What in the world are we missing?

How is it that there are 5.5 billion (84% of the population of the world of 6.6 billion) people in the world practicing hundreds of different religious beliefs and we still have 2.2 billion people living in poverty, in many cases dying of starvation and without shelter tonight?

How is it that we know more about the collapse of a bridge in Minneapolis than we do about the 19 million people that were left homeless in India earlier this month due to flooding?

When I began my working life, teaching in 1964, I didn’t intend to work on peace. I intended to accomplish it in my lifetime.

So how is it possible that so many really well intentional people continue to screw things up (a technical term, in this case used to describe a lack of global peace, tranquility and workability)?

Could it be that we have missed the most beautiful and simplest gift we have been given?

I want to talk about God

Please don’t tighten your belief systems.

Please leave your membership cards wherever they are.

I want to see if, by asking a few questions, we can have an experience of God.

Not a thought about Her, but an actual experience.

Not a religion or a belief system, but God.

YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE!

If you can read this or it is being read to you, you were given the gift of life!

You are breathing, able to make choices.

You are breathing? Right?

Think about that. Your body takes air in through your nose, into the lungs (Biology I, don’t fail me now) and they transfer it as oxygen throughout your system via your blood because of the pumping of your heart.

Read that again, please.

Human beings without oxygen die!

You know anybody who ever lived that gave any more spectacular gift? And, where does that oxygen come from?

It comes from MY angel winged begonia (and a few gazillion other trees and plants – please, could we stop killing the rain forest?), which is now repotted and seven feet tall and over six feet wide. It takes carbon dioxide that we create by breathing and driving and creates oxygen.

Read that again, please.

And we live on the only planet in our solar system that supports oxygen and therefore life. Holy mackerel, indeed.

And, as a bonus prize, if you are reading this, you are probably not in the third of our global population that is starving or without shelter. If you don’t think being here is such a good idea, ok, opt out. If you don’t want to be here, you don’t have to. I’m not going to suggest any really creative alternatives. You could simply drink or smoke yourself to death.

I would ask you to look and see who might be affected by that decision. Is that what you want to communicate to them?

Does it look to you as if Lindsay Lohan sees life as a gift?

Does it seem as if seeing life as a gift from God has anything to do with how much money or fame you have?

Does it look like drugs and alcohol increase your access to happiness and gratitude?

She is our daughter. Is that how we talk about her?

I am going to assume since you are still reading and breathing that you are going to hang around for a while.

So here we are with this great gift called life.

And, what do we do with it?

Do we cherish it and treat people as equal gifts, always respectful of them and their opinions?

Of course not.

We develop a system of religious righteousness that allows our differences to be used as an excuse to kill, steal, rape and pillage. What does any of that have to do with God?

Churches talk about the arising of an anti-Christ. Is it possible that the institutions that claim to be about God are so far from the experience of grace that they are the anti-whatever? That last remark might just cost me the membership. But to what? An institution? God isn’t an institution.

When we are feeling loved (the chosen one) and special (the majesty of the process of life), we treat people with dignity and grace and loving-kindness. See how you are. When you are feeling good, don’t you want the best for others?

How are you when you feel abused, poorly treated, alone or sad? If you do not feel full of grace and loving-kindness, how did that happen? There are only two choices I can see. You didn’t start today off by seeing, experiencing and acknowledging that this day is an incredible gift. The other possibility is that some other damaged soul did damage to you, so profound that you think you can’t turn it around. If you can have the thought to turn it around, you have the power to do so.

You were given a mind and a heart. Have you acknowledged their gift today? Where would a child abuser get that idea to abuse a child? Have you ever thought about doing that? Where did you get that idea? What makes you think any action on your part other than loving-kindness isn’t a contribution to the problem? Putting people down, driving rudely, littering, not feeding the starving, not sheltering the homeless, you know the list.

If God gave all of us the tools to master human life and She did, what does anyone gain when we act as if it were not true?