Beginning Connections

When we have grown up in a particular culture, it is interesting to meet people who have grown up in other cultures.

Our shared interests through classes, community events, or children’s activities is what brings us into contact with each other.

As we get to know each other bit by bit, we discover things we have in common.

We also appreciate and acknowledge the differences in background and outlook knowing where they come from.

We are able to build a realtionship on a foundation of shared interests and ideals.

Elements which are part of a private life or part of a different community are not a threat.

We attend to our own private lives and our involvement in other aspects of community.

Our shared interests are all that concern us in our beginning connections with people from other backgrounds and other viewpoints.

Our greatest shared interest is that we are all free to live our own lives in expression of our highest ideals.

It is vital to realize that we are not involved with imposing those ideals on others.

We are attracted to ideals which serve our character.

Others are attracted to ideals which serve their character.

We share that commonality, character.

How that is expressed is up to individuals.

It does not involve coercion nor conversion.

It involves respect.

We can live our best life secure in the fact that it meets our needs.

We can allow others to to live their best life secure in the fact that it meets their needs.

We can share the highest values of our life through respectful conversation and interaction.

We can share our delight, our appreciation, our celebration.

We can do this without intrusion on the lives and celebrations of others.

When we respect the origins of other cultures, we can become enriched thorugh our interaction with people who practice other traditions.

Our appreciation leads to harmonious and respectful community interaction.

Our beginning connections can grow into an overflow of respect and communication and can create an uplifting attitude throughout our community.

© 2019 Kathryn Hardage

www.sharedglobalvision.blogspot.com 

Oneness

One power.

Infinite divine oneness.

Solutions begin as you draw toward the light.

Be light.

Light is truth.

Truth just is.

It doesn’t have to prove itself.

Simply notice the difference between truth and lies.

Be aware.

As long as you do not give your consent to a lie, even if it is imposed on you and all around you you will live a life of truth.

Since your life comes from within, keep cultivating the truth you know within.

Let the Universe, the One Power, guide you.

It will produce oneness.

You will live under the guidance of One Power.

It will reorient your life in a truthful, productive direction.

© 2016 Kathryn Hardage

www.sharedglobalvision.blogspot.com

A Modern Museum Built on Slave Labor

I had mixed feelings today as we visited a wonderful museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, Crystal Bridges Museum.  http://crystalbridges.org

The exhibit of American Folk art was very inspiring.

It showed the accomplishments of every day people, in wood carving, quilts, weaving, embroidery, metal working, scrimshaw, painting.

A picture of every day wealth was exhibited by the accomplishments of every day people.

What our ancestors knew how to do and make was beautiful, practical, and astonishing.

A very great deal of satisfaction came from this work, both while it was being done, and now, one hundred and fifty years later.

This museum was built by Alice Walton, of Wal-Mart.

I couldn’t help but notice that it was built on the backs of their Wal-Mart minimum wage employees.

I was grateful for the classical education of Alice Walton.

I wish I could feel better about the possibilities for the education of the Wal-Mart employees and their families.

I usually am happy to visit museums funded by real estate and oil and utility magnates;  it never bothered me before this.

But now, with the growing inequality of our country, I realize I am missing so many conversations with literate people.

I had expected that would be my great joy as I continued my own education and got out into the world.

But those conversations are fewer than I would have hoped, and it looks like they will be fewer still with the corporatist attitudes which have replaced the idea of businesses as services for every day people.

Now people service businesses.

At the end of the day, although the museum experience was beautiful, it is in a context of inhumanity after all.

© 2016 Kathryn Hardage

www.sharedvisionswmo.blogspot.com

Success and "Success"

We may feel a lot of tension, most of it quite unnoticeable, because we are not yet really in touch with ourselves.

We have been conditioned to follow directions, go for certain types of economic and social goals, and yet, these may have nothing to do with what our own true goals are.

This produces a lot of tension, but since we are so used to feeling that way, we may not identify it correctly.

When we do find ourselves getting out of the made rush through illness, a sense of disorientation or lack of meaning, failure or simple fatigue, it gives us a change to look at things differently.

In the priority of gaining back our health, relaxing and slowing down, we have the opportunity to reassess what we are doing and why.

When we allow our true feelings to surface, we may be surprised to discover what they are.

Quite often, our true feelings reveal interests and priorities that have absolutely nothing to do with society’s values around us.

So, this is the moment of courage.

While you are feeling your weakest physically you may draw on the courage you never knew you had to change direction.

You will find that this contributes greatly to your health, your sense of focus and direction, your imagination, sense of purpose and your happiness.

© 2016 Kathryn Hardage

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