Being that spring is finally near I am looking for better health. With spring comes outside garden work, sun, exercise, worm castings, home grown food, more daylight, fishing, biking and all kinds of good stuff. My struggles and concerns, Marquette Teaching War and use of the 1.1 million Catholic church money for the poor remain the same but somehow with spring and the light the burden become lighter and the blessings increase. My curses remain my blessings but in spring they are easier to see and feel as blessing.
Recently someone asked me what do I do for myself? I thought about this question and another one we posed in faith sharing yesterday, how do we find God in all things? In a sense everything we do is for self, being it selfishness or for interest of others and self. Now if we believe that we can find God in all things the question becomes how we find God in ourselves. I do not have the answer or solution but know it has something to do with living deeply in the present moment.
Everyone preaches living in the moment but deeply living in the moment is a struggle that exposes us to pain and suffering as well as blessings and peace.
Now to bring these thoughts down to earth with some examples! I have friends who deeply concern with the plight of the people of Palestine and are concerned with more and more war spending. What do they do about it? Go to more talks and discussions about the subject, write letters, sign petitions, make phone calls and faithfully vote. Nothing much changes so what do they do but do more of the same. They keep doing these moment by moment stuff, never discovering using the power of nonviolence in each of us. They seriously believe they are going to get politicians and others in power to do something without matching the power of others, friends or foe, without confronting power with power.
Their power is the power of nonviolent love and action, individually or, better yet, working together. People fear alienating the “powers to be” and believe they can persuade these powers without conflict or confrontation. This has happened over and over again with our “liberal congresswoman” who keeps on voting against the people of Palestine and for more war spending. A few years back when groups of person were about to hold her accountable for her war spending ways a local peace group interfered and made it impossible. Keeping the surface is fine but doing something deeply about it is another thing.
When will we ever learn that living in the moment is great but unless we do it deeply, so we can really hear and see, nothing really changes?
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