Do our spiritual beliefs and practices influence the planet? Let's explore how they do, and don't. We in Unity love our holiday traditional special services such as: the four weeks of Advent leading to Christmas; Candlelighting Services; Burning Bowl, White Stone and Kwanza ceremonies; and more. These involve the purchase of supplies, food, gifts, use of special lighting, etc. In all our services we emphasize the principle of Oneness and that we are expressions of God. Importantly this oneness is to be lived consciously and transforms personal suffering. I'm relatively sure we have not emphasized that it can transform our purchases!
During the holidays our purchases are often made unconsciously--unconscious of the treatment of animals, unconscious of farming pesticides that destroy the one plant species Monarch butterflies require for survival for example. And, more so, unconscious giving which leads to over consumption of resources often mined in other countries and built on the backs of the poor. So what is the disconnect between our purchases and our realizations of oneness?
I suggest to you that meditating and realizing Oneness as God omnipresent influences conscious awareness, but this often is bound in the intellect whereas living oneness generates and grows from the heart of love. Compounding this disconnect with our purchases are the basic Unity teachings about God as absolute. Our Unity writers and speakers teach God knows God but, from an absolute perspective, God does not know pollution, pain and suffering. So let's go deeper in meditation, experience God personally as Love. From an absolute perspective, Love will also only know Love-- this though is what we want! To know Love in all and through all creation so that we will care for all life just as sincerely as Mother Teresa recognized Jesus in every human.
The story of Jesus' birth and what Jesus demonstrated of love can encourage us. Love reaches into suffering and liberates. It may seem overwhelming to solve global environmental issues, but one purchase at a time is all we need do to be an activist for Love. I've been preaching to anyone who will listen an eco-Advent to Christmas and beyond idea. Each week my Friends of Unity community and I light a candle for that which we require to live on this planet, that which we as God-beings require for the expression of Divine Love to be manifest: the minerals, the plants, the animals, the humans. Join us in the practice of listening for the guidance of Divine Love in each and every purchase: What purchases reduce trash? What purchases generate good for more than one person? What purchases include humane treatment of creatures? What purchases increase human health?
I'm with you, friends, in the love coming on down and through each of us during this season celebrating the light of Love.
Love, Kathy