One type of news reporting that has me plugging my ears and humming these days is that in which a news team travels into a town to sniff out the most ignorant citizen in the community, and places a microphone in front of him. As if to say, “look at this guy, tell me he isn’t the thickest member of the herd?” My first reaction is, “Oh my, you mean there are people in this country who actually think that way?” And then I might sum them up. “That’s got to be the biggest beef-head in the pasture.” So unfriendly! I don’t like those thoughts! So, when I think a story is headed for one of these pastures, I go running for the hills. I don’t need any excuse to love people less. I need reasons to love them more. My friend Sarah has a fantasy that the entire family of man will one day experience a reset moment. One day, she likes to imagine, there will be a voice from the sky, which everyone in the world will hear, and we will all, every single one of us, look up and listen. Whatever the voice says to us, it will usher in a time of peace and healing around the whole globe, and a saving of our dear planet. I was walking up a great hill, and next to me walked a man whom I understood viewed me as being slightly beneath him. He was Muslim, and I could tell that he assumed that I was a Christian. We lived in a town where Christians were in the minority. I was also a woman, a fact for which I believed he also judged me as being beneath him. And, though we walked fairly near to one another, and at the same pace, I felt him purposefully looking ahead at the road, careful not to glance in my direction. I viewed his attitude toward me as a failing in him, and thought it slightly comical that he could not bring himself even to look over and acknowledge my presence. We walked like this for some time when suddenly, out of the sky, boomed the voice of God. I stopped. “Did you hear that?” I said to the man. “Yeah, I heard it.” He answered, without looking at me, and began to walk on. I scampered up after him, saying to his back, “That was the voice of God.” He hesitated. “Yeah,” he grunted, still unwilling to turn his head in my direction “But, did you hear what he said?” I asked him. He mumbled that maybe he hadn’t quite caught it. I moved to face him. “He said, ‘Bless your sweet reunion.” The man turned to me, and our eyes met. At which point, any prejudice either of us held toward the other vanished. One universal shared by those who have had ecstatic epiphanies, an idea that is echoed among the mystics and the teachings of the great spiritual masters, is the awareness of the perfect union of all of life, from molecules to stars. For those who have managed to attain this understanding, words can be too small to convey its magnitude. And, however difficult this idea is to speak of, it is much more difficult to live it out. If we are to believe our spiritual teachers, and trust those who have arrived at the truth of the unity of all of life, then our journey through life should be a process of striving for this sense of unity with all of mankind, and finally with every living thing. But, here is my question … Why?... Why is it necessary that we leave the heavens, where we knew this unity, to come down here to live out a lifetime in a place of widely accepted disparity? Why? Why is it that we are asked to live out a life of apparent duality, with me and you, them and us, black and white, Muslim and Christian, male and female, sane and insane? Why? Why do we travel to this place of apparent disunity and then struggle to uncover its coherence? There must be some use in this process for our individual souls. Perhaps we can only learn certain lessons about love while living out a life in apparent isolation. Love is certainly more challenging when we think of ourselves as separate from those around us. Maybe if we can learn to love from a place of supposed division, we will have attained super powers of love. To return to the cow pasture, I don’t believe we came here to gain enough independence to be able to point out the weakest link in the herd. “Would you look at that crazy bovine?” No. I suspect it has more to do with looking for what, in our shared pasture, we can love together, what unites us. We can love the same sweet grass, the same bright flowers, the same clear sky, the same pure water, the same fresh air, the ground of our shared mother earth. “God bless the herd,” we will shout out. “God bless the pasture,” We will sing. “God bless our sweet reunion.” Visit her site at: http://www.listenwell.org |
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