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Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. I hope persons of varied wisdom paths will find inspiration here.
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox
MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Teacher, Author
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook – Inspirations for Living – Love, Joy, Peace.
I think that one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there's nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless. Here lies the power of the liberal way: … in helping ourselves and others to see some of the possibilities inherent in viewpoints other than one's own; in encouraging the free interchange of ideas; in welcoming fresh approaches to the problems of life; in urging the fullest, most vigorous use of critical self-examination.
*Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965), Liberal Democrat, Presidential Nominee 1952, 1956
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A Dallas, Texas, man disagreed with a bank. His house sat next to land where the bank planned to build a new facility. The bank asked to buy his home, so they could knock it down.
The man did not agree. His land was appraised at $86,350, and he claimed the bank offered him only $68,000. The bank claimed it offered more.
At age 98, the man had lived in the house for about 50 years. He did not have to sale, so he decided not to. The bank built the new facility anyway.
The result was a new bank building shaped like a horseshoe around the man's house. An automactic teller machine dispensed money 15 feet from where the man slept. The vehicles of drivethrough customers idled in front of the kitchen window.
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Can persons linked with the bank and the man who refused to sell his house be said to be neighbors. Yes. But are they neighborly? No. They coexist, but they do not cooperate.
The Ephesians writer in the Christian New Testament gives the ideal of community. He writes, in Ephesians 5.21, “Out of respect for Christ, be coutesouly reverent to one another” (The Message). This can be rendered, possibly better: “... submit yourselves to one another.”
What does it mean “out of respect (or, reverence) for Christ”? One way of seeing this is “respect for Christ” means the post-resurrection Christ. A second way - “Christ within each member of the communion.” A third way - “Christ as the Body of Jesus followers.” I surmise likely all three are intended, and the second and third are essential to each other: the Body is the Body of Christ, for Christ being the Life in each member.
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Spiritual relationship and community is based on an innate Divinity; yet, there is more. Spirtual harmony flows out of a respect, even a reverence, for the Divine in the other and oneself. Spiritual fellowship arises from a spiritual vision, a spiritual anthropology. If we reverenced the sacred in the other …
Would there be any war? Any hate crime? Any abandoned children? Any homeless? Any sexual abuse? Any gossip magazines? Any sexual exploitation? Any condemning of other religions? Any parents molesting their offspring? Any supremicist classes, be they racial, political, religious, ethnic, …? Any few nations hoarding the vast majority of the Earth's material goods?
Likewise, how would your and my life change if we truly appreciated the sacredness of the other person? What changes would be make, if we rightly reverenced the sacred in ourselves?
©Brian Wilcox, and OneLife Ministries. 04/06/2010
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*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life, as an Associate of Greenbough House of Prayer. He lives with his two doggie friends, Bandit Ty and St. Francis. He is a member of “United Communities of Spirit: A Global Interfaith Initiative,” for advancing understanding and peace among persons of different faiths and beliefs. Brian is a member of the on-line networks “Guru” and “Peace for the Soul: A Common Space for Harmonic Peacemakers.” OneLife Ministries seeks to share the spirit of unity among all peoples of faith and humanity as a whole.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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