Philosopher Josef Pieper defines the essence of bourgeois living as "taking for granted." It is true that those who live in homes where the water always runs through spigots take water for granted. And when people always have money they take their next meal for granted. Our lives are filled with assumptions about the universe serving us all the time. This is false thinking. Will it take catastrophes to awaken us to the truth that all is gift? An earthquake reminds us that not even the stability of the ground underneath our feet should be taken for granted. Death reminds us that not even breathing itself can be taken for granted. As the forests disappear and the soil and waters become increasingly poisoned, we learn that we cannot take air or water or soil for granted. One way to learn not to take for granted is to voluntarily do without. This is best done in a ritualized context where the community does without together and supports one another through the difficult process of letting go. For example, go without water for three days. Go without food for five days. Go without meat for two weeks. These are ways to learn to cease taking for granted. Every overdeveloped person and culture should undertake these periods of fasting. In doing so we learn the basics of gratitude, for not one of us created the waters or the air or the soil or the foods that we take for granted. Fasting also allows us to identify, at least partially, with those millions of the world's poor who can never take eating a meal or drinking good water for granted. Gratitude changes our lives. It fills us with energy and vitality. When I was twelve years old, I had polio and could not walk for six months. The doctors could not reassure me that I would ever walk again. As it turned out, I did get my legs back. But I learned a lesson in the process that I have never forgotten: don't take for granted. I had taken my legs for granted, legs that work , legs that run and play ball, legs that take me exactly where I want to go. When my legs returnd to me I was filled with gratitude-not gratitude for the "miracle" of my legs being healed, but rather gratitude for having legs at all, legs that work. I was filled with energy and promised myself that I would not waste my legs for as long as I lived. FROM WASTE TO RECYCLING One of the overwhelming sins of the "First World" is that of waste. WE are a civilization whose major product is waste, and we appear to be the only species that wastes more than it recycles. What we give back to the universe is often not blessing-it is poisonous and nonrecyclable goods. The petrochemical industry-that industry that was the very first to support a young politician named Adolf Hitler in German politics sixty yearg ago-has developed plastics and Styrofoam that appear simple and cheap but in fact cannot be disposed of even in five hundred years. Our cities are being inundated by our own refuse. We have no way of dealing with the nuclear waste that has proliferated from military and civilian power plants. This lethal plutonium will "live" for at least another 100,000 years: Joanna Macy suggests that instead of burying this radioactive waste in order to deny it, thus making life intolerable for generations to come, we ought to keep it visible above ground, and build monasteries around it to remind us all of its lethalness and our mortality. These "guardian sites' would become holy places of pilgrimage for persons who regard the planet as a sacred trust. We also waste our youth and their talents and gifts. When hope dies, waste takes over. Whether that waste is expressedin the form of crime or drugs, alcohol or prison, despair or sexual addiction, it is living proof of the depth of waste that haunts our consumer society. How does a consumer society stop wasting? By restoring relationship to the center of our lives and life-styles. If we considered our relation to generat ions to come, for example, we would cease giving out plastic bags in grocery stores. Recently I accompanied a friend (who is an extrovert) to a supermarket late at night. "Plastic bag or paper?" She replied in full voice, "Plastic? Plastic won't disappear for 500 years!" The cashier sheepishly responded, "Our manager tells us to push the plastic because it is cheaper." ............... The greatest waste of all is the waste of our human gifts for ingenuity, good work, healing and joy. If "joy is the human's noblest act," then to waste our gift for creating joy it is to squander the noblest potential of our species. (book Creation Spirituality Matthew Fox) ... All diseases come into our bodies through the foods that we eat the only way to get rid of them is through fasting.... Submitted by Mirna distributed by CROWN - www.croatianworld.net - CroWorldNet@aol.com Notice: This e-mail and the attachments are confidential information.If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail and the attachments is strictly prohibited and violators will be held to the fullest possible extent of any applicable laws governing electronic Privacy. If you have received this e-mail in error please immediately notify the sender by telephone or e-mail, and permanently delete this e-mail and any attachments.
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