One World

Just as the human body is a whole in which damage to any part is shared by the whole; our World is a functioning unit where damage to any part is shared by the whole.  Recently the whole world has been damaged by the coronavirus.  If we can find anything positive coming out of this global pandemic where we have shared fear and loss, I hope it brings a greater awareness of our One World.

Only recently has humanity become aware of the reality of our world as a singular unit—it has always been treated as if it were made up of separate parts.  The first time the curvature of the planet was observed was in 1935 when an explorer balloon observed the earth’s spherical horizon.  In 1946 the first pictures of the curvature appeared.  The most famous picture of all time was taken in a rocket  traveling to the moon on December 7, 1972—the stunning picture of one tiny Blue Marble drifting in the vastness of space; one single whole unit on which everything we have ever known resides.   We have come to revere that picture; but have we yet understood its’ meaning?  This is one world, one singular complete unit, sustained by the delicately balanced interaction of its many parts—and humanity is one of those parts.

For thousands of years of human history, the earth’s complexity and vital interactions were not realized or understood, so its wholeness was separated into pieces.  Those generations can be excused, they didn’t know.

Looking to the long past we see a slow gathering of groups of people from tribes to villages to cities, until the groups became Nations which laid claim to land areas and fought wars to hold or expand their ‘piece’.  National Resources, earth’s gift to humanity, were claimed and privatized for profit by states, special groups and corporations or occasional individuals.  The air and waterways were  polluted in the name of progress as industrialization swept the globe.  Species were carelessly extinguished for profit and pleasure—all because of a ‘piecemeal’ focus while failing to recognize the earth’s reliance on its interdependent functioning.

In the half century since that photo of our ‘blue planet’ appeared, we should have become cognizant of our world’s wholeness and awakened to the realization of its delicate balance and that we—humanity is part of it.  We should all be seriously taking steps to mend the sundering, not withdrawing from peace and climate accords!

It will take generations to end the warring, and learn to share the planet and its’ resources, but it has been given to This generation that it begins to move in that direction.   We may look at the acrimoniousness in today’s world and say ‘it’s not possible’—but look back some 80 years and  see the bitter fighting between Germany and Japan against Great Britain and America in WWII and realize they are now all allies.  

My point of writing this is that the coronavirus is awakening us the reality of One World.  We will get through the suffering, with painful losses to be sure, but I pray it awakens us to the only way we can save ourselves from ourselves—by seeing our wholeness.

Manifested Consciousness

Who is God and what is God? I can’t possibly know.  I believe religions help us to focus on the concept of God, which is needed by humanity in order to not self-destruct, but religions are man’s creation.  Humans are flawed so errors are made in religion’s attempts to reach for God.

Science—because it can’t prove God exists—denies the possibility of God and credits randomness for creating the human species, our world, and the universe. Now that takes more ‘faith’ than I can muster.  As I study all that is ordered I see a requirement for consciousness to plan a process of selecting, sequencing and executing to achieve the desired result.

Slabs of metal, nuts and bolts, pieces of glass and rolls of leather will never randomly assemble themselves into a car no matter how much time is given; flour, sugar, eggs and chocolate pieces will never randomly assemble into cookies under any circumstances.

The human species, our world and the universe are the most carefully ordered sequences that can be imagined.

I have no faith that randomness yields complex order—it requires intentionality. 

I don’t know who or what God is, but I believe the order that brought us and all that is into existence has been the manifestation of a consciousness capable of bringing order. I’m content to call that God.

A Consciousness Change

“The Age of Nations is past,

The task before us now, if we would not perish,

Is to build the earth.”

                                                                                                            Teilhard de Chardin

I believe there is a God and that there is meaning and purpose to our existence: humanity is to evolve and learn to live as God has directed—then we will join God in eternity.  I believe that Father God, who created life and the world, first guided infant humanity.  I believe he gave directions to Abraham to form the Jewish nation in a time when ‘Might Means Right’ was the only guiding principle.  For the nascent nation God chose Moses to lead their development with laws and rules.  This changed humanity’s consciousness.  It evolved from tribalism and led to the first Axial period wherein, throughout the globe, isolated clusters of humanity, led by great Prophets, laid the foundations of civilization between 800 and 200 B.C.

When God determined the time was ripe, God the Father ceased direct guidance, giving humanity full power of free will.  God entered time as the man Jesus, demonstrating how we are to live.  Like rebellious adolescents, mankind did not adopt ‘The Way’ given us by Jesus.  Some saw the wisdom and Christianity took hold, keeping Jesus’ words alive.  For centuries the world progressed physically in adolescent-like rebellion, playing dangerous war games, claiming for profit earth’s natural resources and rebelling against moral order.

We now stand on the brink of self-destruction!  We're children no longer, needing to be guided and led; we can see what the rebellion has achieved.  It is time to accept our adulthood—another consciousness change is needed—to recognize our world is one interacting/interdependent unit that will succeed or perish as a whole.

* * *

                                          THE CHILD IS FATHER OF THE MAN

From parent comes child

Who is destined himself to become parent.

From God comes man

Himself to become as God—

One to other

United in understanding

Through shared creation.

Each still is

But they share a being

Impossible without the evolutionary development.

But that is the completion—

The becoming is painful.

To grow under protective care:

                  To have one to give answers,

                  To have one to run to for comfort,

                  To have one to define limits’

                  To have one to forgive mistakes,

                  To have one to answer needs

                  To have one to see in us value . . . . . .

                                                      Childhood and Innocence.

Then to be alone:

                  To search out answers,

                  To endure without comfort,

                  To draw our own limits,

                  To be responsible for mistakes,

                  To find the means to answer needs,

                  To create our own value by our actions . . . .

                                                      Maturity and Responsibility.

The aloneness feels like abandonment;

But necessary for becoming.

It is weakness, cowardice, and death

To run back to the protectiveness outgrown.

It is strength, courage and life

To face the challenge alone.

The challenges to be met?

One cannot foretell.

For some they are few;

For others, many.

But the greater the challenges met and overcome,

The greater the one overcoming.

Refuse the challenge

               Deny the worth of the struggle.

                                 Give no example to those who follow,

                                                   Destruction . . . . . . .

                                                                     And worse yet,

                                                                                       Responsibility for that destruction!

Refusal, denial, and the killing of hope

Will not eliminate the responsibility inherent in maturation.

There is no choice but to go forward and build,

To find within the self

The ability to become as the One who gave being.

God is not dead

His infinite wisdom sees the necessity

Of Man’s accepting the responsibility

Of his own destiny.

The pain?

                  The suffering?

                                    The aloneness?

                                                      To be endured!

Instead of receiving,

It is now ours to give

The child must now become the father.

Trinity Thoughts

Throughout this Easter season I have thought much about the Trinity.  I find it does not present to me the great incomprehensible mystery theologians speak of – Why?

This is how my mind addresses it.

I am Barbara, one singular limited human being.  During my lifetime others have known me as different persons.  I can and have manifested myself in these ways:  I am parent—“Mom”; teacher—“Ms. S-C”; and writer—“B. Sabonis-Chafee”.  Because I am limited by my material reality and exist in time and space, those manifestations happen sequentially.  Although most people can and do experience me mainly as one or the other (and can even be unaware that I’m manifested differently to others at other times) I am always the same Barbara.

For God, there is not a limit.  The Eternal God exists beyond the limits of time and space.  God’s Being has been manifested to humanity in three ways: as Creator, Savior, and Spirit.  Christianity has chosen to identify those manifestations as: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Theologians have also chosen to label God’s different ways-of-being as ‘3 Persons’. The choice of terminology has effected our perception of and our ultimate understanding of God.

Consider the word ‘person’.   Unconsciously we bring our common understanding to it, which refers to a separate individual or ‘unit’ of being.   We know of a person as one who comes into life by way of two individuals joining in sexual union to produce a baby—or new unit of being—which is first dependent upon parents but develops (over time) into the new singular unit, independent of the source of their existence.

The vastness of God is beyond our ability to comprehend but we use what we do know to try to reach a degree of understanding.  During the two thousand years of development, the Jewish people became monotheists—believers in One God—and awaiting a Messiah.  The life and message of Jesus brought people to the belief that he was the promised Messiah, the Christ.  He preached love and peace, was crucified, died and arose—conquering death.  The Messiah, thus God’s presence had been manifested to the world.  Some of the Jews, then non-Jews became Christians, believers with the conviction that Jesus=God.  Then, experiencing another manifestation of God’s presence with Pentecost, accepted that Holy Spirit =God.  It took centuries to establish the tenets of Christianity.  One great problem (still considered the greatest Mystery) was how to reconcile monotheism with a Triune God of three different persons.  The world’s experience of God had been in three different ways as: creator, savior and spirit; these encounters were different experiences so, in thought, they were separated and given the labels of ‘Father’, ‘Son’ and ‘Holy Spirit’, calling them different ‘persons’ of God, creating the confusion of One God, but three ‘persons’.

God is beyond our knowing and those awarenesses that do come to our understanding are clouded by explanations we have invented.  When reason advances our understanding (consciousness?) it requires that we change our perceptions and relinquish the long-favored errors present in the explanation.  Faced with a change in perception it is imperative not to deny the essential experience or main point but realize the error was in the way it was explained. 

Regarding the Trinity, I suggest relinquishing the use of ‘persons’ to describe the differing manifestations—the ‘Person’ of God is God (I Am) One God.  God was manifested in an earthly sojourn as the human person, Jesus.  The Christian belief is that God did enter human form for a specific duration to share the experience of being human and demonstrate how we as humans can share in ‘godness’.  We can’t fully understand it, but history and scripture affirm that it happened.  God did not ‘leave’ eternity to become Jesus (making eternity absent of God).  Eternity holds all expressions of reality within itself, so God continues eternally while entering time’s temporality. 

How many ways can God manifest the God-self?  We can’t know that, so lets confine the issue to the ways in which humanity has recognized them.  God’s Being is manifested to our human world: 1) as Creator (we see and experience life and the world in which we exist); 2) as the Savior in the person Jesus, also identified as The Christ (saving us from limited being); and 3) as the Holy Spirit, (The Divine Milieu) present throughout all of creation, guiding our evolution.

My prayer:    God of the Universe, you are one God in three manifestations;

                          --as Creator you give us life and the world;

--as Savior you clothed yourself in human flesh and entered time to show us how we are to live

--as Holy Spirit you are everpresent, enveloping us in your love and giving guidance to those who seek your council.

            Thank you—for all that is

            Amen—Thy will, not mine be done
            Trust—I believe, Lord, help my unbelief