Sunday, March 18, 2018

If you make a mess...

Clean Up

“Spirituality is not just about sitting in a room encountering a mystical god in meditation or about seeing God in a sunset. Awe is the gateway to compassion. It is a deep awareness that we are creators, creators who work with the Creator, in an ongoing project of crafting a world. If we do not like the world or if we are afraid of it, we have had a hand in that. And if we made a mess, we can clean it up and do better. We are what we make.”
Diana Butler Bass (Grounded: Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution)


Next weekend, a march is planned to support sensible gun laws in America. I will be there with friends and millions of others who want to create a less violent world. We've been leading up to this for some time—shocked as we are by the growing level of gun violence over the past few decades. As a Southerner, I grew up with hunting weapons. My father was a hunter and fisher, and I learned anatomy standing on a chair at the kitchen sink watching him clean fish and quail and rabbits. My former husband was a hunter and fisher as well. I've cooked everything from doves and squirrels to venison. I am not “anti-gun,” but I am for sensible gun control.

We who are co-creators of these United States, have a responsibility to change the laws when we see problems. We should not allow the National Rifle Association to govern in our absence—all special interest groups and lobbyists will fill a void that benefits themselves if they can. It is in the best interest of their industries to do so. We should not blame them if we are negligent in our duty as citizens.

Perhaps you do not see this as a spiritual issue. Maybe it's just practical to you. We have a second amendment that gives citizens the right to own guns. No amount of explaining what that meant at the time it was passed will convince gun enthusiasts that it had nothing to do with personal privilege, so I won't even try. What is a spiritual issue, however, is the slaughter of children and others on our streets and in our schools and churches. It speaks of a culture that places little value on the rights of its citizens to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” When our souls are so distorted as to think that owning an assault rifle is a primary right that supplants all others, then we are in big spiritual trouble as human beings and as a nation.

Spirituality is of little use if it does not become active for the betterment of the world. It isn't enough to sit in meditation or express elevated thoughts or quote scripture. When there is a “disturbance in the force” we are the ones tasked with cleaning it up. When we defer, we not only risk the killing of our children, but the death of the soul of our nation, and ourselves. “We are what we make.” I know we can make this better, and “a little child shall lead us” (Isaiah 11:6) in that effort.

In the Spirit,
Jane

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