This is an 800 year old tree in France. At some time it was struck by lightening and the amazing hollowed out area was the result. It has made an outstanding church.

I have been aware of a large increase in violence and mean-spirited debating lately. Everyone is right and everyone else is wrong. Because I consider myself a child of the Universe, I find this to be distressing. What does it mean to be a child of this universe we live in? To me it means that I acknowledge the right of someone to disagree with me and to express it. It means that I frequently to within to the inner landscape to experience the love of Divinity. I honor the Divinity within myself and others. I don’t “have the way” and I do not think your way is wrong.

My prayer for today is: “To raise us above the distinctions and differences which divide us”.

The Fundamental Truth
——Marge Piercy

“The Christian right, Islamic Jihad,
the Jewish Right Bank settlers bringing
the Messiah down, the Japanese sects
who worship by bombing subways,
they all hate each other.
but more they hate the mundane,
ordinary people who love living
more than dying in radiant glory,
who shuffle and sigh and bake bread.

They need a planet of their own,
perhaps even a barren moon
with artificial atmosphere,
where they will surely be nearer
to their gods and their fiercest
enemies, where they can kill
to their heart’s peace
kill to the last standing man
and leave the rest of us be.

Not mystics to whom the holy
comes in the core of struggle
in a shimmer of blinding quiet,
not scholars haggling out the inner
meaning of gnarly ancient sentences.
No, the holy comes to these zealots
as license to kill, for self-doubt
and humility have dried like mud
under their marching feet.

They have far more in common
with each other, these braggarts
of hatred, the iron hearted
in whose ear a voice spoke
once and left them deaf.
Their faith is founded on death
of others, and everyone is other
to them, whose Torah is splattered
in letters of blood.”

So I am constantly turning from hatred to love and hoping that as love shines from my heart, others will notice and feel peace.

“It is good to love many things,
for therein lies the true strength,
and whosoever loves much
and performs much,
and can accomplish much,
and what is done in love
is well done”!
—-Vincent Van Gogh