Settle down in a comfortable position and release any tension you might feel; perhaps around the eyes…in the neck and shoulders…the thighs or in your feet. Feel it and then just let it go. You might want to count breaths from one to ten.

Now, imagine that you are in Bethlehem on the first Christmas. Visualize yourself following the Christmas star and seeing the wise men. See yourself standing in the stable, gazing down on the newborn Christ child lying in the manger. Lying in perfect love, perfect peace. It is so easy to love Jesus but so hard to love ourselves. Feel your love for the baby Jesus overflowing from your heart and filling your chest with warmth and peace. Feel the warm flow spreading into your arms and hands, and gently flowing down through your legs to your feet. Feel the love floating like a soft cloud up into the thoughts of your mind bringing comfort and peace. And now your heart is so full you feel it opening in love. Look directly into your own heart and there you will see another child. A child which, like Jesus, came into this world in perfect love, perfect peace. This is your inner child, your true self.

Now reach into your heart and gently place your child in the manger next to Jesus. For a few moments just look at the two babies side by side in the manger. Look at the baby Jesus. Look at your inner child. And as you lovingly observe the two babies, you can see and know the truth: that your inner child is beautiful, just like Jesus; innocent and pure and loving just like the Christ child. Kind and accepting and peaceful just like the baby Jesus. It becomes so obvious. You are a miracle of creation also, worthy, deserving of love, a perfect being.

And now lovingly return your child to that place of love within you, to your own open heart. Feel your inner child there in the warmth and comfort of your heart. Safe now, surrounded by the power of your love. No need to be afraid, no need to hide. Now safe in love. Now secure in peace. For now you love your inner child, you love yourself, just as you love the baby Jesus.
– anonymous

by Rev. Chad O’Shea

I love The Sun, a mind-bending little monthly published out of Durham, N.C., by Sy Safransky. I experience it as a treasured source of provocative insights into the nature of authentic spirituality. I was recently browsing through the February, 1996, issue and discovered the following letter from a reader.

“After seven years of kidney dialysis and related problems, my mother’s health took a turn for the worse. Her leg arteries had become occluded, and, unless she agreed to arterial surgery, she risked losing the use of her legs, possibly even the legs themselves. It was a risky procedure, but she reluctantly consented.

The results were not good. Although the surgeons were able to restore circulation to her legs, the operation triggered a number of systemic failures throughout her body. Her condition rapidly deteriorated, and she became unable to eat or digest, to turn herself in bed, or even to speak beyond a few whispered syllables. She was incontinent, nearly comatose.

Although her doctors told us that, with continued intravenous feeding and round-the-clock-care, she might survive for months, we all agreed that such an existence hardly constituted living. We decided to take her home from the hospital, keep her as comfortable as possible, and prepare for the end. The doctors warned us that, without the IV, she would die within a matter of days.

After a painful ambulance ride home and the difficult transfer of her bloated, wasted body into the bed, we sat numbly, braced for the end. About two hours passed, and my mother asked for some soup. Not only that, she wanted to eat it in the kitchen. She sat at the table, fed herself, and asked for more. Within three days, she was walking to the kitchen without assistance. Within three weeks, she was cooking the soup herself. And within three months, she was going to the hairdresser and telling jokes.

Now, almost two years later, and despite a few lingering problems with her feet and legs, my mother is not only fully recovered . . . she has undergone a remarkable change in outlook. Once a vain and proper woman, she now looks for substance beneath the outer shell. She laughs often, swears occasionally, and demonstrates daily her love for us.

When I asked her what she thought had made her recovery possible, she said, ‘When I got home and saw all of you, and all my beautiful things, and when I thought about my wonderful life here… I decided I didn’t want to leave.”

“I decided.” That simple. What a powerful and inspiring example of the healing power of our minds when they resonate with love and gratitude and child-like assurance. No fear, no doubt . . . simply “I decided.” And so we thank the story for inspiring us and reminding us that faith is the spiritual gift that empowers all healing at the subtle levels. But is that the only spiritual insight this remarkable example of miraculous physical transformation contained? I think not.

Perhaps a far more remarkable “healing” is spoken to in the story-tellers revelation that “my mother is not only fully recovered… she has undergone a remarkable change in outlook. Once a vain and proper woman, she now looks for substance beneath the outer shell. She laughs often, swears occasionally, and demonstrates daily her love for us.” Now that’s a healing!

From obsessive civility to “don’t worry, be happy” in one magical lifetime. Up close and personal confrontations with Dr. Death have that kind of accelerated transformational clout. The nitty-gritty of that sobering occasion for self-assessment never fails to clear up a lot of confusion about what’s truly important in this earth-walk we are taking together. Mother discovered that prim and proper aren’t nearly as satisfying as real and relevant. As she let go of her rigid commitment to Victorian protocol and Emily Post etiquette (her “vain and proper” image) she discovered the healing joy and lightheartedness to be found in an uncensored celebration of the gift of her life.

She laughed often, embraced the expletive, and never missed a chance to say, “I love you.” A living, breathing, laughing, loving Valentine. What a treat!

Sounds like a righteous recipe for health and happiness to me, as well as a not so subtle reminder that it might just be time for each of us to take a good hard look at the value system currently dictating the open or closed nature of our minds and hearts.

If we’ll look carefully at the forces (beliefs, attitudes, points of view) that condition our mental sense of things, we’ll begin to see how our cherished opinions, and the inner dialogue they inspire, color our thinking and create the nature of the emotional environment we live in from moment to moment.

The gift of Mother’s experience for each of us is an awareness that it’s not absolutely necessary to look physical death in the eye to initiate a transformative process of beneficial self-assessment. If your life seems to be an unfolding encounter with people that you tend to label with thoughts like wrong, rude, crude, inappropriate, thoughtless, abusive, liar, etc., etc., and events that you characterize as unfair, bad, the pits, sucks, a drag, ad infinitum, ad nauseum . . . you can bet the farm that you are operating from a point of view deeply in need of a major overhaul.

As long as we continue to pollute our feeling natures liking this and disliking that, judging, comparing, evaluating… as long as we stay stuck in a whirlwind of action and reaction… joy and lightheartedness are going to be in short supply.

So, let us choose, right now, before death knocks on our door, to engage ourselves in a process that will liberate us from the mischief of a mind playing with unenlightened values and perspectives. As we sharpen our awareness and learn to withhold agreement, emotional energy, and action from the unenlightened perspectives of the false witness mind, we create an increased sense of calm and equanimity that allows us to look more deeply into the Truth of our experience.

We gradually develop the capacity to ground ourselves in the reality of what is actually present in the moment rather than being lost in the false witness of our unenlightened interpretations projected onto pure Isness. The “son of a bitch who ripped me off and ruined my life” becomes “a child of God, lost in ignorance (“sin”), looking for some answers.” The “foul-mouthed barbarian shouting and screaming at me” in the clear light of Truth becomes “child of God, lost in the weeds, crying for love.”

This steady and precise awareness brings a profound sense of stability because it resists nothing. Each moment of our lives will be a study in equanimity because our practice is empowering us to be open to the full range of changing experience free of any attachment or aversion. The spiritual art and discipline of a meditative practice is one sure way of beginning to establish some dominion over the tyranny of a thoroughly conditioned mind insisting that everything life brings us be exactly this or exactly that.

And let us not forget that clear seeing is infinitely nurtured by a sense of humor. Once the Korean Zen master Soen-sa-nim was eating breakfast and reading the morning paper at his center in Providence, Rhode Island. A student at the Center, who had heard the master teach many times, “When you walk, just walk” and “When you eat, just eat” upset himself over the master’s action. How could he say that and then go ahead and eat and read at the same time? So he approached Soen-sa-nim and asked him to explain his apparent transgression. The master looked up from his paper and his meal, smiled, and replied, “When you eat and read, just eat and read!”

Remember, Beautiful Ones, your duty is to be . . . not to be this or that, just be, and while you’re at it . . . please be my Valentine.

I Love You,
–Chad

My gardening prowess is legendary. What I mean is it’s largely a legend, meaning it’s “fiction”!

Oh, the excitement of early spring gives me a burst of enthusiasm and energy that translates into actual physical work. And I have been known to harbor some overly ambitious plans for what I’d like to see out there. But when the hot sun and the mosquitoes come out, I’m much more interested in a good book and comfy chair.

My main interest is in the harvest. I like eating sun-warmed tomatoes more than planting or weeding them. I’d prefer a whole lot of reaping without much sowing. (Unfortunately, prosperity in all areas of life doesn’t seem to work that way… but that’s another article.) This brings me to my favorite fruit: blueberries….

We were blessed to have 10 full-grown blueberry bushes on our lot when we moved to this house. For 2 months of the last 22 summers, I have had all the blueberries we could eat, with almost no work! Thus I sing the praises of blueberries, the lazy gardener’s fruit!

OK, so I have to spend time picking them, but that’s a peaceful way to spend time and it always recharges my batteries.

Blueberries are full of antioxidants to keep you healthy… in fact, their health value is downright amazing.

Blueberry bushes have a few preferences (Don’t we all?): they like the soil to be acidic (put them near pine or hemlock trees, or mulch with pine straw). Most varieties need cross-pollination (a different variety nearby) in order to set fruit. (We all need friends nearby.) A location with a little protection will prevent losing your crop to a late spring frost . They get pretty big, so allow enough space between them… and plant enough so you can share with friends and the birds.

Maintenance is easy: every few years, you should prune the tops to keep them low enough to pick without being 7 feet tall. Chop down the few weeds that grow under them. And that’s about it… Yes!

Once you pick them, you just wash them (pick out the twigs, stems, and stray bugs), then let them dry a bit (I gently use a salad spinner). Blueberries keep in the refrigerator for weeks in a colander (they like a little air) or put them in a ziplock bag and into the freezer. Next winter you can make muffins or pies, or throw a frozen handful into your hot oatmeal.

What a fruit! What’s not to love about it?

I want to encourage you to plant a few blueberry bushes wherever you live… even if you plan to move.

We’ve all heard the tale of Johnny Appleseed who spent his life planting apple trees all across the country. Whether fully fact or partly fiction, his story is one of leaving a sweet legacy for future generations.

When the people who lived here before us planted those blueberry bushes, they gave us a lifetime of fruit. First they reaped the benefits of their labors, and then passed them on, not knowing who would receive that gift. They enriched my life, and I am grateful.

When I was growing up, there was a great big lilac bush right next to our back door, right next to the sandbox where I spent many happy hours. Its lovely flowers and sweet perfume lingered in my memory. As a young adult, I planted a lot of lilac bushes at houses where I didn’t live long enough to ever see their blooms. No regrets… because I know that eventually somebody got to smell their sweet fragrance. And when I settled here, my lilac karma came due… there were 8 full-grown lilac bushes… and the unknown boon of blueberry bushes.

The gardeners who have gone before us have enriched our lives in ways they probably never dreamed. Their legacy of natural beauty inspires, nurtures, and feeds both body and spirit. At the church, I think of Penny & Denis Smiley and all the landscaping they did that is maturing so beautifully and enjoyed by so many people. When I walk down a shady city street, I give thanks to the unknown person who convinced some city council to plant or preserve trees. And I wonder, will anyone enjoy the fruits of my labors in years to come? Whatever you plant in your garden of life is helping to create the future for someone else.

My mom loved to pick blueberries in our backyard. Free, fresh fruit! When she picked the summer when she was 87, I wonder if she sensed that would be the last time she would ever pick berries. We never really know what the future will bring to us, so we need to enjoy the gifts of today.

When Mom passed away last fall, two friends gave me a Top Hat blueberry bush instead of flowers in her memory. How fitting! I don’t think they knew I had a backyard full of bushes. I wondered what to do with it. Plant it with the others? Plant it at the church? Nothing felt quite right. So I let my mind rest around the question for a while, and I researched and found that it was self-pollinating and often container-grown. I had my answer: plant it in a pot.

We all grow older, and someday this house will be too big to rattle around in, too expensive or difficult to maintain, and it will be time to down-size. And one of the hardest things for me to leave will be my blueberries! So now I have a blueberry bush in a giant pot that I will be able to take with me. And every time I walk out my front door, I see it and think of my friends’ thoughtful gift and of my mom. It is a living legacy.

Life goes by so fast. Most of us wish for a bit of immortality, something to say “I was here on earth and I made a difference.” But we make our mark by what we love and take care of…. with our time, our effort, and our money.

An old gospel song tells us to “Brighten the corner where you are.” In other words, be a light and leave things better than when you got here. So raise a child, volunteer at a charity, give when you are asked, take care of what you love (your family, your church, your community)… and plant a blueberry bush. Someone will thank you for it.

–Lytingale
© 2010 Lois J. Henrickson (Lytingale)

“I am always amazed at how much more toothpaste I can squeeze out of the last bit from the tube. How powerful it would be to live every moment of life with the same zest!”
~ Alan Cohen

Each of us is blessed with an inner “Sea of Tranquility” whose basic nature is calm and serene. It represents the natural state of our emotional natures. But it responds to the thinking mind much like a punch bowl responds to movement.

Imagine carrying a large, filled to the brim, punch bowl from your kitchen to the serving table. Notice the agitated surface of the liquid as your movement creates turbulence sending the punch back and forth in waves from one side of the bowl to the other, perhaps even sloshing some of it over the edge. Now, carefully set the bowl down on the serving table and watch what happens. Spontaneously, with no effort on your part, the wave action of the liquid will begin to subside until, eventually, the surface of the punch bowl returns to its natural state of absolute stillness and calm.

Nothing we “do”turns turbulence into serenity. It’s what we “stop doing” that allows the liquid in the bowl to seek and find its “natural state”. And so it is with our human emotional nature. The force that agitates the calm serenity of our emotional “Sea of Tranquility” is our thinking mind lost in dysfunctional patterns of unskillful use spiritually defined as judging, coveting, hankering, clinging and infinite variations on the theme of “bearing false witness.”

–Rev. Chad O’Shea

“You always go with dreamers,” my brother Garth said when I told him my new boyfriend Ed, a lieutenant in the Navy, planned to build a 57 foot gaff-rigged schooner. Garth wasn’t the only one to express doubt; Ed’s uncle said we wouldn’t even be able to afford the sails on a boat that size. They didn’t expect our tenacity. Four years and nine months later, we launched Satori with $25.00 left in our pocket.

In those building years, we were totally dedicated to our dream. Every penny we earned went into Satori’s creation. During her construction, we lived aboard in the boatyard, carrying in 5 gallon jugs of water and using a Porta-Potty for a head. We showered at family and friend’s houses. Ed bought our groceries at the commissary. Dinners out were at friend’s houses, or when my parents treated us on special occasions. If we couldn’t find something Navy surplus, we figured out how to make it ourselves. We formed sand candles and tie-dyed clothes to give as Christmas gifts rather than buying expensive presents. When we found a 100-year-old treadle sewing machine at a flea-market, I learned to sew by making our couch and sail covers. Those very expensive sails of Uncle Don’s concern were made affordable by our doing most of the floor work under the direction of the sail maker. Ed bought a stick welder and made the hardware for the masts and booms.

Our masts were 60 foot Douglas fir poles bought at the power company, which Ed sanded to the proper dimensions. Our yardarm came from a movie studio lot. Ed picked the brain of every boat builder, marine diesel mechanic, and marine electrician for miles around, learning how to build and install all the systems (using the K.I.S.S. method, or Keep It Simple, Stupid).

I finished my college degree in those first two years, then Ed left the Navy and I was the moneymaker for the next two. We married on the boat in the yard, and celebrated the event in my folk’s backyard. A money tree collected the checks of well-wishers. In the last nine months, I quit my day job and we worked side-by-side. Ken and Lisa joined that final push in exchange for room and board and the prospect of going sailing.

On our shakedown, we broke our rudder in a storm off the Channel Islands . Having survived, but fearful, I left the boat to stay with a friend and decide if I really wanted a life at sea. After 3 days ashore, I realized that the only thing that mattered was being with Ed. A life aboard the boat far surpassed the normal 8-5 grind that was the alternative. The four of us spent a year in San Diego , working part-time jobs and learning how to sail such a big rig. With her bowsprit, Satori was 75 feet long and held 1800 square feet of canvas.

We left California in December 1976, headed for the Caribbean . Our bilge bulged with 25 pound plastic containers of rice, flour, beans and popcorn. Under the dinette, we stored #10 cans of peanut butter, jelly, dried vegetables, and cheddar cheese powder. In addition, we’d bought what we assumed was a year’s supply of soup, vegetables, and meats at a bent can outlet. We trailed a fishing line daily. We were at sea for 70 days, becalmed over 2 weeks but unwilling to waste diesel to arrive in Panama any sooner. We transited the Canal, spent a month in the San Blas Islands, a week in Jamaica , a week in Puerto Rico , and finally arrived in paradise, St. Thomas U.S.V.I., in May of 1977. Ken and Lisa left for the states, and Ed and I stretched our remaining $200.00 kitty, until our first charter the following Thanksgiving,

We chartered for 14 years, taking our guests on “the best vacation they’ve ever had”! We learned early on to schedule a sanity week for ourselves after 3 weeks of charters: earning a living while enjoying life was more important than making a lot of money. Most captains and mates burned out after 2 years of back-to-back chartering during the winter season. In our summer seasons, we built a 3 bedroom villa, again doing all the construction ourselves and taking 4 years to complete. We even built the swimming pool and hot tub.

After 7 years in the islands, I convinced Ed to take a chance on my dream and have a child. He had been ambivalent, always saying, “In 5 years”. Lyric Serena Angelique was born a week after our 11th anniversary. She has been our greatest gift and joy, or, as Ed says, “The best decision we ever made.”

Hurricane Hugo’s 190 mph winds convinced us to try a new life experience. We put our boat and villa up for sale and moved to the mountains of Western North Carolina . We found 117 acres adjoining the Pisgah National Forest . We blindly risked everything in its purchase, but our luck held, and Eco Cove became ours. Appalachia is a hard place to make a living, but it was the perfect place to raise our seven-year-old daughter. Lyric was able to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after high school, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude in 2006, a quality education made affordable by being a resident of North Carolina. She now works as a policy analyst at Women for Women in Washington , D.C. , supporting women in war-torn areas with micro loans and education.

In our lifetime together we have discovered that if you are willing to take a chance, and if you believe in yourself, you can make your wildest dreams come true. Most people settle for what they know, or believe to be easiest or best, rather than risk an uncertain future. Life is too short to not experience it fully!

More Articles by Gabrielle Thompson

The day was balmy – over 70 degrees on the last week of January! The warm sun was a treat, but at the same time, I find it scary that our weather should be so warm this time of year. The daffodils were budding and the blackberries were leafing out – which is totally unnatural for this climate. I recall reading how this has been the warmest year since they began recording temperatures. Beautiful day… or global warming? The yin and yang…

Further on, I came across the debris left by a pesky dog in our neighborhood. He likes to take things – like toys, flowerpots, trash bags, and garbage from our compost bucket. He chews on them, and leaves the trash around the yard. Last week his owner cleaned up 2 such piles of trash from our yard and 1 from his own. I’d imagine, however, that he loves this dog, gaining affection and companionship from him. Hassle… or beloved pet? Yin and yang.

At this Valentine’s season, we can also remember the give and take of relationships. Having a spouse to call sure is helpful when the car battery dies… but of course, it’s less convenient for the rescuer than for one who is rescued. On the balance sheet of relationships, how many football games equal one night out dancing? At some time, we are each the caregiver and one cared for. To get the goodies, we gotta give ‘em too. Yin and yang.

There was a great line in the movie “Oh, God” where God explains how he just “can’t make a front without a back, an up without a down, a good without a bad,” etc. As long as you judge one thing “good,” there’s gonna be its opposite, and the Dance of Duality goes on.

But beyond the place of just resigning ourselves to this duality, there exists the possibility of embracing everything, without the baggage of our value judgments. One of the best explanations was in the song “Beware What You Tell Yourself” by Summer Raven, written when she used to hang out with Ken Keyes and friends:

“When life didn’t please us, we made ourselves sad.
When we couldn’t control things, we made ourselves mad.
This kept up from loving what we already had.
What we want we call good, what we don’t we call bad.”

That last line is the crux of the matter. For instance, how you feel after this Superbowl Sunday depends entirely on which side of the stadium you’re on – whether you’re from Atlanta or from… well, wherever that other team was from.

I admit that I don’t succeed at staying out of judgment very consistently. I have pockets of clarity mixed with vast areas of stuck-ness, especially on the big things we like to label evil. For instance, the hurricane in Central America was pretty hard to feel OK about. Must innocent people die just to warn us of global climate changes… or to give us the opportunity to practice compassion? I really don’t know. But at the risk of sounding Airy Fairy about this issue, I will point out that we don’t know the really Big Picture… that’s God’s domain. I’ve got enough to deal with in my own backyard.

I do believe that the quality of my daily life is improved to the extent that I can stay out judging the little things good or bad. And that’s the level where I have great power to change my experience of reality. Do I lose it when I see trash on the lawn? Do I kick someone out of my heart for a few precious minutes of my life, just because he left dishes in the sink again? Do I create anger whenever the traffic light turns red?

Every situation presents me with an opportunity for choice in how I will respond to it.  No, I might not be able to choose the situation… and I believe that many situations are God picking a curriculum for my spiritual studies. I can, however, always control the way that I will respond to what comes into my life.

We can go on chasing the good and resisting the bad, or we can seek to take dominion over our minds and embrace everything. When the yin and yang combine, they form a perfect circle of wholeness, of Oneness.

Call me a sucker for moral fervor and stinging rhetoric, but I’ll admit it: After reading the first half of Mario Cuomo’s book, Reason to Believe, I wished he were running for president. Cuomo is an unapologetic, hardball progressive politician who insists that an institution “of, by and for” the people can improve society…for everybody. Among his currently unfashionable political beliefs, Cuomo challenges progressive politicians to fiercely defend the legitimacy of a social safety net designed to “relieve the palpable suffering of human beings who are taking a beating out there on Main St. U.S.A.” That’s about as biblical as it gets, folks.

Most everybody I bump into these days, in and out of Unity, agree that one of religion’s primary functions is to inspire you and I to cultivate a sense of values grounded in love and compassion rather than greed and self-indulgence. In a society where human worth is typically determined on the basis of accumulated fame and fortune… adulating the Michael Jordans, the Donald Trumps, the Madonnas, Mr. President, Newt, Rush, Jay, Dave and all things Disney… the Bible provides a whole different set of criteria. Consider this.

When Congress first spoke of dismantling the federal guarantee of health care for the children, the elderly and disabled, imagine what would have happened if Christian and Jewish leaders had come together with one voice to remind one of the most religious nations in the industrialized world of the spiritual mandate contained in Deuteronomy: “For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I (as in God) command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy in thy land.” Anybody home? And if that didn’t get the job done, a legislator would have to be totally clue-deficient to ignore Luke’s injunction, “When thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind.” Remember, when Jesus found himself way out in the wilderness with 5000 hungry pilgrims, a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish, He did not feed some of them…He fed all of them.

On his path to sainthood, God demanded that Saint Francis of Assisi embrace and kiss a leper, whom Francis considered the lowest of all humans. From St. Francis, God exacted compassion harshly: “Half of his putrescent nose had fallen away,” Nikos Kazantzakis writes in God’s Pauper, a provocative retelling of St. Francis’s life. “His hands were without fingers… just stumps; and his lips were an oozing wound. Throwing himself upon the leper, Francis embraced him, then lowered his head and kissed him upon the lips.”

How many of us would similarly embrace a human being with AIDS or a homeless brother of sister who hasn’t had the benefit of bath or shower for weeks? The story of St. Francis challenges each of us to honestly examine our willingness to “be there” for folks, especially when it requires an act of service way outside our comfort zones.

It brings us face to face with a question the Jesuits ask of themselves, “Do you live as a man or woman for others?” End game. The spiritual gauntlet is cast. Self indulgence or sacred service? How we treat the least among us . . . the least important, the least appealing, the least wanted . . . is a challenging litmus test for determining the spiritual integrity of the decisions we make about how we use our wealth, from personal incomes to our national tax revenue.

How we treat the least among us… is a challenging litmus test for determining the spiritual integrity of the decisions we make…

In an age of unchallenged capitalism, an awakened religious community’s greatest responsibility may be to provide an alternative set of economic values. In the 1980s, for example, when the Catholic church did speak out on economic issues, it offered one of the most profound challenges to conservative economic doctrine and its celebration of profit and wealth. In the week after Ronald Reagan’s landslide reelection in 1984, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops released the first draft of their pastoral letter on the economy. It was a chastening statement, a moving, beautifully written guide to Catholics “trying to live their faith in the marketplace.” The bishops wrote to provide guidance for members of their own church. “No one may claim the name Christian and be comfortable in the face of hunger, hopelessness, insecurity, and the injustice found in this country and around the world.” But the bishops also wrote to help shape the public debate on the economy. Every economic decision and institution, they insisted, “must be judged in light of whether it protects or undermines the dignity of the human person.”

The current challenge facing progressive religious leadership in the United States is to hold the spiritual high ground of social and economic justice for all Americans without getting sidetracked into endless debate over the spiritually suspect agenda of Pat Robertson’s foray into power brokering “in the name of Jesus!” The Christian Coalition’s partisanship with Mammon is unabashed. While the little guys get fed to the legislative lions, Ralph Reed and friends have been up in the skyboxes with the movers and shakers cheering the fat cats on. Ahhh, to be there when their karma flattens their dogma.

Authentic spiritual values can and do play a fundamental role in determining what government provides and what it expects. Probably the most influential demand for President Clinton to veto the welfare reform bill came from that paragon of advocacy for children’s rights, Marian Wright Edelman. In a stinging Washington Post op-ed piece addressed to the President she appealed to Clinton’s “moral leadership,” referring to God’s mandate “to protect the poor and the weak and the young.” “Do you think,” she asked, “the Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Micah and Amos, or Jesus Christ, would support such policies?” In his heart he knew she was right. And so does Pat and Ralph and Newt and Bob . . . and you.

Cuomo knows. He not only knows, he has the spiritual chutzpah to say “nonsense” when a devolution devotee suggests we’ll all be better off “getting government off our backs.” Frankly, I’m quite thankful that a majority of Americans insisted that laws be passed that protect us from buildings that collapse, toys that maim, food that sickens, toxins that pollute, planes that crash, workplaces that kill and injure and employers who exploit, to mention a few. Other programs help Americans get through life’s traumas – disability or disease, sudden job loss, crippling old age. To each his own though. It’s what makes America great. But let me suggest to all you truly dedicated “government downsizers” that you walk your talk if your house ever catches on fire. Don’t be a hypocrite and call 911 or look for a public fire hydrant. Do the right thing and contact an entrepreneur interested in selling water for a profit.

Sure, many entitlement programs have outlived their usefulness and need to be revamped or retired. An enlightened coalition of religious progressives could help facilitate the process by encouraging its members to honor the prime directive of their faith by getting actively involved in established programs or personal initiatives dedicated to ending human suffering whenever and wherever it becomes evident. Since leaving the presidency, Jimmy Carter has brokered peace, founded a center to work for democracy, and lent his name and hands to Habitat for Humanity. His example of a private citizen acting on his faith’s call to action may prove to be a more lasting legacy than his presidency.

I’m sure the point is clear. Our God assignment is tough, but it’s not a “mission impossible.” It’s a simple call to feed His flock . . . to “heal the sick and give the blind vision.” It’s an invitation engraved on every soul to experience the grace implicit in every act of selfless service. The richness of our lives is not to be found in the barren landscapes of acquisition and accumulation, but rather in our deepening commitment to the well-being of all God’s Creation. As Mother Theresa puts it, “Our ordinary duty is to be holy.”

So, let’s hear no more talk of ending our collective efforts to respond to human need and suffering on a national basis simply because our efforts to date have not solved all our problems. That’s kind of like arguing that we should scrap the Gospels because the Golden Rule still hasn’t caught on completely.

Keep the faith, dear Unitics, and remember… in as much as you serve the least of our brothers and sisters so you invoke the eternal Spirit of Christ compassion and bring delight to the great heart of our beloved Elder Brother and Way-shower.