I believe that we have lived, forever it seems, under the shadow of a lie, one that has been perpetrated by certain religious institutions, certain governments, and certainly by the mass media, judging from the spume of venom and vitriol which seems to be its diet. We have been taught that we are evil, we have been taught to hate "the other", a philosophy that has us entangled in a never ending spiral of darkness in which no one emerges as victor. Such is the shadow world of our existence that has informed us since the dawn of collective memory.
And then this morning a news item caught my eye. As I scanned the news I saw an article that talked about an incident in Perth, Australia. A man is on a commuter railway platform joining hundreds of others passengers on his way to work. The train stops and he walks into the area where the carriage of the train joins the platform. He slips. His leg is now wedged firmly in the narrow gap between the train and the platform as video cameras record the tableau silently. A railway employee approaches him, sees his dilemma and waves frantically for the train engineer to remain stationary. He talks to the man and we can see that he is going nowhere. Without a word being said, the majority of the commuters, the young and the old, the infirm, men and women, stand alongside the train and rock it backwards. They are not told what to do. All along the platform you see the images of these people as they PUSH a megawatt train over to one side until the man's leg is freed. He stands up, and they all get on the train, and it departs.
Who needs "Super Heroes"? We are the ones we have been waiting for.
This little vignette speaks volumes. In my opinion, THIS is who we are, we are born good, it is innate in all of us. As Nelson Mandela once wrote, "We are born to love, and yet we are taught to hate." Fortunately this teaching, with a lot of persistence, is reversible.
And, unless you think this is an exclusively human characteristic, by some twist of circumstance, a colleague forwarded a video clip later in the day that was shot in a zoo in Budapest, in the cage of a bear. We see the bear eating his daily snacks as a crow lands into the pool next to him. For some reason, the crow starts to drown, flailing madly in its attempt to stay afloat. At first, the bear looks at the crow nonchalantly and resumes eating. The crow is getting more desperate, its squawks more pronounced. The bear ambles over to the pool and with its claws drags the crow out of the water and deposits it alongside the pool. And then walks away and resumes its snacking as we see the crow slowly come back to life, moving from an immobilized position onto its feet, looking towards the bear in a somewhat dazed manner.
We are ALL created to be good: humans, animals, rocks, flowers and trees, because we were created with the same breath as the Angels and the great Beings of Light, by a Creator who is Love, not darkness, and not hate.
Beware of those institutions and their priests, however so defined, that tell us we are evil and living in "original sin" (will someone PLEASE explain to me what that is). Because the greatest evil is THIS message, and those who perpetrate it.
Not us.
And then this morning a news item caught my eye. As I scanned the news I saw an article that talked about an incident in Perth, Australia. A man is on a commuter railway platform joining hundreds of others passengers on his way to work. The train stops and he walks into the area where the carriage of the train joins the platform. He slips. His leg is now wedged firmly in the narrow gap between the train and the platform as video cameras record the tableau silently. A railway employee approaches him, sees his dilemma and waves frantically for the train engineer to remain stationary. He talks to the man and we can see that he is going nowhere. Without a word being said, the majority of the commuters, the young and the old, the infirm, men and women, stand alongside the train and rock it backwards. They are not told what to do. All along the platform you see the images of these people as they PUSH a megawatt train over to one side until the man's leg is freed. He stands up, and they all get on the train, and it departs.
Who needs "Super Heroes"? We are the ones we have been waiting for.
This little vignette speaks volumes. In my opinion, THIS is who we are, we are born good, it is innate in all of us. As Nelson Mandela once wrote, "We are born to love, and yet we are taught to hate." Fortunately this teaching, with a lot of persistence, is reversible.
And, unless you think this is an exclusively human characteristic, by some twist of circumstance, a colleague forwarded a video clip later in the day that was shot in a zoo in Budapest, in the cage of a bear. We see the bear eating his daily snacks as a crow lands into the pool next to him. For some reason, the crow starts to drown, flailing madly in its attempt to stay afloat. At first, the bear looks at the crow nonchalantly and resumes eating. The crow is getting more desperate, its squawks more pronounced. The bear ambles over to the pool and with its claws drags the crow out of the water and deposits it alongside the pool. And then walks away and resumes its snacking as we see the crow slowly come back to life, moving from an immobilized position onto its feet, looking towards the bear in a somewhat dazed manner.
We are ALL created to be good: humans, animals, rocks, flowers and trees, because we were created with the same breath as the Angels and the great Beings of Light, by a Creator who is Love, not darkness, and not hate.
Beware of those institutions and their priests, however so defined, that tell us we are evil and living in "original sin" (will someone PLEASE explain to me what that is). Because the greatest evil is THIS message, and those who perpetrate it.
Not us.