My grandparents were peasants--farmworkers who owned small farms. The dictionary defines peasants as 'unsophisticated country persons' and 'farmworkers.' The word 'pagan' originally meant 'peasant' until early Christian leaders redefined it to mean 'heathen,' which meant anyone who did not accept their particular religion. But I use the term 'peasant' as an honorofic rather than a pejorative....
My ancestors, like many of yours, came from elsewhere because elsewhere didn't work for them. Their descendants, my family, are now shoved up against the Pacific Ocean in California, gazing into the future with nowhere else to go to find something better. There are no more escapes to new frontiers and a better life.
And because there will always be those who wish to reimpose the harmful belief systems and harsh conditions our ancestors escaped from, we have no choice now but to turn, hunker down, and work for what is best where we now find ourselves....
Looking at the sophistication and technical skills that we may have attained, we have to ask, what sort of people are needed on Earth? Who are the self-sufficient, the independent? Who are skilled at growing and harvesting the food that keeps us all alive? Who knows how to build a roof over their heads rather than just buying one? Who knows how to make clothing rather than simply shopping for it?
Who are really the needed, and who are really the needy?
I believe we have a restlessness in this country because we have become lazy; we buy everything and make very little of anything. Many of these things we buy today are not made to last.
In high school, graduates are pressured to attend college, when some are clearly more suited to be craftsmen of different kinds.
For a 16 year old, texting has replaced spending Saturday afternoon under the hood of a 2nd hand car.
Part of our spiritual hunger is a hunger to be significant. How significant can anyone feel when 'U R' texting instead of talking?
I found this thought provoking as well as Carol's comments. Couldn't agree more about the testing and would include email, facebook you name it! Adults too!!
Smith's expression makes me think of Plato's The Republic.
To see who is 'needed' and who 'needy' is to create division, to create winning/losing sides. If everyone is self-sufficient re material goods, what need for society? If everyone is physically secure, alone, what need for society? Society provides infinite opportunity to see God reflected in each person, thing, place.
Reading The Republic, I see things have not grown worse. The same 'perceived' problems remain, for some. To truly be independent is to allow others their independence, and to not impose my values on another. Who am I to see or say for another? This is the spiritual self-sufficiency that Emerson speaks of, as does all spiritual texts.
To create sides means that I 'need' to choose a side, and defend my position, or attack his/her position. To be free is to be free of sides.
I know what sort of people are needed on Earth: the one's who are here; there are no others. For me to believe there should/ought to be others, is to be enslaved-to-my-beliefs (attachment).
This time is blessed with urgency and sprinkled with potent visionaries to guide our quest. There are systems of local food, organic gerdening and permaculture which are replacing factory farming methods where there is insight and opportunity, sunlight and water.
Innovative styles of building homes, called "bio-mimicry" or "earthship biotecture" design the structure to condense water from the air, harvest warmth from the erth and sun, grow food and compost waste. Decades of resistence from the social systems have thinned with the economic downturn, and new societal relationships are arising.
Mike Reynolds (the Garbage Warrior) has built these homes using recycled waste, and Grace Lee Boggs in Detroit and Vendana Shiva in India and internationally,have championed the restoration of organic and permaculture food systems from communities suffering urban blight to regions commandeered for building nuclear plants and hydro-dams.
Don't look back, help is here and now, we are texting AND talking, and finding each other.
How do we help people to see the world and the people in it differently? I think David Smith is doing a good job of that, but we also need people who can say it outloud to people who aren't likely to read it. I am hoping for some new orators in our country and in our world.
"How do we help people to see the world and the people in it differently? "
Do people not already see things differently? Or is this euphemism for "How do we help people see the world and people the way I see the world and people?"
Perhaps each sees what God gives each to see.
"Show, don't tell" was introduced to me by a poetry teacher. I did not then realize that this was a spiritual principle. When I lead, others follow. They just don't follow on Michael's time-table.
Everything I do is leading-by-example. If I seek to have others see what I see, rather than see what they see (think for themselves), then the world I see is one in which technology (texting etc) and other externals are an Obstacle rather than Vehicle.
Smith is asking me not to look out there for answers, but to look within, and to model the world I want by my very actions. What a joy to be part of the world, rather than apart from.
Maybe we as a people have left the needed behind, leaving them to become the needy?
It would be great if you made it easier to share these on one's Facebook page. I LOVE your wisdom and want to share.
Thanks
"Who are really the needed, and who are really the needy?" Funny thing how history repeats itself--it has always been the "needed"/the self-sufficient/the independent who have 'created a need' so that the "needy" can become dependent/sufficient upon them. I think here it is called "Capitalism"; the very reason we have become a 'buy/spend culture' instead of a 'grow/build/make' Life and Livlihood. What once was the 'dignity and priviledge' of the "needy" has become a 'priveledged profession' of the "needed". And we have become so advanced/sophisticated at it by now, that the 'self-made neededs' are maping-out what the rest of us 'needies need'. So much so that we are now hearing talk about a "nanny-state"? "What is best where we now find ourselves"...is to acknowledge the 'dignity and worth of every human being'--so as to see each other as God sees us then, within that VISION--the 'needed could realize their neediness' and the 'needy would fulfill their neededness'.
"Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach them to fish and you feed them for a Lifetime"!
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