Something To Smile About...

The picture of our "Christmas Cactus" below shows one of dozens of blossoms. It's by our front window and the cool weather here in central Wisconsin has apparently initiated its awesome beauty! With the temperature in the 30s all day today, we are not inspired to get out into the garden. However, our indoor cactus, violets and orchids give us visual pleasure and reward our care and interest. Since all things are changing moment by moment (although our twenty gorgeous white orchid blossoms seem to have resisted that thinking the last couple of months), we need to appreciate and enjoy whatever seems good in the present. Tomorrow will offer new visions, opportunities and challenges. Maybe tomorrow we can add a little extra beauty to our living so that those around us can feel inspired and be uplifted up to pass on goodness and kindness. What a wonderful, changing world!

Our "Christmas Cactus" now! 

Christianity Corrupted!

For every action there’s a reaction. That’s cause and effect. Human behavior also has its cause and effect… as complex as those two might be. Most of us would acknowledge that parents are generally responsible for the good or bad behavior of their children… in an elemental sort of way. Parents are in charge and they have the power, at least in the beginning. Cause and effect!

With regard to morality and meaning in our world, religions have had the power and influence. In fact, they have been essentially “the only game in town”. Over the centuries, who has looked to any other institution or movement for basic answers to life’s questions and for how to live properly on earth. Even today, don’t look to government, politics, science, technology or even education to tell people about morality and meaning.

In our world, “Christianity” has had center stage and is responsible for our present lifestyle and perspective on values and priorities. Here again we see cause and effect. Christianity has not only had “the floor” but also “the time” to exert its influence. The results are obvious in our western world. Followers of the faith are abundant, proud and competitive. Seriously, as a “Christian nation”, we are not only messed up morally but also physically and spiritually. The evidence is clear how far we have drifted from Christ’s basic teachings about agape love, sevanthood, sacrifice, sharing, discipleship, faithfulness, peacefulness, humbleness, forgiveness, commitment, heavenly security, etc. That’s to say nothing about how we are destroying and raping His Father’s world. How could this have happened? The simple truth is that Christianity has been turned into a politically correct “order” for 18-20 centuries. The early faith that confessed “Jesus is Lord!” has been twisted into a man-made social club… formulated slowly to cater to man’s ego and his materialistic and worldly desires. Self-centeredness and idolitry are on the rampage. This has been in the works and progressing for a long, long time. Its just that these days, we can’t help but see how far we’ve come! Shocking as it may be, “Christianity” as we know it is the cause of our degraded and self-centered life-style. Cause and effect! Of course even bad children do some good things. Radical change is our only hope for a creative, peaceful and more divine future.

Priority Change For Survival

A relative of mine – Peter K – reports from South Africa:

“The Business Report section of our Cape Times for April 11, 2005 carried
several stories about the visit of Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to
Bangalore, India. He and India’s PM, Manmohan Singh, announced cooperation in
many vital areas, but particularly in the area of information technology.
‘India’s software skills combined with China’s dominance in hardware could
trigger a tectonic shift in the global technological landscape.’

A smiling Wen Jiabao told reporters: ‘Co-operation is just like two pagodas,
one hardware, one software. Combined, we can take the leadership position in the
world.’ The two Prime Ministers spoke about the coming “Asian
Century”!

Didn’t we see it coming? Together India and China have a
population of two billion. That’s some market, some labor pool.”

Peter’s analysis is that countries like South Africa, Britian and the United States are already losing out to countries like India and China. He also tells us, “Headlines warn that China is constructing a smaller, tougher military.” So what is the United States doing about all this? Little or nothing… since we invest hundreds of billions in a war to protect our sources of oil and spend valuable political time arguing about how long to prolong an individual’s death (the Terri Schiavo case). In the meantime, we cut spending on education, research and many important social programs for our own workers in order to give tax breaks to the rich and powerful. What is going on?

Of course, we know what’s going on. As a proud, powerful, wealthy nation we have attained “our day in the sun” and we are headed for disaster… down the road just a bit. We are caught up in debating self-righteous, extremist religious views. We are getting fat and lazy purchasing everything in sight and protecting our fortress on the hill. Moreover, we are degrading our environment and wasting our resources. The bottom line is that we have our priorities all messed up and we will pay for that oversight… eventually. If we want to survive as a decent example of democracy, moral credibility and intellectual insight, we will need some radical change in the near future. Don’t count on the Christian God to bale us out!

Author and Photographer 

Change Yourself And Change The World

Most of us can see that the world is in trouble and usually we like to see other people and things change to make it better. However, it’s pretty hard to change other people. We have enough difficulty changing ourselves, even when we would like to do it. Still, change isn’t so bad and it’s not all that hard to do when a person understands how change happens and what it takes to accomplish it. The whole world has been continually changing since the very beginning, but it has been taking place very slowly. That’s part of the secret of change. It happens best very slowly over time… and if we were to look at “a result” down the road we would see that there was a kind of destination or end result to all that very gradual change. These days, most of us would like immediate results. We work and play at a fast pace and we have gotten used to immediate gratification. We go one way and then we go another. We do something for awhile and then we stop and do something else. That’s probably part of the reason we have difficulty taking charge of change and accomplishing the kinds of change we desire. Who is perfect and who doesn’t need to and want to change in some way? But how many of us get those “new years resolutions” carried out? Well, all of us are meant to change and change we do… sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. What is truly powerful is when we can take control of change – change ourselves in some admirable way -- and honestly function better for the world as we know it. The ripples of that “controlled change” will have a gigantic impact on unimaginable numbers of people and things in our world. We just need to believe it and begin to consciously act to make it happen. Yes, you and I have the power to change the world!

Agents Of Change

We are all agents of change. We influence people and things close to home as well as far beyond our vision and understanding. Sometimes our words and actions move out like ripples for the apparent life and health of our world. At other times, we as individuals affect life around us in a negative way and we are instrumental in causing trouble for our world and its inhabitants. What is important is that we become more aware of the implications of what we say and do so that we can be life-givers rather than destroyers. Understanding how we change and what an awesome influence we have on our environment or world can help us to have more happy and fruitful lives.

It would be wonderful if every one of us could look at change as a "friend". Sadly, many of us seem to be threatened by a lot of change. We resist it and feel threatened by it, even if it seems to be in our own best interests. Of course, there is some change that may appear to be harmful to us personally. If we are wise and skillful however, we can often even use apparent negative changes to enhance our lives. The beauty of change is that we can usually adapt it and use it for more healthy living.

It's my hope that in this blog I might be a bit instrumental in looking at change in our world -- change that has continued to happen ever so slowly almost forever -- how it is happening, where it is taking us and what we can do about it -- and forge a "change connection" with all of you change agents out there. Wouldn't it be healthy, wonderful and exciting if we could help one another better understand the root causes of change as well as get a feel as to how to proceed toward renewal and refreshment for "spaceship earth"!?

As I begin, I have a lot of development of this blog to work on... and I hope you feel free to contribute and make suggestions. Thanks for any healthy or beneficial change connections!