On God and Oil

The eye with which you see God, is the same eye with which God sees  you. (Adapted from M.  Eckhart)

I started out on this journey by saying that we need a revolution in ecology, economy, community and faith. I've touched a good deal in this blog on the ecology and the economy part. I've scratched the surface when it comes to community, but I don't think I've even skimmed it when it comes to faith. That has to change because this is a major area of concern in our current spiritual world climate where people are killing each other over questions of faith or using faith as an excuse for subjugating, disenfranchising or discriminating against others.  

While it is not my intention to offend anyone,  I have to speak to my convictions and my beliefs. I'm just going to lay this out there the way I see it. Everyone is free to make of it what they will and take from it what they will. So here it is folks. We need to wake up and realize that we are all like blind men fighting over the appearance of an elephant. Each one "sees" what he believes to be the whole, but his perception is limited and he does not see all. A comparative study of major religions will find that, on the key points and principles, there are more similarities than there are differences. While one group worships many gods, they see that these gods are all aspects of one God. While another group sees God as one, they recognize his roll as protector, redeemer, one who sustains you through your trials, avenger of wrongs, guiding light.....etc. and so on.  And we take it further, to the point where those who believe in one God must fight with each other because they disagree on how he should be worshiped. Have we completely missed the point of the message? When you boil it all down, isn't the message of all faiths that we should love God and love our neighbor as ourselves?  If  you truly believe that, how can you degrade, subjugate, disenfranchise, discriminate against and God forbid... harm or kill your neighbor? 

The truth is that while we hear that people are killing one another over their faith, this is only partially true. They are killing each other over power and access to power and much if not all of that is driven by wealth or access to wealth which in turn is driven by our oil saturated economy. This oil saturated economy is a global phenomena, so I feel justified in using "our". Demand for oil's outputs (fuel, fertilizer, plastics, clothing, food.....it seems like everything we touch these days is tainted with oil) may be highest in developed countries, but the negative impacts of this oil greedy culture are felt the most in the oil producing developing nations.

How many beauty pageant contestants and essayist have dreamed of "world peace". If so many people really want world peace why haven't we achieved it yet? Because we are putting the cart before the horse. Because we are treating the symptom rather than the disease. We have rampant poverty, social stratification and wealth disparity, between the first and third world and within each of these. We are not going to have peace while a minority of people grab power for themselves and step on the necks of everyone who gets in their way. We are not going to have peace while we continue to fight over an ever dwindling pool of resources. We are not going to have peace while some of us continue to take more than our fair share. 

So what can we do about it? We need to STOP and reassess our personal consumption habits. we need to do a true needs assessment and learn to live within our means, and I don't just mean within your personal household budgets. I mean we need to realize that on this finite planet there is a finite amount of everything that must be shared among all of us, and we need to look at what we are consuming and ask ourselves if it is really needed and if we are taking more than our share from the resources which belong to ALL of earth's creatures, not just to the ones with the biggest bank accounts and the most guns. We need to wake up to the fact that everything in our daily lives is saturated in fossil fuels, particularly oil, and we need to start looking for alternatives. It might help to stop and remember that we have been exploiting oil in the current fashion only for a little more than a hundred years. For the ten thousand years of recorded human history before that we survived and even thrived at times without it. And we need to remember that we will have to do so again, in a future that is far less distant than many of us think. Let's revive some of the tried and true method of human survival and invent some new less energy intensive methods to see us through the next ten thousand years.

Walk lightly, live lightly, shine brightly!