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*Brian Wilcox. 'Flowers in a Field'
A more important question than, "How can I help create peace in our world?," is, "How shall I be peace in our world?"
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I did not plan this writing to be a response to the coronavirus pandemic. The work became that somewhat in the writing of it. It is about so much more, however, for how we respond in times of collective crisis speaks of who we are, including how dependent we are as part of Life, of Nature. Last, this writing is more directive than most of mine. This is unapologetically the ascent of feeling related to the crisis we are in, including how we need to support each another, minimizing how we are different, accenting how we are alike and one. As to this unity...
If a flower had a God it would not be a transcendental flower but a field.
*Akṣapāda. Tao of Alan Watts: 444 Expressions of Zen.
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A flower having a God would be a flower being in and a part of God, arising out of and manifesting God by simply being a flower. God appears as the environment we together are, each one and all of us. This is the view of great sages. A Christian Scripture, Acts 17.28. indicates this unity-in-God, the flowers-in-the-Field.
Indeed, in God we live, we move, and we have being. Some of your [the Greek] poets have stated this same truth: "We are God's offspring."
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So, a premise of this writing is we are all in the Field, in God. The flower cannot be otherwise than in the field, and the field, as to time, is before the flower. Still, the idea of God-separate (transcendent, outside), which leads to the illusion that the created aspects of Life ~ such as, you, me, trees, birds, raindrops ... ~ are separate from God and each other is a tenacious untruth. Even in another rendition of the above Acts passage, the Contemporary English Version tones down what the Acts passage has, "...[H]e gives us the power to live, to move, and to be who we are. 'We are his children,' just as some of your poets have said." A world in which we are in God with God giving us God and one in which God is outside us giving us something, these are radically divergent views of Life. We feel differently, we treat others differently in these different fields of Life.
I am asserting, as a basis of what is to come in this writing: Being in the Universe means we do not come into the Universe, we come out of the Universe. An infant does not come into the World, an infant comes out of the World. This means we are one for we come from One, even as every branch is an expression of the tree. Every flower in the field participates in the field for arising from the field. We know that this Universe is participatory, devoid of separation. Science and religion can agree on this unity unless religion is too enthralled with belief in the dogma of separation.
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