The theme of day one's Behold Your Life was Beginnings and Mother Earth: Embrace your beginnings. Remember the truth that you came from the earth and shall return to the earth. Embrce your memories of the earth. Where are your sacred places on the earth? Revisit those places in your mind.
Whenever i think about "beginnings," i will always think of one of my favorite quotes, from the novel The Warlords.
Whoever or whatever it is that gives such things, gives us our essence at birth.
The design of this essence then starts to unfold.
To watch it unfold is to live.
To watch it with confidence and good humor is to follow the Way.
Everyone needs to decide who that "Whoever or Whatever" is for themselves, but we are all on the same page when it comes to the fact that whatever answer you come up with we all have something, from somewhere, that gives us life; something that rocks don't have. That "essence" enlivens us. That "essence" is functioning 24x7x365. That "essence" was a gift, yet all too many people, unfortunately, take it for granted, abuse it, and make no attempt to understand it.
I agree with Macrina when she says that the earth is sacred. According to my Websters, one of the definitions of sacred is: "Secured as by a religious feeling or sense of justice against any defamation, violation, or intrusion; inviolate."
It seems like complete common sense to me that we must treat the earth as nothing less than sacred. There is only one. There is no reset button. There is no "I didn't mean it; i'm really sorry; i take it back." If we screw up this planet we screw up our life support. If absolutely pressed into a corner, anyone and everyone, from the most liberal to the most conservative, from the most democratic to the most dictatorial, will tell you that the earth is more important than their particular ideology. Yet such a great many people are unwilling to look past their own immediate gratification and ignore the potentially destructive consequences of their actions — should worse come to worse and something gets out of hand. I just do not understand this way of thinking.
How can governments be willing to let their people starve to death and die of curable diseases simply because their own personal grasp on power is more important. How can one person's benefit be of more value than the lives of millions of others? How can millions of people's rights and lives be of less value than those of one small clique of leaders? How can greed be of more value than compassion? Almost all people will say that it's not, yet their actions don't match their words as they continue to support governments that daily demonstrate that they value greed, power, and control over all other values.
The earth is sacred. The people that live on it, in the past, now, and all those to come, are sacred. Whether or not there was a "beginning," certainly we, as human beings, don't have the right to bring it to an end. In fact, we have a moral obligation to prevent it.
Wisdom, compassion, and courage. Make those your defining values — not how much you earn or how much you own. Let giving be of more value to you than receiving. Let your Contact List be filled with people you can help, not those who can help you. Forgive, don't forget. Compromise, don't criticize. Offer deference not difference. Seek to understand rather than trying to eliminate. Work to understand your beginning so that we don't have to face our ending.
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