Skip to main content

Forward or Backward

Forward or Backward


 The world is full of challenges right now and that is putting it lightly. There are two main directions that we can go, forward or backward.

The world is full of challenges right now and that is putting it lightly. There are two main directions that we can go, forward or backward.

Forward, for me, is that all cultures, people, and the world are seen as part of the whole, not judged, seen as less, or able to be left out/left behind/left back. We come together for the common good, making sure that all have enough, all are cared for, and all have a safe place to live and grow.
Backward, in my opinion, is that we continue to believe that some cultures and people are better than others and the earth is something to be used. We believe that we have to get ours because there isn't enough to go around (whatever it is) so the goal is to make sure me and mine have ours; are safe, even if it means that others aren't.
Forward isn't some pie in the sky and it isn't easy. It will take all we are, all we have and then some. But God created this world so that we can have an abundant life, we just have to change what abundance is: not stuff, money, vacation homes, bling, power over others, the best and most expensive. Abundance is pursing our passions, being in a community that lives in harmony with all life, and not having to worry about what we are going to eat, but living in the moment.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nothing Outside Contaminates

 First we start with the human traditions, not all of humanity, but Western civilization under the Doctrine of Discovery that basically states that any European explorer (especially from countries that were still Roman Catholic) coming upon any land and people that weren't Christian were able to claim the land and people in the name of their king and country. This created human traditions of enslavement and taking what isn't theirs which is still happening today in Sudan with diamonds, the Congo with lithium, and Palestine with natural gas. We continue to the 1980's were the wealthy were given massive tax cuts and the unions were routinely broken up and laws were put in place to make it very hard to create one in the 'Right to Work' states. Our human traditions have created once again a wealthy class that if they lost 90% of their wealth, they would still be the most wealthy people in the world.  It probably started with philosopher Francis Bacon who helped begin th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Selling Out

 Last Fall, I read a book called, "A History of Burning." It is a multi-generational story about a family that migrates from India to Uganda for hopes for a better future to help the British build a railroad, whose children through education secures a government job, but then Uganda throws off their colonial oppressors and gains independence and turns against the Indians who live there, and they have to migrate again and start all over in Toronto, Canada. It is a sad story of colonial power of the British Empire bringing in foreign cheap labor to build their infrastructure that leaves out the local population. And once Uganda gets independence, the corporations still control much of the economy and fosters division between the Ugandans and Indian to keep the country unstable. It is a triumphant story of human determination in the face of adversity, but only a few make it.  One of the first paragraphs in a Wikipedia search about Africa told me that Africa is politically unstab...
Post a Comment
Read more

You Will Be My Witnesses

 The first time I served communion as a licensed minister in Fargo, ND, I picked up the tray of cups and proclaimed, "This is the cup of the new covenant!" And then I remembered we serve the bread first, panicked, and said, "Which comes after the bread!" The next time, months later, I served communion, I took the cover off the communion cups, and the altar table was stone, and I timed it perfectly, and purely accidentally, so the cover spun on the table, and you would hear it go, "whew, whew, whew" faster and faster. Sitting near the front was a couple that worked closely with me in the youth groups, each time when I began and messed up, they were bent over, hands covering their faces, taking great humor in my mistakes.  In my first church in Walker, MN I messed up just about every baptism, including one time putting the head right on my lavaliere mike and the baby started crying into mike, and I almost dropped the baby when switching it around in my arms....
Post a Comment
Read more