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The story of the meeting in my office mirrors how far we have to go before receiving the Unity the First Principle is working among us. Larry and I continued as friends and spiritual partners. Stacy refused to tolerate me with my beliefs. He never allowed himself to see past the externals to my heart. He never permitted himself to believe he and I are connected eternally in our Creator. My pleading with him regarding the priority of Christ-likeness over belief did not persuade him. I gave up trying to live in unity with him, for unity requires chosen participation. He even heard a rumor of my converting to another Christian denomination and responded by affirming his certainty that hell is my destination.
God will not content himself with our refusal to live our innate oneness. We are all family, accept it or not. In God all barriers among us are shown to be illusions of the human mind--however culturally hallowed these walls are. How sad that the institutional church has been a primary promoter and fortifier of intolerance in human history. Maybe we have yet to begin to understand Jesus' radical inclusiveness or appreciate the cosmological Good News in the Eucharist.
Nature itself mirrors for us the miracle of unity wedded with diversity. The oneness is itself part of a larger whole. The larger whole is itself by including its many members. Nature amazingly preserves a supple balance between parts without losing wholeness. We humans are still trying to acquire that skill--and it cannot be acquired, for it is a Gift.
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Maybe soon we will accept Divine help to erase the lines dividing us and keeping us out from one another: possibly, we are now accepting that Help. Such a realization, according to the Galatians texts, will result from a radical affirmation of an-already-existing wholeness "in Christ"--but not as a religiously defined Christ, but the One in Whom creation flows from the Father, or First Principle, and back into Creation. The "Christ of dogma" offers no true Communion, for dogma leads us to the Christ before our most esteemed religious ideas.
Ironically, to refuse inclusiveness and fellow feeling toward others brings its curse. In the words of a Chinese proverb: "The silkworm weaves its cocoon and stays inside, therefore it is imprisoned; the spider weaves its web and stays outside, therefore it is free." Freedom only comes in the vulnerability of reciprocal determinacy with others. To reject another unlike oneself is to imprison oneself and defy nature, as well as the Creator of nature. Does not God and nature teach us that we must live as one?
Thought: We are none fully free until we are free along with all others being fully free.
Prayer: Wisdom, Beautiful Lady, you who have included us in One, enable us to act kindly toward all others. Save us from the curse of our unnatural intolerance. May we each day do a deed and think a thought which brings this world closer to full harmony. Show us the inward thoughts and prejudices that bar us from those whom we share this earth with. May peace come as we become persons of good will and kind charity. Amen.
See next page for data on purpose of OneLife Ministries, biographical information on the writer, and how to order the author's book.
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