to experience the perfect peace of God and feel God's love, unlike any other love we could know. 

 

'Water is sacred,' NO Nestlé

Photo from No Nestlé in Cascade Locks' Facebook* 

 

Poised on sacred ground, Native Americans from the Columbia River tribes stand defiantly against illegal water usage by the multinational corporate giant, Nestlé, who, you might recall from a previous Tiger Lilies post, (1/9/15) still purchases chocolate harvested by children trafficked in slave labor in Africa.

Nestlé has filed a proposal to the City of Cascade Locks in Oregon to build a water bottling plant which would draw water from Oxbow Springs in the Columbia gorge.

 

“They’re blatantly violating the Treaty of 1855,” Anna Mae Leonard (third on right in photo above) with the Columbia River Tribes said.

According to that treaty,  the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla tribes, "gave up, or ceded, to the U.S. more than 6.4 million acres in what is now northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington. In exchange, a parcel of land was designated as the Umatilla Indian Reservation which the tribes would retain as a permanent homeland."

                             In this map, the small area in the center is the current site of the

                             Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The

                             larger yellow areas are the traditional lands of the Cayuse, Umatilla

                             and Walla Walla.

                                               

In the treaty, the tribes "reserved rights to fish, hunt, and gather traditional foods and medicines throughout the ceded lands. The Tribes still protect and exercise those rights within the 6.4 million acres of ceded land in what is now northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington." As you can see from the map, the Columbia River runs through the northwestern sector of their ceded lands to which they have retained their rights to fish, hunt, gather traditional foods and medicine, and protect.

Anna Mae has fasted and stood vigil outside Cascade Locks, Oregon, since Monday (8/17) urging that city's leaders’ not to allow Nestlé to bottle and sell water from the nearby Oxbow Springs. She has been joined by a growing group of tribe members and others in her stance to protect the water and stop Nestlé.

The Columbia River and its water is sacred and protected by the treaty, the tribes assert.

“It is intrinsically a desecration to sell that water,” Anna Mae said to a KOIN reporter. “It is specific to our spiritual, cultural practices right here.”

The proposed water bottling plant would siphon off 118 million gallons of water from Oxbow Springs every year.

“It goes against our beliefs to sell water,” Anna Mae said to the television reporter . “You cannot sell water. It’s wrong, we have to have water to live.”

And, as if the violation of a treaty isn't bad enough or that the Columbia gorge is one of the most beautiful and pristine places in the world, the Columbia River is slowly being poisoned by seepage from the Hanford nuclear remediation plant in Washington. Already, the salmon are dying due to high water temperatures in some of the area's rivers.

Oregon and Washington states are virtually militant in protecting the environment as evident in late July when 13 people suspended themselves off the St. John Bridge in Portland to protest oil drilling in Alaska.  They protested by attempting to block the departure of Royal Dutch Shell PLC icebreaker 'Fennica,' which is part of Shell's exploration and spill-response plan off Alaska's northwest coast.

They were, as are Anna Mae and the Columbia River tribes, crying out to the president, the country, and the world to stop the exploitation of the natural environment by faceless, soulless multi-national corporations, such as Nestlé and Shell Oil Company - among others - which have bought their way to rape, pillage, and exploit our Earth. 

Are we, the people of the Northwest, the people of the U.S. and the people of the world, so complicit in this great and terrible evil that we would silently sit by and do nothing, say nothing, turn away while our Earth is slowly being desecrated?

Perhaps the Columbia River tribes and Greenpeace activists are crying in the wind - their voices snuffed out by raging wildfires, record-breaking temperatures and a 50-year drought. But, isn't that the point?  Isn't the state of the climate directly related to our doing nothing to stop this kind of exploitation by corporations?

People are encouraged to sign a petition opposing the Nestlé bottling plant in City Hall, 140 SW Wanapa St., Cascade Locks, Oregon 97014. (541) 374-8484

_________________________________

Updates:

 

1.  Re:  Shell Oil drilling in the Arctic:"Our Climate, Our Future": As Obama Visits Arctic,

Alaskans Urge Him to Reverse Shell Oil Deal mail@democracynow.org at Democracy Now!

Weeks after approving Shell’s plans to drill in Alaska, President Obama is heading to the state to warn about the dangers of climate change. "Alaska’s glaciers are melting faster, too, threatening tourism and adding to rising seas," Obama said in his weekly address. A protest is scheduled today in Anchorage to urge Obama to reverse his decision on Shell and stop all exploratory drilling in the Arctic. We speak to Richard Steiner, an Alaskan marine conservation biologist, who is speaking at the "Our Climate, Our Future" rally.

2. It seems the City of Cascade Locks also has concerns about the strain the water bottling plant would put on its water system, according to a statement on its website.  

"The City of Cascade Locks' current water system cannot  handle the amount of water Nestlé would bottle from the waters of Oxbow Springs.  It shouldn't.  It's not designed to."

Everyone is encouraged to sign a petition opposing the Nestlé bottling plant in City Hall, 140 SW Wanapa St., Cascade Locks,Oregon 97014. (541) 374-8484

Furthermore:

 

Nestle Pays Only $524 To Extract 27,000,000 Gallons Of California Drinking Water

(left) The Arrowhead Mountain Water Company bottling plant, owned by Swiss conglomerate Nestle, on the Morongo Indian Reservation near Cabazon, Calif., (AP/DamianDovarganes)

Activists have called for a boycott of Nestle Waters and all Nestle products until they are held accountable for their actions in California.

By Claire Bernish | AntiMedia | August 21, 2015

 

(ANTIMEDIA) Los Angeles, CA — Nestle has found itself more and more frequently in the glare of the California drought-shame spotlight than it would arguably care to be — though not frequently enough, apparently, for the megacorporation to have spontaneously sprouted a conscience.

Drought-shaming worked sufficiently enough for Starbucks to stop bottling water in the now-arid state entirely, uprooting its operations all the way to Pennsylvania. But Nestle simply shrugged off public outrage and then upped the ante by increasing its draw from natural springs — most notoriously in the San Bernardino National Forest — with an absurdly expired permit.

(Go here for the rest of the article)

 

*https://www.facebook.com/pages/NO-Nestle-in-Cascade-Locks/1634554230089491?hc_location=ufi
*http://koin.com/2015/08/19/anti-nestle-protesters-gather-in-cascade-locks/

The Lion's Gate

 

"I am . . . the bright and morning star"  

Revelation 22:16

Aslan, Mufasa, Judah? There are no words to express the sadness of the terrible killing of Cecil, the lion. Images speak loudest, I guess, and this portrait is rich in meaning.

Yet, I can't help wondering if this tragic slaughter of such a magnificent animal is timely and spiritually archetypal. It seems like an icon of what we're doing to the world as a whole. Why are people still killing the animals? Haven't we evolved past that by now?

And, the children and the poor and the oppressed and the millions who are sick and dying due to poor nutrition are also at risk, living precariously at the mercy of the world's wealthy hunters - corporate, political, and military. Cecil is a symbol of the natural world - the Earth, the animals, the children, the women, the powerless, voiceless, oppressed  - struggling to just survive. They are the children of the Earth, the divine mother. They are those who suffer from wars and famines and are powerless to stop them.

And yet the Lion, the ancient and universal image of the Divine in our midst, that Lion of Judah, the king of nature, holds a powerful prophetic message on many levels.

It is certainly a call to stop the mass killing of the poorest of the poor on our planet through neglect, capital exploitation, and political and military aggression. It's a huge statement, maybe larger than a selfish American hunter's cruel killing of the beloved Cecil.

The slaughter of the lion is reminiscent of the slaughter of Christ who surmounted the grave, who lives eternally. While he is always calling us to step up to the gate to our own inherent divinity, he is equally showing us who he is. In the Gospel of John, he is the gate to life itself.  He is the way to authenticity, abounding joy and peace, all that is real, and eternal life. (“I am the way and the truth and the life." John 14:6 NIV) That door, that way, that gate, is the Lion's gate. It is a way, unlike any other we know.

While the long, slow, excruciating death of Cecil is extremely emotionally troubling, it points the way to the great and eternal Lion's Gate. We all will stop and look up and then be directed to look within, to our hearts.  Do we conspire to kill the innocent or are we courageous, with a lion's heart and stand up and speak out on behalf of those who can't.  Certainly the Earth itself and the animal kingdom is voiceless, as are the human women and children. That is, unless you have eyes to see and ears to hear their voices in their overall deteriorating vitality, dramatic climate change, extinction of species. 

What will we do when we see the Lion's gate? That too is metaphoric of the inner realm, where the true gate is - and is a kind of star gate.  If you see it out there, that means you have found it in here.

Yes,  he is in the heavens, as Aaron Blaise suggests, but he wasn't the first to see that.  C.S. Lewis saw the resurrection of Aslan as a symbol of Christ's eternal realm. He is who He is, the great and eternal Lion.

But even on the most mundane, the commonest of levels, the kind that CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, or the BBC, will pick up on, the lion's death was not in vain. The world's outrage will insist on change. The conscience of our global community has been awakened. Thankfully, finally. And, hopefully the world's outrage will effect change.

The kingdom of God is WITHIN you

"Neither shall they say,
Lo here or, lo there! for, behold,
the kingdom of God is within you."
                         - Luke 17:21
 


"If your leaders say to you,
'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,'
then the birds of the sky will precede you.
If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,'
then the fish will precede you.
Rather, the (Father's) kingdom
is within you and it is outside you. 
 When you know yourselves,
then you will be known,
and you will understand that you are
children of the living Father.
But if you do not know yourselves,
then you live in poverty,
and you are the poverty."
                                   - Gospel of Thomas, 3