Change is the Very Nature of Life
I try not to read the news. I made that a habit when I traveled around the world in 2011. It allowed me to live in the majority world and experience it the way those who exist there do every day. The people of the poorest nations and the communities trying to survive in them including most living in South America, Asia and Africa have no clue about fiscal cliffs, Wall Street rip offs, stock market fluctuations, iron domes, or western recessions and our so called financial crises.
The people of the majority world spend their day focused on survival; how they are going to feed their families and care for the wounds inflicted on their bodies from the struggle to make it. When I saw this I just stopped watching TV, listening to the BBC, or reading newspapers or internet news.
It was in fact delightful. An entire year passed and I had no clue if Mars had attacked or California had slid into the Pacific. OK; to be honest I had contacts in California so I knew they hadn’t become uninvited guests of the lost city of Atlantis. The point was I learned to focus on my path and my mission for the time I was on it. It wasn’t about not caring it was about living in “the now” and knowing I was a tiny cog in the giant wheel of creation and the best way for me to make a difference was to stay focused and not get distracted by the swinging clapper of a clanging world that would continue to clang if I listened or not.
On the other hand, now that I have returned to being “Awake in the West” I can’t be completely ignorant of the minority worlds ebb and flow. I still don’t watch the TV I don’t have and the radio banter is in French so I haven’t a clue what’s being said. I have no car so the radio is hardly on anyway. I can even go days without entering the letters CNN or BBC into my browser so when I do I’m often shocked by what I see.
It’s a little like being a mini Rip Van Winkle. Suddenly I wake up and see a major minority world event and wonder where I have been. The reports about the escalating violence and attacks between Israel and Gaza got my attention recently.
I’ve been to Israel and while in Jerusalem visited Golgotha, the Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock. I’ve crossed the Sinai desert, walked the streets of Tel Aviv and floated on the Dead Sea. I’ve met Palestinian, Israeli, Muslim, Jew and Christian alike and I’ve held hands with every one of them and I know they are the same.
They are just human beings trying to survive in a sea of change and they have more in common than they have differences. The fear of change keeps them from achieving peace.
Of course the collateral damage of fighting with creation are those lost children we read about. In spite of this the decision remains to resist change because we have left the seat of consciousness and taken the seat of fear.
That is the tragedy we suffer because we are afraid, because we are wanting and because we cherish life more than the promise of death. It is our undoing and it has been this way for the history of humankind. When the first sun rose and we saw another two legged upright figure coming towards us on the horizon we had a chance to open our palm imagining the possibilities this change brought with it or raise a fist in fear.
It is the fist that rises to often because we fear change but in fact we have no power over creation. We need to embrace change and share what we stand on because that’s how creation was set up and fighting it only accelerates our departure empty handed.
