Wednesday, October 5, 2016

What's the message?

Turning

Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.”
Mahatma Gandhi

I lay in bed for an extra hour this morning thinking about the world. There are so many conflicting messages and none of us knows what is true. We are in a hot mess, folks. I know we've been here before. This time is not in any way unique—I've lived through enough wars now to know just how futile they are. I keep thinking humanity is on the precipice of “turning,” which in the Bible meant a complete change of direction, a life-altering realization that utterly changes history's trajectory and momentum. Perhaps we just don't move that fast.

Last week on Science Friday an earth scientist compared the the time-line of Earth's history to the months of a single year. Homo Sapiens showed up in the last fifteen minutes of the the last hour on the final day of that year, December 31st. And civilization as we know it only began in the final five minutes. Everything we think of as human history happened in the last twenty seconds. So, we haven't been around for all that long, and we're still trying to figure out how to do this without destroying each other. How do you think we're doing?

So far, our solution has been to kill the messenger who tried to bring us the message—the one about love being stronger than hate, about equality, and not hierarchy, being the means to a peaceful end. Think Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. But, here's the truth—I still believe we'll learn it. Maybe not in my lifetime, but hopefully in the lifetime of your children and grandchildren. I'm optimistic simply because we, as a species, have to learn it or perish, and survival is important to us.

I hope you'll give this some thought today. It is we who will bring about a “turning.”

                                                          In the Spirit,
                                                             Jane



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