That said, I move on with absolute faith that the passage of time since our last connection has been a gentle occasion of relative tranquility, a few honest chuckles, and a song or two sung in joyful remembrance that you are a well loved, deeply appreciated participant in this incredibly rich adventure we call Unity.

“Rich?” Is that a sneer I hear . . . a flash of cynicism in your, “says who?” I can hear your protest. I too have sat on society’s knee and had the fairy-tale read to me . . . the materialist fable with the seductive moral that laying up fame, fortune and cultural correctness paves the golden road to “happily ever after.” And I too have been just as chagrined as you to discover that, alas, the tale was just a tale and that the truth turned out to be a contradiction of the fiction.

But, take heart! If you’re out there singing the “lowdown, sick and tired of it blues,” you do have alternatives. And the way to discover them is to get off by yourself somewhere, get still for a moment, watch your breath till your mind runs out of chatter and then listen carefully. After “coming apart for awhile” you are going to hear a supremely assured, still, small, voice speaking to you from the “secret place of the Most High” gently reminding you that we “do not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

Let your mind play with that radical insight for “forty days and forty nights” and you’ll begin to see, ever so clearly, that your feelings about the quality of your earth life have precious little to do with your ability to exercise dominion over the material domain, including how folks choose to behave. Cultivate the heart of that insight into consistent mindfulness and your relationship with the world of form will mature into the “don’t worry, be happy” genius of Alfred E. Newman himself.

Remember, Jesus had the temptation game run on him too. The only difference being, unlike most of us, He didn’t buy into treasure hunting at the three-dimensional level. He was committed to far bigger game. He was intent on cornering a market alright, but He dealt in the awakened commerce of love, peace and joy leaving the rat-race for bucks, power and being “right” to the less insightful.

He knew, ever so clearly, how foolish it was to lay the foundation of a peaceful, content life on the shifting sands of human behavior and endless episodes of acquisition and accumulation. He knew because He had that clear vision that no longer denied the impermanence of everything that occurs in space\time. He let us know in His own inimitable Way that rust and dust simply don’t make it as the cornerstone for something as enduring as God’s eternal peace, love, and joy.

Nope, “man shall not live by bread alone,” and neither shall the ladies. Mass ignorance of the wisdom contained in that revelation explains why so many of our brothers and sisters aren’t “living” in any kind of truly fulfilled sense. Especially, it seems, in the highly industrialized, super competitive, authoritarian cultures that have “bread” and “morality” coming out of their ears. Yes, societies just like ours.

Even a cursory look at our society quickly reveals that, in addition to a dazzling array of “stuff” and highly refined codes of religious, social, political, legal and economic “correctness,” we must also acknowledge intolerable levels of poverty, violence, illiteracy, addiction, disease, and, lest we forget, lethal levels of intolerance . . . cruel bigotry justified by a child of God’s skin color, ethnic origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, economic class, political persuasion, age, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. A tragic ignorance of lethal indifference that makes it tough for anybody to taste the sweet nectar of God’s cup of existence. It is a rare event, indeed, to encounter a being who is not living a life of “quiet desperation” hauling around a heart playing out its drama in a theater of unfulfilled longing.

Billions of God’s children dealing with hearts full of fear, hostility and disappointment seeking refuge from their despair in distractions like alcohol, prozac, cocaine, pot, caffeine, nicotine, work, sex, tv, and daily hunting and gathering excursions into the outback of the local mall . . . and all of it efficiently accounted for in the medical calculus. Today’s health care community is quietly going nuts. In spite of a diagnostic and therapeutic armory that staggers the imagination (not to mention demolishing your pocketbook) they aren’t even close to keeping up with epidemic levels of emotional illness and chronic, degenerative, psycho-somatic diseases that are the inevitable human by-products of societal value systems that insist on confusing high levels of consumption and being “right” with a high standard of living. Could it be an unconscious, intuitive recognition of the foolishness of that mentality that instructed the economic mind to label the national product “gross?”

The most recent “guesstimate” of the Surgeon General’s office, for example, puts about seventy million Americans in the potentially hypertensive category. That’s about right-on with the straw poll I take at our local K-Mart’s free pressure checker. About one out of four of the folks I see checking it there hit the digits at better than 140 over 90. That’s a lot of folks in this country whose bodies are telling them something. I’ve got a hunch it’s saying “Take your preoccupation with elegant homes, fine cars, designer jeans, the ‘in’ look, the ‘right’ job, the ‘perfect’ mate, cellulite, youth, fame, fortune, everybody’s approval, and being ‘right’ and shove it, baby, ‘cause if you don’t give me a little peace and a few chuckles, I’m outta here!”

Yeah, a body does grow weary of the hard climb to the top of the control and image charts, but if that isn’t the way to grab a little lasting peace and contentment, what is? What do we have to do to find a little peace, some harmony and a healing portion of joy? That inquiry brings us to an interesting paradox that it seems must be understood to access the Jesus turf, the Kingdom of Peace, Love and Joy that He called “heaven.”

The Truth of the matter seems to be suggesting that we don’t have to “do” anything to find a little peace and contentment. Quite the contrary. Peace and contentment "find us," effortlessly and spontaneously, the moment we "stop doing" . . . the moment we cease playing the foolish mind games that distracted us in the first place from our natural state of light-hearted serenity . . . our divine inheritance . . . the "image and likeness" of emotional perfection in which we were created.

Each of us is blessed with an inner "Sea of Tranquility" whose basic nature is calm and serene. It represents the natural state of our emotional natures. But it responds to the thinking mind much like a punch bowl responds to movement.

Imagine carrying a large, filled to the brim, punch bowl from your kitchen to the serving table. Notice the agitated surface of the liquid as your movement creates turbulence sending the punch back and forth in waves from one side of the bowl to the other, perhaps even sloshing some of it over the edge. Now, carefully set the bowl down on the serving table and watch what happens. Spontaneously, with no effort on your part, the wave action of the liquid will begin to subside until, eventually, the surface of the punch bowl returns to its natural state of absolute stillness and calm.

Nothing we "do"turns turbulence into serenity. It’s what we "stop doing" that allows the liquid in the bowl to seek and find its “natural state.” And so it is with our human emotional nature. The force that agitates the calm serenity of our emotional “Sea of Tranquility” is our thinking mind lost in dysfunctional patterns of unskillful use spiritually defined as judging, coveting, hankering, clinging and infinite variations on the theme of “bearing false witness.”

Or, as Albert Ellis observes, "You feel awful because you insist on ‘awful-izing.’ You feel frustrated, resentful and disappointed because you insist on ‘must-erbating.’" The unenlightened mind at play singing its song of misery on high, "I cannot have all my wishes filled, whine, whine whine. I cannot have every frustration stilled whine, whine, whine." Get the picture?

So, peace is not a heavenly reward that you have to bust your fanny to invent. It’s something you learn to allow. It is not something contextually determined by the ever-changing flow of form and circumstance that makes up your earth experience. It's something already inside you waiting to be released. Released from the bondage of attachment, desiring, clinging, envy and greed. Play with this idea for awhile. No matter how hard you work at finding peace, you’ll never discover it until you stop doing the foolish things that hide it from you in the first place. To search for peace while you continue to cling to and hanker after the things of the world is much like wishing a pond would become quiet and serene while you stand there throwing rocks. Nothing you can "do" will ever make that pond peaceful as long as you continue to make waves. But, remember, there is something you can "stop doing" that represents truly enlightened action. The pond will return to its natural, tranquil state, all by itself, the moment you stop throwing rocks.

The God-given grace of peace and harmony floods our awareness with its healing, liberating presence the moment we choose to allow the foolish thing to drop away.

When Puck sat up in his laughing tree and chuckled, "what fools these mortals be," I’ve got a hunch he was reflecting the foolishness of dedicating our creative energies to a way of life that encourages us to be constantly envious of the things we don’t have, and eternally greedy for the things we should have. I invite you all to explore the possibility that being stuck on the treadmill of accommodating a value system that depends on envy, greed and being right for its survival has to be the epitome of the human dilemma.

The foundation of individual and planetary peace will never be laid on the "treasures of earth" including the treasures of social and ethical correctness. Let us remember that Jesus did not teach a merely social or ethical gospel. He taught an uncompromisingly "spiritual" gospel that challenges us to practice compassion and tolerance toward our brothers and sisters, especially when they are goring the sacred oxen of social and ethical correctness. Remember, the teaching is to "Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do." It’s not, "Crucify them, Father, for they have transgressed my pet ‘no-no’."

The popular notion of "peace through prosperity," so attractive because it promises the best of both worlds, is, in fact, the very kind of thinking that perpetuates the malignant fear and conflict, hunger and disease eating away the human dream of peace on earth and good will to all beings. Universal prosperity, in the modern consumeristic sense, if attainable at all, can only be achieved by continuing to cultivate envy and greed as the motivating drivers of human behavior . . . and what possible good can come of that? Nothing destroys intelligence, serenity and happiness faster than a steady diet of wishing and wanting.

"Poppa" Charlie Fillmore said it like it is when he observed, "the soul wearies of the wear and tear of the artificial life." And nothing is more artificial then a life dedicated to the single-minded pursuit of more and more wealth, fame and authority.

If your soul is feeling a little weary, perhaps it’s telling you that it’s time to give up some of the foolish attitudes and ideas that keep us in hot pursuit of the "artificial." I’m thinking that we’ve come to a point in our evolutionary journey where it can be fairly said that no one is truly dedicated to the quest for peace and planetary harmony unless s/he is working primarily for the "restoration of wisdom" to the way of life they embrace, thus, encourage as a planetary model.

And what is this wisdom that needs to be restored? It’s the wisdom of a Jesus saying, "man does not live by bread alone." It’s the wisdom of Gandhi observing, "Earth provides enough to satisfy everyone’s need, but not enough to satisfy everyone’s greed." It’s the discriminating awareness that can tell the difference between real needs and artificial wants, and chooses the joy and quiet dignity of voluntary simplicity.

And, it’s the courage to give up the familiar for the unknown, the "old wine" for the new, the "treasures on earth" for a "yoke that is easy, a burden that is light." "Light ‘n Easy," the only way to travel. Hitch your life to a Way of living that measures human worth by the sparkle in your eye, the song in your heart and the wisdom to say, "Thank You, Father," for the blessing the moment contains.

Walk that road for awhile and you’ll never question the richness of your life again. You’ll know what Thanksgiving is all about too. Pure, free Spirit . . . attached to nothing, celebrating everything. Yea, it’s rich all right!

Enjoy the Grace.
Happy Thanksgiving!
--Chad

© 1996 Rev. Chad O'Shea

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Most everybody I bump into these days, in and out of Unity, agree that one of religion's primary functions is to inspire you and I to cultivate a sense of values grounded in love and compassion rather than greed and self-indulgence. In a society where human worth is typically determined on the basis of accumulated fame and fortune... adulating the Michael Jordans, the Donald Trumps, the Madonnas, Mr. President, Newt, Rush, Jay, Dave and all things Disney... the Bible provides a whole different set of criteria. Consider this.

When Congress first spoke of dismantling the federal guarantee of health care for the children, the elderly and disabled, imagine what would have happened if Christian and Jewish leaders had come together with one voice to remind one of the most religious nations in the industrialized world of the spiritual mandate contained in Deuteronomy: "For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I (as in God) command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy in thy land." Anybody home? And if that didn't get the job done, a legislator would have to be totally clue-deficient to ignore Luke's injunction, "When thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind." Remember, when Jesus found himself way out in the wilderness with 5000 hungry pilgrims, a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish, He did not feed some of them...He fed all of them.

On his path to sainthood, God demanded that Saint Francis of Assisi embrace and kiss a leper, whom Francis considered the lowest of all humans. From St. Francis, God exacted compassion harshly: "Half of his putrescent nose had fallen away," Nikos Kazantzakis writes in God's Pauper, a provocative retelling of St. Francis's life. "His hands were without fingers... just stumps; and his lips were an oozing wound. Throwing himself upon the leper, Francis embraced him, then lowered his head and kissed him upon the lips."

How many of us would similarly embrace a human being with AIDS or a homeless brother of sister who hasn't had the benefit of bath or shower for weeks? The story of St. Francis challenges each of us to honestly examine our willingness to "be there" for folks, especially when it requires an act of service way outside our comfort zones.

It brings us face to face with a question the Jesuits ask of themselves, "Do you live as a man or woman for others?" End game. The spiritual gauntlet is cast. Self indulgence or sacred service? How we treat the least among us . . . the least important, the least appealing, the least wanted . . . is a challenging litmus test for determining the spiritual integrity of the decisions we make about how we use our wealth, from personal incomes to our national tax revenue.

How we treat the least among us... is a challenging litmus test for determining the spiritual integrity of the decisions we make...

In an age of unchallenged capitalism, an awakened religious community's greatest responsibility may be to provide an alternative set of economic values. In the 1980s, for example, when the Catholic church did speak out on economic issues, it offered one of the most profound challenges to conservative economic doctrine and its celebration of profit and wealth. In the week after Ronald Reagan's landslide reelection in 1984, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops released the first draft of their pastoral letter on the economy. It was a chastening statement, a moving, beautifully written guide to Catholics "trying to live their faith in the marketplace." The bishops wrote to provide guidance for members of their own church. "No one may claim the name Christian and be comfortable in the face of hunger, hopelessness, insecurity, and the injustice found in this country and around the world." But the bishops also wrote to help shape the public debate on the economy. Every economic decision and institution, they insisted, "must be judged in light of whether it protects or undermines the dignity of the human person."

The current challenge facing progressive religious leadership in the United States is to hold the spiritual high ground of social and economic justice for all Americans without getting sidetracked into endless debate over the spiritually suspect agenda of Pat Robertson's foray into power brokering "in the name of Jesus!" The Christian Coalition's partisanship with Mammon is unabashed. While the little guys get fed to the legislative lions, Ralph Reed and friends have been up in the skyboxes with the movers and shakers cheering the fat cats on. Ahhh, to be there when their karma flattens their dogma.

Authentic spiritual values can and do play a fundamental role in determining what government provides and what it expects. Probably the most influential demand for President Clinton to veto the welfare reform bill came from that paragon of advocacy for children's rights, Marian Wright Edelman. In a stinging Washington Post op-ed piece addressed to the President she appealed to Clinton's "moral leadership," referring to God's mandate "to protect the poor and the weak and the young." "Do you think," she asked, "the Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Micah and Amos, or Jesus Christ, would support such policies?" In his heart he knew she was right. And so does Pat and Ralph and Newt and Bob . . . and you.

Cuomo knows. He not only knows, he has the spiritual chutzpah to say "nonsense" when a devolution devotee suggests we'll all be better off "getting government off our backs." Frankly, I'm quite thankful that a majority of Americans insisted that laws be passed that protect us from buildings that collapse, toys that maim, food that sickens, toxins that pollute, planes that crash, workplaces that kill and injure and employers who exploit, to mention a few. Other programs help Americans get through life's traumas - disability or disease, sudden job loss, crippling old age. To each his own though. It's what makes America great. But let me suggest to all you truly dedicated "government downsizers" that you walk your talk if your house ever catches on fire. Don't be a hypocrite and call 911 or look for a public fire hydrant. Do the right thing and contact an entrepreneur interested in selling water for a profit.

Sure, many entitlement programs have outlived their usefulness and need to be revamped or retired. An enlightened coalition of religious progressives could help facilitate the process by encouraging its members to honor the prime directive of their faith by getting actively involved in established programs or personal initiatives dedicated to ending human suffering whenever and wherever it becomes evident. Since leaving the presidency, Jimmy Carter has brokered peace, founded a center to work for democracy, and lent his name and hands to Habitat for Humanity. His example of a private citizen acting on his faith's call to action may prove to be a more lasting legacy than his presidency.

I'm sure the point is clear. Our God assignment is tough, but it's not a "mission impossible." It's a simple call to feed His flock . . . to "heal the sick and give the blind vision." It's an invitation engraved on every soul to experience the grace implicit in every act of selfless service. The richness of our lives is not to be found in the barren landscapes of acquisition and accumulation, but rather in our deepening commitment to the well-being of all God's Creation. As Mother Theresa puts it, "Our ordinary duty is to be holy."

So, let's hear no more talk of ending our collective efforts to respond to human need and suffering on a national basis simply because our efforts to date have not solved all our problems. That's kind of like arguing that we should scrap the Gospels because the Golden Rule still hasn't caught on completely.

Keep the faith, dear Unitics, and remember... in as much as you serve the least of our brothers and sisters so you invoke the eternal Spirit of Christ compassion and bring delight to the great heart of our beloved Elder Brother and Way-shower.

Zippity-doo-dah Springtime Greetings!

I trust this connection finds you all getting a little closer to 20/20 in your quest to "spiritual-eyes" the way you look at that ever changing flow of form and circumstance we call our "lives." Mastering the spiritual art of keeping the eye "single" in the spirit of the Jesus tradition has got to be the ultimate workout in this exercise called "waking up." The way I understand it, that aspect of His teaching challenges us to refine our capacity to first notice and then cease the fool's game of separating life's flow of events and situations into piles of "good" stuff and "bad" stuff . . . "right" stuff and "wrong" stuff.

Learning to capture the vision of Life as a flow of pure, undifferentiated "is-ness" rather than a series of desirable/undesirable episodes takes a tremendous dedication to the discipline of remembering. Remembering, first, to notice exactly what we are telling ourselves about this moment. Then, remembering to inquire if that sense of things rings true with the Truth you know.

One of the commonest fairy-tales we treat as fact, for example, is the truly foolish notion that there is a definite, singular way everything in our material world "should be" at any particular point in time. We determine the specific form of our "preferred universe" by labeling a variety of material objects and experiences "extremely significant," thus establishing them as vital to our happiness. This is the process Jesus referred to as "laying up treasure on earth." "Don't do that," He said. It was His Prime Directive. He understood our tendency to attach too much significance to earth stuff as the prime ingredient in every instance of human suffering.

Getting caught up in an earth-oriented value system inevitably leads to measuring every life situation with a rigid yardstick of irrational expectations. We've all experienced some degree of the emotional drama inherent in every instance of unfulfilled demand and expectation . . . varying intensities of frustration often accompanied by episodes of resentment and hostility that far too often escalate into the blind, cold rage that gives birth to human tragedy.

Dateline: March, 1996 - Bethesda, Maryland . . . "She was a 45-year-old special education teacher, a wife and the mother of a 6-year-old boy. He was a troubled teenager who 'desperately' wanted a gold Toyota Camry for his 17th birthday. Their paths crossed at a shopping center in Toms River, N.J., where the teacher drove her 1995 gold Toyota Camry to buy a sandwich on her way to a college exam."

The article went on . . . "That chance encounter ended both their lives. The teacher was buried last week. The boy sits in jail awaiting trial for murder and carjacking." I think not. Far more than a "chance encounter" was at work in that tragic drama played out on a shopping center's parking lot. What is it that motivates a teenager to kill an innocent stranger? What can we do to prevent such mind-numbing tragedy? For the past twenty years the answer has been tougher laws, more policeman and more prisons. The prisons fill up about as fast as we build them, but that didn't help Kathleen Weinstein, or her husband, her son, her students, or her friends who are all now doing the hard, painful work of adjusting to an earth life without her.

This isn't about not having enough jails, cops or draconian sentences. Something else is going on out there. The way I see it, our culture should be asking itself some very heavy questions if even one of our kids gets as lost in callous disregard for human life as this 17-year-old named Michael. But there's more than one. There's a lot of Michael's out there who seem to have lost their capacity to feel or care. What kind of influence does it take to separate a kid from his humanity?

Michael doesn't quite fit our image of a killer. Yes, like the vast majority of young men who commit violent crimes, he comes from a single-parent household, and he lives in public housing where crime and poverty is a daily fact of life. But his mother works in law enforcement, and his family is described by friends as God-fearing church-goers. He had been in trouble with the police before, but nothing about his record suggested he was capable of such cold-blooded violence. What kind of influence does it take to separate a kid from his humanity?

What is known about Michael is that he was obsessed with owning a shiny new car. He talked about it incessantly to his friends, describing how he was saving to buy his dream. He had to have a gold Camry. He even bragged about how he was getting one for his birthday. It is a fantasy that consumes many teen-agers, reinforced dozens of times a day by TV ads equating owning a new/cool/status car with freedom, power, popularity, and being "somebody." And it's not just cars, it's all manner of material things and human experiences we're told we must have if our life is to have meaning and purpose and value. That's a real tough call for a young man growing up in the projects where coming of age is a passage to nowhere and life is played out on the razor's edge of sick and tired. . . sick of being scared and tired of being poor. But is that enough to separate a kid from his humanity?

I don't know, but after reading what Charles Johnson observed about the impact of being poor you could have a shot at making a case. Consider this. "If you've never been hungry, you cannot know the either/or agony created by a single biscuit - either your brother gets it or you do. And if you do eat it, you know in your bones that you've taken the food straight from his mouth. This was the daily , debilitating side of poverty . . . the perpetual scarcity that makes the simplest act a moral dilemma."

In our modern culture, young and old alike are susceptible to the tendency to "lay up their treasure on earth" because so few of them have had the opportunity to encounter someone clearly and powerfully debunking the seductive myth of the Gospel of Get and Grab. Someone like Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Lao Tsu, St. Francis, Mother Theresa, Ram Dass, Wendell Berry, or Martin Luther King. It's both bewildering and infuriating to acknowledge how muffled their message remains while, for example, the greedy excess of folks like junk bond king, Michael Milken, remains the "hot ticket" at Ivy League Business School soirees. If we could somehow expose the root cause at work on that shopping center parking lot, what are the chances it might turn out to be the failure of our religious institutions to renounce worldliness as a way of life in a voice powerful enough to inspire 17-year-old project kids to hang on to their humanity in spite of their poverty and serenely pray with Joseph Pintauto, "All we ask, oh Lord, is to be safe from the rain, to be just warm enough in winter to watch the snow with a smile, to have enough to eat so that our hunger will not turn us into angry beasts." But is that enough to connect a kid with his humanity?

The article ended . . . "All we know for sure is that in one young man's case the situation was clear. He had to have a gold Camry. He bragged he was getting it for his birthday. In her last few minutes, Mrs. Weinstein couldn't teach lessons the whole culture had failed to teach this boy in a lifetime."

Consider for a moment an alternate point of view. What's the possibility that things went down the way they did because Michael's culture, far from failing, succeeded admirably in teaching him the lessons it wanted him to learn. The consumer's mantram . . . "More is better, now is best. Get it while its hot!" He wanted more. He got it. A gold Camry for Mrs. Weinstein's life. The sick commerce of a lost soul. Is he an aberration or the predictable product of a culture so absorbed in self-gratifying consumerism that it no longer hears the "songs of silence" or sees the words of the prophets etched on subway walls and tenement halls. I pray for the day when every Michael out there has enough sustenance for the body and food for the soul to keep them full of humanity and liberated from the belly of the beast.

And I pray for the day when every Mrs. Weinstein out there can drive gold cars wherever they want, secure in the knowledge that Michael's humanity has been restored by a culture that cares and a Love that will not cease.