Cosmic Kindergarten: Lesson 4: THINK GLOBAL, NOT TRIBAL

We have been talking about lessons that mother earth teaches us his children who live at the mercy of earth. I say that because, if earth doesn't provide us air, water and food, we are toast.

We live on a round shaped fast moving planet that is attached to nothing. But that is not part of our every day consciousness. Our senses tell us that we live in a specific location, on the ground that is flat and stationary. Let us say I am in Jacksonville and somebody asks “where do you live? I will say: “I live in Coral Springs.” If I get that question when I am in NY, I will say: “I live in Florida.” When that question is asked when I am in India, I say: “I live in America.”

Imagine answering that question this way: “I live on earth.” People are going to look at you funny. So, I need a specific zip code to occupy my physical body. But my mind does not have to be and should not be restricted to the boundaries of that zip code. A man made GPS will locate me in a city called Coral Springs. But the divine GPS does not confine me to one location, because I m traveling in space 1.5 million miles a day. By the way, do you know what the human GPS stands for? (Global Positioning System). Divine GPS stands for God's Panoramic Space.

So the fourth lesson from planet earth is, Think global not Tribal. Let me tell you a story.

Joe smith woke up in the morning using an alarm clock made in Japan. While his coffee pot made in Korea was perking, he shaved with his electric razor made in France. He put on a dress shirt made in Sri Lanka and designer jeans made in (Singapore) and tennis shoes made in Malaysia. After cooking breakfast in his new electric skillet made in India, he sat down with this calculator made in China to see how much he could spend that day.

After setting his watch made in Switzerland to the radio made in Japan, he got in his car made in Germany filled it with gas from Saudi Arabia and continued his search for a good paying American job. At the end of another discouraging day of checking his computer made in Korea, Joe decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals made in Brazil, poured himself a glance of French wine and turned on his TV made in Taiwan and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in the USA.

This story is used to illustrate the negative aspect of globalization. I use it to show how inter-connected and interdependent we are to the whole world for our existence and survival.

We live on a globe. Not in a cave. As inhabitants of a globe, our thinking should be global too. Very often tribalism and nationalism inhabit our minds, resulting in fear of the other which leads to prejudice and hate. After the September 11 terrorist attack, I heard someone declare on television: “I only care about America, as far as I am concerned, the rest of the world can go to hell.” Such tribal thinking while living on a globe contradicts the very ethos of the earth. And that is why we have so many problems on earth.

When we hear the word “tribe” we think of the uneducated, unsophisticated, scantly clad people who live in the Amazon jungles and remote African villages. We think of our neighbors in Hollywood, the American Indians from the Navajo tribe. But we will never consider ourselves as members of a tribe. We are not tribal. We think we are a modern, civilized, smart people living in a first world country.

Hello, news flash: All of us are more tribal than we think.

Tribal Mentality, is hard wired into us which is fostered in our earlier years by our family tribe, our religious tribe, our social-class tribe, our race and ethnicity tribes, our country-tribe, our language tribe, our gender tribe. Each of those tribes is interested in its own survival and creates a series of ideas and concepts in our minds. These ideas occupy our unconscious mind.

Tribalism is pervasive, and it controls a lot of our behavior. Tribalism is more emotional than rational. Think of the inhuman things we do in the name of tribal unity. Wars are essentially tribalism. Genocides are tribalism. Remember the genocide in Rwanda in 1994? The Hutu tribe eliminating the Tutsi tribe, killing a million people. Racism is based on tribal thinking. Religious superiority is based on tribal thinking. Xenophobia and homophobia are the result to tribal thinking.

Our political system is a great example of tribal thinking; We have the Democratic tribe and the Republican tribe. Each tribe holds on to their views and opinions without budging or compromising. We see that being played out in Washington, every day.
The “us” Vs. “them” mentality is an “inherent” and “inherited” trait from our origins as tribal people in prehistoric times.

When our ancestors lived among wild animals, as nomads and hunter gatherers, the “us versus them” thinking was necessary for survival. They had to fight against wild animals and rival tribes for their very survival.

So tribal mentality is primordial, primitive and prehistoric. But now we live in the 21^st century. We shouldn't think and act like our ancestors who lived in the jungles thousands of years ago.

Don't wear the most modern designer suits, drive the fastest luxury cars and talk on the latest smart phones and live in the most developed nation and think and act like chimpanzees in the Amazon jungles.

Look around. Look at our politicians. They put partisanship which by the way is tribalism, above the welfare of the country. Think about the uncompromising attitudes towards any type of gun control. It is coming from tribal thinking based on fear and greed.

Our ancestors had an excuse, they didn't know any better. They couldn't see a world beyond the trees in their forests. They didn't know anybody other than the next tribe that threatened their existence. They didn't have newspapers or radio or television. They didn't know that the earth was round. They didn't have internet that connects the entire world. For them, the world was their village. But today we live in a global village. But there is very little evidence we act on that awareness.

As theologian Diarmuid O’Murchu reminds us,

We need to begin by highlighting our universal and planetary identity as human beings—our primary home is planet earth, not the actual house we inhabit in a particular town or village in a geographical area of a specific country. Our national, ethnic and religious identities then become relative values in terms of the greater whole to which we owe our primary allegiance.

Think of a space shuttle blasting off from Cape Canaveral. Before lift-off , the astronauts see the fields around them. As the space-craft goes up, they begin to see Florida and a little higher, they see the entire United States and a little higher, they see the continents and once in orbit, they see the whole earth as one blue dot.

So the higher we rise, the more we see. When we are in higher consciousness, we see the bigger picture. When our consciousness is low, we see only what is just around us. We are only concerned with our self-interests.

Lower consciousness makes us tribal thinkers.

As tenants on the globe, we are called to have a global consciousness and when global consciousness becomes part of our everyday awareness, amazing things begin to happen in our lives. None of our problems will miraculously disappear, but they will magically transform.

When we see the whole globe from a higher perspective, we can clearly see the connectedness of all of us who live upon this planet. We have created imaginary boundaries, sectioning ourselves into countries and states, forgetting that in reality we are all living together, breathing the same air, drinking from the same water, eating food grown from the same earth. We share everything on this planet, whether we are conscious of it or not, with other people, and those people are our brothers and sisters.

We are literally sharing living space with all of them.

Imagine you want to fly to New York. You board the plane but you refuse to sit down, you refuse to fasten seat belt; or you insist that passengers on the seats next to you be removed and you want the entire row for yourself. You insist that the flight attendant serve you a full course meal instead of the dry peanuts. If you make all those demands, you know what is going to happen to you. Most likely, you are not going to fly. But for argument sake, let us say, they calm you down and allow you to fly. It is going to be a miserable journey.

Living on planet earth is a miserable experience for many because, they refuse to follow the rules and ethos of the globe and no wonder it is a miserable existence for them.

In Ephesians 2:15, apostle Paul says: “We are all children of the same God and Christ came to make us “one new humanity” from a divided humankind.” Notice the phrase “one humanity” it doesn't say “one nation.” Every time, narrow minded nationalism creeps into our minds, we should think of Paul's phrase: “one new humanity.”

This is where today's scripture about one body and many parts come into play. Meditate on your body and think about its various parts. All those parts have to co-operate, communicate and compromise for the well being of the body.

Imagine the small intestine saying to the large intestine, I am going to build a wall between us and the Kidney is going to pay for it.

You know what will happen. You will get constipation which is going to be very uncomfortable. If the right ventricles says to the left ventricles about putting up a wall between them, you will die of a heart attack.

You get the point. The body and its thousands of parts have an ethos and a method to their proper functioning. Any variation from that will cause trouble. Same with the earth. It has its own ethos and rhythms. When we refuse to go along with them, we end up not getting along on the planet.

Exercise for the week. Find a quiet space in your house, sit comfortably, breath, look at a globe. If you don't have one, buy one..it is worth the investment...Touch it...feel all the sides..Look at all those countries in different colors..there are 7 billion people living in them.

Start with a prayer for your family. Say a prayer for the people of Florida. Think of the 320 million fellow citizens of this great nation. Think of the simple people of a poor country like Sierra Leon in Africa, say a prayer for the destitute in the barren deserts of South Africa. Think of the millions of people in India who survive on one dollar a day..

You can do this exercise in many ways. For example, each day, choose a country on the globe. Touch it with your hand. Bless it. Say a prayer. Look up Google and learn basic facts about that country and its people. If you can do that for 5 minutes a day, your life will change.

When you turn on that tap and enjoy easy access to cold and hot water, think of the millions of women in third world countries who have to to walk miles to fetch water to their huts every day.

When you enjoy light in your house with the flip of a switch, think of half of humanity who live in darkness, with no access to electricity.

Before you fall asleep on a soft bed in the comfort of an air conditioned house, say a prayer for millions of our brothers an sisters who sleep on bare floors in thatched huts or under a tree or a bridge.

Every day engage a few minutes in global thinking and you will see your mind opening, your heart widening, your soul expanding and merging with the mind of God...that is how we become a godly people.

Cosmic Kindergarten: Lesson 3: STOP COMPARING; YOU ARE UNIQUE

In my series titled Cosmic Kindergarten: Earthly Lessons for a Heavenly Life on Earth, we have come to lesson 3. The earth has certain characteristics, rules, and patterns to it. If we can learn from them we will be much better of. Why should we pay attention to that? Because we are part of the earth. We are guests on this planet.

Imagine living as a guest in somebody's house. And let's say, there are 3 main house rules. 1) Don't smoke inside the house, 2) make sure the doors are closed so that the dog won't escape and 3) don't mess with the temperature controls. If you follow those rules, your stay will be happy and harmonious. On the other hand, if you start smoking inside and carelessly leave the door opened and the dog runs away, or you are constantly playing with the AC controls, there is going to be conflict and unease and your stay is going to be very unpleasant.

Similarly, the earth is our home. It has some rules, or lessons as I call them. The first lesson is that the earth embraces and celebrates diversity. We need to embrace it too. We can't fight against diversity around us and expect us to be happy residents of the planet. The second lesson is that everything and everyone on earth is interconnected and interdependent. If you think you can do all by yourself and engage in hyper individualism, without no regard for the community aspect of life, you are going to be miserable.

Today I like to reflect on the third lesson which is stop comparing yourself to anyone else.

It is a hard lesson to learn, because when we look around, all we see is inequality. Unequal on so many levels: size, shape, color, health, looks, education, fortunes,etc.

But the truth is that all these differences are external. There is always somebody ahead of you and somebody behind you in all those measures. There is always somebody in the world who is better looking than you, but there is also somebody who is less attractive than you. There is somebody who is richer, but also somebody who is poorer. There is somebody with more money, but also somebody with less. The list is endless. But there is no one like you in the whole world. So stop comparing you to others. It is an exercise in futility that will end up in frustration.

On the level of our humanity, all of us are equal, special and unique. If you can learn that lesson once and for all, you can get rid of feelings of envy and jealousy which plague so many people. You can get rid of 3 of the 7 deadly sins or capital sins as the Church calls them. You can get rid of pride, envy, anger. The other four being greed, lust, gluttony and sloth.

This is a lesson planet earth can teach us. To understand this lesson, think of the shape of the planet. God created it in round shape rather than square or triangular shape for a reason. There is a lesson in that.

Think of a Ferris wheel at a carnival. There are ten buckets on the wheel and there are two people in each bucket. Jim and Jane, who just started the ride, look up and see Sam and Sue sitting in the top bucket and they feel jealous of their superior position only to realize in the next minute, they are on the top and Sam and Sue are at the bottom.

While enjoying the exhilaration of being on top, they also begin to feel the loss of their peak experience as the wheel continues to turn.

Regarding positions and possessions, you will always be inferior to some and superior to others, but on the level of the soul, words like superior and inferior don’t matter.

True humility and true self-esteem are based on that awareness.

The circular nature of the Ferris wheel reminds us that there is really no one who is above us or beneath us, in front of us or behind us, but we are all in this together.

Concepts like up and down, front and back, high and low, beginning and ending are all meaningless illusions in a circular universe.

As inhabitants of a round shaped planet, we should see through the hollow nature of such illusions and live wholesome lives.

I told you that awareness of living on a circular planet can help you get rid of three major capital sins—pride, envy and anger. You are prideful because you are physically more beautiful than your friends and neighbors, or you have more money than they have, or your house is bigger than theirs, or your car is a better brand than theirs, or your children are more successful than theirs. When those prideful thoughts go through your mind, you should also realize that there are many other people in the world who are more handsome than you, their houses and cars are better than yours; there are people in the world with more money than you have. So when you are proud of what you have, you are also envious because you have less than somebody else.

When you think that others are ahead of you, you feel envious of them. You feel anger and resentment, and as a result you feel depressed. You are lacking in joy, your smile disappears from your face, you feel morbidly happy about the misfortunes of others. You feel envious when your neighbor's kid goes to an out-of-state ivy league college and your's goes to the local community college.

Who do you compare with? The person in front of you or the one behind you? If you compare yourself with the one in front of you, there is always somebody, in front of that person and another after that...so who is a point of reference? It is the same if you go backwards.

As inhabitants of a round planet, we shouldn't be thinking in terms of ahead or behind, up or down. We shouldn't be comparing ourselves with anybody else, because in a circular world, it is an endless loop.

I learned this important life lesson when I had to deal with the disability of my son Johnny. As most of you know, he is autistic. He was diagnosed at the age of 3. He is 26 years old now. He cannot engage in meaningful conversations. He can't drive. He cannot be left alone at home for long periods of time. He needs supervision and guidance. He is under our guardianship because he cannot manage his affairs. He won't be dating, or marrying or having a family of his own. Basically, Johnny is 26 going on 3 emotionally and intellectually.

I used to compare him with our next door neighbor Daniel who is only four months older than Johnny. As a normal kid, he played sports, at age 16 he learned to drive, at 18 he graduated from high school. For the next four years he went to UF in Gainsville, graduated with a degree in engineering. He drives a sports car. Last year, he moved in with his girl friend who is doing a PhD program and on April 2^nd this year they got married. Daniel's parents are empty nesters. They can come and go as they please. They don't have to worry about finding a “babysitter” for their 26 year old as my wife and I have to.

So when I compare Johnny with Daniel, there is much to be desired. They live in two very separate worlds. Feelings of envy and sadness are inevitable. And every now and then, I have them.

But, then I catch myself and do a backward comparison with Brandon who was with my son Johnny in the YMCA program. Brandon was Johnny's age and he has down syndrome. He is in a wheel chair. At five o clock when the after school program ends, I have watched Brandon's dad, David, coming to take his son home. He parks his car, goes in and wheels his son to the car. Then he opens the passenger side and lifts his son from the wheel chair and helps him into the car. The boy is little heavy-set and it does a number on David's back each time he has to lift him. He is not even capable of fastening his seat belt.

Once Brandon is securely in, David pushes the wheel chair to the back of his SUV, opens the trunk, folds the wheel chair, puts it in, closes the door and drives home. It takes at least 15 minutes to move his son from point A to point B.

When I see what David has to deal with, I thank God thinking how blessed I am with Johnny. When I go to pick him up, I don't even have to get out of my car. I just honk once, and he comes out and in 15 seconds he is inside my car, buckled up and ready to go. He is independent in many ways. I don't have to do anything for his personal care.

Nobody is better, nobody is worse. Nobody is high, nobody is low. Nobody is ahead, nobody is behind. Nobody is up, nobody is down. It is all an illusion. We are inhabitants on a round shaped planet. In a circular universe those words are meaningless.

The scripture passage that deepens this third earthly lesson is Psalm. 139 14:

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Psalm 139 describes some of God’s attributes. He knows everything (v.1-6), His Spirit is present throughout the universe (v.7-12) and each person is created by Him (v.13-16). The verse before and after Psalm 139:14 describe the development of a baby from conception. This caused David to praise God for His power and skill and exclaim that “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (139:14).

The Hebrew word that is translated “fearfully” is yare. It means “to be in awe.” To be “fearfully” made means to be “awesomely” made.

When God created us, He made us exactly the way He planned. When He designed us, He planned our size, the color of our eyes, the color of our skin, everything about us! The psalmist says: “When I was woven together in the depths of he earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.”

You came out of the womb of mother earth, to be a unique, physical, local, manifestation of the Divine. Disclaiming that and comparing yourself to others is a denial of the divinity within you.

There is story about Zusha, the great Chassidic master, who lay crying on his deathbed. His students asked him, "Rebbe, why are you so sad? After all the mitzvahs and good deeds you have done, you will surely get a great reward in heaven!"

"I'm afraid!" said Zusha. “because when I get to heaven, I know God's not going to ask me 'Why weren't you more like Moses?' or 'Why weren't you more like King David?'
But I'm afraid that God will ask “Zusha, why weren't you more like Zusha?'

And then what will I say?

You don't want to feel like this Rabbi...celebrate the person that God created you to be...don't compare yourself to anybody else on this planet, because among the 7 billion plus people on planet earth, there is no one like you.

Cosmic Kindergarten: Lesson 2: INTER-CONNECTION & INTER-DEPENDENCE

We have been talking about the lessons mother earth teaches us so that we can be happy and joyful tenants on this planet earth. I have identified ten lessons earth teaches us and if we learn from them, we can create heaven on earth. Two weeks ago, we talked in detail about the first lesson, which is Diversity is Divinity distributed.

I said that the diversity we see all around us—the diverse plants, animals and people belonging to 5000 ethnic groups is God's creation. God is present in all of them. Diversity is divinity distributed. When we see God in all of it, accept and appreciate it, our lives will begin to change.

So the second lesson that follows from the notion of diversity is that of inter-dependence. We are part of a universe that is inter-related and inter-dependent. Once I told a friend that the tree was in him and he gave me this funny look?

What do you mean? he asked. Whether you agree with it or not, whether you are aware of it or not, each time you take a breath, you are in communion with plants and trees. The plants receives CO2 from us and give us clean O2. If the trees didn't exist you won't. You are interconnected and interdependent. Once you become aware of this, you will start looking at plants and trees with new eyes.

If the plants don't do photosynthesis and give us O2, we are toast. But without the light from the sun, the plants will be helpless to produce O2. Without the heat from the sun there won't be much evaporation of the oceans. Without evaporation and formation of clouds, there won't be rain. Without rain, the plants wont grow and flourish. See how the whole thing is inter-related.

Let us take the case of the butterfly. The beautiful butterfly that we see freely flying around, was once a caterpillar. It all started when the butterfly laid a small egg on the leaf of a plant. God decided that the butterfly's egg should have a little sticky substance to it so that when it lays the egg on a leaf which tosses in the wind, the egg won't fall off and be destroyed. See how carefully God takes care of the minutest details of the life of a small butterfly. And you think he doesn't care about us humans who are created in the image and likeness of God?

The eggs of birds don't have any sticky substance on them because birds lay their eggs in secure nests. Butterfly don't have that luxury and so God makes special provisions for them. So the egg of the butterfly hatches and grows on the leaf by eating the leaf. So it is dependent on the leaf for its survival. Once it is viable, it moves to the branch of the tree and hangs there for 38 days until the process of metamorphosis is complete and the butterfly is born. Then it needs the nectar from the flowers which grow on plants and turn around and return to the plants to lay an egg on the leaf of that plant. You see the interdependence.

So interconnection and interdependence are inbuilt realities of the universe.

The plants and animals and and sun and moon and other stars of the universe understand that. Mother earth not only understands that , but functions as a safe abode for her creatures, that includes us. She accommodates the large elephants and and smallest ants, the poisonous snakes and the harmless reptiles, the tallest giraffe and the tiniest tortoise. Since it is tinny and close to the ground, God made sure it had a protective shell so that it won't be easily trampled and killed by bigger creatures.

So the plants and every other creature seem to understand the interconnection and interdependence on each other except us, humans. We are too smart. We create divisions between races, cultures and religions.

The root cause of our unhappiness and misery is the mistaken belief that we are separate from the earth and other humans. It is called separation illusion.

It is the thinking that as nations, religions, and races we are separate from other nations and religions and races and that we are better than others that our interests should be taken care of regardless of what happens to others.

I call this illusion because, if you really think about it you will find that we are not separate. Mother earth teaches us a lesson of interconnection and interdependence. You are never going to be happy and joyful in your earthly life, if you refuse to learn that lesson.

Let me share with you a personal story of how I experience that interconnection and interdependence on a daily basis and how it helps me to have a joyful life. I like you to hear it as a meditation.

In 2010, I had knee surgery for a torn meniscus. About six people were directly involved in my surgery; but about six billion were indirectly involved to make it all happen.

Now what do I mean by that? Early that morning, I took a shower in the water that was supplied by the city of Coral Springs. I was thinking of the thousands of people who were involved in the harnessing, purification and channeling of that water to my house on that particular street.

The people who manufactured the pipes that made that water flow safe. The companies that made the water purification chemicals. The people who made the hot water tank in my house; the technicians who installed it. The people in the company that made the shower head. The people at Home Depot who sold it to me. When I think like that, the number of people involved in giving me a hot shower that morning, multiplies by the thousands.

Remember, the the day has barely started, and millions are still going to be involved.

I was wearing a shirt that morning which was made in Bangladesh. The label said: Made in Bangladesh 100% cotton. Usually people don't pay attention to these things but I do, and I make it an occasion for prayer and it has a lot to do with the peace and joy I feel in my life.

I thought of the thousands of people who were involved in making that shirt, starting with the poor villagers who produced the cotton, a grandmother who might have woven that cotton into threads in a small factory in a remote village. Her emotions of fear, and hope or hopelessness have been woven into the threads that made my shirt which is now covering my body. I think of the people who made the machine that stitched my shirt together; the person who folded it, packed it, sealed and placed it on a truck to the nearest railway station. The fears, cares and energies of of all those people are part of the fabric I am wearing that day.

Then I think of the train that transported it to the nearest airport in Bangladesh and off to a cargo plain bound for Arkansas, the headquarters of Walmart. And from there, it is unloaded, coded and re-routed into a truck that goes a 1000 miles to a Walmart in Coral Springs. Think of the thousands of employees whose joint effort made that shirt appear on a rack, and I pick it up, pay for it with a credit card, issued by a bank that has another ten thousand employees, who make sure that Walmart is paid on my behalf. You see the endless connections with people that make it all possible.

I am only talking about the shirt now. The pants I am wearing that day has a story of its own. And don't start me with the Fruit of the Loom underwear.

The day has barely begun, and I have not gotten to the Surgery Center yet. My wife drives me there in a car that has 2200 different parts. Those 2200 parts of the car have been touched by the energy, imagination, and efforts of another million people, not here, but somewhere in Japan.

Then I walk into the Surgery Center, and there is the girl at the front desk, who registers me on a Dell Computer which has 5000 parts, that was made in China...and now another billion Chinese people are getting involved in my life that day.

Then I am taken into the prep room, and I am surrounded by half a dozen people, nurses, anesthesiologist, my doctor, recovery room personnel. I am thinking of all the people who are connected to them by extension, their families, friends, the communities they belong to etc.

Then they put me under, using this sedation medication that was manufactured in a medical lab in Nebraska, shipped via Fed Ex planes and a Fed Ex driver brings it to the facility. An unknown Fed Ex driver and all the people in his life have now gotten involved in my life.

And then there is this million dollar medical equipment with a zillion parts, lights, camera and laser beams that will make three holes on my knee, will probe the damaged area, and this doctor whom I have seen only twice in my entire life, will scrape it, repair it and and make it all right.

That morning, I was held tenderly and directly in the hands of six human beings, but I was indirectly supported and lovingly sustained by the energy of six billion people.

And the funny thing is that I was completely unconscious, totally at the mercy of a group of strangers.

May be not; they are strangers only in a superficial sense. In a deeper sense, they are my spiritual siblings, sharing a home planet. And it doesn't matter one of them was gay, another trans-gendered or another was Black or Hispanic...it doesn't' matter...they are all created in the image and likeness of God, all of them children of God.

This is just one scenario of a single human interaction. This happens in our lives, every day. You don't have to go into surgery to experience it. Where ever there is a human interaction or transaction, this scenario of interconnection and interdependence plays out all the time.

It is called unity consciousness. Unity with the entire humanity, and in that unity, divinity is contained.

Apostle Paul is teaching us the same earthly lesson, in today's reading about one body and many parts. Just as each body part is connected to and depended on the other, we are all connected to each other. And we are connected as members of the one body of Christ.

Any sense of selfishness, seclusion and separation is a wound in the body of Christ. Any sense of division, discord, and disunity is a rupture in the body of Christ. It is antithetical to the ethos of the earth which is a unified whole, inviting us to wholeness and holiness.

So let the unity of the universe help us experience unity within us, between us, and around us and inspire us to live as members of the body of Christ, experiencing heaven on earth.

Cosmic Kindergarten: Lesson 1. DIVERSITY IS DIVINITY DISTRIBUTED

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.

Cosmic Kindergarten: Earthly Lessons for a Heavenly Life

I am writing this on Earth Day 2019. Few years ago, I would not have noticed this day, or paid any attention to it, let alone write about it. So much has changed in my spiritual life that I consider earth day as important as Easter Sunday, Christmas day and many other religious holy days.

It is not because I am a new age guru, or a tree-huger or ardent environmentalist, which are usually used as pejorative terms. But, it is because, I have reflected deeply about the unfathomable beauty, mystery and magnificence of this moving, yes, moving blue dot in space which holds me up as God holds me tenderly in the palm of Her hands.

I have lived on earth 21,170 days and it has never failed to provide for me: air, water and food, the three most basic ingredients needed for my very existence. Thank you holy mother earth. As I walk gently on this holy ground, I join with prophet Isaiah this morning to say: “The whole earth proclaims the glory of God.”

Let us take a closer look at our home planet. We usually experience it as stationary, because that is what our five senses tell us. But if we could stop for a moment and reflect, we will realize that we are moving, rather spinning, and yet staying put...that is a huge mystery worthy of adoration itself.

The earth spins around her axis at the speed of 1,000 miles an hour at the equator. To spin around once takes 24 hours. The spinning makes our days and nights. But as we spin, we are also on another circle journey as we orbit round the sun. Traveling at the speed of 66,600 miles an hour, this second journey takes 365 days to complete. In the annual pilgrimage around the sun, we travel 595 million miles. Such an awareness of distance, speed and order creates a sense of awe and wonder.

Consider what it must have been like for astronaut Edgar Mitchell as he gazed down on the home planet and allowed his feelings to find words: On the return trip home, gazing 240,000 miles of space towards the stars and the planet from which I had come, I suddenly experienced the universe as intelligent, loving and harmonious. My view of the planet was a glimpse of divinity.

Perhaps what most of us need is a pilgrimage to outer space, to have our eyes and hearts opened afresh to see the sacredness behind and above the appearances and to reawaken that inner light buried beneath our limited ways of thinking.

It is worthy of note that Mitchell uses the word 'divinity' but not 'God'. God is a divisive term for many. Religions people fight over their own definitions of God and make declarations like, “My God is bigger than your God.” But, if we can speak of divinity it has an an all embracing quality to it. When we use 'divinity' instead of “God' what is at work here is 'spirituality' not 'religion.' And our goal is to evolve more each day as spiritual beings not merely as religious people.

When we see the earth as a whole, from outer space, we can clearly see the connection and interdependence of all of us who live upon this planet. We have created imaginary boundaries, dividing ourselves into countries and states, forgetting that in reality we are all living together, breathing the same air, drinking from the same water, eating food grown from the same earth. We share everything on this planet, whether we are conscious of it or not, with other people, and those people are our brothers and sisters. Seeing earth as a whole brings new meaning into Christian concepts like “Communion of Saints” and “Body of Christ.”

When we realize that any sense of separation we have from one another is truly an illusion, we will naturally begin to make more conscious choices in our daily lives. The simple act of preparing food, or deciding how to dispose of our refuse, can be done with the consciousness that whatever we do will affect all our brothers and sisters, no matter how far away they live, as well as the planet herself.

When we contemplate the earth in her wholeness, we see the bigger picture, which is, every one of us, living on her body. We are connected to one another in the most intimate way, because we literally share our living space. As we become aware of the reality of our interdependence, sins of racism, sexism, and homophobia will disappear and much of the discord that we see now will dissipate and we will live in a more harmonious world.

Let earth day inspire us to become holy and wholesome.

By learning the 10 lessons mother earth has taught me, I have been experiencing heaven on earth. These lessons are titled Cosmic Kindergarten: Earthly Lessons for a Heavenly Life. I will share them  with you in the days and weeks ahead. 

EMPOWEERING LIVES THRU TENacious DISCIPLESHIP

Before I talk about the sermon topic, I want to make a promise and a request. We are going through a time of transition. During the last few years our membership has been declining. It is not just our church that has been losing members. It is a national and international phenomenon. About 4000 churches are being closed every year in the USA. In many European countries, churches have been turned into museums.

The bottom line is that we cannot afford old ways of doing church. Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

So, I think we need a paradigm shift.

Paradigm shift means a “fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions.” An “important change that happens when the usual way of thinking about or doing something is replaced by a new or different way.”

Let me give you a example. Let's say you are sitting in the waiting room of the ER at Coral Springs Medical Center. You are sitting there looking at the TV or reading a book, or just trying to close your eyes. You notice two small children running around the room, climbing on chairs, spilling water from the water cooler, being noisy and disruptive. And the mother of this children is sitting in the corner, with her head down, and not paying attention to the unruly kids. She is not paying any attentionr to her children. And you are fuming. You are totally irritated. Under your breath, you are cursing the kids and judging the mother.

And then you find out that the young mother was sitting there processing the bad news that her husband had died in that hospital. That explains everything.

When you become aware of that new piece of information your thinking suddenly changes. You undergo a paradigm shift from a judgmental and irritable mind to a compassionate and loving mind.

Paradigm shift in religion is something like that. It is also called awakening or enlightenment. In the coming weeks and months, what I am going to propose is a paradigm shift in the way we think about God, and Jesus, bible, church, salvation, prayer, heaven, hell and christian spirituality in general.

And I know change is hard. And it will be harder if what I say challenges you to re-examine what you may have heard in a baptist church or a Lutheran church or Calvary chapel or from a TV preacher.

There could be some confusion and sense of loss. For example, if what the pastor says about God in Calvary chapel is right, then, what I say in this church might be wrong. If what I teach about heaven and hell is different from what Pat Robertson is teaching about the same topics, then one of us have to be wrong. Robertson is on TV, he wears expensive suits, he has millions of followers. I have none of that. So he must be right and I must be wrong.

Not necessarily. Let me tell you why. There are 30,102 verses in the bible. They were written about 3000 years ago, in a language neither me, Pat Robertson or any living pastors speak, in a culture none of us has lived in, from an era far removed and foreign to what we are living in today.

So it is not a question of who is right or wrong but how you interpret it. According to World Christian Encyclopedia, there are more than 33,000 Christian denominations in the world. That means there are 33000 different interpretations of the bible. If there was only one interpretation, there should only be one church.

There is no way we can examine the rightness or wrongness of the theology of that many denominations. We don't have to. What I am interested in is how to live by the one and only commandment of Jesus...love god and love your neighbor. How can we become loving, compassionate, joyful, peaceful human beings who experience the abundant life that Jesus promised and how to share that life with everyone we come into contact with. That is all I am concerned about.

So to prepare you to be open to new ways of being church, and to make sense of life in the midst of so many competing claims and contradictory interpretations, I promise you one thing: that everything I propose and implement will be based on three basic criteria.

Number one, it will be based on the New Testament especially the gospels because that is what our denomination, the DOC focuses on.

Number two, it will be fully faithful to the mind of Jesus. If anything I say here is against what Jesus would have said, I want you to challenge me.

Number three, everything I say and do will be in keeping with the theology of our denomination which is spelled out in this little book which I have studied. The more I read about the theology and practice of the Disciples of Christ the more I like it.

Along with my promise, I have a request of you. If you feel challenged by what I say, please come to me directly. Don't stand in the corner and complain. I am one of the most approachable people you will ever meet. Approach me via phone, text, messenger or face book. I will be happy to sit with you here in the office, at your home, at my home, at Starbucks, or anywhere else, to explain and clarify what I said. May be you will teach me something. May be I will return the favor. Let us grow together spiritually as one community.

Every successful organization has a vision. As proverbs 29.18 says: “Without a vision people perish.” Not having a vision is like driving without a map in a foreign country. You have no idea where you are going. Usually a clear vision can be often captured in one phrase of sentence. For example, our founding fathers envisioned the essence of this nation in just one powerful phrase: E Pluribus Unum (from many one).

15 minutes could save you 15%..you know which company that is without even mentioning its name. “The Ultimate driving machine” for 40 years BMW has thrived on that vision. “The happiest place on earth” (Disney) “All that is fit to print (NYT) “Democracy dies in darkness (WAPO)

In this day and age, when people have short attention span and no patience for more than 140 characters, we need a short phrase to express and explain, what we are about as a church.

After a lot of praying and meditation, I came up with this phrase:

Empowering lives through TENacious Discipleship.

A lot of Christian messaging I have heard about over the years, is about enslavement not about empowering. We are described as unworthy, wretched, sinners living in depravity.

Our plight is to somehow endure life on earth which is a valley of tears, and aim for salvation after we die. In that paradigm, we feel like victims, so powerless to do anything about our plight in life.

That is not what God wants for his children.

The primary purpose of the incarnation of Jesus into this world is not to die for our sins, but to empower us to be children of of God. That is what today's reading says: (Read John 1: 10-13)

To those who believed in him, Jesus gave them, the right, and the authority and the power to be children of god, children born not of human descent, but born of God. Jesus is saying to you today that you are born of God...either we don't pay attention to its meaning, or it is too much to bear...to think about ourselves as born of God.

Last week I told you of the story of Jim who found it extremely hard to believe that he was created in the image of god.

Today, let me tell you the story of another person who finds it hard to claim his divine potency. This happens to be my brother in law, John, one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. Two weeks ago, I had posted a message on face book requesting blessing for my new role as interim minister. And this is what my brother in law wrote:

You certainly have my prayers. As a layman, I don’t know if I’m qualified to give you a blessing unless you sneeze, so I’ll assume you did. Bless you Paul!

John is operating from the hierarchical system of the Catholic church where you have the Pope on the top, then you have the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests, deacons and lay people at the very bottom. The lay people have no merit, or status or capabilities. In that thinking you feel less than the priest or the pastor, personally unworthy and spiritually powerless.

Jesus did not call his followers lay people or servants. He called them friends (John 15:15). Jesus made no distinction between clergy and laity.

Jesus told his disciples to follow him. In order to follow somebody, we have to have the basic capacity within us to do that. For example, a cat cannot follow a bird, because the cat does not have the capacity to fly. For the same reason, a fish cannot follow a cow.

Let's say I have to take my car for repairs to a dealership in Coconut Creek. So I tell my wife Judy to follow me to the dealership. I don't expect her to walk behind my car. It is assumed she will drive her car because she has the capacity to do that.

When Jesus asked his disciples to follow him, he knew that they are capable of doing it. They did it with the power that God gave them to do it. That is what made Apostle Paul to proclaim: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13)

We can do it too, but we have to engage in tenacious discipleship, which means, persistent, tireless, steadfast, untiring, unwavering, unyielding discipleship. In addition to that meaning, I have used tenacious as a play on words.

Tenacious discipleship has to be a conscious discipleship. We have to make a conscious choice to follow Jesus, through consistent practice of prayer, meditation, scripture reading and communal worship. There are ten principles that will make our discipleship tenacious and conscious. That is why TENacious is typed with TEN in capital letters. I hope to explain each of those principles in ten upcoming sermons.

Let me end with these parting words of Jesus: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12)

Jesus wants us to do greater things than he hid. And we say, no way, that is impossible, because we are sinners. And Jesus says, yes way, because I am going to empower you to do that.

This week, I like you to repeat these words several times, every day:

I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me.

YOUR DIVINE DNA

Today I like to talk to you about the meaning of that sign at the entrance to our sanctuary. Welcome Home. If you came here looking for God, realize that God arrives when you walk thru the door.

Understanding, believing and living the meaning of those words could change your life...it changed mine.


Jesus talks about the Kingdom of Haven as a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, in his joy, he went and sold all he had and bought the field (Mt.13:44). It took me 45 years to find the treasure and buy the field. Life has never been the same.


Notice the words: it is a treasure; it is hidden and you have to find it. Until you find it, you will never let go of what you are holding on to.


Until about the age of 45, I was like that man holding on to things I had—lesser quality treasures like occasional happiness, transient peace, momentary pleasures, temporary satisfaction etc. Peace and joy were not default settings of my life. I was cutting and pasting them depending on daily experiences and events. Everything would be okay, until something bad or negative happened to me or around me. Then my world would fall apart. And I would go into this depressive mood of being under the spell of a pervasive sadness and irritaton about life. And it would last for a few hours or few days depending on what had precipitated it. Then I would be happy again, until the next shoe of negative experience drops.


That changed when I became aware of the divine DNA within me. I am now mostly joyful and peaceful all the time, regardless of the circumstances in my life. Just like you, I am exposed to the misfortunes and tragedies of the world such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fire, poverty, gun violence , wars, racism, terrorism, and everything else on cable channels. I can think of at least half a dozen personal things in my life that should erase the smile on my face and drain the joy out of my heart, and cause me stress and anxiety. But I am not stressed out. I m not anxious.


I am talking about having the peace of Christ that passeth all understanding, the joy that supersedes the sorrows of life. It comes from a deeper place where my inner being is connected to the Supreme Being. Where the divine spark within me removes the shadow of sadness. Where the power of the Higher Self snubs out the sinful inclinations of my lower self. Where my individual soul is intimately connected to the Universal Soul. In that scenario, nothing can wrong because I am living from my soul, not from my ego.


It is available, and attainable to all of you. I like to teach you how to unlock the power that is already within you by acknowledging, accepting and celebrating the divine DNA. You don't have to work hard to attain union with God, because you have already got it. You don't have to establish a relationship with God, you only have to be aware of it. You don't have to go to god, you are already there.


It won't happen with one Sunday sermon. For some it might happen, but I will be here Sunday after Sunday talking about this at least for a year, and if you are open to the Holy Spirit, one day it will hit you and your life will never be the same again. The welcome sign was designed with that goal in mind. It is an invitation to come home to yourself, the dwelling place of the Holy.
So how do the words of that welcome sign radically change your life? Before I get to that, let me tell you how excited I am about it. As part of articulating my vision for this church, it was the first thing I talked about in our elders meeting, and I was not officially the interim minister yet. Alice knows about it because I put a little pressure on her to get the sign done before my inaugural Sunday, and she made it happen. When I texted Alice, thanking her for her efficient work, she texted back: “don't get used to it.”


The elders approved it on a Monday night, Alice sent it to Steve Sikora on Tuesday morning, and Steve delivered it Thursday after noon and Thursday evening Alice and Daryl put it up there.


I am so excited about its meaning because it tells you that you come to church not to meet god who is waiting for you here, but to awaken and celebrate the god who is already within you. It is a reminder that you are a part of god, not apart from God.

In John 10:34, Jesus answered them, “is it not written in your Law, “I have said you are gods?”

In the 4^rd century, St. Athanasius, a Father of the Church said this: “God became man so that man might become God.” German mystic Meister Eckart calls it deiformity, the conformity of our lives to that of God's.

There are many people who think that it is a minority opinion bordering on blasphemy. In our elders meeting Mike brought it up. He said, that is a tall order. I cannot see myself as part of god, because I know my sinfulness and my weaknesses. Mike is not alone in this. In fact 99 percent of Christians feel like that.


Let me tell you a story to illustrate how difficult it is for people to acknowledge and accept the truth that they are part of God.


Yeas ago, I needed to make a personal website and being computer illiterate, I had no idea how to do that. I heard about this guy, his name was Jim, who had this special affection for married priests like me and he offered to design a website for me as a favor. I was so appreciative of it and so I invited him for dinner to our house. So Jim and his wife Maria came for dinner. Jim was a retired engineer and Maria was a retired high school teacher.


We had a great visit, during which we talked about faith, family, church, religion, bible, spirituality. Both of them are former Catholics but called themselves NPCs. Non Practicing Catholics. I gave them a copy of my book titled God is Plural and that generated a discussion of its own. They were very curious about that title because they always thought that there was only one god. That is a whole new sermon I have to preach one day. At the end of the dinner, Maria asked me: “So how do we see God's image in everyone, especially in people who irritate us, such as bad drivers or annoying neighbors?”  I told her that she had to read the whole book!

So my dinner guests thanked us, gave us big hugs and went on their merry way.  The next day, I got a nice e-mail from Jim thanking me for the sumptuous dinner and the warm hospitality.

I wrote back, once again expressing my gratitude for designing a free website, and I ended the email with these words: In my thinking, Maria and you are two more images of God consciously added to my collection, to make my image of God larger and more complete.


I was sad and surprised by Jim's response the next day: He wrote: I never thought that Maria and I or ANYONE for that matter, could be images of God--although I have heard that phrase, “Made in God's image--my whole life...thinking about that brings a smile to my lips.


Here is a 67 year old man, very intelligent and highly accomplished. He was a systems engineer at IBM for 29 years, and a senior engineer at Boeing for 15 years; married for 46 years with three children and ten grand children. He has traveled extensively and lived in several cities due to job related transfers.  Born and raised Catholic, he was baptized as a baby, received first communion at age 10, was confirmed at 14, and attended Mass faithfully every Sunday. He has listened to thousands of sermons, read the bible a few times, and read several spiritual books. We are not talking about an “average religious Joe” here.


And yet, and yet, he never thought or believed that he could be an image of God! You know what?  If you don't consider yourself an image of God, you are unlikely to see people around you as images of God because what you see out there, is a reflection of your inside! Like philosopher Nietzsche, if you believe that “hell is other people,” you are likely to see hell in front of you, and create hell for others. If you believe that other people are images of God, you are likely to treat them with respect and compassion.


Why didn't Jim who is a very religious man, a life-long Catholic, never thought he or his wife or anyone could be images of God? He admits to hearing it thousands of times. Why didn't he believe it?  Why is it so hard to believe that, for many people?


One reason is that many pastors don't believe it or preach about it. The fact that we are part of God is too good to be true. It is a frightening possibility because they are focusing on the mighty God of Moses who appeared in the burning bush, refusing to show his face or reveal his name. They are not thinking of the God of Jesus who is a loving father who shares his divine genes with us his children.


To prove that we are weak sinners, unworthy of god, they quote Augustine's theory of “original sin.” They quote Calvin who talked about our “total depravity” or Martin Luther who wrote: “Humans are like piles of manure, covered over by Christ.”


I am not denying the existence of our sinful self or discounting our propensity and capacity for doing evil things. There is definitely an aspect of our humanity that is weak, dark, frail, fickle, faithless and faint. But there is another aspect to our humanity that is beautiful, wonderful, magnificent, something that is “fearfully and wonderfully made.” I invite you to focus on the latter without ignoring the former.

Your primary identity is not that you are a sinner; your primary identity is that you are a saint; Awaken to it, own it; manifest it; your life will change.


Almost every letter of Apostle Paul begins with this greeting:
To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:
To the church of God in Corinth, together with all the saints throughout Achaia:
To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus:
To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi:
To the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colosse:


Paul could have addressed them “my brothers in Christ,” or “my fellow disciples,” or “my dear servants of Christ,” or “my dear Christians.” But he didn't. He called them saints. Paul knew that there were bad people in those communities. In Corinth for example he had to deal with people who were idol worshipers, institgators, liars and cheaters. He still called them saints...


If apostle Paul were to write a letter to us today, it would begin with these words: To all the saints at Royal Palm Christians Churh in Coral Springs, Florida. It is an aspirational title. We are not there yet...but we should not stop from aspiring to get there. Believing that you are callled to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect, is the first step of that journey.


So you can focus on your sinful humanity and live like a victim, feeling badly, struggling endlessly and suffering needlessly. Such a life will be largely devoid of joy, and filled with irritations, frustrations, and lack of fulfillment.


Or you can awaken to your innate divinity, acknowledge your identity as a spiritual being and celebrate that divinity displayed all around you. Then you will be living the abundant life that Jesus promised.


Christianity is not the only region that teaches the unity of god and man. According to the Hindu scriptures, there is no duality between divinity and humanity. The Hindu phrase Aham-Brahmasmiti (Brahman is within me) points to that truth.


I like to end with the words from a letter that Rabindranath Tagore wrote to a friend after his visit. Tagore was an Indian poet and mystic, the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. He wrote to his friend: “After you had taken your leave, I found God’s footprints on my floor.”


So, the question this morning is this: Do you leave God’s foot prints where ever you go?