When I was little and I was riding in the car with my family, someone would see something and point to it outside of the car. I would look for it and often miss whatever was being pointed to before we had passed it. It became frustrating. I guess it was understandable. After all, I was the youngest. I might have been sitting lower in the car, or some other factor may have made it less likely for me to see whatever was going by. Over time, I think I gave up on trying.

As I grew up I began to rely upon other people’s points of view to see. I would go to other people to tell me what they thought, or I would go to a book to give me the truth of a thing. I had little confidence in my own vision. And I think the physical use of the eyes is just a more basic level of a use of the eyes that involves a higher use of the brain and spirit: vision, the ability to look forward and look with courage, foresight. . . and those are certainly related to discernment and wisdom.

It has been time for many reasons in my life for me to begin to use my own eyes to see. It is frightening. I don’t always want to see the truth. Just look at the entry I posted just a couple of days ago. Life can be very frightening. But I can choose to see, and then vision where I want to go and what I want to do, or I can ride along passively with the wave that I am already on.

Yesterday I was at a meeting with some of the people at the Alliance for Sustainable Communities. We were discussing the issue of mobilizing people towards change. One of the people said something then that really touched a chord for me. People aren’t going to go forward into a void. They need a vision of where they are going before they are going to leave an old paradigm, an old belief system about the way things need to be. Yes, it does look pretty bleak in our world today. The problems are so multifaceted and interconnected it seems like a straitjacket that we can’t get out of. But answers are blooming at the same time all around us. Why haven’t I even thought about that?

OK. The economy has some major flaws. There may come a time when we can’t rely upon the banks. Maybe the grocery stores may reach a point where they don’t have the ability to bring food to us from far away. Maybe many of us will be losing our jobs. Maybe gasoline may become too expensive. Maybe oil for heating our homes may become too expensive.

The political arena has had some real challenges for a long time. There has been so much corruption for so long, once you get into that system it seems that making changes becomes a continuous give and take of compromise where one hand is supposed to wash the other even though it should be so clear what is right and what is wrong.

The corporate world has been aiming at shareholder profits to the exclusion of everything else since that word “corporation” was first defined. We are seeing the results of that in the narrow focus on selling, selling selling and the ultimate use of the media to hypnotize our culture into buying buying and buying bigger and more.

We each have answers. If we can learn to work together, we can put those answers together into a cohesive whole. It is too multifaceted for any one of us. That is why the answer lies in working together. We can re-create our economy, from the bottom up if necessary. There already exist cooperative banks. There are organizations that are active here in the Lehigh Valley which bring together local businesses who can and do attempt to support each other. There is a group involved in trying to get local farmers together with those who would buy food from them here in the Valley, restaurants, the local food coop which is forming, and other organizations as well. There are people in this area involved in farming which is not so dependent upon the use of pesticides and fossil fuels in other forms. There are many organizations through which people are coming together to solve all of these problems and others. We just need to get over our fears and reach out. And add to the visioning.

There is hope. There really is. Thank you all for helping me to have the courage to see. Please feel free to let me know what you think the answers are.

Technorati Tags: answers, hope, Vision

tagged: answers, hope, Vision

Posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 9:27 am under Spirit and tagged: answers, hope, Vision.
Comment RSS 2.0 feed. Comment, or trackback.