Prophetic voices and events - Housing the homeless in your own backyard

The BLOCK Project invites community into the task of ending homelessness by placing a BLOCK Home in the backyard of one single-family lot on every residentially zoned block within the City of Seattle. Each 125 sq ft home is beautifully designed to be off-grid, self-sufficient, and amenity-rich (featuring a kitchen, bathroom, sleeping area, solar-panels, greywater system, composting toilet, etc.). 

The BLOCK Project represents an innovative leap forward on the issues of homelessness, cross-class integration, social inclusion, and architectural design.

For more click here , and here.

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

Spiritual practice of the day #20 - How can I help?

Remember there is no such thing as sin only mistakes. When you see something make a mistake or you make a mistake yourself, ask "How can I help?"

Question of the day - Do you enjoy gossip?

To what extent do you enjoy gossip and drama in your personal life, at work, in politics, in celebrity media, on social media? Is this good or bad?

Make the right choice

Most Unitarian Universalists, like most of humanity, have control issues. They reject most forms of governance. They want to make up their own minds and manage their own small congregations. One of the reasons that  Unitarian Universalism has remained such a small denomination is its failure of its local churches to give up control. All of this willfulness is hidden behind the meme of the "democratic process" which gets carried to such an extent that UUs are mocked for their desire to talk things to death in committees because they cannot resolve their disagreements and conflicts for the greater good.

The schisms and infighting in UU congregations are legendary and has consequences the biggest of which is the failure to engage in UUs mission because there is too much infighting for control. Self righteous egos block any kind of movement toward cooperative obedience. Cooperative obedience is anathema to UUs and so they languish in the hell of their own making.

In the last analysis we have only one choice to make: whether we follow the path of the ego or the path of the spirit.

The path of the ego is constantly calling us. In the great Christian prayer, the Our Father, in Latin the Pater Noster, we pray, "...and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil." The path of the ego is the "temptation" of which the prayer speaks.

The path of the ego is a path of comparison, specialness, the power of attack, hurt and harm, vengeance and punishment, condemnation and judgment, contempt and disdain, criticism and subjugation, exclusion and ostracism, sacrifice and death, sickness and deprivation. This is the hell which we create on the path of the ego full of drama and excitement at our neighbors expense and suffering and anguish.

The path of spirit offers us happiness and joy, bliss and peace, contentment and fulfillment, love and abundance.

Why wouldn't a person choose the path of the spirit? Because the path of the spirit requires giving up control. The path of the spirit asks us to align our wills with the Will of God. This surrender of our control and willfulness is the stumbling block and most humans would rather create and live in hell than give up their own will for the Will of God.

Multiple times a day we are offered the choice of the path of the ego or the path of the spirit. As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, "Let it go." We have to admit that our lives our unmanageable and surrender to our Higher Power whatever we conceive that Higher Power to be. We all must do this when we die and everyday we live many small deaths experiencing loses and having to let things go. We can do this with anger, fear, suffering and thinking and feeling like a victim or we can do this recognizing that our navels are not the center of the universe and our will is not in charge.

Jesus says, "Seek and you will find. Knock on the door and it will be opened to you."

You are already seeking or you wouldn't be reading this. This lesson is that you have to knock. This lesson encourages you to make that choice.

Prophetic voices and events - Shop local with the 99%

One of the reason that the 1% keeps getting richer is because we give our money to them. Do the Waltons really need more of our business? How wealthy can one family be? How about if we shopped local instead of big box stores, and farmer's markets instead of international produce marketers.

Plenty of studies have been done to show that shopping local keeps money in local economies and local communities are enriched.

Might you spend a couple of bucks more locally? Yes, but it comes back to you in multiple ways as there is more money in your local economy rather than on some billionaires yacht in the Mediterranean.

For more click here.

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