More

I am a little taken by how easy it is to approach those who have money or those who do damage to the environment without love or compassion - with a dehumanizing spirit that becomes hyper focused upon the goal - tunnel vision, and therefore oblivious to the humanity of the person who becomes an "enemy." I think everything in the spiritual path I seek to walk cries out against this. I cannot abuse people with ecology, any more than I should have ever abused people with "the Bible" (as I read it). Love needs to embrace all beings, even those who we might feel justified in demonizing. Compassion helps us see the fear behind affluence, the emptiness that lurks behind possessions and wealth (even in my own life, which is far from affluent by U.S. standards) - compassion helps us seek a way of healing that fear so that we might all move forward into a new future together. It helps us bridge the lines of bifurcation that have kept us split into camps - oppositional parties who keep distance from each other and stand justified through dehumanizing/demonizing the other party, firmly entrenched, not needing to listen or compromise.

I have much more to say on this topic, but my movie date with my wife calls to me. May we not forfeit the love of God for some perceived "goal" or "project" that we might feel God has called us to. I think God has called us to love, care, and compassion, for the planet, but also for the wealthy. We must not seek to change them because they hurt the environment, but also because they hurt themselves, just as we see our propensity to hurt ourselves through our greed, pride, fear and prejudice. We seek to help them change, because we care deeply for them, we seek, as thich nhat hanh puts it, "through compassionate dialogue" to help others renounce fanatacism, and also destructive ways of living and being in the world. We seek to help others, not as masters who have the answers in hand for dissemination, but as fellow journeyers also seeking to make sense of the world and live faithfully to a deeper purpose of being, renounce ways that are destructive to life in all of its interconnectivity. We cannot demonize, because demons cannot (according to popular myth) be redeemed. And we must all seek redemption, together. There is a t-shirt I want to get that says this: One World, One Karma. Amen.