Expect a Miracle

"I am realistic.  I expect miracles." ~ Dr. Wayne Dyer

The other day, a friend told me a family she knows in Oregon packed up all of their belongings and headed for the hills, to an undisclosed location, the apocalypse deemed near.

And we are faced with a humanitarian crisis of untold proportions, as desperate refugees flood into Europe.  Barbaric extremists desecrate human life and human history, running amok.

The world is in crisis again. 

This morning, at Dawn.

What is the answer?

The first answer is to Love and to demonstrate Love, in whatever way we can.  Some Germans are showing the way.  And so is Pope Francis.

The Greater Answer, which is derived from Love, as all things must be, is to take it even Higher.

How about expecting a Miracle? 

Is this the New Earth or not?  We have a choice.  Miracles are Real.

Almost...

"There is always a gap between intention and action." ~ Paulo Coelho

In the two or three months before Christmas, every time I went to a particular grocery store, they would ask me if I was collecting stamps for some sort of promotional program.  I always would say "Yes".  Because "Why not?"

One day last week, I noticed the woman in front of me apparently retrieving her stamps for a rather ugly serving dish, too small to do much serving.  It looked rather useless actually.

But when I got up to the register, I asked when I needed to retrieve my stamps.  "Tomorrow is the last day."

So what did I do?  I spent who knows how much time (maybe an hour?) looking for stamps obscurely stashed away in my kitchen (though I thought I had stashed them all in the same obscure place), carefully placing them one by one by one by one in little squares on a sheet I also managed to somehow find.  For 50 stamps (equating to $1000 in groceries, I think), I'd get some sort of a pan, after all, "a $14.99 value".

I didn't bother to count the stamps before I put them on the sheet.  But I saw my destination...42, 43, 44.........45...........................46...................................................

No more stamps.

I probably spent 15 minutes at least looking for 4 more stamps in my kitchen.

The sheet said I could pay $7.99 for the $14.99 pan with what I had.  Why?

And that's the question, isn't it?  Why?

I never did find the other stamps.  I would have liked to take a picture of the sheet I so carefully filled out, give it a useful purpose, but it's long gone with the recycling.

Sometimes the goals we set are not really that important.  Sometimes they are.  And sometimes it's the intent that matters most of all.

I fell asleep last night before I could write the "sheet of stickers" post already in my head, my laptop literally in my lap as I dozed off (and I forgot when I awakened and then went back to sleep for real).  I had thought I might blog every day, but my body overruled me.  When the dog awakened me just now, as she does early in the morning, I required myself to write, my "resolution" shattered.  Why?  It's really the intent that matters.  Time to get more needed rest...still, I'm kind of stubborn about such things (which is why I "almost" filled that silly sheet)...I may write twice today... ;-)  I won't require myself to post a picture now...it went out in the recycling.

The End of Mindless "Justice"

For quite some time, I have been pondering the way justice is handled in our society, and I have become ever more convinced that what is often viewed as "justice" has more to do with mindless vengeance and fear than what could truly be considered just.

It is ironic that as I was about to express my thoughts on what I really feel is one of the most important topics impacting the world today, the following article just happened to be highlighted on Yahoo: Many willing to cut Afghan shooting suspect slack.

People are apparently concerned that the mental state of Robert Bales, shell-shocked from seemingly endless deployments, questionably "recovered" from a severe head injury and potentially suffering PTSD from the shock of a comrade's brutal dismemberment, may have resulted in a situation that spiraled beyond his behavioral control. This particular case is of course exceedingly complex because an entire war may depend upon the outcome, yet that alone exemplifies why justice is often skewed by circumstance, in this case no doubt to the extreme.

This is not about questioning that a brutal, horrendous act was committed. And the real question we find before us is not just what happened to the mental state of Robert Bales. The real question is if we should be highlighting the state of impairment of the accused in every single case before the courts, no matter what results from such impairment. Is it ever truly just to convict someone based on behavior they could not control? Or is that more a matter of vengeance and fear than true justice? If a shell-shocked soldier from another country had done the same to us, could we feel the same empathy?

An acquaintance a while back told me a very sad story of a relative in prison for speeding and accidentally hitting another car, resulting in a tragedy. Was this person any more guilty than the countless people who speed every day, yet happen to hit no one? Yet vengeance demands "justice" because "somebody has to pay".

Age-old traditions have taught us paths of vengeance and fear, of culpability and punishment far more severe than the intent of the offense. Perhaps the time has come for more people to have the moral courage to clearly convey what justice is and what it is not.

I believe it's time to rid ourselves of "somebody has to pay". Almost all human tragedy and strife has resulted from that mindless statement. More and more of us believe "somebody has to understand", "somebody has to heal" and "somebody has to forgive" are the statements a higher consciousness society would substitute instead. Imagine a society where there is NO "punishment" to fit the crime because punishment itself has become obsolete, replaced by restoration.

It will take a quantum leap to get there. I believe one is in our midst. The surprising outpouring of empathy for Robert Bales is only the beginning...