When is it OK to neglect an infant? LIFE IS SACRED

If we are to enter the Kingdom we must learn to remain attached to "the least of these my family."

When is it OK to neglect an infant? LIFE IS SACRED. This idea may help.

Kingdom "FUNDING" pays massive dividends

See "Thy Kingom [IS FUNDED] as thy will is done..."

Kingdom "FUNDING" pays massive dividends. There is a huge multiplier. Jesus had just one life but it has been paying dividends for thousands of years. Think of an important kindness that was done to you when you were a young child. Has it affected you just once? It has affected, encouraged, enlightened... you many times, and will continue to do so, right? And therefore you will "fund" the Kingdom for others and yourself much more, and many more times than if this original kindness were not done to you, right?

So, take heart! Keep on!

"Thy will [not "words"] be done..."

Never Again... ANY PERSONAL PRICE NOT PAID

The opposite of love is not hate; the opposite of love is indifference or appathy. Rollo May

"Thy Kingom [IS FUNDED] as thy will is done..."

The reality, the Truth is that the world is in extreme suffering and that our individual response needs to be extreme. "The question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice--or will we be extremists for the cause of justice," asked Dr. King.

However, by way of encouragement it was very helpful for me to realize the other day: "Thy Kingdom [IS FUNDED] as thy will is done..." Every Brotherliness is Brick in the Kingdom. Every time we do our Father's Will out of love we lay a Brick, we Fund the Kingdom for our Dearest, our Family, ourselves. Now, if the bridge must be completed for our Beloved to get to the hospital can we take much comfort in one brick? NO! But we can and should take come encouragement from that one brick.

ONE ACTION IS WORTH 1000 WORDS

"Preach the gospel at all time; when necessary, use words," St. Francis

"An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching." MK Gandhi

“One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons”. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Nonprofits / NGO's = MERCENARIES?

... and the new crop of student "activists" that are told that activism is doing something for which you get "credit," a "grade." Oh my God. We are ripping the Heart entirely out of these High School and College children.

There is an insideous disease that is destroying our humanity. The disease is in the form of a notion that we can "pay" "mercinaries" to take care of our human Family.

"In answer to the question, “What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?" Lincoln replied: “It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, our army and our navy. These are not our reliance against tyranny. All of these may be turned against us without making us weaker for the struggle. . . . Our defense is in the spirit which prized liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere,"

Gandhi said, "Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living ?"

"PAYING THE PRICE" SETS THE PRICE / WORTH / VALUE

"PAYING THE PRICE" SETS THE PRICE / WORTH / VALUE.

Think about the importance of what you do, and do not do. Correctly, this principal underlies "free markets." The price, the value is what people pay! Everything else is illusory!

When we pay lip service - that sets the price.

When we "pay the price" with our lives like Beko, King, Gandhi, Teresa, Diane Wilson and others have done - THAT SETS THE PRICE.

OPINION LEADERS, PIONEERS SET THE PRICE THAT OTHERS THEN BEGIN TO PAY!

BROTHERLINESS = PAYING "THE PRICE" FOR OTHERS

BROTHERLINESS = PAYING "THE PRICE" FOR THE NEEDS OF OTHERS OR FOR THE MODEST AND NECESSARY NEEDS OF OURSELVES.

This is a monumentally important discovery for me. Is there anything else that needs to be said?

VIOLENCE = EXTORTING "THE PRICE" FROM OTHERS

VIOLENCE = EXTORTING "THE PRICE" FOR WHAT WE WANT FROM OTHERS.

This is a monumentally important discovery for me. Is there anything else that needs to be said?

"GOD BLESS YOU" is the salutation Start receives now

There is little that I have done in many months that is not just "surrender" to the Almighty as best I am able. This includes the tattoo on my forehead. Divine Inspiration is how I experience it.

Almost always when I encounter people face to face, if they engage me, somewhere in the dialog is the saluation, "God bless you." 99% of the time. It seems genuine. It seems deep. It seems comfortable. It seems spontaneous.

Hmmm. It seems that more than before I bring a sacred sense of God, of the Almighty to their Spirit. Hmmm. That is the entirety of what I want to do!

Thanks Father.

Quantum

Most of what Saves us is not just a little bit better. It is a quantum leap better, more pure, more of the Almighty:

• Gandhi
• Teresa
• Diane Wilson
• ML King
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Steve Beko
• Etc.

In the most sacred of essays, Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel gives us a hint to this phenomenon:

"God will return to us when we shall be willing to let Him in into our banks and factories, into our Congress and clubs, into our courts and investigating committees, into our homes and theaters. For God is everywhere or nowhere, the Father of all men or no man, concerned about everything or nothing."

Tolstoy's life of DIVERSIONS was his DEATH

By his early 50's Tolstoy had written all his Novels, made a fortune, and lost the will to live.

Then he did his own translation of the Gospel and found 40 more years of life in poverty serving "the least of these my family."

HUMANKIND'S GREATS ESCAPED ENCULTURATION

Hmmm. Did we get our Greats from enculturating them: Jesus, Gandhi, King, Diane Wilson, William Thomas, Davinci, St. Francis, Teresa of Calcutta, Motzart....

• In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards. Mark Twain
• School-days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn't take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not. H. L. Mencken
• From my expereince of hundreds of children, I know that they have perhaps a finer sense of honour than you or I have. The greatest lessons in life, if we would but stoop and humble ourselves, we would learn not from grown-up learned men, but from the so-called ignorant children. MK Gandhi
• To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. Theodore Roosevelt
• A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education he may steal the whole railroad.
  Theodore Roosevelt
• Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russell
• I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. Mark Twain
• The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. Albert Einstein
• My education was interrupted only by my schooling. Winston Churchill
• "Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education." Bertrand Russell
• "We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought." Bertrand Russell
• Your learning is useless to you till you have lost your text-books, burnt your lecture notes, and forgotten the minutiae which you learnt by heart for the examination. Alfred North Whitehead
• Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school. William Shakespeare
• I think my deepest criticism of the educational system at that period [junior high and high school], and that also applies to other periods, is that it's all based upon a distrust of the student. Don't trust him to follow his own leads; guide him; tell him what to do; tell him what he should think; tell him what he should learn. Consequently at the very age when he should be developing adult characteristics of choice and decision making, when he should be trusted on some of those things, trusted to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes, he is, instead, regimented and shoved into a curriculum, whether it fits him or not. Carl Rogers
• He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on. Benjamin Franklin
• College isn't the place to go for ideas. Helen Keller
• If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labour, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor. Ralf Waldo Emerson
• You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves. St. Francis
• A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. George Bernard Shaw
• It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry. Albert Einstein
• It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry. Albert Einstein
• The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Alvin Toffler
• Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands. Anne Frank
• Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction. Annie Sullivan
• If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning. Carl Rogers

THE INFANT IS "CREATION" AND "CREATOR"

Why are we so overwhelmingly drawn to the infant? THE INFANT IS "CREATION" AND "CREATOR." The infant is the closest we will ever come to encountering entirely The Almighty, The Creator.

We are neotenous creatures, among the only such creatures on the planet. Neotenous: Retention of juvenile characteristics in the adults of a species.

We are to remain close approximations of the Creator. Jesus died to try to make this True for us.

Life happens at the "GROWTH TIP"

Growth tip:

• Where it happens in plants
• An extremely small part of the "whole"
• Presumably "painful"
• "Alien" from the mass
• "Lonely"
• Essential to life
• "Leading"

JESUS FOLLOWERS FOLLOW THE "ALMIGHTY"

For that matter, The Almighty's followers follow the Almighty - Truth, Love, Life; just like Newton followed, was irrestably drawn by Gravity. No?

This explains all the prophets, Jesus, the Disciples, the Apostles.

The world continues to burn because we look beyond this simple truth for magic and mysticism so we can escape the implications:

We are all one Family; no double standards; Be Brotherly; GET ON WITH IT.

!!!!!! THE RICH YOUNG MAN IS ME AND YOU !!!!!!

You can forget everything else on this site if you want to. Don't even bother with it.

Just ponder this, and face the implications:

!!!!!! THE RICH YOUNG MAN IS ME AND YOU !!!!!!

?????Is this OK?????

Mark Chapter 10 "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" 18 Jesus answered him, "Why do you call me good? 3 No one is good but God alone. 19 You know the commandments: 'You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother.'" 20
He replied and said to him, "Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth." 21 Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, "You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to (the) poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." 22 At that statement his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

Matthew 19 "Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?" 17 He answered him, "Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good. 13 If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments." 18 14 He asked him, "Which ones?" And Jesus replied, " 'You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; 19 honor your father and your mother'; and 'you shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" 20 15 The young man said to him, "All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?" 21 Jesus said to him, "If you wish to be perfect, 16 go, sell what you have and give to (the) poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." 22 When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions. 23 17 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

BLESSED UNREST

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.... You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."
~ Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille

"More!," as my friend says.

"All, Everything!," as the Almighty says.

"Groundhod Day" movie. "Life" looks like this.

I've admired this movie for so long, it is amazing to me that just within the last few days did it hit me, why!

Life, the Almighty, looks like this movie looks. Every day, every day Life, The Almighty improves, learns, grows.

Blessed Unrest!

NOT "COMMANDMENT!" JESUS GAVE THE "SOLUTION!!!"

Did Einstein give us "Commandments?"

Did Lister give us "Commandments?"

No, they gave us Solutions TO LIVE BY!

JESUS GAVE US THE SOLUTION TO LIFE! My goodness, how did I not see this until now. Tolstoy articulated exactly this in "The Kingdom of God is Within You." The following is NOT Tolstoy's articulation:

JESUS SOLUTION: WE ARE ALL ONE FAMILY. NO MORE DOUBLE STANDARDS. GET ON WITH IT!

1. Love God (we have one Father)
2. Love your neighbor as yourself (everyone is your neighbor, everyone is your brother; BE BROTHERLY. PERIOD.)

So, what do we get with this solution? With certainty, THE KINGDOM: E=MCsqd. "THY KINGDOM COMES AS THY WILL IS DONE..."

THE "PRICE" IS: EVERYTHING & NOTHING

Paying the Price is the central issue of our age. We learn to do so, we learn to do what needs to be done, what our Hearts would have us do, or technology and weapons will reduce all life on earth to hell. !!!!!! THE RICH YOUNG MAN IS ME AND YOU !!!!!!

Like "sacrifice," "suffer," "courage..." "PRICE," or "paying the price" is profoundly different for the onlooker than for the actor. The one "paying the price" if doing so out of Love, feels Joy centrally, and any sensation of "paying" is peripheral. Yes this is absolutely true in the extreme, for Jesus on the Cross, for Ganhi close to death in a Hunger Strike. "Don't you know I am never so Joyful as when I am suffering for my people," asked Gandhi? [paraphrase]

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy." George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), Man and Superman, Epistle Dedicatory

"A CHRISTIAN" VS "CHRISTIAN"

All the difference in the world:

• Cancer vs Health
• Death vs Life
• Hell vs Heaven
• Admiring & Exploiting Jesus vs Following & Serving Jesus
• Flesh & Head vs Heart / Spirit
• Crucifixion vs Resurrection

This is not a matter of malice, or even of choice. "Many are called but few are chosen." This is really, really cruel.

THE "PEARL" / "TREASURE" OF JESUS

Life.

I have just now glimpsed this!

I cannot prove this to you, but if you want, I can show you.

You are young parents in the first minutes of holding your first newborn. What is more valuable?

Now, imagine a Heart as expansive of that of Jesus, Teresa, Gandhi, King or any other uncrippled adult human. What is the "Pearl," the "Treasure" for which you would sell everything? The "Pearl," the "Treasure" for which you would sell everything is EVERY SINGLE, ANY SINGLE HUMAN LIFE.

WITHIN EVERY LIFE IS CREATION, AND THE CREATOR - THE ALMIGHTY. INFINITE WORTH. INFINITE VALUE. INFINITE BEAUTY AND WONDER.

Separating ALMIGHTY TRUTH from manmade "truth"

Who are you? What are you to become?

What if you and anyone on earth have never encountered a "Golden Retriever" baby puppy; or a tulip bulb?

How would you go about discovering what it was, its "nature?"

• Patience
• Respect
• Honesty
• HUMILITY
• Rigor....

The real point is that YOU would KNOW THAT IT HAD A "NATURE," unlike a piece of clay or Iron Ore that, although these two have a nature, they are inanimate and "invite" manipulation and forming. Alive "nature" invites discovery and nurture. Yes?

Human Beings provide an infinitely more complex problem due to their practically limitless capacity to be enculturated. Yet, imagine that you are a species from a distant planet, extremely "humane," and you encounter a human infant. What do you do? The above list, right?

The point is, humans have a "nature." By Jesus time we had lost much of our sense of this. With Judaism we were living as though we were weak clay that needed constant force to assume a shape pleasing to the Almighty.

Jesus saw the Truth. Our nature is Humane / Brotherly / Universal Family / Compassionate / Loving. He died to have us re-envision ourselves and to re-envision our relationships. He died to Lead us to Lead others to recreate ourselves and our culture - to Heaven on Earth.

We have been crucifying him ever since. Jesus has company that in more recent years have arrived at much his conclusions: Carl Rogers, Alfred Adler, Pitirim Sorokin, Victor Frankl, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, Abraham Maslow. Those who are evidence that Jesus was correct in seeing the full "health" of a human include Gandhi, Teresa, King, Eleanor Roosevelt, Abe Lincoln, Dietrich Bonhoeffer....

EVERY "BROTHERLINESS" IS A "BRICK" IN THE KINGDOM

Wow. This was a much needed bit of encouragement last week.

This was important clarity. We need Heaven constructed and a bridge for all of us to get to Heaven to be constructed. This is a HUGE JOB!

But make no mistake, think about your own experience.

What is YOUR bridge toward Heaven so far. Is it no made up of acts of Love / courage / Heroism / Altruism ... bricks made and laid by people directly and indirectly in your life?

• Mom
• Dad
• Sister
• Brother
• Teacher
• Historic characters
• Strangers
• Fiction characters
• Jesus
• etc
• etc

Every act of Love / Family / Brotherliness / Kindness / Humanity / Altrusm... is a brick.

Take heart! Get on with it!

JESUS SAID THERE WOULD BE A "PRICE TO PAY"

So far for me it has been exactly as Jesus said:

MarkChapter 8 "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. 35 For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel 9 will save it. 36 What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? 37 What could one give in exchange for his life? 38 Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this faithless and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."

Mark Chapter 10 28 Peter began to say to him, "We have given up everything and followed you." 29 Jesus said, "Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel 30
who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.

Matthew 19 29 And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life.

ALTERNATIVE LANGUAGE FOR "NONVIOLENCE"

Who could be satisfied with the term "nonviolence?" It so defines itself in terms of what it wants NOT to be. The reverse should be true.

Potential alternatives include:

1. Militant Brotherliness
2. Militant Family
3. Militant Loving
4. Militant Love
5. Militant Nonviolence
6. Militant PeaceMaking
7. Brotherliness
8. Revolutionary Brotherliness
9. Tough Brotherliness
10. Tough Loving
11. Universal Family
12. PeaceMaking
13. ?
14. ?

Thine is the... "Glory"

Oh my. What a tragedy that people like me were never taught how to be prayed by this prayer, the Our Father! Year after recent year I find this a perfect prayer, the perfect prayer for developing me as a disciple, for making me Christian.

My experience with the last three phrases is the newest. I expect to spend many hundreds of hours, if granted by the Almighty, being pondered by "For Thine is the Glory." In my experience so far, what is as glorious as:

• The Love that your caregivers provided as you grew
• The Love of your best teachers
• The self-sacrificial Love of histories Heroes
• The way Truth wins out ... in the end
• The wonder of Life in an infant
• Etc
• Etc

Thine is the "Kingdom"

Oh my. What a tragedy that people like me were never taught how to be prayed by this prayer, the Our Father! Year after recent year I find this a perfect prayer, the perfect prayer for developing me as a disciple, for making me Christian.

My experience with the last three phrases is the newest. I expect to spend many hundreds of hours, if granted by the Almighty, being pondered by "For Thine is the Kingdom." In my experience so far:

• Yes! Thine is the ONLY KINGDOM in which anyone that had experienced it would want to live!
• Thy Kingdom is the only one with the power of the Almighty!
• Thy Kingdom is the one WITH the Almighty - that you can reside with Love, Life, Truth.
• Thy Kingdom is the one that is Heaven on Earth, including for those most dear to us.

It is really important to intimately envision the Kingdom:

1. To know where we need to be.
2. To know where we WANT to be.
3. To know what to try and build.
4. To know where we need to lead others.
5. For the motivation that comes from seeing the prize.