Forgiveness is necessary on the path of the spirit.

The Universalists got it right. God loves us unconditionally. The Universalists preached this message to the world and it has been drowned out. It is rarely heard any more. It has been drowned out by the idolization of the individual, and the meme of personal responsibility. In our materialistic, capitalistic society, there is no room for mercy, for compassion, for forgiveness because it is bad for business. We justify our greed, our exclusionary practices, our subjugation and oppression as "just doing business." The Universalist message is drowned out in cacophony of our "me too," and "me only" culture.

As a society we operate on the basis or "me," "mine," and "ours." We want to make America great again, an America build economically on genocide and slavery. Genocide and slavery are our roots, the deepest and sturdiest roots of the tree of American democracy, and we act surprised when a Trump gets elected and forget that his vision of America and his values have millions of supporters many of whom control vast resources of wealth.

Rev. Dr. William Barber, II, has observed that America is in a moral crisis. The moral dysfunction runs very deep in our history and in our souls. We either choose to forgive or continue to condemn erroneously justifying our condemnation as God's will and intention. The Universalist message has been dwindling and what will help our nation rectify the sinful path it is on is the recognition and acknowledgement of the Universalist insight. That recognition and acknowledgement begins with the naming of our errors and forgiving ourselves and others and sharing the grace of God's Unconditional Love.

It is written in A Course In Miracles, "Forgiveness is the world's equivalent of Heaven's justice." T-26.IV.1:1

That's an awesome idea. If God is Unconditional Love, forgiveness shouldn't even be necessary for what would there be to forgive? What difference would sin make on such a path?

If God is Unconditional Love there would be no judgment, no punishment, no hell. Judgment, punishment, and hell is the creation of the path of the ego. We humans, in separating ourselves from God's Oneness, have created our own hell. The ego loves the hell we have created because it involves drama which keeps us from being aware of the choice we could make to leave the path of the ego and embark on the path of the spirit.

If Heaven, the At-one-ment, Salvation is when everybody loves everybody all the time because this loving everyone all the time is an extension of God's Unconditional Love, then forgiveness of our own and our brother's egotistical beliefs, intentions, and behaviors is the correction required by the path of the spirit to move humanity closer to God's intentions for us on earth as it is in heaven.

UUs need to proselytize. We need to act as missionaries in our own country and around the world teaching and spreading our good news. In many places it will not be welcome. Jesus told His disciples not to waste their time in such places but to move on to places where the good news would be more welcome or at least listened to.

Standing on the side of love requires more than just standing. Solidarity can be a wonderful thing. Just standing though will get you no where. We must move - move out in greater and greater circles of love. We must teach, minister, share, nurture, uplift the idea that everyone is loved, not just loved, but loved unconditionally. That is their birthright, and when they are not loved something has gone wrong, terribly wrong. Recognizing this fact and acting on it is Heaven's justice.

Prophetic voices and events

The bail system in the U.S. is a travesty of justice. Poverty is not a crime.

Spiritual practice of the day #16 - Be mindful

The ultimate Christian prayer, according to Jesus, is the Our Father. We pray in part, "...and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil." The temptation which the prayer refers to is anything unloving. We need to identify our unloving thoughts, beliefs, and intentions, and then manage them by correcting them. This requires reflection and awareness. Scan your intentions for unloving thoughts and correct them today and in coming days. This is, in our contemporary times, is called "mindfulness."

In case you were wondering.............

Question of the day - Anxiety: Where does it stem from?

Anxiety disorders is the most frequent psychiatric diagnoses in the United States. The recommended treatment is usually benzodiazepine drugs. What is it that most Americans so live in fear of that they have to be medicated to function? What are your biggest fears?

UUs are blessed with their appreciation of the interdependent web

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote a respect (which I think should be love) of the interdependent web of all existence which (it would seem to go without saying) we are a part.

It is a principle in systems theory that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We, humans, have learned much about the nature of the world by breaking things down into their component parts. Our logic and rationality is linear and reductionistic and this approach has contributed to great scientific understandings of the phenomenal world. And yet, with this linear and reductionistic approach, some of us understand that something is missing. Newtonian physics, looking at the world like a mechanism of a clock, doesn't quite cut it. This perception is missing something. So we put the things we have deconstructed back together again looking for the whole and the quality that the parts, individually, are missing.

What gives us peace and satisfaction is wholeness, oneness, the still place where there are no boundaries, no limits, no discrete parts that are less than the whole. We long for the whole, for the Oneness from which we came and to which we return.

Humans complicate things. We break existence down into parts. We separate things and in doing so we create illusions that are not real. We are only seeing a part of the whole, the proverbial "tip of the iceberg." Don't be fooled by perceptions. They are not what they seem to us to be. We are missing the whole picture which we consciously or unconsciously crave.

UUs explicitly state in their covenantal principles their appreciation of the interdependent web of all existence, some of us would call, God's creation. In this principle, UUs name their longing and their place in the world. We are so blessed in our recognition and our acknowledgement and our gratitude.

Prophetic voices and events - Black mothers die at much higher rates than white women

From Democracy Now on 01/11/18

ANNIE WALDMAN: Yeah, well, first I want to say thank you so much for having me here. It’s an honor to speak about this work.

 And secondly, you know, when I heard the news of Erica Garner’s death, it was horrifying. It’s incredibly—we, at ProPublica, have spoken to hundreds of women who—and families of mothers who have died in childbirth. And it’s a devastating thing and a heartbreaking thing to lose a mother, a new mother, in childbirth. And in these conversations, the most important thing that seems to come up with African-American women or with white women or women of other races is that it’s an injustice. And it’s injustice because in the United States we have some of the highest rates of maternal death across the board. And most of this is driven by the deaths of black mothers.

As we heard in what Shannon was saying earlier, in New York City alone, women are—black women are 12 times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. This is an injustice—an injustice that can be stopped.

 NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, in your piece, as well, or in the ProPublica investigation, I mean, there are some extremely, in addition to what you cited, distressing statistics, that a black woman is 22 percent more likely to die from heart disease than a white women, 71 percent more likely to perish from cervical cancer, but 243 percent more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes. The investigation also cites the World Health Organization saying that black expectant and new mothers in the U.S. die at about the same rate as women in countries such as Mexico and Uzbekistan.


 

For more from ProPubica click here.

For more from Democracy Now! click here.

 Four women by Nina Simone