Reflection
To follow Jesus means to be moved as he was by injustice, to see through the ignorance and selfishness that have brought us to this moment, and to do all we can to work with those who are trying to bring us all to a new consciousness. This is a personal journey but not an isolated one. We are called to an awareness of our emergence from the same Source and our kinship with all that is. The Spirit of God is always the Spirit of communion not only with our human sisters and brothers but also with all creation. Understanding this leads to love and compassion. We feel the suffering of those we will never see. We are moved by the hunger of children, the suffering of victims of war and brutality, the loneliness of those who are sick, aged or abandoned, the pain of animals who are harmed by our lack of reverence for them and threatened by our selfish use of what sustains them, and of Earth which we use and abuse. Having come to a a deep awareness that we are all one, we cannot view these things with indifference.
Prayer
Come Holy Spirit and renew the face of the earth.
Action
Reflect on the spiritual implications of “neighbor”. How can my perspectives and actions reflect a fuller understanding of the respect and compassion due to all life?
Suggested Reading
In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to God’s purpose.
Romans 8:26–28
Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.
Pope John XXIII
All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.
Tahereh Mafi
While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.
Chinua Achebe
Our mission is bringing forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence on Planet Earth.
Awakening the Dreamer Initiative
The story of the universe is now being told…We begin to understand our human identity with all other modes of existence that constitute with us the single universe community. The one story includes us all. We are everyone cousins of one another. Every being is intimately present to and is influencing every other being.
Thomas Berry
The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Look out into the universe and contemplate the glory of God. Observe the stars, millions of them, twinkling in the night sky, all with a message of unity, part of the very nature of God.
Sai Baba
I believe the fundamental work of this time — work that requires the participation of all of us — is to discover new ways of ‘being together.
Margaret J. Wheatley
The great human problem of evil stems from the illusion of separateness. Whenever this illusion is overcome, we behave lovingly to one another.
Barbara Marx Hubbard
The more a person becomes spiritually minded or advances towards
God, the more tolerant he becomes and the less differentiation he sees.
Meher Baba
The human being is part of the whole, called by us the ‘universe’,
a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts
and feelings, as something separate from the rest — a kind of optical
delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein
True compassion means not only feeling another’s pain but also being moved to help relieve it.
Daniel Goleman
The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
Arthur Schopenhauer