Inconvient TRUTH of June
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
So the month of June marks the half way point in this year, and what a year it has been so far, more natural disasters, volcanic activity on the rise, storms, plagues of animals and humans, death and destruction from the forces of war and of man's ignorance of the value of all human life still make the headlines of the news here and abroad every day.
With the turning of the year on its calendar axis my husband and I have made our final decision about Israel and the possibility of returning there...sadly with a depth of understanding that we now have we have determined that we will not go back! We hear from many of our friends there that the town of Tzfat is blacker than ever, (if you recall that word is not in reference to the color of one's skin but a reference to the ultra religious style of dress). Just this morning I had a wonderful call from a dear friend and learned that they are moving too, as are many of the people we knew there. This dear friend and her husband have spent long years in Tzfat, but she said to me, "It has become so ultra religious, so crazy, they shout at us when we drive in the streets on Shabbat!"
I wonder how Moses would have dealt with this predicament of the religious fanatics! More than that I wonder how in the modern world we can ever overcome the years of mismanagement of God's word! The problem seems to me to loom large right at this particular time, man over the centuries has taken the words of the prophets, the words of the religious leaders of ancient times and twisted them until they resemble those little spiral colored pastas that are used for salads!
Recently with the advent of the motion picture, "Da Vinci Code's'" popularity and the furor over the book, " Holy Blood, Holy Grail," it has become even more evident that mankind is in need of something new in the way of spiritual leadership. The movie gives us a glimpse into the hidden side of Christianity and it's various forms of manipulation of God's word while the book, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" gives one of the deepest investigations into the man-mad God person who is known as Jesus the Christ that I have ever read, it revealed things that I never dreamed might be true but had always suspected, it also revealed the devious way in which man distorted the word of God in order to suit the needs of the church. Within its covers are revealed deceptions and deliberate distortions by those in power in the church that make Watergate look like a day at the kiddy park!
It seems to me that what we need most in this modern age is a God/Man connection that is personal, real and not based on any of the teachings of the various religions of the world. It seems that humans are seeking once again for a spiritual life ring that doesn't come with all the trappings of manmade religion, something that puts us in touch with our own souls and the force that connects us all not only to God and each other but to the planet we live on and the other living creatures that inhabit it with us.
This past weekend we had the sheer pleasure of seeing the movie, "AN Inconvient Truth" by our almost president Al Gore. Here is an example of a man who set out to do one thing, become president and when that didn't work still found a way to tell the TRUTH! It is an awesome and distinguished piece of film, one that makes clear that unless we all decide to change and become conscious of our actions and how they affect Gaia, Mother Earth as we know her will die, and many of us will die with her. This film is a must see, it gives practical wisdom for dealing with the issues of Global Warming, but for my husband and I it was more than that. It was another sign that somehow, there must come into this world a new understanding of God, the Creator, and the Author of the Planet called Earth...
A new understanding of our place as humans in the hierarchy of life on this planet, and a greater knowing of our power to aide the planet in her struggle to survive what mankind has done to her!
As a social worker I spent a long time learning about children who are abused, and when I saw this film I was reminded of the signs of abuse that we were taught to look for. Guess what! If we as sentient human beings were being watched by some social worker in the heavens we would all be in jail for the way we mistreat our child...! We have polluted our air, fouled our rivers and seas, decimated our forests and neglect the health of the entire earth. We are negligent to the extreme, in another few years there won't be enough fresh water in many places and the drought that plagues certain areas will have encompassed half the globe causing more starvation that we can deal with.
I expect that whoever or whatever God is, God is crying, possibly God has even forsaken us, left us to our own defenses because of the lack of our sentient intelligence! We were given an ability not given to the animals; we are sentient beings capable of change, capable of learning, capable of knowing wrong from right!
We need to get hold of that spiritual life ring I mentioned earlier, we need to seek our beings to their very core, and to find within ourselves the connection to that spiritual place where we awaken from our apathy and begin to take account of our actions. We need to rectify what we can, and to change how we look at the world, not just the planet and the ecosystem, but the inhabitants in all their varied forms. We need to wake up from the stupor imposed on our brains by years of teaching in the various religions to which we belong and begin to shake the tree! We need to ask the hard questions of our leaders, both spiritual and secular; we need to seek TRUTH until we find her in that most unvarnished, unchanged form that she is! We, each one of us, must step up to the bat with one thing in mind, hit a grand slam right out of the park, don't be a sideliner, don't sit in your barcalounger with you beer and watch expecting others to do it. You and YOU and YOU and I must all make a change, we must step forth as seekers on the path, we must question everything, we must make personal changes, walk or ride a bus...don't drive everywhere, eat less, use less energy in your homes, your offices, smell the roses, clean the sidewalk, water that tree in front of the apartment building that belongs to the city, don't sit there and idle away time thinking that one person can't make a change!
Speak out on subjects like Global Warming! Speak up and ask questions when you hear something in your religion that seems wrong! Ask the hard questions until someone answers you. Educate yourself on the state of the world, on the state of the people of the world, on the state of the animals and planets and fishes and wildlife! Read, get involved! GO out and tell a friend that you are seeking TRUTH! And when they ask why, tell them that you recently woke up to what is really going on in the world, and that you would like to share what you know with them!
Take nothing for granted! Life is precious; Life as we know it is short! Without change the world as we know won't exist in another 50 years! Each one of us has a responsibility to change, to wake up from the slumber of apathy and to begin to seek TRUTH!
Don't think that anyone has all the answers; don't be satisfied that because your Minister or Rabbi, Mullah, or Priest went to seminary they KNOW EVERYTHING! Seek out and read the new facts that are being exposed on a daily basis about the world's religions, her governments and her environment!
Search for knowledge and when you find a gem share it with everyone who will listen!
Our President today did an astonishing thing! He put himself in harms way to meet face to face, eye to eye with the new leaders of Iraq, he acted on his TRUTH! We should all be as brave as to act on TRUTH! We should all care enough about the rest of the world that we want to look them straight in the eye, that we want to work with them toward something better!
Ignorance of the TRUTH makes fools of us all, we must not take for granted that we know all there is to know about anything, most especially about God. Keep in mind this one fact...all religion is man made, God just is, and if we seek hard enough, if we succeed in scraping the scales from our eyes and listen well enough to that small voice within we may just find that connection to our spiritual self that is so vital to the days ahead of us and the survival of this lovely little blue planet we in habit.
So the month of June marks the half way point in this year, and what a year it has been so far, more natural disasters, volcanic activity on the rise, storms, plagues of animals and humans, death and destruction from the forces of war and of man's ignorance of the value of all human life still make the headlines of the news here and abroad every day.
With the turning of the year on its calendar axis my husband and I have made our final decision about Israel and the possibility of returning there...sadly with a depth of understanding that we now have we have determined that we will not go back! We hear from many of our friends there that the town of Tzfat is blacker than ever, (if you recall that word is not in reference to the color of one's skin but a reference to the ultra religious style of dress). Just this morning I had a wonderful call from a dear friend and learned that they are moving too, as are many of the people we knew there. This dear friend and her husband have spent long years in Tzfat, but she said to me, "It has become so ultra religious, so crazy, they shout at us when we drive in the streets on Shabbat!"
I wonder how Moses would have dealt with this predicament of the religious fanatics! More than that I wonder how in the modern world we can ever overcome the years of mismanagement of God's word! The problem seems to me to loom large right at this particular time, man over the centuries has taken the words of the prophets, the words of the religious leaders of ancient times and twisted them until they resemble those little spiral colored pastas that are used for salads!
Recently with the advent of the motion picture, "Da Vinci Code's'" popularity and the furor over the book, " Holy Blood, Holy Grail," it has become even more evident that mankind is in need of something new in the way of spiritual leadership. The movie gives us a glimpse into the hidden side of Christianity and it's various forms of manipulation of God's word while the book, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" gives one of the deepest investigations into the man-mad God person who is known as Jesus the Christ that I have ever read, it revealed things that I never dreamed might be true but had always suspected, it also revealed the devious way in which man distorted the word of God in order to suit the needs of the church. Within its covers are revealed deceptions and deliberate distortions by those in power in the church that make Watergate look like a day at the kiddy park!
It seems to me that what we need most in this modern age is a God/Man connection that is personal, real and not based on any of the teachings of the various religions of the world. It seems that humans are seeking once again for a spiritual life ring that doesn't come with all the trappings of manmade religion, something that puts us in touch with our own souls and the force that connects us all not only to God and each other but to the planet we live on and the other living creatures that inhabit it with us.
This past weekend we had the sheer pleasure of seeing the movie, "AN Inconvient Truth" by our almost president Al Gore. Here is an example of a man who set out to do one thing, become president and when that didn't work still found a way to tell the TRUTH! It is an awesome and distinguished piece of film, one that makes clear that unless we all decide to change and become conscious of our actions and how they affect Gaia, Mother Earth as we know her will die, and many of us will die with her. This film is a must see, it gives practical wisdom for dealing with the issues of Global Warming, but for my husband and I it was more than that. It was another sign that somehow, there must come into this world a new understanding of God, the Creator, and the Author of the Planet called Earth...
A new understanding of our place as humans in the hierarchy of life on this planet, and a greater knowing of our power to aide the planet in her struggle to survive what mankind has done to her!
As a social worker I spent a long time learning about children who are abused, and when I saw this film I was reminded of the signs of abuse that we were taught to look for. Guess what! If we as sentient human beings were being watched by some social worker in the heavens we would all be in jail for the way we mistreat our child...! We have polluted our air, fouled our rivers and seas, decimated our forests and neglect the health of the entire earth. We are negligent to the extreme, in another few years there won't be enough fresh water in many places and the drought that plagues certain areas will have encompassed half the globe causing more starvation that we can deal with.
I expect that whoever or whatever God is, God is crying, possibly God has even forsaken us, left us to our own defenses because of the lack of our sentient intelligence! We were given an ability not given to the animals; we are sentient beings capable of change, capable of learning, capable of knowing wrong from right!
We need to get hold of that spiritual life ring I mentioned earlier, we need to seek our beings to their very core, and to find within ourselves the connection to that spiritual place where we awaken from our apathy and begin to take account of our actions. We need to rectify what we can, and to change how we look at the world, not just the planet and the ecosystem, but the inhabitants in all their varied forms. We need to wake up from the stupor imposed on our brains by years of teaching in the various religions to which we belong and begin to shake the tree! We need to ask the hard questions of our leaders, both spiritual and secular; we need to seek TRUTH until we find her in that most unvarnished, unchanged form that she is! We, each one of us, must step up to the bat with one thing in mind, hit a grand slam right out of the park, don't be a sideliner, don't sit in your barcalounger with you beer and watch expecting others to do it. You and YOU and YOU and I must all make a change, we must step forth as seekers on the path, we must question everything, we must make personal changes, walk or ride a bus...don't drive everywhere, eat less, use less energy in your homes, your offices, smell the roses, clean the sidewalk, water that tree in front of the apartment building that belongs to the city, don't sit there and idle away time thinking that one person can't make a change!
Speak out on subjects like Global Warming! Speak up and ask questions when you hear something in your religion that seems wrong! Ask the hard questions until someone answers you. Educate yourself on the state of the world, on the state of the people of the world, on the state of the animals and planets and fishes and wildlife! Read, get involved! GO out and tell a friend that you are seeking TRUTH! And when they ask why, tell them that you recently woke up to what is really going on in the world, and that you would like to share what you know with them!
Take nothing for granted! Life is precious; Life as we know it is short! Without change the world as we know won't exist in another 50 years! Each one of us has a responsibility to change, to wake up from the slumber of apathy and to begin to seek TRUTH!
Don't think that anyone has all the answers; don't be satisfied that because your Minister or Rabbi, Mullah, or Priest went to seminary they KNOW EVERYTHING! Seek out and read the new facts that are being exposed on a daily basis about the world's religions, her governments and her environment!
Search for knowledge and when you find a gem share it with everyone who will listen!
Our President today did an astonishing thing! He put himself in harms way to meet face to face, eye to eye with the new leaders of Iraq, he acted on his TRUTH! We should all be as brave as to act on TRUTH! We should all care enough about the rest of the world that we want to look them straight in the eye, that we want to work with them toward something better!
Ignorance of the TRUTH makes fools of us all, we must not take for granted that we know all there is to know about anything, most especially about God. Keep in mind this one fact...all religion is man made, God just is, and if we seek hard enough, if we succeed in scraping the scales from our eyes and listen well enough to that small voice within we may just find that connection to our spiritual self that is so vital to the days ahead of us and the survival of this lovely little blue planet we in habit.
posted by Leah PettePiece | 8:26 AM
