When I was a young boy, I wanted to
join the seminary and become a priest. I had no idea about how to get
admission to the seminary.
A friend of mine who had already
joined, told me that I had to write a letter to the Archbishop
expressing my desire to become a priest. He told me the phrase to
use; it went like this: Your excellency: For the glory god and
salvation of souls, I like to become a priest.
So the two fold purpose of becoming a
priest is to glorify God—God as understood as a Supernatural Being
who resides in a far away heaven and we have to praise, worship and
thank him every day, thereby glorifying him. Secondly, we have to
live a holy life so that we can save our souls and go to heaven. As a
priest I also have to help save the souls of members of my parish.
There was no attention paid to life on
earth. The earth was viewed as a valley of tears, with suffering and
pain and tribulations. Earthly things like food and sex were
considered to be necessary evils, not nice realities of life. In
Christian thinking, there were three things that were considered to
be enemies of spiritual life: the world, Satan, and the human body.
The world was the source of temptations, the body was the cause of
temptations and Satan was the instigator.
Life on earth was thought of as
something to be endured rather than celebrated. Life on earth was not
an end in itself, but only a preparation for the next world, which
is heaven. The role of the Church is to prepare people for an
evacuation plan from this evil world, and priests and nuns were the
field workers to help with that evacuation into heaven.
As I began to study the life and
teachings of Jesus, my consciousness shifted from focusing on things
in the heaven after we die, to things on earth before our death. We
have to pay attention to life on earth, before we can get to life in
heaven.
I developed new understanding and
appreciation of earth. If the earth was such a bad place, why would
Jesus choose to be born here. Incarnation means, taking flesh...he
was born on this planet and took flesh. Some people believe that
Jesus came on earth to save us and take us to heaven. I believe
that Jesus came on earth to
show us how to create heaven on earth.
This glorious planet which God has
given us as our home has an ethos and a pattern to it. Nothing on
this earth is arbitrary. There are some guiding principles that
govern the earth. Everything on earth, has a plan and a pattern that
has been designed, delineated and choreograph by the creator. If we
can join that plan and go with the flow of the earth, we will be much
happier and peaceful people.
For starters, we should erase from our
minds the mistaken notion that we are living on the earth and
replace it with the notion that we are living with the earth.
I know, when we look with our superficial eyes, it looks like and
feels like we are living on the earth, because that is how it
feels. I don't blame you for thinking like that. But if you look at
it with a spiritual vision, we will realize that we are living with
the earth, because we are part of the earth. We don't come to or
on earth, but we come out of the earth. We usually over
look prepositions like to, on, at etc. But in this case, they are
important.
Look at the story of creation in the
book of genesis. God created the first human from the clay of the
earth. We are dust and unto dust we shall return.
Body is an outgrowth of this earth.
Your body is a piece of this planet. 80% of your health depends on
how much you are in tune with earth.
Remember that all the elements of the
earth such as hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen are in us too. We have
iron in our blood and calcium in our bones. Just as 70 percent of the
earth is water, our bodies are also 70 percent water.
So, this earth of which we are so
much part of, this earth that Jesus made his home, this earth which
proclaims the glory of god, this earth which god so loved and sent
his son onto, has a lot to teach us.
So I have developed ten lessons that
the earth teaches us. If we can learn them, we can create heaven on
earth. So I call them, earthly lessons for a heavenly life on
earth.
I rarely think about going to heaven
after death, but always think of ways to make life on earth a
heavenly one. In fact, when Jesus said that the Kingdom of
Heaven is in the midst of you, he was inviting us to create
that kingdom right here. When he taught his disciples to pray, thy
kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, he
was referring to experiencing heaven-on-earth.
In the next 10 Sundays, I like to share
those lessons, one lesson per week.
Lesson Number One: Diversity is
Divinity Distributed.
The fact that the earth is a very
diverse place is stating the obvious. We may know about alligators,
antelopes, and ant-eaters, bears, bullocks and buffaloes, cows,
camels and cats (I am only up to letter ‘c’) but there are 2
million species of animals on earth. We may know doves, ducks and
chickens but there are 9956 species of birds. We have seen salmon,
sardines and trout, but there are 30,000 species of fish.
Have you ever stood in front of an
aquarium and watched those beautiful fish with different colors and
textures? I often go the coral square mall..stand in front of the
aquarium and look..it is a divine experience. We may have seen
cobras, crocodiles and lizards, but there are 8240 species of
reptiles. We may be familiar with cockroaches, crickets and termites,
but there are 950,000 kinds of insects. We may have a mango tree,
palm tree or coconut tree in our back yard, but there are 297,000
varieties of plants and trees on this earth.
I haven't even mentioned the diversity
among humans; The world population can be divided into 4 major races,
namely White, Black, Hispanic and Asian. The
United Nations, in a 1950 statement, opted to drop the term ‘race’
altogether and speak of “ethnic groups”.
In this case, there are more than 5,000
ethnic groups in the world.
Of the 7 billion humans on earth, not
one is the same as the other. God doesn't r duplicate or repeat.
Faced with such mind boggling diversity
around us, how can we live in the confining cocoon of our narrow
minds?
I know we like uniformity. Strangers
make us nervous. People who look differently than us make us
uncomfortable. Some people would like to build a wall around our
country and don't let anybody else come in. When we think like that,
we are going against the ethos of the earth which is to accommodate,
appreciate and celebrate diversity. When we fight against the ethos
of the earth, we become fearful, miserable earthlings.
There are three common ways of dealing
with diversity: hate it, tolerate it or accept it. Hitler was not a
fan of diversity. Many people I know just tolerate it. When an
African American family moved into our mostly white neighborhood, my
neighbor told me that he was not too happy about it, but there is
nothing he could do about it, because it is 2014 not 1950. He was
just tolerating it.
According to Webster’s dictionary
tolerate means to “bear or put up with someone or something not
especially liked.” Accepting is a little better than tolerating
because, it means to “agree, consent to, or approve favorably.”
I think we should go beyond merely
tolerating or just accepting and engage in celebrating diversity
because that is the ethos of the earth. Riding on earth—honoring
and praising its diversity—can help us thrive in life because, the
earth thrives in her diversity. Fighting against it will only make us
miserable misfits in a diverse universe.
Diversity was God’s idea.
It is God's plan. Going against than plan is not going to make us
godly people. Look at what God says about creation, in Gen. 1.26.
“Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.” The word is
plural. God doesn't say let ME, let US.
The US of of God is distributed all
around the world.
So, God is the creator of diversity. He is also the catalyst of unity. In God's mind, diversity does not mean division but unity. As diverse as the earth is, God wants everything and everyone on earth to live in unity and harmony. God doesn't want us to build walls around us and segregate ourselves from the cares and concerns of others. God is concerned with unity in diversity. Paul articulates it so well: Galatians 3:28 says, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
If we really learn the first earthly lesson that diversity is divinity distributed and start celebrating diversity and embracing unity, all traces of racism, sexism, homophobia, hatred, and jealousy will disappear from our thinking. Traits like narrow mindedness, fundamentalism, fear of others, and suspicion of strangers, will vanish from our minds. We will start appreciating the fact that there can be more than one correct answer to the same question; there can be more than one way to reach the same destination; there can be more than one opinion on the same subject. There can be more than two sexual orientations. As the popular saying goes: there are more ways to skin a cat.
Another advantage of celebrating
diversity is that we will be less arrogant and more generous in our
over-all approach to life; We will fight for equality, justice and
liberty for ALL and the ALL includes, humans, animals, the
environment, which are all part of God's diverse and beautiful
creation. We will be less stubborn and more flexible in all areas of
thinking, feeling and behaving . Blessed are the flexible, for they
shall not be bent out of shape.
I know a lot of people whose lives are
so bent out of shape because they are holding on to thoughts and
ideas and notions that have never been tested against the diversity
of planet earth.
We don't want to live such lives. We
want to live on this planet, experiencing the freedom of the children
of God. We want to live with a mind that is open to everything and
attached to nothing, which is actually the mind of Christ, which we
are supposed to have as followers of Christ.
Humanity has to think like the earth,
be like the earth, behave like the earth, because that is what who we
are.
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