Should the U.S. Fear, Antagonize, Denigrate, Irritate or Embrace China?

This anonymous post about anti-China perceptions in the West is viral on the internet. I found it fascinating and thought-provoking. I think you will too…. 

What Do You Really Want From Us?

When we were the sick man of Asia,

We were called the yellow peril.

When we are billed as the next superpower, we are called “the threat.”

When we closed our doors, you launched the Opium War to open our markets.

When we embraced free trade, you blamed us for stealing your jobs.

When we were falling apart, you marched in your troops and demanded your fair share.

When we tried to put the broken pieces back together again, Free Tibet, you screamed. It was an invasion!

When we tried communism, you hated us for being communist.

When we embraced capitalism, you hated us for being capitalist.

When we had a billion people, you said we were destroying the planet.

When we tried limiting our numbers, you said we abused human rights.

When we were poor, you thought we were dogs.

When we lend you cash, you blame us for your national debts.

When we build our industries, you call us polluters.

When we sell you goods, you blame us for global warming.

When we buy oil, you call it exploitation and genocide.

When you go to war for oil, you call it liberation.

When we were lost in chaos, you demanded the rule of law.

When we uphold law and order against violence, you call it a violation of human rights.

When we were silent, you said you wanted us to have free speech.

When we are silent no more, you say we are brainwashed xenophobes.

Why do you hate us so much? we asked.

No, you answered, we don't hate you.

We don't hate you either,

But do you understand us?

Of course we do, you said,

We have AFP, CNN and BBC….

What do you really want from us?

Think hard first, then answer…

Because you only get so many chances.

Enough is enough, enough hypocrisy for this one world.

We want one world, one dream, and peace on earth.

This big blue earth is big enough for all of us.

 

Please send your comments to njcpace@gmail.com. Thank you! 🙂

 

New new new spiritual sharings (and more to come)

12/1/10 – Fearful dreams which have the purpose of getting “more” for oneself at others’ expense never satisfy. However, all dreams, when transformed to include goals of shared peace, love, appreciation, understanding, respect and support for all of life, do satisfy.

 

11/30/10 – Our rational, logical brains have indispensible but highly limited utility. All quality lives and human relations are inspired and supported by helpful, loving, appreciative, accepting, intuitive, spiritual motivations and intentions that arise within.

 

11/29/10 – When we stop struggling to “figure out,” analyze, intellectualize and speculate on the motives, goals and purposes of others and ourselves, but instead, listen to the wisdom within us, we will feel no need to fear, judge or attack ourselves and others.

 

11/28/10 – We are God’s expression of consciousness, creativity and love. We are God’s hands, feet, eyes and ears. All of God’s power and knowledge lies within us. We are inseparable from God, from his wholeness, presence and power throughout all creation.

 

11/27/10 – We can know ourselves and others as “one” only intuitively, through loving appreciation and healing acceptance. But when we try to analyze, figure out and predict ourselves and others, we forget this oneness, and begin separating, judging and attacking.

 

11/26/10 – When we are feeling lost, we can remind ourselves of the peaceful goals we want, seek within for guidance in creating and experiencing the perspectives, actions, feelings, outcomes and days we want, follow our inner guidance—and let all our fears go.

 

11/25/10 – We can safely turn our days over to God, who already knows our deepest questions and real desires, as well as our infinite potential for creating and spreading joy, and for supporting what is alive and eternal in ourselves and in all others everywhere.

 

11/24/10 – All the power of God, mankind and creation is accessible within each of us. We can ask and receive understanding, answers, insights, love, joy and wisdom. Within us is God’s home, where all are one. Nothing spiritual, true, real or eternal is outside us.

 

11/23/10 – Our self-protective, logical, rational, defensive illusions, images, concepts, arguments, explanations, excuses, justifications and projections offer us and others only guilt and pain. They offer us nothing we could ever want, and many things we don’t.

 

11/22/10 – Nothing good, peaceful, useful, happy, meaningful or worthy can ever come from creating defensive, guilty, judgmental images and concepts of ourselves or others, or from guessing, projecting or analyzing our own or others’ motives or intentions.

 

11/21/10 – Our defensive concepts, analyses, self-images and projections set up exhausting, judgmental, false rules and realities which produce only harmful fantasies and painful guilt. We can ask to replace them with an accepting, healing spiritual vision.

 

11/20/10 – When we let go of demands and expectations, we allow ourselves and others to be the perfect, unique, lovable, beloved eternal creations we all are. When we live and let live, and let guilt and judgment go, we rest in loving circles of giving and receiving.

 

11/19/10 – Until we respond to all errors and mistakes as requests for healing and help, rather than as unforgivable sins deserving of attacks, blame, anger, judgment and retribution, we cannot know God’s eternal benevolence, forgiveness, justice and love.

 

11/18/10 – A good way to relate well to anyone is to establish, in advance, a peaceful, loving purpose—toward everyone. All relationships go better when founded upon a goal such as the golden rule, which derives from the gentle facets and permutations of peace.

 

11/17/10 – Reality is not “out there,” but “in here.” Reality is not about our bodies or a world “outside” us, but instead, the eternal, spiritual truth within us, which creates and animates all things, is the source of all life and all love, and is that which never changes.

 

11/15/10 – We are all fellow-travelers upon a road that is often dark and difficult. Yet we can bring light and hope and love to one another when we decide to neither lead nor follow, but to walk with one another as beloved, lovable and loving friends.

 

11/14/10 – We’re “wrong” when we react judgmentally, defensively, adversarially or aggressively toward others who are doing the same, and feeling “right” about it. The only “right” (and effective) response to such “wrong” is healing and help.

 

11/14/10 – Since no person, group, party, religion, nation or leader knows all perspectives or has all the “right” answers, “wrong” arises, not just when we make mistakes, but when we attack others for their mistakes, and thus add to the sum of the world’s injustices.

 

11/13/10 – Satisfying, peaceful paths are those that serve us, God and all mankind, drawing us all closer in our awareness of spiritual oneness. Efforts that compete, divide and separate, or that serve one person at the expense of another, must always disappoint.

 

11/12/10 – A personal self-concept must be defended, lived up to, lived down, regretted, explained, built up, grieved, avenged, elaborated upon, and consistently maintained. With no self-image, we’re free to freshly recreate all our relationships, moment-to-moment.

 

11/11/10 – We are on our right path, doing our highest will and God’s. All spiritual paths are confusing, difficult, boulder-strewn, filled with pitfalls and detours—and unique. Our way feels sure, clear, peaceful and safe as we let our guiding inner spirit lighten our steps.

 

11/10/10 – We can’t know everything, so we can’t judge others fairly; and because we can’t judge fairly, the only effective, inspiring, motivating correction we can offer is one which we would want for ourselves and our own mistakes—to love, lift and let it go.

 

11/9/10 – Are we lost, separate, mortal creatures in brutal natural competition with each other for survival, or are we God’s single, beloved, sacred and eternal expression, his will and reflection, perfect in oneness, diversity, uniqueness, interdependence and holiness?

 

11/8/10 – Our seemingly insignificant contributions, stumbling steps, counterproductive setbacks and fumbling mis-directions are our perfect, unique and indispensably holy paths to awareness, sharing and celebration of God’s oneness, forgiveness and love.

 

11/7/10 – When we want to say or do the right thing, calm ourselves, make a decision, find new perspectives and insights, order our priorities, be happier, understand, be better—we can go within, ask our questions, and trust the loving, peaceful answers.

 

11/6/10 – Our hardest lesson is to let go of our own guilt, defensiveness, mistakes, struggles, wrong assumptions, misdirected efforts, incorrigibility, anger, jealousy, resentment, weariness, despair and self-condemnation—and live fully, freely, now.

 

11/5/10 – We can choose to experience agelessness or aging, timelessness or time, beauty or ugliness, delight or despair, spirituality or cynicism, positivity or negativity, joy or sorrow, freedom or guilt, goodness or evil, life or death, love or fear, truth or illusion.

 

11/4/10 – Our daily challenges, struggles and mistakes are opportunities: to ask specific questions; pray to see things differently; receive miraculous insights, wisdom and love; and become humbled, grateful, open, accepting lifters of our fellow-travelers’ burdens.

 

11/3/10 – We don’t have to resolve the past or know the future. All we can ever do is live fully in the present moment, and do our very best with now—the only time we ever have to give and receive love, create, heal, forgive, cherish, lift, learn, appreciate and inspire.

 

11/2/10 – Physical, spiritual, individual, interpersonal and planetary health and healing are inextricably interconnected and intertwined, and always miraculously support each other, as we ask for, receive, and offer forgiveness, acceptance, love, peace and gratitude.

 

11/1/10 – We can accept ourselves and all others as-is, without reference to the past; or we can suffer from guilt, judgment, separation, anger, blame and attack. Self and other-acceptance are interdependent keys to all healing, peace, and creative power for good.

 

10/31/10 – We can see, create and extend our guilt and fear outward toward a cultural delusion of division, hate and death, or we can see and heal ourselves and all others as one eternally perfect spiritual creation, by loving unconditionally in the present moment.

 

10/30/10 – When we pray for peaceful solutions, when we let go of a troubled past, when we trust God to work and speak and heal and love through us, nothing is impossible.

 

10/29/10 – We can experience the joy and peace of God once again as we let anger and judgment go. Our sense of injustice arises from a perception of temporal separation; yet God’s justice knows and expresses creation only as one, whole, perfect and eternal will.

 

10/28/10 – God judges his creation, not as divided and competing, but as one, whole, inseparable, timeless good. Only this holy, all-encompassing perspective of an unconditionally-loving, eternal justice can heal our perceptions of temporal injustices.

 

10/27/10 – We fear chaos, insanity and meaninglessness. Yet reality, truth, purpose and hope lie, not in any past mistakes, but in humankind’s capacity to see, accept, appreciate, celebrate and love, with God, his imperfect/perfect expression/creation, right now, as-is.

 

10/26/10 – When we put our trust in ourselves alone, we feel neither safety nor direction nor help. When we nourish, through daily spiritual practice, our safe reliance upon God, we find strength, comfort, insight, clarity, sustenance, purpose and joy everywhere.

 

10/25/10 – If we are not mere bodies, but instead, eternal spirits—the will and expression of a loving God—then all pain, loss, suffering and sin are mere temporal illusions. If God is love, then so are we—blameless, unconditionally loved, and safe, now and forever.

 

10/24/10 – When we are harshly judging ourselves, others and the world, we can ask God to judge instead, whose judgment urges us to look and see, at every moment and in each detail, the goodness, blamelessness and sacred wholeness of his perfect expression.

 

10/6/10 – Our eyes and brains analyze all that seems “outside” us in terms we’ve acquired from our experiences, thought and culture. It works better to see only positive, eternal, loving reality, and not react to all the rest, which is only negative illusion.

 

8/22/10 – God is the power, insight and comfort in which I now receive infinite gifts of present and eternal peace, acceptance and unconditional love, and return them joyfully and serenely to that-of-God, humankind, nature and self comprising the One Self of all.

 

8/13/10 – The most honest and meaningful truth we can communicate on any subject always reflects our highest spiritual perspectives on the unchangeable safety, innocence, value, goodness and holiness of every single one of God’s beloved eternal beings.

 

8/12/10 – We can use the creative power of universal mind shared by all God’s eternal expressions to build a world of truth, beauty, love, joy and healing, and not in support of destructive cultural myths of sin, fear, guilt, despair, weakness, vengeance and evil.

 

8/11/10 – In all our relationships, we have daily opportunities to teach through our own words and examples—and thus simultaneously to learn and to reinforce—trust, faith, honesty, gentleness, forbearance, joy, generosity, defenselessness, patience and peace.

 

8/10/10 – Each of us fulfills a unique, loving, peaceful work in life which is our shared will with God, who gives us what we need to accomplish it, along with trust in our own innocence, and a sense of freedom from guilt, fear, inadequacy and defensiveness.

 

8/9/10 – We can give only to ourselves. Exactly how best, what, when, why, to whom, and how, each of us uniquely balances our giving, is always different for each person—and always perfect. When we feel conflicted and defensive, we’ve forgotten this.

 

8/8/10 – What makes everything and everyone beautiful? Recognition of the sinless innocence of everything and everyone at every present moment of eternity. It is this bountiful, unconditional forgiveness which Jesus’ life teaches, exemplifies and clarifies.

 

8/7/10 – The most valuable, essential lesson we can teach others is our own example of joyous, guilt-free living, which holds up a mirror for the innocence of others. The most destructive, pernicious, persistent cultural myth is the belief that being human is wrong.

 

8/6/10 – I gratefully accept the abundant justice of an eternity of peace and oneness with God, his ever-available gifts of comfort, strength and unconditional love, and the blessings of teaching, learning from, sharing with, and loving my eternal fellow-travelers.

 

8/5/10 – In the sense that we are all eternal, time doesn’t matter. But thoughtful choices about our use of time can exponentially lessen suffering and add to joy. We can seek help within to spiritually order our lives and priorities, and to know the next right thing to do.

 

8/4/10 – What matters? Recognition of ourselves and “others” as God’s one beloved immortal perfect innocent equal creation. What doesn’t matter? Any/every/thing else— because nothing else lasts forever. We live best in time when we remember who we are.

 

8/3/10 – When we’re feeling unsure about how to juggle all our imagined “competing” priorities, our guiding spirit restores our trust in God, renews our courage, strength, positivity, love and peace, and reminds us that all things work together forever for good.

July 2010's Spiritual Sharings

8/2/10 – We’re culturally programmed to react destructively, angrily, guiltily, defensively and vengefully, but we can instead go within and find the gentle, peaceful, loving, forgiving opposites to such conditioning which miraculously transform each moment.

 

8/1/10 – Our shared cultural judgments damn us all to a collective sense of wrongness, inadequacy, sinfulness and unworthiness, while recognition of our shared spiritual perfection, creativity, will, w/hol(i)eness and love offers all a saving release from fear.

 

7/31/10 – Cultural myths, like all words and symbols, are always relative. They can be rich, suggestive, poetic, powerful, helpful, revealing and inspiring, as well as confusingly and distractingly circuitous, contradictory, incoherent, destructive—and persistent.

 

7/30/10 – Words can usefully point to and hint at truth, but they can also obfuscate and complicate truth. Words are always relative, whereas truth is ineffable—inexpressible and incommunicable in words—as well as absolute, experiential, simple and self-evident.

 

7/29/10 – Words are mere human symbols, variously-defined in relation to one another, subject to arbitrary interpretation, misinterpretation, re-interpretation and twisting. Everything written and spoken is relative, whereas truth is always ineffable and absolute.

 

7/28/10 – Without a shared theology or belief system, we can still all joyfully join in accepting our beautiful, amazing selves, each other, and the world as-is, sensing our oneness with a timeless, powerful, loving source, and attending to our inner guide.

 

7/27/10 – We can buy the cultural illusion that we are deprived, cheated sufferers, cruelly and unfairly punished for unavoidable failures; or we can recognize that we are God’s one whole perfect creation, forever sharing the love and abundance of the universe.

 

7/26/10 – We can beneficially dedicate each day to asking our guiding spirit for loving, strengthening, helpful spiritual perspectives regarding the people, situations, questions and challenges we will encounter, pondering the answers we receive, and applying them.

 

7/25/10 – We can see humankind as our one self, recognize love’s shared abundance everywhere, and fulfill our only need—to extend acceptance, forgiveness and appreciation as required to gently heal all errors arising from fear of love’s insufficiency.

 

7/24/10 – When we ask for spiritual help in seeing any situation, issue or person differently, our limited, defensive, angry, skewed viewpoints are powerfully replaced with a helpful, peaceful, smart, thoughtful, intriguing insight which changes everything.

 

7/23/10 – Within us is a guiding light, a spark of divinity, that-of-God, a calm, soundless voice, a shining conscience, a comforter, sage and seer that strengthens, inspires and loves us, answers our questions, and understands all situations far better than we can.

 

7/22/10 – We can draw all we encounter into our circle of acceptance, appreciation, love and forgiveness for everything, past and present. As we gently welcome all who stand outside the circle, we will find ourselves drawn safely and peacefully inside it, with them.

 

7/21/10 – We can close our culturally-blinded, critical, defensive eyes, choose patient acceptance of our own and others’ gaps in understanding, and trust only in God’s quiet, loving judgment of our holiness (wholeness), and in the unity of our shared forgiveness.

 

7/20/10 – The single essential, motivating lesson we are challenged to teach, exemplify (and thus learn) is how wonderful we all are as-is—wholly lovable in our fallible human uniqueness, forever blameless, sufficient, worthy, indispensible, precious and holy.

 

7/19/10 – How we see others, treat others, think of others, is how we will see, treat and think of ourselves. We can remember that we are all lovable, wonderful, fallible, forgivable and very human, and that we all have forever to live, learn and love.

 

7/18/10 – Communication can be honest, effective and true when we ask for spiritual help—in dropping our barriers, staying in the moment, letting go of fear, getting our ego out of the way, and allowing God to express, affirm and celebrate our holy connection.

 

7/17/10 – God can free us of our cruel cultural illusions—of conditional love, of our own guilt, helplessness and isolation, and of a too-brief interval between birth and death spent fighting over a few unsatisfying earthly rewards and pitilessly-limited slots into heaven.

 

7/16/10 – What if we live forever in an abundant universe and a timeless present—perfect, undivided, loving, loved, interdependent, innocent, one with God, each other and all creation—and eternally blessed with access to God’s guidance, strength and power?

 

7/15/10 – We are exactly as we were forever intended to be, uniquely indispensible to God and his creation, timelessly innocent, and capable of expressing one shared perfect love and will. Yet we dream a cultural nightmare of fear, difference, guilt and chaos.

 

7/14/10 – We can focus our faith, commitment, time, energies and talents on recognizing, creating and fulfilling at each present moment the truth that “what-is” is good; or we can limit and postpone awareness of our own power to creatively fulfill that beautiful reality.

 

7/13/10 – The justice of God comprises eternal innocence in a timeless present; the gift of an amazing and abundant universe; total access to God’s love, strength, guidance, and spirit; and an eternity in which to enjoy and equally contribute to loving interdependence.

 

7/12/10 – When we let go of the recent and ancient past—all mistakes and regrets, both ours’ and others’, remembering only good intentions, efforts and gifts—we once again feel light, open, positive, and free to love and give again in each shining new moment.

 

7/11/10 – We can ask for help in letting go of our cultural focus on harmful illusions, analyses and projections of a competitive, guilty, fearful reality, and instead see everyone and everything through loving, eternal eyes—beautifully, perfectly, spiritually “as-is.”

 

7/10/10 – We can’t feel and express both negative and positive emotions simultaneously, but we can ask for help in releasing those fearful feelings, so as to allow room for the miraculous healing power of accepting feelings to flow through us in the present moment.

 

7/9/10 – Anger is a sign of guilt pangs so bad that we attempt to foist them on others by focusing on their mistakes and shortcomings, all in a foolish attempt to redirect our imagined deserved punishments and retributions for an implacable past that is … gone.

 

7/8/10 – When we confidently and humbly offer our unique and invaluable lives and gifts to the completion of God and his creation, assured that our contributions are as important and indispensible as everyone else’s, God responds by offering us everything, forever.

 

7/7/10 – We gain what we give. We can offer God’s beloved children strength, light, hope, support, healing and peace as we walk hand-in-hand along our path with them and with God, and receive, multiplied and overflowing, all the gifts that we have extended.

 

7/6/10 – If we want a peaceful day, we can let go of fear, and share instead God’s eternal acceptance, appreciation and unconditional love with every each of his beloved children, treating all as infinitely worthy of our deepest respect and our most loving thoughts.

 

7/5/10 – To see only love in ourselves, everyone else, and everything, we can let go of our defenses against it—our fearful cultural lessons, strict personal experiential rules, and every barricade, wall and fortification separating us from offering and receiving it.

 

7/4/10 – Moment-to-moment, we choose between love and fear. Choosing love always makes sense, because love always works in the eternal now.Choosing fear (guilt, anger, injustice, separation, vengeance, sadness, despair…) never makes sense in any context. 

 

7/3/10 – We cannot “fix” ourselves or anyone else, but we can choose to see everyone through loving, appreciative, forgiving eyes. When we choose to express peace, we will understand the power, vision, value, joy and clarity (for everyone) in loving choices.

 

7/2/10 – The body was never meant to last. Only universal mind remains forever in eternal communication with the love that is its self. Love is who we were created to be, who we are and will always be, one perfect love with God and his whole creation.

 

7/1/10 – When we’re afraid for others, we’re relating to them as to mere limited mortals, tragic figures bound within a brief life and a cruel death. Yet we can choose instead to joyfully communicate as peaceful eternal spirits boundlessly expressing the love of God.

 

6/30/10 – An instant of willingness to share God’s truth, inspiration, guidance, love, peace, light, forgiveness and joy clears away all nonsense about the past and all its guilty, angry, fearful, judgmental, divided, painful, stupid, useless “knowledge” and “lessons.”

More Spiritual Sharings

3/22/10 – Perfect peacefulness (comprising love, forgiveness, joy, and acceptance of all-that-is, all others, and oneself) is both cause and effect of spiritual wisdom, and vice-versa. Neither peace nor spiritual understanding is ever found apart from the other.

 

3/21/10 – When we ask our guiding spirit for another way to see all that is troubling us, and attentively await his answer, we can be sure we will always receive a brand-new, unexpected, surprising perception which will miraculously change everything.

 

3/20/10 – Power lies in all of us working peacefully together, and in none of us alone, because opposition weakens power, and weak power is a contradiction in terms. All that’s ever missing in any situation is our own willingness to share our love with all.

 

3/19/10 – Whatever thought, activity or task we do mindfully, joyfully, and in a spirit of love is a right choice, blessed by God, because we were created as one, to together create and extend love, learn and teach love, give and receive love, in all its forms.

 

3/18/10 – When we ask to know God’s will for us, we realize that what he wants for us is what we want—to lean upon his strength, grace and guidance, to be free from sacrifice, guilt, fear and weakness, and to be his own unique, powerful, loving expressions.

 

3/17/10 – When we’re feeling discouraged, we can give each one of our challenges over to God, remember that he celebrates, appreciates, loves, accepts and forgives us all unconditionally now, and begin again to faithfully accept, express and extend his love.

 

3/16/10 – We can give, receive, be and do more, when we seek and trust God’s guidance and miraculous outcomes, let go of guilt and fear, see only love or requests for it, and then surrender to God’s strength and healing as it works powerfully through us now.

 

3/15/10 – The term, “good,” comprises every expression of having, giving or receiving love, while the term, “evil,” comprises every expression of the fear of not having, giving or receiving love.

 

3/14/10- We can choose to joyfully contribute to God’s eternal process of creating, extending and expanding a loving spiritual reality, or stray temporarily into fearful, preoccupations; but we can change neither his outcomes nor his infinite patience.

 

3/13/10 – False humility is the illusion that we are weak and alone. True humility is the realization that we are powerful to the extent that we remember to ask for and rely upon God’s love, guidance and strength.

 

3/12/10 – Our purpose here is to share unconditional love in all its forms with all others. What should others’ purpose toward us be? We won’t ask that question anymore, when we learn to fulfill our own purpose perfectly, since we’ll already know the answer.

 

3/11/10 – We can’t solve our problems alone, because we’re feeling guilty, separate, inadequate, unlovable and unloving. But when we bring them openly to God, he solves them by freeing us to love ourselves and others unconditionally, as he loves all.

 

3/10/10 – Heaven is mindfulness, awareness and appreciation of the bountiful creation and eternal justice and love we all are and share; while hell is the misery of obliviousness to our one eternal, rich, abundant, innocent life and love, so generously given to all.

 

3/9/10 – We want to feel safe and loved, so we hurry to learn; but then we want to be right about what we’ve learned. Better to accept humbly how little we know, keep learning and loving, cherish our truths and welcome others’, and love the questions.

 

3/8/10 – Our bodies are useless for any purpose other than communicating love in all its forms. When we realize this, and when we have learned to use them only for loving, we’ll discover that we can communicate love just as freely and completely without them.

 

3/7/10 – To know what we “believe,” we can consider how we spend our lives. Beliefs which divide us from God and man mostly serve to depress, limit and harm us, while beliefs that draw us closer to love of God and all creation inspire joy, power and freedom.

 

3/6/10 – Our beliefs limit us to endure angry, fearful, separate lives weighted with guilt, resentment, hurry, competition, division, frustration, dread, suffering and despair, or they free us to celebrate joy, wholeness and peace, as one perfect, eternally-lovable creation.

 

3/5/10 – The eternal holy present is all there is, our only time to know God’s calming guidance, perspective and strength, our only time to live faithfully and fearlessly as innocent, loving, invaluable, beloved equals sharing peace, joy, purpose and oneness.

 

3/4/10 – Happiness is a choice about who we are. We can remind ourselves and others of our reality as joyful, peaceful, powerful, loving, beloved, eternal, innocent children of God, or suffer and die as hurried, vicious, vulnerable, sinful, guilty, punished mortals.

 

3/3/10 – We have no needs, changes or corrections to make, except to ask that God’s changeless, eternal peace and love might continuously see, greet, bless and give through us to that same changeless, eternal peace and love in others, in a limitless, endless cycle.

 

3/2/10 – Did a judgmental God create unequal, inadequate, guilty, helpless, miserable, doomed sinners, forever cast away from him? Or did a loving God create equal, innocent, lovable, beloved, loving, powerful, eternally joyous spirits, forever one with him?

 

3/1/10 – Meaning and peace always come from sharing our own unique, loving gifts with others—unless we use our gifts to gratify our egos, to inflate our little separate sense of self, or to build false concepts of superiority, specialness, difference or vindication.

 

2/28/10 – When we’re feeling afraid, defensive, confused, judgmental and alone, we can ask God to shine away the nothingness of our fears, and give us instead the loving, unifying perspectives which alone bring understanding and meaning to our relationships.

 

2/27/10 – Instead of seeing fearful, guilty, sorrowful bodies struggling toward death, we can ask to see now only the goodness, purity, innocence and eternal perfection in all, and thus remember with joy that we too are exactly as we were created and meant to be.

 

2/26/10 – We are boundlessly empowered when we use our unique talents, interests and abilities to support peace, healing and unity, to give and receive love and joy, and to encourage everyone else’s equal power to do the same.

 

2/25/10 – Relationships thrive when we recognize and appreciate one another as equally loved, innocent, eternal brothers and sisters, with no needs but to walk together in the holy present, joyfully learning, giving and receiving God’s boundless love.

 

2/24/10 – We are God’s expression, invulnerable in our eternal innocence and perfection, as we were meant to be. We witness our oneness when we entrust our problems, the instant they arise, to him who solves them, not with everyday illusions, but with truth.

 

2/23/10 – When I ask my guiding spirit to “decide for me,” I can then relax, confident that my priorities and energies will be directed thoughtfully and lovingly, and that I will have a busy, productive, peaceful day, keeping the highest interests of all in mind.

 

2/22/10 – Spiritual health, like physical health, thrives on discipline and vigilance. We can share God’s peace when we practice his presence, accept his love and grace, seek understanding and inspiration, and fully appreciate ourselves and all his beloved children.

 

2/21/10 – Peace, joy and love come to us when we share it. We can act out our cultural delusions of separation, lack, competition, pain, guilt, loss, death and retribution, or we can lovingly appreciate and enjoy our eternal oneness with God and his beloved creation.

 

2/20/10 – When we put all needs and all gifts under God’s guidance, and let go of everything but love—all guilt, fear, sacrifice, resentment, doubt, confusion—we can see and appreciate God in all his perfect, beloved children, and know all things are possible.

 

2/19/10 – At any moment, we can ask for and receive our guiding spirit’s help to see and accept ourselves and others with love, understanding and appreciation.

 

2/18/10 – God is one truth, one love, one meaning, one joy, one answer to all things. When we give, see, accept and love all things as he does, we will also understand and appreciate ourselves.

 

2/17/10 – When we ask our guiding spirit to help us stay lovingly in each present moment, we can let go of all our fears, and all negative thoughts about yesterdays and tomorrows.

 

2/16/10 – Our lives, as they unfold in all their beauty, complexity, pain, glory and tragedy, are God’s will, even when things seem to go wrong. Our job is to love and let-love. Our guilt and fear add nothing to life, but our love, acceptance and joy add a lot.

 

2/15/10 – God is the love in which I see everyone with full appreciation. I can let go of my fearful imaginings, and choose to see only through his loving, accepting, forgiving eyes all the beauty, purity and holiness that is his own beloved, eternal, perfect creation.

 

2/14/10 – I am God’s completion. His will and mine are the same—to share his joy and peace, not suffer pain. When I surrender to his guidance, and let him teach me to forgive, help, trust and appreciate every person in my life, I am choosing his peace and joy.

 

2/13/10 – God created us to learn about his love, communicate his love and extend his love, Nothing else matters or lasts. When we lose our way, God merely waits patiently for our return, saving all his love for us all, eternally.

 

2/12/10 – When we feel separated from others—attacked, unappreciated, resentful—we can remember to seek within the calm, certain reassurance of our shared spiritual reality as one eternal creation, one gift, one mind, one truth, one purpose, one love.

 

2/11/10 – There is never a shortage of love in any person or situation, but sometimes we let fear, guilt and judgment crowd love out. We can look at, and then surrender, all such concerns to God, who remembers that nothing except love matters, or means anything.

 

Sharing Spiritual Inspiration and Insights

Every day that I can, I meditate/pray/(or whatever word you want to call it) as early as I can. Usually I have personal questions or issues that seem pressing that day, so I attempt to articulate those questions as part of my meditation. Then I do some reading from a variety of inspiring sources. Then I summarize what I learned from that day’s meditations, questions and reading in a brief Spiritual Sharing.

           

I hope you will feel free to substitute (for the word “God” in the following meditations) your word that best describes or names the source of your experience of spiritual power, insight and understanding—whether God, guiding spirit, intuition, the unknowable, conscience, Hashem, inner knowing, natural understanding, deity, the Universe, friend, light, the Ineffable, creator, a favorite deity, I-Am-That-I-Am, or any other word or name that works for you. The many different linguistic, cultural, religious and experiential names we assign to our various but often uniquely personal spiritual experience and understanding of our higher power cannot change whatever may be its essence and nature.

           

It’s possible that I may someday attempt to publish this year’s worth of mediations. Thank you for your help, and for feedback too!

 

 

Daily Spiritual Sharing:

 

2/10/10 – We can help others best by recognizing that we don’t know how to—but God does. We can be fully present, accepting and loving. We can ask to see clearly, allow God to work through us appreciatively, encouragingly and forgivingly, and not interfere.

 

2/9/10 – When we limit the number of times we turn to our guiding spirit for insight, inspiration and help, we limit the number of daily problems, large and small, that we can resolve.

 

2/8/10 – Our happiness and strength arise from our undivided efforts to see, accept and lift ourselves and all others as God’s one perfect, unconditionally-beloved, eternal creation, to whom he has given everything, and with whom he is well-pleased.

 

2/7/10 – All apparent angry attacks and defensiveness conceal fearful pleas for healing and help. When we ask for God’s grace and vision, he lifts every imagined illusion and barrier to the love that sees only goodness and unity, and sets all things right.

 

2/6/10 – We get angry at others because we feel guilty about what we’ve done to them, not the other way around. And so we try to make ourselves feel better by dumping our guilt feelings on them, imagining we can rid ourselves of our guilt that way. We can’t.

 

2/5/10 – Human culture projects its fearful interpretation upon everyone’s actions, while spiritual guidance leads us to a more peaceful, loving vision. Thus, we can reactively interpret behavior as aggressive, or we can ask to see it as offering—or requesting—love.

 

2/4/10 – When we notice someone who frightens us—someone apparently sick or sad or desperate or angry—we can ask our guiding spirit for another way of seeing that person, not let our fear interfere, surrender the encounter to peace and inspiration, and relax.

 

2/3/10 – When we ask for clarity and guidance, we find out that what we need and want the most, but may have temporarily lost sight of, is exactly what God wills for us too. We are wholly supported in accomplishing this shared will—surely, safely, serenely, joyfully.

 

2/2/10 – We don’t understand our own needs. Our guiding spirit does, and will supply them, when we let go of our own ideas of what they are, and stop hurrying to fulfill them. Instead, we can be willing to ask, and receive.

 

2/1/10 – Gifts given resentfully, guiltily and fearfully, without loving thoughts, are unwelcome sacrifices, angry attacks, tradeoffs, payments for something. We imagine someone is demanding sacrifices of us, but we’re demanding them of ourselves.

 

1/31/10 – We are God’s one perfect beloved eternal expression. Bodies are for communicating unity, acceptance and love, and were never meant to be permanent. God bountifully comforts, inspires and strengthens the willing. Of what shall we be afraid?

 

1/30/10 – We can relate to one another as to God, and he to us—one good, whole, perfect creation, one value, one mind, one love, one request and one answer. We are his loving eyes and willing hands, and through us he extends his appreciation and meets every need.

 

1/29/10 – All our guiding spirit asks of us is our willingness that it be our guide. We don’t need to be strong, or sure, or wise, but merely willing.

 

1/28/10 – Our one real choice is whether or not to invite and follow our inner guidance. When we surrender to it, we’re happy, and when we don’t, we lose our way. This one powerful choice offers us vision, release from guilt and fear, and clarity of purpose.

 

1/27/10 – When we dedicate each situation, interaction and perceived conflict to a peaceful outcome, and look on everyone with appreciation and acceptance now, we can be assured that all will play their parts well, and that God will meet everyone’s needs.

 

1/26/10 – When things go wrong, we need do nothing. We can rest quietly, calmly, patiently, fearlessly, harmlessly—accepting and trusting in God’s peaceful, healing light, hope, inspiration, vision, power, insights, strength, and unconditional love.

 

1/25/10 – What if spirituality reveals a powerful higher reality not contradictory to science but unexplained by it? What if we share one transcendent mind and love? What if the universe is within, nothing is without, and we dream eternally in the heart of God?

 

1/24/10 – How do we know what’s the right thing to do? What makes us feel good. What makes us feel peaceful, loving, loved, at one with all of life. What relaxes, heals, warms us, lets us breathe, brings smiles and laughter, what feels right, what makes us happy.

 

1/23/10 – We can only give love, which is who and what we are—one love, one mind with our creator and his creation. Nothing else is eternal. Our bodies are temporary, a means of loving. We can choose to give and receive love only now. Nothing else matters.

 

1/22/10 – We create our own little separate realities by projecting our fears about the world outward onto others, and then letting their responses reinforce our beliefs. When we express and see instead only one loving, eternal reality, love’s witnesses appear.

 

1/21/10 – As we give now to our brother, and thus to ourselves and everyone, the eternal gifts we’ve received of peace, acceptance, love, appreciation and forgiveness, our eyes mirror our freedom from fear, past and future, change, mistakes, guilt, hurry, and time.

 

1/20/10 – Each of us creates his own little harmful, hostile, confusing, insane personal and cultural world of senseless mental fantasies and meaningless projections of guilt, judgment and fear—when all we ever need and want is to be in the circle of God’s love.

 

1/19/10 – God’s justice comprises his peace, life abundant, and life eternal. His love is unconditional, his forgiveness and patience infinite. We can be ignorant, confused, misguided, willful, crazy, dangerous and cruel, but never irredeemably “bad” or “evil.”

 

1/18/10 – When we feel inadequate, we’re judging God himself to be difficult, angry, impossible to please. God loves us now and always with unconditional love and infinite appreciation for our smallest gifts, which ripple perfectly through his beloved creation.

 

1/17/10 – Instead of letting guilt and fear hold us back from the love we could be giving and receiving, we can use them as reminders to ask God to share with us—and through us—his comforting vision of one unified, beloved, forgiven, eternally perfect creation.

 

1/16/10 – We can experience the power and the memory of God anytime that we want nothing else. We can ask for it, welcome it, and then await the coming of God’s bright, beautiful, revealing, comforting, illuminating, reassuring, guiding, restful presence. 

 

1/15/09 – What if this life isn’t the only “chance” we get? What if somehow we go on forever in an eternal present, one with all creation and its accepting, loving creator, just as he intended? Why cling blindly to a tragic cultural vision of a brief, hurried, guilty life?

 

1/14/10 – When we let God work powerfully and lovingly through us, he heals our illusion that we are separate, divided, competing mortals, and shows us that we are forever one in him—free to be, do, have and share everything we need and want.

 

1/13/10 – When we ask God for guidance, he who sees his creation as one, equal, beloved and eternal, will move us away from all sense of isolation, guilt and fear, and toward choices that are in the best interests of everyone and everything—that is, our own.

 

1/12/10 – We can ask God to share with us his vision of one perfect creation all equally and forever blessed with everything we could want and need, and for the healing strength we need to free ourselves now from all guilty illusions of a past that is, after all, gone.

 

1/11/10 – We are most powerful when we merely accept everything and everyone as-is, without opposing, comparing or defending, letting the goals of acceptance and peace inspire all our relationships, interactions, decisions, conflicts and endeavors.

 

1/10/10 – God helps us drop our cultural blindfolds—the judgment, guilt and fear which fog and obscure our sight of others and ourselves as-we-are and were meant to be—his unique, beloved, beautiful, human, muddled, messy, forgiven, perfect creation.

 

1/9/10 – God is not at home in our separateness, but in our relationships. We know his peace when we let go of imagined “safety” barriers of guilt and fear between ourselves and others, choosing instead to rest calmly in immutable innocence and oneness.

 

1/8/10 – We can walk joyfully along our eternal path of now by walking together with others—neither before nor behind—seeing ourselves as God does, as his one perfect, beloved creation and will, and letting go with him our human blindness to that light.

 

1/7/10 – We can rest together where time begins and ends, one with another and our peaceful guiding spirit, healed, forgiven, released from past guilt and future fear, filled with the inspiration and creative possibilities inherent in a loving, innocent, eternal now.

 

1/6/10 – A focus upon one single healing purpose comprising acceptance, appreciation, help, forgiveness and love toward all things offers stability and meaning to life. All other perspectives—on ourselves and each other, our activities and goals—result only in guilt.

 

1/5/10 – When we humbly accept God’s miraculous healing of all our past errors and imagined future fears, we can once again live joyfully and appreciatively in the present moment, seeing in ourselves and everyone only reflections of his light, grace and love.

 

1/4/10 – When we see ourselves as temporary, threatened individuals, we compete and attack.When we remember our essence and eternal value as beloved co-creators with God and all, life is joyful, loving, purposeful, cooperative, productive, peaceful, meaningful.

 

1/3/10 – Giving and receiving acceptance now miraculously changes and heals the past while creating a peaceful, happy future. If we drag our own and others’ past mistakes into our present moments, when will we envision, create and share a different kind of future?

 

1/2/10 – All that we give is wholly shared, because God’s creation isn’t separate, but one. God’s love is given and received in an eternal creative cycle, to us and through us. Our only limit on giving and receiving is our willingness to ask, receive, give, and appreciate.

 

1/1/10 – When we accept and mindfully practice union—peace, kindness, acceptance, love—as our highest relationship goal, all our interactions, communications, conflicts, giving, creativity, work, play and all our other priorities feel miraculously supported.

 

12/31/09 – Who might be harmed if we all consistently chose to project upon one another—and ourselves—a warm, caring, positive, empathetic, optimistic vision of their/our human potential, capacity, and possibilities? Who might benefit?

 

12/30/09 – All guilty, sad, hard things of the past, all scary possibilities of the future, are just illusions that mess everyone up in the present moment. Everything that is joyous, loving and giving happens now, this moment, when we let all past and future fears go.

 

We can pass on, encourage, enkindle either fear or love. Let’s choose love. And when we or others forget, we can let it go and choose once again. Love is the most powerful force in the universe, while fear is nothingness. Choose love, and choose love, and choose love.

 

Fear erases whole-heartedness—all appreciation, all reasonable, loving perspectives, and everything we know to be true, replacing them with insanity, cruelty and chaos. We can always, right now, choose love over fear.

 

Love isn’t sacrifice. Union can’t be found in bondage. Love is freedom. As we release others from their separations-through-sacrifice, we will find ourselves released to be free, loving and as one, and available to receive their comforting love in return.

 

“Special” relationships are only harmful when they hold us to guilt about the past and fear of the future. “Special” relationships work only when we give freely of our appreciation and acceptance in the present, and let go of past and future illusions.

 

People are motivated by only two things: a wish to help, or a wish to be helped. No other interpretation of others’ motivations is ever accurate, and when we guess or assume some other motivation, our response to them will have nothing to do with anyone’s reality.

 

All we ever need from others is: their permission to love and give to them, or their gracious loving responses to our moments of fear, regardless of what form our fear takes—whether anger, judgment, attack, defensiveness, withdrawal or misunderstanding.

 

When we learn to interpret others’ every action as either loving, or a request for some kind of loving—whether help, kindness, acceptance, gentleness, appreciation—life gets simple, kind, friendly, relaxed, peaceful. And when we forget, we can begin again, now.

 

The whole world is as we are. If we send out messages of peace and love and giving, they will return to us. If we send out messages of fear—anger, guilt, attack—they will be returned to us. Love the world and watch it love you back.

 

We are love—beloved, loving, and eternally one with all and a loving God. When we momentarily forget this visionary truth, we feel alone and guilty, because we have rejected God’s unconditional, universal gift. We can accept and share it once again.

 

The pressure and pain of continual judgment and fear—from within and without—wears us all down. God sees us only now, as innocent, perfect and beloved. When we ask his help to see ourselves and others as he sees us, all judgment and weariness disappear.

 

God wants us to accept ourselves, him and one another, as a loving circle of support. He wants us to let go of all our illusions of a condemning, angry, vengeful, impatient, impossible, unforgiving God who expects us to understand and know everything already.

 

Instead of focusing on guilt, vengeance, resentment and anger, we can stop attaching demands, bondage or expectations to our “special” relationships, and instead seek, see and accept in ourselves only our own highest, holiest, loving and forgiven innocence.

 

Right now, there is no such thing as conflicting needs or confusing motivations or angry illusions. Right now, we have no need but to share God’s mysterious, incomprehensible, irrational, unexplainable, ineffable, eternal, unconditional love, acceptance, appreciation.

 

The cause of fear is illusion—that we are separate, defective, competing, imperfect, mortal selves, hurrying to be superior to others before we die. The cure for fear is accepting that we are eternal, equal, one, and unconditionally loved by God.

 

12/29/09 – I am committed to being, knowing, seeing, sharing, expressing, honoring, welcoming, embracing, accepting and appreciating only God’s one whole eternal, infinite, perfect, loving, powerful, sane, peaceful, innocent, meaningful creation.

 

12/28/09 – All the sad, guilty, hard things of the past, all the scary possibilities of the future, are just illusions that mess everyone up in the present moment. Everything that is joyous, loving and giving happens now, when we let past and future fears go.

 

12/27/09 – When we’re upset, the only way to return to peace and love is to be peaceful and loving. We’re never upset for the reasons we think—injustice, who is right, unfairness, unkindness, selfishness, anger, weariness—but because we’re afraid.

 

12/26/09 – All our fears are about “past” and “future”—mere verbiage, concepts, words about time which never occur. Only an eternal series of nows really happens. With God, we can handle anything now. Now is also the only time we can change past and future.

 

12/25/09 – The only gifts which are loving, useful, and acceptable to others and God are those offered in appreciation and love, never those given out of fear, selfishness, guilt or sacrifice.

 

12/24/09 – We are one creation, eternal, infinite, equal, unlimited, whole, unshakeable, miraculous, powerful, peaceful, beloved—and usually asleep in dreams of separateness, dreaming we are competing, joyless, suffering, sinful, finite mortals.

 

12/23/09 – We can be only goodness. We can inhale, exhale, think, ask for, receive, see, know, share, speak, hear, accept, teach, learn, express, envision, feel, choose, create—only goodness.

 

12/22/09 – Sacrifice isn’t love. It’s the opposite of love—an attempt to kill it, control it, and replace it with guilt. Giving freely with God’s strength and guidance of our highest self at each moment—to ourselves, to all—is love.

 

12/21/09 – We are free to see God in everyone—expressed as unlimited, innocent, joyous, good, beautiful, loving, gifted, abundant, wise, eternal be-ing, one, in and with all.

 

12/20/09 – A God of love, our source and nature, never created fear, evil and guilt, but only eternal love, which we can embrace or postpone, but never change. God’s beloved eternal creations honor him and each other by creatively extending his love in his image.

 

12/19/09 – When we let go of another’s wickedness, cluelessness, obtuseness, mistakes and attacks, we forgive ourselves too, and peace and truth dawn on us both. When we appreciate rather than condemn, innocence is reflected from wherever we bestowed it.

 

12/18/09 – Why act out human suffering, despair, anger, resentment, guilt, defensiveness, loss, limitation and death, when God offers his beloved eternal children forgiveness, joy, wisdom, strength, guidance, peace, love and endless abundance, forever?

 

12/17/09 – The only goals that bring satisfaction, healing, peace and love are those which offer these continually to ourselves and others. We can lean on God’s strength, live our faith, trust his loving guidance, and let all weakness, guilt, anger and fear go.

 

12/16/09 – We can practice willingness to see things God’s way anytime, so when we most need his perspective—in moments of conflict, panic, confusion, fear, weariness, anger—we will remember to ask for it, certain of its healing, transforming power.

 

12/15/09 – If we were mere mortals, we might reasonably feel doubt, guilt, weakness and defensiveness. But God is real, and well-pleased with his beloved children. We can choose to live, express and see only this strong, certain faith in ourselves and in everyone.

 

12/14/09 – When we have learned to always choose love over fear in every situation, we will be free to focus on creatively choosing how best and most usefully to express that love from moment to moment.

 

12/13/09 – As God’s willing, human, eternal creation, we put our trust in his strength, guidance and unconditional forgiveness, and devote each moment to courageously, joyously, uniquely, humbly and powerfully expressing and sharing his boundless love.

 

12/12/09 – We exhale panic, confusion, frustration, resentment and helplessness; inhale God’s perspective, guidance and strength; and focus confidently, trustingly, calmly, lovingly and completely upon doing the next right thing with his holy gift of now.

 

12/11/09 – We can heal the walls between ourselves and others when we let go with God all our present and past guilt, sins, mistakes and errors—and see others as equally free of theirs. Accepting and sharing God’s forgiveness releases us to love and be loved anew.

 

12/10/09 – Our everyday priorities, activities and interests are rewarding and meaningful only in context and service to our highest spiritual goals—peace, love, understanding and acceptance of God’s will (“what-is”), forgiveness, and our oneness with God and man.

 

12/9/09 – We are God’s will, forever loved, learning and forgiven. Our loving thoughts are infinitely transformative, creative, powerful and eternal. We ask God to express himself joyfully through us now, letting go with him distracting imaginings of past guilt.

 

12/8/09 – Giving and receiving love joyfully reminds us of our oneness with God and his eternally loving creation. Guilt, suffering, attack, deprivation, need, unfairness and death are all fearful, meaningless, ephemeral illusions of separation from this holy relationship.

 

12/7/09 – We are eternally learning, loving and forgiven spirits. Time itself, as well as suffering, aging, everyday concerns, wars, catastrophes, mistakes, and all our everyday choices are urgent only insofar as they postpone or hasten our peace, joy and oneness.

 

12/6/09 – We learn—and teach—best from approaching the good, not from avoiding the bad. God helps us focus on what brings joy, not pain.

 

12/5/09 – All relationships are reflections of our relationship with God. We are his eternal creation and expression, sharing one mind, one love, one purpose.

 

12/4/09 – When we feel tension building with someone, we can remember to turn the relationship over to God, dedicate it and the conflict to the goal of peace, be honest, gentle, forgiving and appreciative of both, listen calmly, and ask thoughtful questions.

 

12/3/09 – Strain, weariness, and confusion disappear when we share with God his undivided will to love, lift, forgive, help and comfort all his children, to recognize only our eternal goodness, and to support only our eternal greatness.

 

12/2/09 – When we feel fearful, confused, dispirited, hopeless, uncertain, pulled in various directions, unloved and unlovable, we can be sure we are not communing with God, nor relying upon his guidance and strength.

 

12/1/09 – Union is always universal and unconditional completion, extendable infinitely and lovingly to everyone. Separate, special, exclusive “unions” are counterproductive, disappointing, impossible oxymora.

 

11/30/09 – What few know, and even those few too often forget, is that in God’s eyes, we are all exactly the same, equally and eternally blessed with an infinite amount of love, forgiveness and appreciation to share with others.

 

11/29/09 – All we ever need remember to do in any situation is ask God to share with us his unique perspective on our every sorrow, trouble, challenge, pain, guilt, fury, conflict, frustration and fear, and then peacefully await his sure, clear answer.

 

11/28/09 – Guilt is insane and blasphemous when God has joyfully offered to each of us, his prodigal sons and daughters, immediate and unconditional love and forgiveness for all the mistakes we would leave behind us.

 

11/27/09 – The light and joy in others’ eyes strengthens our faith by reminding us that God works lovingly and powerfully through us.

 

11/26 – When we refuse to see shortcomings in others, and instead see only their eternal value as God’s beloved children, we remember our own lovability, value and oneness as an essential and indispensible part of God’s one, single, unified, eternal, perfect creation.

 

11/25/09 – When we learn to see only the joyous, beloved and loving eternal spirit in everyone, we will see a beautiful world where death, suffering and time are irrelevant,

 

11/24/09 – Instead of seeing cruelty, evil, error, ignorance, obliviousness, selfishness and foolishness, we can choose to see in others only the beloved and learning spiritual beings they are, acting only upon one of two goals: either offering others love, or asking for it.

 

11/23/09 – We can rest our faith, peace and love in the powerful, unconditional, universal love that God channels though us, instead of in our demands and expectations for others’ behavior.

 

11/22/09 – In quietness and peace, we allow God’s forgiving miracles to work through us, and do not interfere,

 

11/21/09 – We each made our own weird, private, personal, completely insane and incommunicable worlds of fear, so we can release them to God, and decide to share with others only our love, which is always perfectly understood by everyone.

 

11/20/09 – Even if we can’t understand it, we can accept and use the unshakable grace and faith we are granted, along with our desire to be holy, share God’s will, and be wholly helpful, kind and forgiving.

 

11/19/09 – When we start our day asking for God’s strength and guidance, we can then listen, trust, work and rest peacefully.

 

11/18/09 – When we feel tired, frustrated, overwhelmed, we can let go and let God’s inexhaustible and certain strength and power work through us.

 

11/17/09 – When we feel defensive, we can ask to see ourselves as the eternally lovable, loving, forgiven creation God sees.

 

11/16/09 – We can accept, forgive and love ourselves when we are willing to allow each present moment just to be what it is.

 

11/15/09 – All God’s children are forever safe, unconditionally loved and joyously supported. Our bodies are temporary, our spirits eternal.

 

11/14/09 – When we are frozen in fear and guilt from past pain, we can ask to see things differently, as God sees, who loves his whole creation unconditionally and eternally now, as-is, just as he created us to be. Then we can let go and let God, and rest in his peace.

 

11/13/09 – Spiritual sight is always wholly helpful, because love attracts love to itself by offering and seeing it everywhere. When we ask continually for spiritual light, all paths work. When other perspectives distract us, even our sincerest efforts come to nothing.

 

11/12/09 – We want only to ask for, accept, give, receive and see the eternal light, peace, love, strength, joy and forgiveness of God in all that we do, in everyone, and in everything.

 

11/11/09 – When we carry guilt around, we’re seeing ourselves and the world as hopelessly unteachable and unforgivably mortal. We can choose instead to accept, affirm and see all about us as unconditionally loved and loving, learning, forgiven, eternal.

 

11/10/09 – Whenever we consistently ask for and apply God’s guidance, we are his accepting, forgiving, loving expression, and our lives work. When we decide to go it alone for a bit, our lives fall apart. God merely waits in infinite patience and love for our return to joy.

 

11/9/09 – Knowing how divided our minds are, why would we choose to direct ourselves, rely upon our own strength, or be our own teachers? We can resign now, and surrender our every need and undivided attention to our constant, clear, unlimited Teacher.

 

11/8/09 – With God’s consistent guidance, strength and love peacefully flowing through us, we can let go of all attacks—our own attacks upon ourselves, our attacks on others, and others’ attacks on us.

 

11/7/09 – When we’re feeling afraid, overwhelmed, confused, weak and estranged from God and man, we can surrender our simple willingness to allow God’s strength and loving purpose to work peacefully and powerfully through us.

 

11/6/09 – Our decisions—to hand over our fearful thoughts to God, and to share with others only our loving ones—increase our loving thoughts and reduce our fearful ones.

 

11/5/09 –We can remember God’s power, light, love, and healing forgiveness whenever we use and share that power with everyone.

 

11/4/09 – We begin our day by turning it over to God’s guidance, and promise to ask again for that guidance at each difficult moment.

 

11/3/09 – Our loving, appreciative responses to others’ fears are reminders that we are all unified in God’s love, and that we need never fear loss or separation from that love.

 

11/2/09 – As we humbly ask for God’s love, healing and forgiveness to flow through us, we are one with him, and become his perfect answer to every problem.

 

11/1/09 – When we trust God enough to ask him, often, for understanding, meaning, help, love—and for the answer to every problem—he will remind us that his answer already lies in us.

 

10/31/09 – In an eternal, but also in a practical sense, “reality” is not “out there” but rather “in here”—in the loving thoughts we all share with each other and with God. A “realist” then, is aware only of the love that is everyone, everything, everywhere.

 

10/30/09 – We recognize and nurture our own limitless value when we see and nurture that same equal and limitless value in everyone.

 

10/29/09 – Living joyfully in the light of God’s unconditional love, acceptance and forgiveness of our humanity is co-conditional and inextricably intertwined with joyfully sharing that same unconditional love, acceptance and forgiveness with all his children.

 

10/28/09 – We are exactly alike in our interdependence upon each other and our Source as a loving whole. We are completely unique in freely channeling that love through our lives, relationships, creations, productions, expressions.

 

10/27/09 – The way to God is to see everything and everyone, including yourself, with love and without blame. God and his creation comprise a perfect, eternal, loving whole. What is not love doesn’t exist, last, or matter.

 

10/26/09 – God answers prayers for peace and rest by removing our fearful, negative thoughts and replacing them with powerful, positive thoughts we use to encourage others.

 

10/25/09 – All God needs from us is one second of willingness, when things feel scary, to let him stoke our tiny sputtering spark of love into a bonfire.

          

A Very Good Save-the-World Software Development Idea. Please Help Yourself! :-)

Will some brilliant programmer please step up and design a google-type software program that can linguistically analyze and determine a speaker/writer’s cooperative tone and intent?

 

Your new program could identify and distinguish among those writers/speakers whose communications promote a sense of division, partisanship, negativity, polarization, blame, attack, incivility, rudeness, destructiveness, unfriendly competition, bickering and hate—and those promoting a sense of positivity, creativity, life-affirmation, support, harmony, acceptance, forgiveness, productivity, civility, courtesy, equality of opportunity, caring, cooperation and unity.

 

Your software could have endless useful and profitable applications. For immediate profitability, please consider using your product for security purposes, to helpfully ward off unfriendly attacks and attackers (of whatever kind) upon individuals and enterprises (of whatever kind.)

 

Imagine leaders young and old in every field vying for their communications to be screened and certified via your software. Why not simultaneously award a “Truth-bearer” (or some other such logo) “gold seal of approval” identifying individuals and organizations as positive communicators, healers, light-bearers?

 

Your prestigious and desirable software “accreditation” could motivate many people to investigate and understand the important distinctions between peaceful and contentious communication purposes, and to recognize and encourage humanity-unifying goals as non-threatening and potentially beneficial to all earthlings, while discouraging communications with adversarial, hostile ends. Your software would also surely stoke national dialogue, while heightening awareness about the many distinct (although often confusingly-disguised) differences between helpful and harmful human communications. Your software would take care not to exclude any gentle, friendly, cooperative practitioner of any ideology, religion, political party, nation, organization, affiliation, etc.

 

One important goal of your software would be to educate. Hopefully, everyone would eventually become enlightened enough to merit universal inclusivity (by acting as good, positive communicators) according to your accrediting software, which might also be developed Wikipedically, or perhaps Amazon-style—i.e., open-sourced, by inviting motivated reviewers and voters opportunities not only to build your site, but also to offer feedback opportunities and provide needed talent to shape and debug upgrades and develop next-generation software.

 

Recipients of your approving nods (such as Nobel prize winners and mild-mannered third-graders) could proudly display and announce their cherished new affiliation and certification on their websites, on Facebook, business cards, in TV commercials and advertising, on coffee cups, tee-shirts, shopping bags….

 

Additionally, your software could assist web surfers to more-judiciously select helpfully-screened websites, products and opinions as the very ones they will most benefit from investigating. Perhaps your software could also eventually include a function which would recognize and refute inappropriate co-opters of your symbol of acceptance and stamp of approval—an iterative process that would call out abusers while encouraging more awareness and discussion.

 

Your software will stimulate lively dialogue; increase the impact and number of creative, thought-provoking, and controversial-but-civil exchanges; reduce (by virtue of indifference and neglect) the quantity and influence of divisive communications arising anywhere in the world; universally improve facility in verbal and mental processing of complexities, innuendo and nuances; and inspire us all to pull together cooperatively to resolve our common personal, local and global problems.

 

While you're programming, please give extra points for humor?

 

And if you're not a programmer, but merely a earthlinged, godlinged promosapient like me, please pass this idea on to any similarly-inclined programming/software folk or foundations, or to whomever might be interested!

 

Thank you…. 🙂

 

Nancy Pace

njcpace@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Democratic Advocacy for the Sanctity of Human Life

Americans of faith, whether liberals or conservatives, have always wanted to elect leaders who will put in place caring governmental policies supportive of human life, from beginning to end—policies such as people-friendly health care, education, jobs, housing, transportation, and energy; equitability and opportunity; a small-business and worker-friendly economy; environmental stewardship; generosity toward the most vulnerable; representative, transparent politics, government, and taxation; and a peaceable foreign policy. Unfortunately, Republican partisan hacks continually manipulate our natural emotions and sympathies to galvanize us around single values-issues like abortion, and thus distract and divide us into voting against our own (and everyone else’s) best interests, against the very life-supporting and compassionate values we care so much about, values which the Democratic Party has always stood up for. The Democratic Party party is pledged to make abortion more rare, not more dangerous, and to promote healthy childbearing, family planning, contraceptive research, and comprehensive family life education. Look at Republican Party results and you will see that, once in power, they consistently put in place policies that move the bulk of the nation’s money away from the broad middle class and toward a small group of very wealthy people. The Republican Party isn’t what it used to be. This time, I hope Americans of faith will vote Democratic—for a change

New Exciting Commitments, Time Crunches, Beloved Old Ones

My big question today is:  how will I manage to add on another new, time-eating priority (that is, taking mediation training, and then volunteering) while I’m already feeling over-committed to my many other current involvements, which I truly, dearly love and want to support, and continue, and finish?

 

I so love my husband and our life and time together. I love and am committed to supporting my children, parents, sisters, friends. I love inspirational and thought-provoking ideas and conversation, and having a regular spiritual practice.  I want to establish a Department of Peace. I want to get Barack elected, end the war, and help him succeed in achieving his amazing agenda.

 

I want to keep working out, almost-daily. I dearly love writing my quirky personal take on breaking news for this blog (and sometimes for the local newspaper) and I love writing my (coming-along-nicely) “heartwarming, funny, and astonishing” (my words) memoir assessing the various impacts and implications of a military brat childhood upon my life and family (and upon others, and upon culture in general.)

 

I love Master Gardeners and our mission and activities. I love Women in Black and our peacemaking activities. I love keeping up with news and issues, reading about politics, reading non-fiction books and periodicals in all my favorite fields, and delighting in art and culture via Netflix and television. I love my dog, my home, my garden. I want to cook more often, and more healthfully and artfully. I sometimes need (and even fruitfully use) unstructured downtime (and sleep.) I love staying in the present moment, and being available and responsive and supportive to those I love and strangers alike, available to listen and help when things come up. I love sponsoring family visits and happy holidays.

 

I want to be gentle with myself, and to resist picking on myself about spreading myself too thin, about not “being there” when needed. True, I do too many things hastily and half-assed, but why waste time and energy judging myself? I don't want to waste my life feeling like I disappoint everyone, or fretting about health issues, poor discipline, or advancing age.

 

My answer for now? Trust. Surrender.

 

As Popeye says, I yam what I am. I accept forgiveness for myself, as I extend that acceptance to others who are also going 100% to do whatever most needs to be done, whatever most wants to be done.

 

I'll always do my best (which, granted, sometimes ain't so hot.) I'll focus on excellence in each small process, and I'll stay in the present so I won’t have to fret about my results, however wonderful, indifferent, or disappointing.

 

I'll make the time to start my day well, with humility, vision and heart.

 

I'll trust in God's strength and guidance to help me make healthy, loving choices, moment-to-moment, to help me live a good life.

 

I'll follow my love, energy, excitement. I'll remember that this approach generally works, if in characteristic fits and starts. (My husband sometimes kindly reminds me–as he goes, uncomplaining, to work each day–that no matter how many activities and relationships I choose—or how few—I’ll never get any of them “right”—to my satisfaction—because, after all, really, nobody ever gets anything or any relationship, finally, â€œright,” now do they? 

 

Oh, what a relief to not have to worry about that.

 

True, I do let people down sometimes, and I hate failing others' expectations. Sometimes I collapse in a familiar heap, and sometimes I run away and hide for awhile.

 

But I’m not going to kick myself anymore. I'm just going to keep making the best choices I can, moment-to-moment, keep doing what I do, and adjust, as needed, and let that be enough. I'm going to remember to love me too, by letting me be me, and not beating me up. (And mediation training would be such a nice present to me….)

 

After all, I wasn't getting as much done these days as at some other times in my life, probably because I’m currently feeling bogged down and overwhelmed and uninspired and unsure how to juggle my already-competing priorities. Probably an exciting new involvement, by its nature, will synergistically fill in important blanks, open new mental doors, create missing links, help me integrate, energize and prioritize all my beloved activities–inform all of them, support all of them.

 

Because, just as army brats must (eventually…somehow…) learn excellence, loyalty, perseverence, and FINISHING STUFF, we musn't forget meanwhile that we also simply thrive on jumping into new opportunities, taking risks, enjoying novelty, adventure, new learning, new friends, excitement, expanding our spidery souls by ceaselessly venturing, seeking connection, tirelessly unreeling our threads out of ourselves, casting filament after filament out into the universe, 'til they catch somewhere, O my soul*….

 

See? My decision to take on mediation training (which I've longed to do for ten years) has already inspired me to write this new blog! 

 

* inspired by and adapted from Walt Whitman's “A Patient, Noiseless Spider”. 

 

 

Please send your comments to njcpace@gmail.com.  Thank you!

Sarah Palin for Vice-President?

The McCain campaign would love for the American public to think this campaign is “about” being “for” or “against” Palin. It's not. It's about choosing between Obama and McCain on the issues that affect the American people. But the McCain campaign very much hopes we will forget about the issues, in the midst of all the Palin drama they'll keep stirring….

Palin will do a LOT to open feminism up to conservatives, so there is some good in that. She is in many ways a good, remarkable woman, just misguided and ill-informed. I admire her grit and her many abilities and accomplishments. However, I certainly do not agree with her politics, and she is in no way qualified to be either President or VP of the U.S. No major party would dream nowadays of nominating a man with such weak credentials, so they nominated her in part in hopes of stealing the women's and evangelicals' votes, and in part because she is a very talented, smooth political operative. I would not entrust such an important office to an unqualified woman, no matter how appealing, and I will vote for the ticket which is best-qualified and most likely to solve our many global challenges and right our economy, and make the rest of the changes we need here at home–Obama/Biden.

She knows almost nothing about national and international politics, and on several issues, she is a right-wing extremist clearly out of step with most Americans. Shame on McCain. His gambit may work, but it's cynical and self-serving.

The U.S. already twice elected a Palin lookalike–George W. Bush–a “pretty,” likeable, electable young face with an earnest, authentic voice, ideological convictions and good intentions, someone “real,” “like us,” who doesn't know much but you could have a beer with. And the American public trusted and hoped that those wiser would guide him as necessary. Consider where that got us.

Should Palin need to step up to the top job, her office will immediately be taken over by a committee of small, incompetent, warmongering political insiders who will once again run the country amok.

Palin is a good spokeswoman for Republican ideology, and certainly unique, and I wish her much growth. She has a bright future in conservative politics as a talking head for the powerful insider Rove/Limbaugh/Cheney puppeteer troupe (although they may find her harder to “handle” than Bush was–maybe not.)

But regardless of her politics, she is in no way ready to run our country in it's hour of greatest need.

Although admittedly, Palin is a big step up from Cheney…. 

Hillary and other feminists need to say, Yes, a qualified women for VP or President, but Palin is not qualified. I'm sorry, but Palin's face and style keep reminding me of Annette, the Mouseketeer. J-O-H   N-S-M   C-C-A-I-N! Sorry, Annette. But if it quacks like a duck….

I also think we need someone who will be a 24/7 President, as Obama has promised. He has pre-arranged the excellent care of his children with his wife, in-laws and friends, and they are counting on him to show up and be Daddy on occasion, but not to have any family responsibilities other than being a loving father, husband, friend. He does not have five children, one a special-needs infant, one heading to Iraq and one young, unmarried, pregnant and vulnerable.

Clearly, Palin's husband will be playing the traditional parent-at-home job, and I suspect he'll be good at it. If Palin is willing to turn the raising of the family over to him and others, as Barack has done, and leave herself only the responsibility of showing up to be loving Mommy on occasion, as Barack does, then she can be a 24/7 leader. Otherwise, we're gonna get cheated.

Both candidates should of course be with their families during major family crises, which arise more often in families of five children than of two children (see above). Presidents are also needed on-the-job during world crises. Enough said. I welcome the national dialogue that will occur on this issue, about just how much responsibility any parent of either sex can reasonably take on simultaneously at home and at the office, and still perform “equitably,” satisfactorily, laudably

Obama's judgment and patriotism is so evident in his choice of Biden, and McCain's seems ever more unstable, imprudent, impulsive. Certainly Palin was not thoughtfully vetted.

We desperately need national leadership, and we need a clear vision of where we are going and how to get there, not partisanship. We need someone who can give us good reasons to pull together, not someone whose extremism will tear us apart. McCain is all about scaring people into voting for him, and about making people think this election is about Palin, and not either-Obama-or-McCain.

By insisting that the media is to blame for critically vetting Palin, the Republicans are setting themselves up to excuse Palin from future unscripted media dialogue, interaction, and risky exposure. Palin's a maverick, it's true, but a maverick we know little about, who should not be protected from the press, nor left to cut her pretty teeth on the Presidency.

By the way, I understand McCain will soon be shipping Palin back to hide out in Alaska to prepare for the upcoming VP debate. She desperately needs uninterrupted time to bone up on all the national and international “stuff” that she has remained happily clueless about for forty-four years. She'll also be able to stay safely away from the pesky (i.e.,”unfriendly”) press scrutiny and risky unscripted media events Barack has been subjected to, for the last nineteen months (not counting his previous four campaigns for public office, and his public service.)

When the only tool you know well is a hammer, all problems look like nails, and McCain's most familiar hammer is the military. None of the national and global problems the next President will face can be solved militarily (or by a rookie testing out her learning curve.)

I once enjoyed hunting too, my daughter was a very competitive basketball player, I admire strong, ambitious, talented women and I love to see them get ahead in politics. But really, Vice President? I don't think so…. This is a big decision, folks. Let's all do some serious thinking about its implications. Our lives, and our children's lives, our money, the fate of the nation, the world, our very planet, are at stake.

“ClaremontObserver” recently wrote:
——————————————————-
> Only in Republican America would a black man with
> Bachelors degree in
> International Relations from Columbia University,
> a law degree from
> Harvard Law School, 10 years as a professor of
> Constitutional Law at
> the University of Chicago, 12 years in politics,
> four years on the U.S.
> Senate Foreign Relations Committee and manager of
> one of the most
> impressively flawless and forward thinking
> presidential campaigns ever
> not be ready for the presidency while a white
> female evangelical with
> 19 months in politics and a bachelors in
> journalism is considered
> “ready on day one.”

I copied this off a comments thread on www.realclearpolitics.com . “Claremont Observer” has a website called www.ClaremontObserver.com , so check it out! I thought the above was the most important observation on Palin of the day.

 

 

 

An End to Holocausts, Hiroshimas and 9/11s?

Two survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bomb recently came to my fair city to share their stories and plead for an end to nuclear weapons. I now am more persuaded than ever that powerful leaders who order the bombing of civilian populations are as misguided and ineffective in furthering their causes as are terrorists who set off suicide bombs in crowded marketplaces.

 

In the past, I believed that bombing civilian targets was sometimes necessary to end war and save lives, but now I see that Americans would never accept such a double standard if nuclear bombs were dropped on our cities.

 

We only ever have two choices in any personal or global conflict: We can choose never to give up trying to find positive solutions, or we can claim to have no choice but to accept negative ones. We can opt for unity, or we can retreat into defensive separateness. We can bravely reach out to come together as one—one couple, one family, one organization, one polity, one world—or we can retreat from the hard work of reaching agreement.

 

Proponents of “just wars” assure us that violence sometimes offers quicker, surer ways to prevent injustices and insure the survival of the “right” side. Yet this same moral argument is proffered equally fervently by terrorists, who also believe in the “rightness” of their causes. To both of these, I contend that to be “right,” whether individually or nationally, is to be in continuously valiant struggle to live up to the highest, most positive, peaceful, loving universal humanitarian ideals and values.

 

Sadly, many of us excuse our double standards and immoral choices, both at home and abroad, because “we’re right.”  But we’re not “right,” regardless of our politics, religion, or history, unless we, our families, friends, organizations and nation resolve our conflicts generously, cooperatively, and non-violently. If our solutions to human conflict are violent, harmful and hurtful, we are no longer “right.”

 

Our justly historically proud and idealistic nation now controls most of the world’s nuclear weapons (making us by far the greatest weapons proliferator and threat to others around the world) yet we see no problem with that, because, after all, “we’re ‘right’.” We even justify a nuclear attack upon Iran, fearing that they may develop, use or proliferate such weapons—because we’re “right.” As the Bruce Ivins / anthrax case and the Air Force’s case of “misplaced” nuclear warheads have taught us, even well-intentioned weapons research and maintenance can be too easily sabotaged. Deadly bioweapons and nuclear devices quickly fall prey not only to human greed and guile, but also to weakness, illness, error, and confusion about the politically “right” thing to do. All this, while fueling ever more danger, fear, more arms races, and more likelihood of proliferation.

 

During the twentieth century, every peaceful, diplomatic effort that has ever received anything like the openhanded financial and political backing which war receives has been successful. Such political compromises, however frustrating and dissatisfying they may feel at the time, always seem presciently wise and politically courageous in retrospect.

 

Wars cannot prevent catastrophes; war itself is a catastrophe, as attested by all those whose lives are touched by war. Soldiers and soldiers’ families are always catastrophically exploited by war. Ninety percent of the victims of war are civilians. We who so proudly march into war have no idea what future injustices those wars will inevitably loose upon innocents on all sides.

 

The belief that war can prevent injustices is a powerful, well-funded myth. War may prevent a few specific, immediate injustices, but it always creates many more unpredicted and terrible ones. Tragically, we let every generation forget that, whether or fight or not, some great injustices inevitably are suffered, and some people die. Millions of Jews and other innocents died in WWII despite gargantuan war efforts on all sides, and many more died because of them. In wartime as in peacetime, countries come together and apart, tyrants rise and fall. The price of liberty—and its best guarantor—is never war, but eternal, active, courageous, peaceful vigilance. For what does freedom mean, if not the freedom to live and let others livein peace? Our God-given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—a right shared by all peoples everywhere—rests inevitably upon others’ good will.

 

War cannot keep us safe. War cannot prevent human injustices. Even under the best of circumstances, human nature being what is it and human conflicts being inevitable, life will always be fragile, difficult, and uncertain. In today’s (and tomorrow’s) fast-shrinking, intricately intertwined, and insanely violent world, life on earth itself is at risk.

 

The only moral choice about nuclear weapons that any nation has in today’s increasingly complex and violent world is to take the courageous lead in disarming. Such a decision is no different than any of the other difficult moral decisions we make every day. They all come down to one of two choices: whether to live positively or negatively, hopefully or cynically, bravely or fearfully, in faith or in despair.

 

Regardless of the size and nature of the conflict, whether personal or political, local or global, we can always choose cooperation over competition, unity over division, hope over cynicism, brotherhood over partisanship, and forgiveness over vengeance.

 

We can always choose faith, hope and love over fear, defensiveness, and retribution. We can choose whether to add to the sum of injustices by fearfully arming ourselves enough to destroy our beautiful blue planet many times over, mistreating our neighbors as they mistreat us, or we can support only peaceful leaders everywhere, seek compromises, listen to all viewpoints, and steadfastly reject that greatest injustice and attack upon freedom, which is war itself.

 

I’m not brave enough to be a total pacifist; I would defend my family, friends and neighbors from bad guys climbing in our windows and knocking down our doors, and maybe I’m wrong in this. But such scenarios are far less likely if we elect peaceful leaders who maintain strong local militias, and then spend the rest of our so-called “defense” budget redressing local, national and international injustices, and supporting great projects dear to the hearts of our so-called “enemies.” Everyone knows that the best way to get rid of an enemy is to make him a friend.

 

Albert Einstein famously warned us that no nation on earth can simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. Certainly, maintaining the mightiest military force in the history of the world has not prevented us from being continually embroiled in wars.

 

We are all conditioned to believe that being “right” about ourselves, our politics, traditions and religions, is more important than living and letting others live in peace. We have to be “right” about so many things—about who the bad guys are, who started it, who was at fault, what happened, who meant well and who didn’t, who did what to whom, whose ideology or form of government or religion is superior….

 

The truth is, in this confusing world, it’s difficult to find agreement even amongst our best friends and those most “like” us, about what life is all about—what we’re doing here, and how best to look upon the world, ourselves, and one another. Even the greatest scholars realize that the more they know, the more they know they don’t know. This is why, in every conflict, humility, acceptance, mutual respect, support, and yes, forgiveness, are the wisest guides to being “right.”

 

Some day, they will give a war and no one will come. Each of us will either continue to insist upon being “right” and in control (both illusions in this multicultural nuclear age) or hold ourselves to that highest universal standard, the Golden Rule, which treats all others kindly as we would wish to be treated. When more and more of us make this shift to respect and support for human life everywhere, we will enter a more harmonious age.

 

In this age of climate change and peak oil, the great work of peaceful global transformation is urgent. Wars over oil already rage in Iraq, Darfur, and Georgia, and other global scarcities such as water threaten increasing conflict. Our mother Earth is sick and reaching crisis. Einstein famously predicted, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

 

Fortunately, researchers have learned a lot about how to resolve human conflicts peacefully. Amish and Quaker Christians and other historically peaceful communities have shown us that peaceful cultures are possible, and now, across the globe, great moral leaders demonstrate the proven arts and skills of peaceful conflict resolution. It’s time we learned what they know, and time to spread that knowledge around.

 

Hatred begets more hatred; this is immutable law. Until we lead the global paradigm shift away from division and toward brotherhood, exploiting the potential of our great institutions and media in the service of peace and justice, we and our progeny will increasingly be at risk for more crime, more injustices, wars and terrorism, more Holocausts, 9/11s, Hiroshimas and Nagasakis. Neither love nor fear are simple, obvious or guaranteed approaches to resolving human conflict, but at this late date, only one has any chance of succeeding.

 

Please send your comments to njcpace@gmail.com. Thank you!