I read a testimony about a candlelight service to commemorate the September 11th tragedy. The participants waved American flags, lit candles and sang patriotic songs. People of conscience know that racism and religious intolerance are wrong. Some people may still feel hatred in the privacy of their hearts, but they know it’s wrong to express it in the public sector. That may not seem like much progress, but it is from the perspective of all of human history.
I recently read about disputes going on in the Middle East regarding the water supply. The surface water and ground water are not confined to the boundaries drawn on a map. They overlap, and therefore the countries who “own” the water are fighting about the rights to its use. The obvious solution is to share the water but there are so many jagged issues between these nations that make the obvious solution difficult and even painful to practice.
Once while visiting the Pamunkey Indian Reservation in Virginia, we heard a talk which touched on the topic of private land ownership. Before the white man came to North America, land was considered public, owned by the Great Spirit and shared by His children. The European notion of land ownership, with markers and borders and fences, was incomprehensible to Native Americans.
God created the world without borders. The weather is shared by all. I’m sure if someone could have drawn lines around the sun and the rain and the stars and charged for their use, they would have already done so. Unfortunately, the land and rivers and mountains have been drawn and quartered and sold to the highest bidder already, but the ecosystem itself does not support this kind of thinking.
The Native Americans who shared the land and its bounty had the right idea. They neither wasted anything nor left their garbage behind for someone else to deal with.
Somehow we need to find the mentality that we are all children of the One Parent, God. We all share this globe which is spinning in space. Its resources are here for us to squander or regenerate. We are citizens of the world and we are brothers and sisters under God. We breathe the oxygen, we drink the water, we eat the food, we live on the land and we all have red blood.
Astronauts who see the globe from outer space immediately gain the perspective of the earth as a little ship in the universe, teaming with water and life enough to sustain us all. Down here on the ground, we suffer from the “can’t see the forest for the trees” mentality. I pray for the day when the consciousness of all mankind can be rooted in God’s viewpoint of love for us all. I pray for the day when we have not compartmentalized ourselves into tiny warring factions, but can realign ourselves with the blueprint of Eden.
Let’s fly a common flag. I don’t know what that flag should look like, but maybe it should be a picture of the globe itself. Let’s pray that one day we will be a world sustained by men and women centered on our common heavenly parent, with an awareness of our common attributes and common needs and the common good we can ultimately give to one another. Then we can hold candlelight prayers which honor the pain and the healing of all. Amen.
