Pray for Ukraine - Pray for Peace

 

                                        Archangel Michael is considered the patron saint

                                          and spiritual guardian of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.

                                                              May peace prevail.

    This morning when I woke up to the news of Russia's attacks on Ukraine, I cried tears of anguish, thinking that all hopes and prayers for peace had come to naught. After wallowing in despair for awhile, I was reminded by my online friends that now is not the time to give up hope. 

    War gives us the opportunity to pray harder than ever. It's heartening to see posts popping up from all over the world, demonstrating the solidarity of the world's people of goodwill, all praying for peace. 

    Yes, most of us were praying for peace before today. We were praying that Putin would not attack, and yet he did. Some will now say that prayer is useless. Others realize that prayer is often not answered the way we want it to be, because we cannot see the whole picture. 

    The reasons for war and many and complicated, but the end result is always the same. As someone wise once said: “War does not determine who is right — only who is left.”

    More people than ever before now recognize the futility and evil of war. I am encouraged by the many prayers for peace being lifted up all over the world. Being faced with the evil of war, as we are today, even more people are raising their voices and spirits in prayer, bringing us ever closer to the Era of Peace for which most of us long. 

    Here is one of the prayers I found today, posted by Unity: 

    In this moment of emergency for Ukraine and Russia, we call ourselves to God-consciousness. We speak the word for harmony. We speak the word for order. We recognize no person, situation, or force greater than the power of God, the source of strength, wisdom, and courage.

    And here is a prayer from Marianne Williamson: 

Dear God,
Please send miracles
to the people of Ukraine.
Send angels to minister unto them.
Bring calm and peace to their frightened hearts.
Awaken in Vladimir Putin
the truth of who we are.
Soften his heart and remind him of his soul.
Please God, may there be peace.
Amen

    There are many ways to pray for peace. Choose your way. Let us pray without ceasing until peace prevails. 

myr (Ukrainian)

mir (Russian)

pax (Latin)

This icon for peace was created by a Russian designer, Natasha Alimova. 

For the Love of Birds

 

    I don't know anyone who doesn't enjoy watching birds fly overhead or perch on their birdfeeders. Lots of people from all walks of life put out birdfeeders, nesting boxes, and birdbaths to invite these feathered friends into their yards. True, birds can be a nuisance. We all grumble about bird poop on our cars, and I'll never forget the time I started out on a walk, then had to run home and wash bird poop out of my hair. But those are small inconveniences compared to the joy of seeing goldfinches, nuthatches, and woodpeckers feeding from the seeds and suet we put out for them. 

    We can build bridges of oneness with birds, because people from every culture and background love them. Most of us recognize the ways that birds benefit us and the environment. Birds spread seeds, pollinate plants, and control pests. They reduce weeds and fertilize the soil. You can read more about the benefits of birds here: Benefits of Birds. 

    We should all be concerned about the decimation of the bird population. In North America alone, there are about 3 billion fewer birds than there were in 1970. Almost 1,500 bird species are threatened with extinction across the world. Over 100 species have gone extinct in recent centuries.

    There are numerous reasons for the decrease in bird species. One of the biggest reasons is loss of habitat. Habitat loss occurs when land is converted for agriculture, development, resource extraction, and other uses. We can create habitat for birds in our own yards by reducing our lawns and planting the native trees, shrubs, and plants that provide the berries, insects, and pollen that birds need. Bird feeders are great, but birds need other food sources.  Baby birds, especially, require insects and caterpillars for protein and nourishment. Caterpillars: It's What's for Dinner.

    If you use pesticides on your lawn or garden you may be contributing to the demise of birds. First of all, the birds need insects for their diet. And second, some of these chemicals, such as neonicotinoids are toxic to birds as well as to insects.

    Free-roaming cats are responsible for 2.4 billion bird deaths in the United States each year. Please keep your cats indoors to save the birds!

    Learn more here about how to save the birds: American Bird Conservation

    This spring I am going to plant a native serviceberry tree and some native shrubs and plants to help feed the birds. What are your plans for saving the birds?

A New Year, A New Beginning

 

    A new year has begun and people all around the world are wishing one another a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2022. Many are praying for a more peaceful year in which kindness, compassion, and generosity prevail. People are making resolutions to be a better person in the coming year. Some are greedily planning how to oppress others in order to gain more money and power for themselves. I truly believe that the majority are wishing a better life for all of humanity. As more and more people visualize a better world, the sooner it will manifest in reality. 

    

    The most beautiful and hopeful words of welcome for this new year come from the pen of poet Amanda Gorman. 

"New Day's Lyric"

May this be the day

We come together.

Mourning, we come to mend,

Withered, we come to weather,

Torn, we come to tend,

Battered, we come to better.

Tethered by this year of yearning,

We are learning

That though we weren’t ready for this,

We have been readied by it.

Steadily we vow that no matter

How we are weighed down,

We must always pave a way forward.

This hope is our door, our portal.

Even if we never get back to normal,

Someday we can venture beyond it,

To leave the known and take the first steps.

So let us not return to what was normal,

But reach toward what is next.

What was cursed, we will cure.

What was plagued, we will prove pure.

Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,

Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,

Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;

Those moments we missed

Are now these moments we make,

The moments we meet,

And our hearts, once all together beaten,

Now all together beat.

Come, look up with kindness yet,

For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.

We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,

But to take on tomorrow.

We heed this old spirit,

In a new day’s lyric,

In our hearts, we hear it:

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne.

Be bold, sang Time this year,

Be bold, sang Time,

For when you honor yesterday,

Tomorrow ye will find.

Know what we’ve fought

Need not be forgot nor for none.

It defines us, binds us as one,

Come over, join this day just begun.

For wherever we come together,

We will forever overcome.

The Greatest Country in the World?

 

    Recently, Hillary Clinton read her 2016 acceptance speech on "The View." (The speech she didn't get to give to the nation, obviously.) I don't watch "The View," so I heard only a few lines. I happened to catch the one where she claims that "America is the greatest country in the world." That one line gave me something to ponder for the rest of the day.

    Growing up in the United States, I learned in school that we are the greatest country in the world, and as a child I never questioned this assertion. Now I have to wonder what gives us the right to claim this title when children in other countries are probably being taught that THEY live in the greatest country in the world.

    I just found an article on "Soapboxie" that gives three reasons for the USA being the greatest nation in the world. The first reason is our Constitution which gives us more rights and freedoms than people have in other countries. I don't know enough about the governments in other countries to say whether ours is the best or not, but I do appreciate the freedoms that we enjoy. On the other hand, I regret that so many Americans are irresponsible with these freedoms. I have to wonder if we carry it too far when we allow people the freedom to do whatever they please, even when their actions are harmful to others. 

    Freedom is highly valued by many Americans, but some people might value other things. For instance, I value peace and non-violence. According to the Global Peace Index for 2021, the three most peaceful countries in the world are: Iceland, New Zealand, and Denmark. The United States doesn't even make the top ten. Some people might rate countries according to their health care systems. According to the World Population Review the United States ranks eighteenth in health care. On the other hand, the World Giving Index ranks us first in generosity (by individuals, not the government), something I can be proud of. 

    There are many different ways to rate countries, depending on what one thinks is most important; so you can only claim to live in the "greatest" country if it is greatest according to the value that is most important to you. 

    My question is, why does it matter? Someone claiming to live in the greatest country reminds me of a child saying, "My dad is stronger than your dad," or a consumer boasting that "My car is fancier than your car." So what? Why would I care when my focus in life is the building of bridges between countries, between peoples, and between heaven and earth? 

    In Matthew 23:11-12 we hear Jesus say: "The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." 

    If we apply this lesson to the nations, we see that the greatest country is the one that serves the others, in order to create peace, justice, and prosperity in all of the world. I'm not sure which country this would be, but I would like to see the nations of the world make this their goal. Rather than acting like children who have to be "the best," "the strongest," "the biggest," or "the richest," I look for the day when every country strives to be the kindest, the most compassionate, and the most peaceful. 

    Thinking about the greatest country in the world reminds me of one of my favorite hymns, "This is My Song." 

THIS IS MY SONG * 

This is my song, O God of all the nations, 

A song of peace for lands afar and mine. 

This is my home, the country where my heart is; 

Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine; 

But other hearts in other lands are beating 

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine. 

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean, 

And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine. 

But other lands have sunlight too and clover, 

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine. 

Oh, hear my song, O God of all the nations, 

A song of peace for their land and for mine. 

*To the melody of Finlandia *Lyrics by Lloyd Stone

    

A World Without War

       

    My first memory of war - not one that I lived through, but one that destroyed the peace of my childhood innocence - was the movie, "War and Peace" that I saw on television at age ten.  The images of violence and suffering broke my heart and I went to bed crying and praying to God for a future without war. 

    My next memory is of an evening news report when I watched the flag-draped coffins being unloaded from a plane from Vietnam. The coffins came out, one after another after another. Why did all of these young men have to die? It didn't make sense to me at age eleven, and it doesn't make sense to me fifty-seven years later. 

    I know that many people believe war to be a necessary evil. People have been at war with each other for as long as history has been recorded. However, I share a belief with many others that it doesn't have to be this way. Project Ploughshares is one organization that holds the vision of Isaiah 2:4:  God shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.

     World Beyond War is another organization that calls itself a global nonviolent movement to end war and establish a just and sustainable peace. World Beyond War was founded in 2014 by David Hartsough and David Swanson. Swanson is the author of War is a Lie in which he details all of the wars in which the United States has been involved, and how not one of them was necessary for the good of our country or humanity. In his book, Swanson presents all of the reasons people have used to justify war over the centuries and systematically refutes every one of these arguments. If you need convincing that war is a barbaric crime against humanity, I highly recommend this book. 

    Wars are fought based on the lies our leaders drum up to convince young people to sacrifice their lives for a false cause. This strategy was glaringly obvious when the USA declared war on Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 tragedy even though the perpetrators of that attack came from Saudi Arabia. The excuse given for bombing Afghanistan was that the The Taliban were sheltering Osama bin Laden in that country. But the Taliban repeatedly offered to negotiate for the handing over of Osama bin Laden, before and after 9/11/01, and "President George W. Bush rejected these offers and continued bombing." (Jeremy R. Hammond, 'Newly Discovered Documents Shed More Light on Early Taliban Offers, Pakistan Role,' Foreign Policy Journal, September 20, 1010.)     The excuse for attacking Iraq was an even more obvious lie. Mark and I knew long before the attack on Iraq that there were no weapons of mass destruction there. We heard Scott Ritter, former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, speak at the state college in Oneonta, New York. During his time as an inspector he and his colleagues never found any weapons of mass destruction. Never mind the fact that many countries, including the USA, do harbor weapons of mass destruction and it has never been a legitimate reason for another country to attack that one.     This brings me back to my premise that there is never a legitimate reason for war. Some people say we will always have war because we have always had war. This type of thinking lacks imagination and faith. I would ask these people to try imagining a world without war and how we can implement it. And I would ask them to have faith in humanity and faith in the divine plan that promises peace on earth and harmony among all people. 

You can sign the Declaration of Peace here: https://worldbeyondwar.org/individual/

Building Bridges of Oneness through Better Understanding

      

    Church membership has been on the decline in the United States since 1985.  According to the Gallup polls: "Over the past two decades, the percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion has grown from 8% in 1998-2000 to 13% in 2008-2010 and 21% over the past three years." I believe there are many reasons for this, but I think one reason is that many people are realizing that the theologies of most religions are too exclusive and do not support our new understanding that all people are One, and all are divine children of God. Many people who believe in a divine universe will not use the term "God" because it evokes images of a wrathful and vengeful being who threatens to punish us for eternity if we stray from the path of righteousness. 

    I personally do not think that church membership is as important as attaining a better understanding of God and our relationship with our divine parent: our Father- Mother God. That relationship is based on Love, and I do believe that Jesus (among many others) came to earth to teach humanity how to be more loving, and to show us how to save ourselves from guilt, fear, envy, illness, and all the other negative experiences of an ego-driven life. 

    Ten years ago I read a book called Who Am I? Why Am I Here? written by Patricia Cota-Robles. I am re-reading this book now and finding many wonderful reminders about the reasons we earthlings find ourselves in the predicament we are in, and how we can get out of it.  I would like to share an excerpt from this book (pages 104-105):

     Jesus agreed to be crucified in order to prove to the world that there is nothing the fallen human ego can do that will destroy the Divinity within us. His crucifixion and resurrection proved that even if one's physical body is abused, tortured, and crucified, the Christ within is eternal and lives on in our Light Body.

    Even though Jesus did not save us in the way many are saying, he did forgive the sins of the world in a very different way. When Jesus was hanging on the cross a Centurion pierced his side with a sword. His intent was to accelerate Jesus' death, and to put him out of his misery. As Jesus' blood and Lifeforce flowed onto the Earth Jesus said, "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do." In that instant, our Father-Mother God allowed the Law of Forgiveness to be initiated as the order of the New Day on Planet Earth.

    Prior to that moment, the Children of God were subject solely to the Law of Karma, or the Law of Cause and Effect. After the Law of Forgiveness was established on Earth, we had another option. Humanity could ask for forgiveness for the misuse of our precious gift of Life and be forgiven. We are still subject to the Law of Cause and Effect, but now when we recognize the error of our ways we can ask forgiveness. Forgiveness transmutes our misqualified energy back into Light before it returns to us as a difficult challenge through the Law of the Circle. 

    It is important for us to understand that we are not forgiven just because Jesus was here, as some believe. We are forgiven if we recognize our mistakes, ask for forgiveness, and change our behavior patterns. 

    If this explanation makes sense to you and you'd like to know more, I recommend that you read this book. If you'd like me to share more excerpts on this blog, just let me know in the comments. 

    

    

    

Neurodiversity

        

       When a child is born with a disability, building bridges of oneness is the last thing on the parents' and grandparents' minds. My grandson was two and a half when he was diagnosed with autism. I didn't know anything about autism then, but I've learned a lot over the past four years. One thing I've learned is that autism is a common disability, and having autism in the family creates understanding and connections with people we wouldn't have known otherwise. 

       Before our grandson's diagnosis, I didn't think a lot about neurodivergent people. In fact, I wasn't familiar with that term at all. Knowing and loving my grandson has opened my eyes and mind to the challenges of raising a child who does not communicate, learn, and play the way a neurotypical child does. I have struggled to find the spiritual reasons for autism, and what I've come up with is that it teaches the family how to love unconditionally. Whenever we are called upon to make sacrifices in order to care for another person, our hearts stretch and grow just a little bit more. I think that's what this is about.                                                        

       A year and a half ago my husband and I left our New York home of thirty years and moved to Wisconsin to be closer to our children and grandchildren. The main reason was to be here for our grandson, who can't be left with a childcare giver who doesn't understand his disability. While he attends an ABA clinic, there are many times that he can't go for one reason or another, and his parents have to leave work to care for him. When the Covid pandemic hit last year there was no childcare available before and after the clinic hours, and no child care for his younger sister, either, so we realized that our presence in Wisconsin was essential.                                

       Making friends in a new town is difficult in the best of circumstances, but add a pandemic that requires social distancing, and it's nearly impossible. Fortunately I made one new friend before Covid shut everything down. I met JoAnne at the gym, but we were drawn together by the commonality of my special needs grandson and her special needs daughter. Kathleen was born with a genetic micro deletion called 1q44. It is so rare it doesn't have a name or a syndrome associated with it. Some of Kathleen's behavior is similar to that of someone on the autism spectrum. Because she has trouble communicating, JoAnne became a speech pathologist. Before we were separated by social distancing JoAnne came to our house to work with my grandson one day, and she and I got together on several occasions.

                                                         JoAnne and Kathleen

Now that we are fully vaccinated, JoAnne and I are socializing again. The other day we went to a coffee shop together and I wore the T-shirt my daughter had given me for Mother's Day. The purchase was a fund-raiser for the ABA clinic. It tells people to "Embrace Autism." I have to say, while I embrace my grandson and others with autism, I can't embrace the disability itself. If I'm misunderstanding the meaning of this slogan, I'd love to hear from anyone who can explain it to me.

After we finished our coffee and muffins JoAnne and I were browsing through the gift section of the shop when a young man who obviously knew JoAnne said hello. She introduced us and I learned that he had been one of her speech clients when he was three years old. He noticed my shirt and told me that he has a disability, which JoAnne later told me is autism. I realized that by wearing that shirt I helped him to feel comfortable with me. Just acknowledging an awareness of neurodiversity and the people who struggle with it can build bridges between people from different backgrounds and forge new relationships. When I meet people with disabilities now I am much more sensitive toward them and their caregivers than I used to be. But I'm still working on it, realizing it is a lifelong process!