Calendar: January 14 and February 1

After several weeks in which I became immersed in some Conversations With God books, I am finally back. As I work through some reflections on Walsch's writings, I will probably make some comments here. Today, though, I am going through calendar pages to start cleaning them off my computer desk.

The Dalai Lama quote for January 14 contains the statement that followers of the Buddha should take his life (the Buddha's, not the Dalai Lama's) as a model.

How I wish the Christian church would say that! I believe that one major tenet of Christianity is that Jesus shows God to us. There are a number of Christianity's tenets that give me problems; this one, however, is spot on. Jesus does show God to us.

What, then, does Jesus show us about God? He shows us that God accepts everyone who honestly seeks Him; we don't see stories where Jesus turned people away because they were the wrong color, had the wrong lifestyle, or believed the wrong things. He shows us that God cares about the marginalized; Jesus was normally found among tax collectors and sinners, not in the company of respectable people. He shows us that God would heal us, teach us, help us to live better lives.

Why doesn't the church teach us these things about God? And about how Jesus shows us these things about God? Why do we keep hearing about sin and salvation, about how Jesus is the only way to God, about the threat of hell if we fail to believe that Jesus was the biological son of God?

Those aren't the things Jesus told us about. Those aren't the things Jesus showed in his life.

If we can follow Jesus' teachings and example, loving and helping others, maintaining an intimate relationship with God as he did, we are truly Christians, aren't we? Isn't that what a follower of Jesus would do?

Moving on to another month, the page for February 1 says this: "When I consider the lack of cooperation in human society, I can only conclude that it stems from ignorance of our interdependent nature."

I would add to that, "Nor do we understand the natural world and our relationship to it."

The reason I want to say that is to spell it out: We are part of the natural world. This planet is part of the natural universe, and every living thing on it is part of the natural world. That includes us human beings.

And we had better learn, quickly, that we are interdependent with the rest of the natural world. We are not separate from nature; we cannot dominate it as though it were something external from us. We have dominated it for so long that we are now destroying our environment. Let's be up front about that. Our soil is disappearing, our soil (such as we have left) and air and water are all polluted, our food supply is polluted with chemicals, and every time we turn around there is another warning or news story about something that threatens us. We also have overpopulated the earth; the only reason we aren't standing elbow-to-elbow throughout all the continents is that we, in the absence of natural predators, prey on each other through war (which with today's technology offers more sources of pollution).

There is a theory held by some that the planet has decided we are vermin and must be gotten rid of. That is scary! Is it true? There isn't any way to really know. But we sure have found some awfully weird diseases in the past several years.

Gloom and doom? I hope not. But we need to wake up, stop arguing about non-issues and roll up our shirtsleeves.

A good beginning would be to heed the Dalai Lama's words. We are interdependent. What happens in Iraq affects something that happens in Alaska. What happens in Chicago can affect people in Chile. Let's understand that and become serious about healing our environment.