You Can Change The World, originally uploaded by oclark53.
"Maybe it's no accident that this story begins when we were slaves in Egypt. After all, what else could have persuaded us, a people as numerous as the stars in the sky, to leave all that we knew for the wilderness? Even after the old Pharaoh tried to kill our firstborns, even after a new one came who made our lives impossible by refusing to give us straw for our task of making bricks, we could not dream of leaving. Even though we grumbled every night about the cruelty of our masters, about our hard narrow life, we could not imagine anything different. What we knew was this: By the Nile there was life; in the wilderness was death.
It was, finally, the plagues that did it. Only after the waters of the Nile turned to blood and the stench of dying fish became so great, we could not drink the water; only after frogs swarmed into ovens and kneading bowls and beds, and lice followed the frogs, and swarms of insects followed the lice; only after pestilence killed the Egyptians' horses and asses and camels and cattle and sheep, and fine dust inflamed the skin of all those that remained; only after thunder, hail, and fire shattered the trees of the fields and ruin the crops and struck down all who were out in the open places; and in the end, most awful of all, only after the Angel of Death struck down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, except our own, from firstborn of the Pharaoh to the firstborn of the slave girl --- only then were we ready, finally, to leave.
God must have sent all those plagues as much for us as for the Pharaoh. To get our attention. To shake our heads loose from the bondage that made us stupid and kept us ignorant of what we could be. To make our hearts ache for something we were afraid to name. To make us hunger for our own land and for a new way of life. Maybe it took every one of the nine plagues and the terrible last one with its screams in the night to strike terror in our hearts for our own children.
Moses' men came around to our villages again and again and told us we were one people, not just twelve tribes - but most of us could not fathom what that meant. They kept saying "There is another place for us, a better way to be." We were afraid, but because of the children, we faced our fear. Even so, it was hard. Who can abandon everything without regret? Our homes. The soft mud of the Nile between our toes. Cucumbers and melons. Leeks and onions and garlic.
Knowing what to do and how to do it."
Rabbi Shefa Gold
Retold in "The Cultural Creatives - How 50 Million People Are Changing the World"
We are in a time of danger; a tipping point for our civilization and planet.
The masses are being denied basic rights, care and economic benefits, their sense of deprivation is fueling wars, revolutions and unrest.
The proliferation of nuclear, chemical, biological and improvised weapons continues to grow more threatening.
Overpopulation is taxing all resources.
Financial institutions trying to maintain their "have it all" status, resist change and are destroying the economy.
Ecological calamities arise daily, destroying our most precious foundations of life... our earth, our waters, our sky.
When will we wake up?
When will you wake up?
Around World War II, Harvard sociologist, Pitirim Sorokin, did an in depth study about major social change. He noted that highly uncertain times produce either a flowering, opening of civilization or a disintegration. Major transitional periods can be a Dark Ages or a Renaissance.
Crisis can invoke a response that is fresh, original and appropriate or it can paralyze and destroy us.
What is your response during the uncertain times we are negotiating?
Are you half in, half out? Are you playing wait and see? Are you fully engaged? Or are you pulling the curtains closed, sweeping your fears under the bed, and playing "Let's pretend everything is normal?"
There is no doubt about it.
We are in the Between.
And what a beautiful space it is!
To be in this state - the fertile openness, where everything is possible and connection is made.
The flow, the suchness, the full unwavering hereness.
It is here, in the Between, that the doorway, the "viriditas" as Hildegard of Birgen named it, opens and invites us into "the joyous, wet greenness of God's creative presence in the world."
Where whatever you love opens its secrets to you, where you can find connections between all things and create a new and whole picture.
Namaste,
C H E Z
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