Friday, March 28, 2014

Psalm 29 revised

       Although our great country was founded upon trust in God, in my lifetime I have witnesses the relentless elimination of God from public commerce.

       In the past decade I have seen unprecedented natural disasters:  droughts, earthquakes, fires, floods, hurricanes, mud slides, tornados, tsunamis, and winter storms of mammoth proportions!

       With these facts in mind I turned to Psalm 29;  this is my version.

                          _ _ _

We have not kept your precepts, Lord!
We have not shepherded the earth by your formulation;
we have plundered for private gain
      and trampled the lowly to amass profits.


Ascribe to the Lord, O mighty ones
      ascribe to the Lord glory and strength
Ascribe to the Lord the reverence due his name
      and take heed of the splendor of his holiness!


The voice of the Lord is over the waters
      the God of glory thunders
The Lord gives warning as we despoil the earth
      the voice of the Lord breaks the cedar
      and howls the winds
The voice of the Lord shakes the mountains
      and strikes with flashes of lightening
The voice of the Lord twists the oaks
      and strips forests bare

Look, listen and know!


The Lord sits enthroned over the waters and land
      The Lord reigns King forever
The Lord gives warning to his people:
      heed his precepts and principles
      lest man's choices bring destruction
      to this wondrous earth and all its inhabitants!
     

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

A New Story

       There is a new consciousness evolving . . . it will take centuries to fully emerge, but signs of it can be seen if we look for it . . . the new consciousness is the realization that all of life is interdependent.

Once our awareness was limited to what our senses could perceive so our 'knowledge' of the world was that earth (WE) were central and the sun, moon and stars revolved around US.  Those who first pointed out our collective misunderstanding (that we weren't the center of all that is) were hated and condemned, tried and imprisoned . . . (we humans don't take kindly to a requirement to change our way of thinking).

       We now know our world is but a tiny speck in a minor galaxy in a vast universe of billions of galaxies balanced and ordered in breathtaking harmony and we gaze upon what the Hubble telescope has revealed with awe and wonder!

There are more collective misunderstandings yet to be addressed;  just as we once saw our earth as the center of everything with 'other' (sun, moon, stars) merely revolving around US, in the same manner (1) we have seen our self-interest as central, OUR wants and needs the only consideration.  Accompanying  this attitude was the assumption (2) that resources were unlimited . . . (there seemed to be a lot of world out there) and we could (3) take what we wanted--all we had to do was lay claim and (4) fight off others who wanted what WE wanted (i.e. invade, plunder, subdue, conquer, hire clever lawyers, etc.)
                                             -- or (5) war if need be!


       It's taken a long time to gather the knowledge and skills to realize the need to dramatically readjust how we see the world and ourselves.
        There's a new consciousness evolving that clearly sees we are not isolated autonomous monads needing to 'do what it takes to get what we want',  but rather we are part of an interacting wholeness that is intrinsically relational (*a complicated way of saying "We're in this together, and together we succeed or we fail")

       This consciousness tells a new story of life and being.