In this Kentucky summer heat, I look out my window upon a green and growing world. Butterflies and bees are working the buddleia bushes in the yard and a robin is singing a cheery song. The overhead fan casts a pleasant breeze on my face and all the homey details of my office fill me with a sense of safety and comfort.
And yet there are many souls today whose homes have been lost; whose gardens have been pounded to rubble; whose photos and mementoes are lost and whose comfort is no more. In Lebanon today, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and are tentatively coming back, in this fragile cease-fire, to see what they can salvage from the wreckage of their family homes. There is damage both to Israelis and to Lebanese civilians, but the great majority of the loss of life is Lebanese.
Our governments have no apologies to make for their bombing of civilians. The American and the Israeli leaders are one in their self-righteous stand against terrorism, in spite of the clear fact that the Hezbollah militia was formed only in response to the Israeli occupation of Lebanese soil in the early eighties. It still is attempting to curb an Israeli re-occupation of the same territory.
If it were Mexicans trying to occupy Texas, I can predict that Texans would have a Hezbollah-like militia resisting such attempts immediately, given that the U.S. Army did not respond first.
Let’s face it: our leaders have no ethical justification for bombing civilians. Their rationale is that they are in a war against terrorism. However the American and Israeli methods of using violence and weaponry against civilians are just as terroristic as any terrorist group’s.
The situation calls up in my mind the image of Marlon Brando in a movie whose title I have long since forgotten, in which the threat of Arab terrorism was treated. Brando’s punch line was, “We are the Arabs.” And I believe this is true. The energies that fuel this whole Middle Eastern tangle are as much American as they are Israeli or Arab.
If I were an activist by personality and calling, I would be marching and petitioning for a peaceful solution in Iraq, or fasting as Cindy Sheehan, Medea Benjamin, Gael Murphy and Diane Wilson have done for over a month now. Their initiative has caused the Iraqi government to invite the ladies to Iraq to break bread with them while they discuss the 26-point peace program which Iraq’s government has been attempting to get the United States leaders to discuss for months. I very much hope that the U.S. will now discuss and implement Iraq’s plan and that this will result in our bringing our troops home.
But an absence of shooting is not true peace. The root of our society’s willingness to accept the use of violence as a policy - for we are not in a war with any country but rather in a stance where we are willing to use violence in order to shape governments of foreign countries to our taste - lies in two factors.
The first factor is a situation which my channeling sources tell me is millennia-old. The present U.S. leaders are reincarnated leaders, they say, from Atlantis. These leaders blew up Atlantis with crystal weaponry in prehistoric times. They are being driven to blow things up again; to create a man-made Armageddon that has the potential to end civilization as we know it on planet Earth.
The second factor the Confederation channeling targets is the addiction of a great majority of regular people like you and I to following orders. We like to trust our leadership. We like things to be easy. Let us get to work, get home, have what we like to eat and entertain ourselves with our choice of TV or DVDs, games or hobbies and we are pretty passive about matters of politics.
We think to ourselves, even if we are somewhat unhappy with things, “What can one person do?”
It is amazing what one person can do to express a spiritual activism, as opposed to a physical activism! Here’s one example: Catherina Rodrigues is a life coach who lives in Australia. It came to her, one day, during meditation that she needed to create a campaign to help people be inspired to think loving thoughts. She designed a logo on the spot; a heart with “think love” printed by it.
In the last two weeks, I have received her story and information from eleven different people. We are so ready to hear this message!
I’ve ordered the tee shirt! What I’d like to do in this week’s column is to spread the word that what we think makes a difference. We have a basic choice, when we come across new information. We can hear it fearfully and contract around it, or we can hear it lovingly and continue to vibrate in peace around it.
If we hear the news of the day and contract in fear, we are thinking fear. It is as if we have chosen to live in a dark cloud. If we respond to the news in hope and faith, we are thinking love.
When we take responsibility for our thoughts, we have, say the Confederation teachings, become a part of the creative principle which is the active portion of the Creator. As we continue to think loving thoughts, we are like a lighthouse, broadcasting light and love to the world around us.
While the “lighthouse effect” does not show outwardly, the Confederation says, we join with all others who are also vibrating in unconditional love, and together we are creating a shift in the mass consciousness of all humankind on planet Earth. We link up when we love the world we see because in truth we are all one. At the deeper levels of consciousness, we share energy all the time.
This is also true of us when we “think fear”. In fact, I believe the present state of our society here in America is the result of long practice by many of us in accepting fear as the default setting of our lives. And the government’s “alert” system keeps that fear level going and strengthens our habit of living in fear and justifying cruelty to our own kind by that fear.
As I said, I am not much of an activist. Most of us are not. Most of us, no matter how much we object to the individual actions of leaders and to the corporate actions of our country in certain situations, prefer accepting the status quo to making our lives uncomfortable and running afoul of government lists.
However, it takes no march or demonstration to express the inner banner of love. It takes no petition to put forth our signature on the winds of love. There is no outer action at all which is required in order for us to think lovingly today.
What it will require from you and me is creativity and imagination. The world view is dark today in many ways. Let us love that dark picture and pray confidently for an outcome in which peace blooms like a flower. My life has its challenges today. I pray to find the discipline to think with a positive spin about those challenges. We will probably meet others today on the roadways. When they misbehave - and they will - let us find compassion and say, “Okay, buddy, here’s some room for you.”
What love itself will require from all of us, as we move through this day, is the willingness to love one another.
I open my arms and embrace your spirit. We meet in love. May all human beings meet in love today.