Earth – Don’t we all just wish that the politicians would cut it out with all of their profiteering? And with using the people to fight their turf wars?

Believe In Your Power

We must find ways to get along with each other for the sake of all of our children – and the generations to come. We must find ways to make peace and live in harmony. Don’t doubt that this is possible. It just takes the people united in a common cause – for freedom and life – for things to really start happening. Believe in your power.

Here are some strategies that would go a long way to creating the dialogue we must start to sustain our planet, and give our children a place to grow and prosper. Already, so many are suffering, and we must rise to the occasion now. Like many, I’m tired of the finger pointing, and the focus on what’s wrong with “the other guy” and the deflection and blame game. I, for One, am now ready for laying out some solutions. So what if the task is daunting from a human perspective?

Who says we have to believe in limitations? There are miracles popping up everywhere, as we focus on giving first, rather than taking. (We all have experienced the feeling of taking first – call it selfishness – and that just doesn’t feel too great.)

So what’s a person to do? A nation? The Earth?

These days, we all need solid ways to evaluate our lives – principles that can provide the solid, reliable spoke of the wheel as time spins – and as our very solar system interacts with others throughout the Universe.

The Twelve Steps of Alcoholic Anonymous are a pattern for living that lay out essential truths common to all spiritual traditions (I believe beyond the Earth). They have been applied not just to alcoholics, but to many people who are looking for meaning and for change in their lives, but just don’t know how to unwind themselves form messes they’ve made.

All 4 One

United with others, we must acknowledge that as the people on Earth we need supernatural assistance. It’s come to that, you know…

The 12 Steps are based on the central premise of “we”  instead of “me”.  We all need the participation and actions and encouragement of each other to make it ourselves! That’s for sure!

Here, I’ve taken the steps and with a little literary license applied them to our warring world at large:

THE TWELVE STEPS OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS – REVISITED FOR PLANET EARTH

1. We admitted we were powerless over the mess we’ve made of the Earth and that our lives have become unmanageable. (Over time, the will to exert power over others – and the greed that accompanies it – has contributed to
incomprehensible oppression, and sabotage of our own planet.)

2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore all of the Earth’s peoples to sanity. (Here, “sanity” is defined as “soundness of mind,” a greater consciousness of all 4 One, and One 4 all.)

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. (The Twelve Steps encourages each person to explore, commit and relate to a “Higher Power of their own understanding.” )

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves – and our nation. (The Light is shining. Let’s come clean.)

5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. (As people and as nations, let’s not be afraid to admit where we’ve erred, without pride or political posturing. Let’s choose people we trust to open up to as we start to live in this manner.)

6. We were entirely ready to have God (our Personal Higher Power) remove all these defects of character. (This is the willingness step. Get ready for some big changes. Only a mustard seed of faith is required.)

7. We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. (Here, we acknowledge that if we knew the exact process to peace, we would have enacted it already. We ask God’s help in resolving the root nature of our wrongs.)

8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. (Committing our new understanding to paper is a given for taking the next steps. We can see it… and share it…oops, that’s the next step!)

9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. (This “making things right” action step is most often done with the help of someone that knows you well, with regard for the highest good for people, especially the kids of the world.)

10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. (We are each looking for some wholesome balance, and in wholeness is perfection. In this step, we keep on keeping on, and keenly focus our attention on how we operate in the world.)

11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out. (Seeking a direct connection with our Creator is possible. It exists within us and outside us. Taking time for thankfulness, and being in nature, along the way strengthens our bond. The 12 steps encourage one to pause when agitated; we ask for help, and then do the next right thing. God’s peace comes.)

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. (We apply the 12 Steps to all areas of our lives – and the life of our
nation. For the support to be there for others who are struggling, we must “give it away to keep it – literally. This is the meaning of Pass It Forward.)

The 12 Steps gives us one tried-and-true process to take a good hard look at ourselves and our nation. The “cleaning” and “healing” tools necessary to forge a new world – inside and outside – are inherent here in the 12 Steps.

We must accept our Higher Power’s love and forgiveness to move ahead confidently and fearlessly.

This Is Our Time

So, explode your limitations. Believe again in the future. Hope for peace and help make it happen, one step at a time. Keep looking up.

The challenge of the century, the millennium, and the eon, awaits us!

Blessings!

A Meditation: The Power to Conceive of and Bring About A New World

From Twenty-Four Hours A Day:

“There is a wide variation in the way each one of us approaches and conceives of the Power greater than ourself. Whether we agree with a particular approach or conception seems to make little difference. There are questions for each of us to settle for ourselves. But in each case the belief in a Higher Power has accomplished the miraculous, the humanly impossible. There has come a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking.

Has there been a revolutionary change in me?“

A friend sent to to me and I want to pass it along:

In the 13th century, a Portugese woman who’d been demonically oppressed resolved to do the unthinkable by taking her own life by drowning herself in the Tagus River. On her way to the river, she passed a shrine erected in honor of the great orator and miracle-worker, St. Anthony of Padua.

She stopped to pray, one last time. As she prayed, she saw St. Anthony standing before her, saying, “‘Arise woman, and take this paper, which will free you from the molestations of the Evil One.” Then he gave her a parchment inscribed with what is now known as the “Brief (i.e., “Letter”) of St. Anthony,” 1 and she was now free from demonic oppression and the desire to do away with herself.

News of this miracle spread, even to the King who asked the woman for the Brief. He placed it with the Crown Jewels of Portugal, which was fine for the King, but bad for the woman. After the Brief was no longer with her, she began to weaken and lapse, so the King made a copy for her that restored her to her healed state. Other copies of the Brief were spread to help the faithful fight the Evil One and remind them that Christ has conquered.

The Brief consists of a depiction of a Cross, and words which, forming a rhyme in the Latin, hearken back to Apocalypse 5:5, “And one of the ancients said to me: Weep not: behold the lion of the tribe of Juda, the root of David, hath prevailed to open the book and to loose the seven seals thereof.”

The words of St. Anthony’s Brief are: Ecce Crucem Domini, Fugite, partes adversae, Vicit Leo de Tribu Juda, Radix David, alleluia. English version: Behold the Cross of the Lord! Flee ye adversaries! The Lion of the Tribe of Juda, The Root of David has conquered, alleluia!

The exorcizing proclamation is carried on the person or placed in homes. It is also used in more specific situations, such as that encountered by the French seamen who found their ship tossed by an angry sea during a storm off Brittany’s coast in 1708.

One of the men wrote the words of St. Anthony’s Brief, and threw it into the sea with a prayer to the Saint. Immediately, the seas calmed and the sailors were saved. The words of this Brief are good ones to use when feeling tempted by evil, oppressed by demons, and in general spiritual warfare.

As an aside, part of these words from the Apocalypse are also inscribed at the top of the obelisk that sits in St. Peter’s Square. The obelisk had been in Rome since A.D. 37, set up in what is believed by many to have been the site of the divisional wall (spina) of Caligula’s Circus, where Nero’s massacre of Christians took place in A.D. 67. Pope Sixtus V moved the obelisk to its present position in a move that …celebrated the triumph of the Faith of Christ, St Peter and the apostles over pagan superstition.

The proximity of the obelisk to the old basilica had always been resented as something of a provocation, almost as a slight to the Christian religion. It had stood there like a false idol, as it were vaingloriously, on what was believed to be the center of the accursed circus where the early Christians and St Peter had been put to death. Its sides, then as now, were graven with dedications to Augustus and Tiberius. On its summit was a bronze sphere believed to contain the ashes of Julius Caesar.

When taken down, the sphere proved to be solid. Nevertheless, Sixtus had a bronze cross put in its place (in 1740, after repairs, a piece of the True Cross was inserted in one of the arms). Solemnly the pope had the heathen spirit of the obelisk exorcised. ‘Impio cultu dicatum’ he carved upon the base as a reminder of what the needle once represented, and ‘Ecce Crux Domini fugite partes adverase’ in proud defiance of Luther and the reformed Churches. 2

Footnotes:

1 Other accounts say that she fell asleep, dreamed of St. Anthony, and awakened to find the Brief. I don’t know which is accurate.

2 “Saint Peter’s”, by James Lees-Milne, 1967

P.S. Did you Know? The word “lived,” as in the past, is “devil” reversed.

P.S.S. The paradox: Fear is real in the mind. Spiritual warfare (of powers and principalities) is what we face on Earth. Yet God is one. All is one. “Where there is love, fear cannot exist… He that is still afraid has not perfect love … Love your neighbor as your self.”

“Fear not,” is the most repeated exhortation in the Bible.

Louisiana, USA – Clean up crews across the Gulf of Mexico are working at night now that it’s so hot … and still the oil is flowing.  Each barrel of oil emptied into the Gulf, demonstrates over and over again the immense corporate greed that has been building for years. Now, we’re seeing the manifestation of this greed right in front of our eyes. For all the world to witness.

A number of Gulf residents I’ve spoken with are just trying to keep busy. “I just try not to think about it,” they say. “I haven’t even walked over on the beach … but I hear there is oil there. No smell yet.” Often, it’s just too much to consider the devastation to the beautiful beaches – and the loss of marine life, jobs and property values. Likewise, many citizens across the United States feel helpless as they watch this unbelievable, sad spectacle.

There is one thing that we can all do – anytime, anywhere – to help. State senators in Louisiana have declared today as a day for citizens to ask for God’s help in dealing with the oil disaster.

“Thus far efforts made by mortals to try to solve the crisis have been to no avail,” state Sen. Robert Adley said in a statement released after last week’s unanimous vote for the day of prayer. “It is clearly time for a miracle for us.”

The legislative resolution named today as a Statewide Day of Prayer in Louisiana and are calling on people of all religions throughout the Gulf Coast – and the world – “to pray for an end to this environmental emergency, sparing us all from the destruction of both culture and livelihood.”

Let’s pray today … and continue praying.

*****

Prayer: Dear Lord, shine your light on this situation for what it is, and help bring enlightenment to those who seek solutions to halting the gushing oil and the destruction of your Creation. Help all on Earth to seek you and your Kingdom first – instead of monetary gain. You indeed are our Hope.