Horizons Magazine

More about Andrea

DECEMBER 2003
Your beliefs influence your perception of reality, "intention" causes
movement of sub-atomic particles, the 10 Commandment judge,
a fish doesn't have to believe in the ocean.

Hello and welcome to the December 2003 issue of Horizons Magazine. As I write this,
 we've had some good rains this week and I can see the pine woods to the west of me
growing back after being burned to the ground in June. As it grows back, I've been taking
strolls through the property, deciding where I might help Mother Nature fill in some bare spots. I've decided to move dozens of loquat seedlings to the border of my west woods, and I'm beginning to design the paths and walkways so as it grows over, I don't have to step over roots and palmettos as I've always done. It's been a hot, humid summer and, as usual, I've enjoyed the outside from the inside, staying in the air conditioning until the weather cools off. This means the palmettos and shrubbery have had a good five months to get a foothold, when common sense told me I should have been out every few days, pruning a little here, trimming a little here. Every single time, I used the heat and humidity as an excuse not to do it, even though I knew it was in my best interest to take the few minutes daily to keep up with it. I know it's the everyday attention that makes anything flourish and keep blooming.

I live next door to a magical elfin couple named Doug & Trish, and everything they touch blooms and bears fruit. Doug goes around every day, taking a quick lap around his property, doing a little pruning here, a little watering here, a little transplanting here, a little clearing here. The result years later is an awesome controlled landscape that perpetuates itself. I'm the type of person to plant something, give it lots of attention in the beginning and then slowly move on to the next fun project and leave it to fend for itself. I can see ex-boyfriends everywhere nodding their heads in agreement :) Sometimes I get amazingly good results, and sometimes I lose something I later wished I'd cared more for. Anyone ever had that happen? Ouch!

So I was walking around in my former west woods - which is now my west palmetto field - after the fire in June burned it to the ground, and I noticed the sumac was growing back a lot faster than I thought it grew. I began pulling up some of the plants, to make way for my paths in and out of what would next year be woods again. I noticed it was very hard to pull the knee-high and taller ones up, and upon closer inspection I find they are all connected underneath by a weblike maze of connected root system.

This makes me have to rethink my pulling up of plants! Now I have to take into consideration that when I pull up a plant here, it affects the line of roots going to that network of plants over there. I'm disturbing its food source, and making it have to fend for itself. Am I liberating it, or am I condemning it to a starvation death?

My yard has a great ecosystem going. Doug & Trish and I are all connected via footpaths through our respective woods, and between us all we own about half the block we live on. A lot of wildlife moves through the property and at night we routinely hear raccoons, armadillos, possums, squirrels, owls, woodpeckers, even the occasional fox or deer.

During the day you can always see birds and lizards and butterflies, bunnies, garden snakes and caterpillars and moths, it's quite a nature scene going on. My kitties are in heaven, and take great sport in trying to waddle their fuzzy fat butts up a tree for the occasional slow squirrel. The good news is they seldom catch anything - at least when I'm watching!

Speaking of watching, I watched the news this morning and the day this went to press, the big headline was that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was removed from office for refusing to obey a federal court order to move his Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state courthouse. A defiant Moore told supporters he had only publicly acknowledged God and did nothing to violate judicial ethics. Listening to Moore talk, you believe he is speaking what he believes to be true. In his frenzy of narrow-minded focus, it totally escaped his notice that it was his public refusal to obey a court order that was the issue, and his behavior undercut the entire workings of the judicial system he had sworn to uphold.

In his frenzy, he missed the entire point, claiming religious persecution. Despite what he was being told, all he could hear was that God was being kept out of the courtroom. And that was not the case. Plus, it was not ?God? who was being kept out, rather it was Moore's version of the Ten Commandments from the King James version of the Old Testament of the Bible that was being kept out. It was that version of that book that Moore had been programmed to believe represented - without question - the inerrant 'word' of God.

I am NOT a Bible basher, but even various religious groups can't agree on which version of the Bible is the 'real? word of God. Some say the American Standard edition is the inerrant Word of God. For others, it is the Revised Standard edition. Oothers, the New American Standard. What about the International Standard? There are many differences between the versions - who decides which is the REAL inerrant word of God? Judge Moore really does not see that it is NOT God who is being banned, but rather the display of a particular set of rules of a particular religious group, to the exclusion of others.

He really, really doesn't get that if you put up the moral laws from one religion, it's only fair to give equal say to other religions as well. Courthouses could get pretty crowded if they all displayed the 10 Commandments of Western Christianity. the 10 Declarations of Judaism, The 9 Noble Virtues of Asatru, the 8 Noble Truths of the Buddhists, the 3 principles of the Bahai Faith, the Wiccan Rede, sections of the Avesta of Zoastrianism, the Bhagavad Gita, the I Ching of Confucianism? you get the drift. Might Moore be offended if he was asked to recite a Native American prayer or the Heart Sutra if those were not part of his culture and upbringing?

This is America, the land of the free, and we are a diverse people, from many nations, from all cultures. There are many people like Moore who were brought up in one religion, and all they know is that one religion. They have been taught that unless you believe as they do, you are destined to eternal damnation. They really believe that. That has been drummed into them from birth. For many, they really do not know that other religions exist. They certainly don't know that what they are doing is imposing their own religious views on others. They don't understand that concept. All they know is what they've been told.
 
With the advent of the internet and free access to research and educate ourselves on our own, many people are discovering for the first time that what they had been told to believe is not necessarily 'the truth.' Many people are in their 30's, 40's, 50's and even 60's before they realize that others have valid viewpoints and all religions contain truths. Many fundamentalist Christian students are forbidden by their parents to take comparative religion courses. Yikes! It is not always the fault of the child. Truly the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children in cases like this, generation after generation.

And we can't blame Moore for thinking as he does. This is a man who grew up in a very conservative religion and was told from Day One what to believe and what was morally right and what was morally wrong. And he believed what he was told. And he thought he was doing the right thing. And most likely, the people who programmed him also thought they were 'doing the right thing.' They grew up being taught there was one way and that their way was God's way. I'm not kidding. This is serious stuff.
In this modern day, anyone with a tv or computer can learn about other cultures and religions, but Moore is of the generation that it was all word of mouth. And anyone who's played that party game of going around the circle, repeating a sentence, knows that what comes out the other end by the last person is seldom anywhere near what the original phrase was.
He's no different than, say, the white supremacists, who are also a product of their own closeknit society. Being so closeknit, they rarely come in contact with opposing points of view, so there is seldom occasion to contemplate anything other than what they've been taught.

In many fundamentalist religions, they are given passages to memorize, and they are taught that it is their duty to memorize these passages so they can 'set others straight.' Lotsa people memorize enormous amounts of scripture and can cite you chapter and verse. But when you ask them what it means to them, they are at a loss for words. Their answer is "It's in the Bible/Koran/Torah.? They've been taught that their Bible/Koran/Torah - whatever the principal scripture of their religion is - is the final say of the word of God. They thus are taught to halt unfamiliar topics of discussion with the admonition that: If it's not in the Bible/Koran/Torah, then God did not say it and it's not the truth. That can be an effective conversation stopper.
I hesitated to write on this topic because I wasn't sure I could adequately express my thoughts about it. I did a quick search on the internet to see if I could find someone who was able to express it effectively. At www.screaming-penguin.com, it was posted: ?Judge Moore said on The O'reilly Factor that the U.S. was founded based on the laws of God. Regardless of your religious views, it's not what the founding of the United States was about. The framers of this nation and the Constitution made it clear they wanted church and state separated for many reasons; discrimination chief among them. You can't pick one religion over other religions and have anything fair about a system. You also can't put the religious above the non religious, which, despite the spin modern rightwing conservatives put on things, many of the framers of the Constitution were. That is, they were non religious or even atheists (read Common Sense by Thomas Paine, one of the most important founders of this nation.) The Constitution of the United States of America does not have the word "God" in it, and also it clearly states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." These are not unclear or ambiguous terms - no religion is part of government - period.

But these are not the things that Judge Moore was taught. My point here is, we can't always blame the wrongdoer. If we're to live in harmony in this world, it helps to cultivate compassion and the sense of 'there but for the Grace of God, go I.' We, too, have been misunderstood and maligned unfairly. We didn't know any better. If we knew better, we'd do better.

One condition necessary for opening the mind is to realize that we all have personal and cultural beliefs and assumptions that influence our perceptions of reality. Only by leaving our prejudices at the door can we minimize those biases so that we are able to see what is.

It is known in physics that intention moves sub-atomic particles. The researcher's beliefs, theories and intentions will determine what they see and experience, and determine the outcome of the experiment. Just so, if we have our mind made up about something, we are not going into it objectively, and the results we see will be skewed according to our personal perception and prejudices.

Judge Moore - and many others - don't know their perception is distorted. They think that what they see - and how they see it - is what IS. And they feel it's their duty to set others straight. Just as many of us feel it's our duty to set others straight. For their own good, of course... *hehe*

My thoughts on that are: as soon as I remove the beam in my own eye, maybe then I can see clearly to cast the mote from another's eye. Until then, maybe I'll just pretend everyone is doing the best they know how, and treat them as such. Plus, I don't care if someone doesn't believe as I do. A fish doesn't hafta believe in the ocean.

Have a joyous holiday season. Enjoy our offering this month. Hari Om.