Archive of
Positive Commentaries
January 2007
Archived Positive Commentaries
Tuesday, January 2nd 2007
The happynews.com website posted several simple tips for readers to get and stay active in 2007. Acknowledging that many resolution makers set their goals too high —and then find them overwhelming to keep—readers are asked, "Why not resolve to simply increasing activity in everyday life." For example, rather than using "drive-thru's", activity can be had by parking in the farthest spot from the entrance and walking to one’s destination. Modifying household chores can also help expend more energy: getting on one’s hands and knees to scrub the kitchen floor; using a push mower rather than a ride-on to cut the lawn; and, raking leavings instead of using a leaf blower. The workplace also offers opportunities for movement and motion: using a bathroom or a water fountain on a different floor of your building; going for a lunchtime stroll with co-workers; taking the stairs instead of the elevator or the escalator, and joining your company’s softball league. Besides being a pleasant distraction from the grown up world of taxes, bills and dry cleaning playing in activities such as flag football, shooting hoops, riding a bike can also be exercise. Conscious decisions to get and stay active can be made throughout the day: walking instead of driving; going bowling instead of sitting on the sofa; and spending vacations hiking, canoeing, or swimming instead of basking on the beach. The article concludes that the more a person moves the better they'll feel and the healthier they'll get.
The physical, mindal, and spiritual realities can truly complement one another when all are in synchronization. ;"It is to the mind of perfect poise, housed in a body of clean habits, stabilized neural energies, and balanced chemical function—when the physical, mental, and spiritual powers are in triune harmony of development—that a maximum of light and truth can be imparted with a minimum of temporal danger or risk to the real welfare of such a being." (
The URANTIA Book
, p. 1209.)
Monday, January 8th 2007
The Winter 2007 edition of
Yes!
magazine listed 7 ways to break free of the corporate economy. Debt can be reduced by only paying in cash—being mindful about what one buys and why. Another way to extract oneself from corporate dependency is to do more oneself, e.g. grow food, pick berries, can and preserve food, bake bread; make or repair clothes, furniture and gifts; create one’s own entertainment; and walk, bike, run or play basketball instead of joining a fitness club. Examples of ways to share and exchange with neighbors were also given: play music, sing, recite poetry, hold art shows, act in local theater; exchange haircuts for homemade desserts, bike repair for massage, language tutoring for babysitting. Weatherizing one’s home or apartment, reducing one’s car usage or even getting rid of a vehicle reduces both waste and pollution. Supporting local businesses—especially those who foster the well-being of the environment and their employees—benefits the entire community. New local businesses can also be launched: one can start a food market, credit union, wifi network, or electricity co-op; ownership options such as cooperatives, nonprofits, for-profits, or single proprietorships can also be explored. Consumers can also vote for a better world with their dollar by buying Fair Trade when buying imports.
"Progress is made possible by inherent motion, advancement grows out of the divine capacity for action, and achievement is the child of imaginative adventure. But inherent in this capacity for achievement is the responsibility of ethics, the necessity for recognizing that the world and the universe are filled with a multitude of differing types of beings. All of this magnificent creation, including yourself, was not made just for you. This is not an egocentric universe." (
The URANTIA Book
, p. 316); Basing an economy on care and concern for others can eventuate into a planet unified by both sustainability and brother-/sisterhood.
Monday, January 15th 2007
In a past (yet still timely) article published on their fair.org website in 1995, Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon bring to readers ’ attention the fact that Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t as well covered by the media after 1965 as he was prior to that year. The reason, they believe, is "...King began challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without ‘human rights’—including economic rights....He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for ‘radical changes in the structure of our society’ to redistribute wealth and power....By 1967, King had also become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech [loudly denounced by the national media] delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967—a year to the day before he was murdered—King called the United States ‘the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.’...King questioned ‘our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America,’ and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions ‘of the shirtless and barefoot people’ in the Third World, instead of supporting them....He saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its ‘hostility to the poor’ — appropriating ‘military funds with alacrity and generosity,’ but providing ‘poverty funds with miserliness.’...In his last months, King was organizing the most militant project of his life: the Poor People's Campaign. He crisscrossed the country to assemble ‘a multiracial army of the poor’ that would descend on Washington—engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be—until Congress enacted a poor people's bill of rights."
"When the spiritual tests of greatness are applied, the moral elements are not disregarded, but the quality of unselfishness revealed in disinterested labor for the welfare of one's earthly fellows, particularly worthy beings in need and in distress, that is the real measure of planetary greatness." (
The URANTIA Book
, p. 317) True and great leaders will strive to be Godlike through service to all of humankind.
Monday, January 22nd 2007
The
Agence France Presse
recently published an article by Jerome Bernard who featured grandmothers Molly Klopot, 87, and Betty Brassell, 76, who were among several dozen grandmothers from 21 US states who gathered last week in the Capitol building to make their protests against the Iraq war heard. Klopot said she had fought all her life to improve the lot of women and workers and build peace. "It keeps me young," she said. "When the society gives us trouble, we have to do something about it," Klopot said. Brassell, 76, and her 29-year-old grandson discovered activism some six years ago. In 2000 she participated in demonstrations against the US Navy training exercises conducted on Vieques Island in Puerto Rico. The protests led to the navy's departure in 2003. In addition to her anti-war protests, Brassell participates helping homeless people in her neighborhood in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Both Brassell and Klopot were arrested on October 17, 2005, with 16 other women, aged 59 to 91, when the group tried to enlist in the US military in New York's Time Square to replace grandchildren who had been deployed in Iraq. Detained for several hours, they were acquitted after a six-day trial. The arrests gave birth to The Granny Peace Brigade. "We will not be silent!" is the brigade's motto.
"When reason once recognizes right and wrong, it exhibits wisdom; when wisdom chooses between right and wrong, truth and error, it demonstrates spirit leading." (
The URANTIA Book
, p. 1142) The greatest hope for the planet is that an ever-increasing number of humans strive to do the perfect will of the Father of All.
Monday, January 29th 2007
Kristen Mueller, in an article published by the
Utne Reader
, writes about Project Rwanda, a U.S. nonprofit promoting the bike "as a tool and symbol of hope." The Rwanda- and California-based group hopes to boost the country's image and economy by showing outsiders—especially mountain bikers—that the country is an attractive place to visit and do business. Volunteers are also working on building a bicycle repair network to support Rwandans, particularly farmers, who rely on decrepit bikes to haul their harvests to market. While touring the African country in 2005, Project Rwandan founders Gary Boulanger and Tom Ritchey "...saw one guy who was hauling 200 pounds of water on a bicycle that was all rewelded. The guy was barefoot, and one of his pedals was missing—it was just a steel rod." Most bikes they encountered also lacked brakes—a necessity in "the Land of a Thousand Hills." Ritchey is retooling his classic mountain-bike design into a heavy-duty trailer that can haul 300-pound loads on an extended rear rack—ideal for Rwanda's 500,000 coffee farmers, whose product loses freshness (and value) with every minute spent pushing bicycles precariously stacked with coffee cherries to market. Ritchey hopes the bike can be distributed, through the help of several American groups working in the country, to 1,000 Rwandans by early 2007, in time for the coffee-harvesting season.
The URANTIA Book
tells us that, "Culture is never developed under conditions of poverty; leisure is essential to the progress of civilization. Individual character of moral and spiritual value may be acquired in the absence of material wealth, but a cultural civilization is only derived from those conditions of material prosperity which foster leisure combined with ambition." (p. 907) Helping one’s planetary brothers and sisters come out of poverty conditions also benefits planetary civilizations.