"LOVE GOD, HEAL EARTH"

We often hear that Jamaica has more churches per land area than almost any place else on earth.

The wonder erupts that if the churches represent moral authority and force, why are so many heinous crimes and "devilish" behaviour occurring in the shadows.

Environmental concerns for turtle habitats, the coastal dynamics of the local shorelines' ebb and flows, threats of rising sea levels, protection of reefs and coral, the plight of fisheries, and more have been bounced around this Forum.

Many have expressed a spectrum of legal, environmental, aesthetic, cultural, public relations, and affirmations of ethical justice. Some are beginning, or have long felt more profound beliefs about a sense of loss, damage or unnecessary insult to Creation.

In another context, when we hear the hymn, "Amazing Grace", many are guided to reflect that it was written by a ship's captain, in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, who by some unspeakable grace, came to an epiphany that trafficking in the sale of human beings could destroy souls, and felt charged to seek its eradication.

When JET's Diana McCaulay, in her threatened "protests and civil disobedience" over government licenses to bauxite interests to mine the Cockpit Country, she and other environmentalists, claimed that it would destroy the sanctity of a rare natural shrine, "home to 80 species of birds and various forms of endemic plants...Its aquifer supplies five of Jamaica's largest rivers...Jamaica's heart and soul."

These are clearly expressions of acts of sacrifice known to people of faith who are called to be "Stewards of Creation", and that "dominion over the earth" does not mean "domination", but compassion and care-taking.

A common thread of so many religious traditions seems to be that we are part of something much much bigger than ourselves, and we share an obligation to the "whole".
Buddhists proclaim that everything is connected...Muslims, that the Almighty created things in balance...agnostics and atheists, perhaps out of the impossibility to grasp mind-boggling immensity & complexity, still marvel at the Ah! & the Matrix of it All.

• Here is link to a video & text by the Rev. Sally Bingham, Love God, Heal Earth, sub-titled: 21 Leading Religious Voices Speak Out on Our Sacred Duty to Protect the Environment addressing Global Warming, but also dear-to-the-heart topics of mangroves, coral, fisheries, trees/species loss.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmgjNkg544k&feature=channel

"Even if the idea of religion would normally send you running for the hills, it's all worth reading. Just substitute 'ethical' for 'moral' and insert 'Nature' for 'god' if that helps...."

Individual Action Essential, But Not Enough

"Individual acts of environmental responsibility—consuming less, recycling more, driving a fuel-efficient car—are necessary but not sufficient to meet challenge before us. Even if a vast simplicity movement succeeded in reducing demand for nonrenewable resources, without other intervention, reduced demand would drive down the price of these resources, stimulating the appetite of consumers still trapped in thrall of thingdom.
Personal responsibility is essential—but it is not sufficient. In and of itself it fails to challenge the entrenched interests of corporations and the governmental agencies which collude with them. Just as the individual acts of conscience by slaveholders who freed their own slaves would never alone have brought an end to slavery, our individual lifestyle choices will not alone solve our environmental problems. [...] Changing a lightbulb is good. Changing a member of (fill in the blank) is better."
(The Rev. Fred Small from his essay "The Greater Sacrifice")

www.treehugger.com/files/2009/04/book-review-love-god-heal-earth-rev-sally-bingh am.php

The Regeneration Project:

http://theregenerationproject.org/

Diana McCaulay: Championing the Cause to Preserve Jamaica's Environment:

www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20061227/news/news1.html

THE THIRSTY MAN, THE WALL & THE WATER

ON THE BANK of a stream there was a high Wall
And on top of the Wall a sad and thirsty man.
The Wall prevented him from reaching the water
That he longed for passionately, like a fish.
Suddenly, he threw a brick into the water--
The sound of the water struck his ears like words
Spoken by a delicious and tender friend....
Because he was so happy hearing the water,
He began to tear down the Wall and throw brick after brick.
The sound of the water seemed to be saying,
"What do you think you gain by doing this?"

The thirsty man replied, "I gain two things
And will never stop doing what I'm doing.
The first is that I hear the sound of the water
Which is like an oboe to a thirsty man.
This sound's for me like the Angel of death's trumpet--
It awakens life in one who was dead!--
Or like the drum of thunder during the days of spring
That makes the garden bloom in all its glory.
Or like the days of almsgiving for a beggar,
Or the news of his freeing for a prisoner.
The second gain I get from doing what I do
Is that with every brick I tear down and throw
I come closer to the running water.
Every brick I take down makes the Wall lower--
Lowering the Wall is a way of reaching the water.
Destroying the Wall's separation leads to Union."
Tearing off the carefully linked bricks is Prostration--
Didn't God announce, "Prostrate and approach Me?"

As long as the Wall stands, it's an obstacle
To the one who bends his head in prayer:
You'll never completely prostrate to the Living Water
While you're not sprung free from the physical body.
The thirstier the man on the top of the Wall is,
The quicker he tears down the bricks and tufts of grass.
The more in love with the sound of water,
The greater are the clumps of brick he tears down.

•••from RUMI, 13th century Islamic teacher & mystical poet, whose Path of Love spiritual movement stirring wonders & ecstasies of Union have survived into the present.

I RAISED A TEMPLE

With days of hard travail I raised a temple. It had no
doors or windows, its Walls were thickly built with
massive stones.

I forgot all else. I shunned the world. I gazed in
rapt contemplation of the image I had set upon the
altar.

It was always night inside, and lit by the lamps of
perfumed oil.
The ceaseless smoke of incense wound my heart in its
heavy coils.
Sleepless, I carved on the Walls fantastic figures in
mazy bewildering lines--winged horses, flowers
and human faces, women with limbs like
serpents.

No passage was left anywhere through which could
enter the song birds, the murmur of leaves, or
hum of the busy village.

The only sound that echoed in the dark dome was that
of incantations which I chanted.

My mind became keen and still like a pointed flame.
my sense swooned in ecstasy.
I know not how time passed till the thunderstone had
struck the temple, and a pain stung me through
the heart.

•••from Rabindranath TAGORE (Bengal, India: 1861-1941): A Nobel Prize winning litterateur (mystic poet, novelist, playwright/thespian, dance-dramatist, composer/song-writer), artist, philosopher/spiritualist.
Tagore's quests & attraction to "heavenly desires" are in the Hindu tradition of Brahama Vihara...The Joy Eternal.

SACRED ACTIVISM

Passing on Excerpts of a Secular/Sacred Newsletter, past the WALL, peeking up from the beach sands at Great Bay near Blue Marlin... for the So Inclined:

ANDREW HARVEY, Oxford scholar and visionary, believes that our survival depends on Sacred Activism, a fusion of profound mystical awareness, passion, clarity and sacred practice with wise, dedicated, radical action. This fusion, he warns, may be the sole key to preservation of man and nature.

Harvey envisions what he calls The Seven Heads of the Beast of the Apocalypse as:

• Population explosion
• Environmental pollution
• Religious fundamentalism
• Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
• Separation from nature through technology
• Corrupt conglomerations that own and create mass media
• Societies that multitask, which makes it impossible to concentrate on our divine nature

“It has become increasingly clear that only Sacred Activism--the fusion of the deepest mystical knowledge, peace, strength, and stamina with calm, focused, and radical action in every arena of society, culture, economics, and politics--can be of help in our growing world crisis.

Neither a purely "spiritual" nor simply "activist" approach can solve our enormous problems. The core teachings of all the major mystical paths make it clear that there is, within human beings, an enormous unused reservoir of pure divine power, the pure power of sacred wisdom consciousness, passion, and compassion--the power of what JC called the kingdom of heaven, and of what in Hinduism is known as bliss-consciousness.

These core teachings also reveal that if we can learn how to use this power--or rather how to let it use us as its luminous instruments--we will harness the "energies of love" and discover for ourselves how a clear, focused, purified, divine passion devoted to transformative action on all levels can birth a new world.”

www.andrewharvey.net