March 24, 2003

• God does not take sides

• All are equally blessed

• The relationship of anger, fear and hate

God speaks to each one of you according to your own individual needs. You bring to this moment concerns that have been voiced and those that have not been expressed, but you should be assured that God always and immediately responds to your prayers.

It is interesting to us that in a time of war both sides invoke the presence and support of God in their own cause. Yet no leader invokes the presence of God in the common causes of all humanity. No one asks that God provide direction and insight that will bring people together. What is prayed for is that one’s will shall somehow prevail.

God does not take sides. God is not on the side of your country to any greater extent than the side of another. God does not favor one people over another. There is no chosen group. Despite the assertions of the religions of the world that they may be chosen, God makes no choice. You are all equal. You all share this planet upon which you ride. You are all responsible for one another. You all breathe air, you all need physical and emotional sustenance, you all have fears, you all have hopes and dreams. You may differ in what you fear, you may have differing hopes, but you all hope. You all wish to be loved, you all have a capacity for loving, you all share in the divine through your spirit, you all are a part of the total light that is God.

Each individual chooses his or her own path. That path will be different for all, but a path for all there certainly is. No one is alone on the path. No one has a sole authority that recognizes the peculiar rightness of his or her own path. There is only a path which is appropriate for each individual. No path is best for all. Any group who claims the sole ownership of the proper path is proclaiming at the same time the inappropriateness of others outside that group. That is a judgment that no human being is capable of making. If God does not judge in such manner, how can humankind make such claims?

You are on your own path. As you have acknowledged in your beliefs, you are where you should be at the moment. You are not on a path belonging to another. You are not on a path shaped by another. Although you may have a restricted visibility imposed by your family, your community, your nation, even within that restriction you are where you should be at this present moment. The grass is never greener on the other side, and by the same analogy, your grass is no greener than your neighbor’s. Neither of you is more worthy; neither is more blessed than another.

You may accept that first statement and find the second more difficult. Living the lives you experience, your interaction with life seems to you more blessed than others who in comparison live lives seemingly very different from your own. It does not mean that your blessings are more than another. They are merely different. For those who believe that your blessings in the nation in which you live are greater than the blessings of those who live in other lands are missing the reality of the equality of all human beings, all animals, all that has been created. If you accept that all human beings are blessed equally yet differently, you cannot possibly claim that your nation is more blessed than another, for in making such a claim you are asserting that God is placing favor upon you at the expense of others. This can never be.

Your lives are different from the lives experienced in other nations, but never are they better. You may feel other nations experience greater hardships, but the truth is they experience different hardships. There are physical hardships, there are emotional and social hardships. Other countries, other societies, other groups within your own country may experience physical hardships that you know little about. But you experience emotional and interpersonal and social hardships that those in other lands, in other societies, in other communities have no understanding of.

No group of individuals is therefore more blessed than another. When you hear statements to the effect of “God bless America,” they sound so meaningful, but they are meaningless. When you pray to God, pray that God may bless all of humanity. Pray that God will open the eyes of humanity to a compassionate vision of one another.

War is a terrible scourge upon the earth. It is like a sickness—it spreads, it’s contagious. But war can bring about an ultimate recognition of its own futility. Human life has always been characterized by a cycle of accommodation followed by competition. Accommodation leads to peace; competition leads to war. Peace brings a sense of unity, but war reflects a kind of societal greed, the need to somehow be elevated above others.

When a group in society has suffered beyond mention, beyond comprehension, that group understandably fears a repeat of that suffering. No one who suffers wishes for that to continue or to be repeated. But the desire to avoid suffering that has been experienced can be blinding in its intensity. Extremes foster or breed opposite extremes, so there is a swinging back and forth between war and peace, between compassion and competition, between love and hate, between pushing and pulling, giving and taking, joy and sorrow, light and darkness, heat and cold. The universe is filled with contrasts.

Each of you is a part of those measured differences, but as you asked, “The universe...is it in balance?” The universe is in a constant state of change. The balance that exists is the result of the change. When cold water is mixed with warm water, the cold water becomes warmer and the warm water becomes cooler. The state of that water is therefore changing and yet the totality of that water, the energy of that water is retained. There is a balance. If you have a gallon of cold water and a gallon of hot water and they are combined, you still retain two gallons of water. Neither body of water has become dominant over the other, but they have been joined. There is a balance, there is a stability, therefore, to the universe. But that balance, that stability requires change.

We have said before the earth is moving toward peace, but at the same time the earth continues to experience conflict. Peace, conflict—the conflict brings peace together. The presence of peace draws energy from the conflict. In the end the conflict is lessened. The peace may be exhausted for a bit, but it will be renewed. The peace will be strengthened. Peace is a force just like conflict.

Sometimes there is a benefit to bringing two people together who feel considerable conflict toward one another, allowing them to express that conflict until that conflict has become exhausted. When that exhaustion takes place, the individuals begin to realize what they have in common and peace evolves. Two enemies who are brought together ultimately realize they both have families, they both love, they both wish to be loved, they both wish to be understood, they both seek happiness, they both seek fulfillment. In the end, what unites them far exceeds what it was that divided them. It may seem unfortunate, it may seem unnatural, but it is undeniable that disagreements, conflicts—despite their ugliness—ultimately lead to understanding. You may fight until you are exhausted, both sides, and there is nothing left except an acknowledgment of what you share in common.

So the universe continues to evolve. It continues to move within its stability, within its constancy. In the end, there is no ultimate destruction or creation but rather preservation. Human lives may be destroyed, but the soul is not created as a result. The soul is preserved. Human life is temporary, it is temporal. It exists for a brief moment, but what is important is your spiritual self. Your souls are never destroyed nor are they created. They evolve. They become more brilliant. There is growth that takes place toward God.

This growth, this change within a constant state is an important recognition as you deal with the reality of anger. Anger is a changing of emotions, but it neither destroys who you are nor elevates who you are. You may be distraught by the anger. You may feel somehow empowered by the anger. But in feeling distraught, you are not lessened. By feeling empowered you are in no way somehow elevated. You are the same person in both instances. When you receive the anger from another, accept it by looking beyond the anger into the individual who expresses that force, and you will recognize that that individual has not changed. As we know, anger is the center of so much that takes place. It is the cause of all emotions outside of love. It is the antithesis of love. Hate is not the opposite of love. Hate is the expression of anger.

The evil in human life is not hate. The evil is the anger, the fear that is expressed and felt in hate. Anger, fear, hate...they are all closely woven together. Where there is fear, anger is at the surface and when that anger is accentuated, it evolves into hate. When you experience anger, recognize it comes from fear. Recognize that fear also evolves from anger. First comes anger, but it feeds upon fear and the anger increases. When you are afraid, your feeling becomes anger, and it is an expression of the fear. And it is the anger, the expression of that anger, which evolves into disagreements. Fear and anger are important components of life.

It is anger at your own short-comings that can evolve into a fear of failure. When you sense you have failed at some effort, your first reaction is not fear. It is anger at yourself. From that anger with yourself comes the fear that it may return, that you may again fail. The fear of failure and the anger that promoted it are sources of so much difficulty between human beings, for fear for oneself results from anger toward oneself.

Human beings are centered on self. It goes beyond what you consider selfishness, for you perceive your lives from your own perspective. There is a sense of personal pride, a need for personal dignity. When you lose your sense of dignity, you are angry at yourself. You may call this guilt, you may call it by many terms, but the anger is first toward yourself. Then follows the fear that somehow the self-dignity that you lost may be justified, may return again, may be intensified, and that fear feeds the anger and together you experience the difficulties between individuals, communities, nations.

Defensiveness between individuals arises because of a fear of loss, but that fear of loss finds its root in anger toward oneself for having given up something considered vital. If you are not angry with something in your own life, you will not be fearful of losing it. Anger and fear are closely aligned. They balance off one another. They feed upon one another. They give strength to one another. The anger creates fear, the fear increases the anger...back and forth they go.

That motion between fear and anger is not unlike the motion between love and hate or joy and sadness. Sadness can feed on joy. Think for a moment of individuals at Christmastime who feel great sadness, and being surrounded by those who demonstrate great joy increases the isolation, increases the sadness. Opposites in life can feed upon one another. It is part of the great mystery that characterizes the human experience.

These opposites are not a part of our lives on this side of the small divide. We experience great love. There is no room in our lives for competition, for resentment. There is no space provided for all that is negative. It does not exist. Yet each of us has experienced what you experience. Each of us has seen the toll of war. Each of us has experienced pain. Each of us has experienced discouragement and anger and fear. We know what it means to be human and we ask each of you to acknowledge those characteristics of life that are permanent: love, compassion, giving, sacrifice for the benefit of others. That is what stays, that is what remains constant. The negative forces of life disappear. The negative forces of life lose their attractiveness.

Concentrate on what you all share with humanity. Join your prayers in a chorus that affirms every human being. Pray not that God will be with your side of an argument; pray that God will be with all human beings. Pray for your capacity to love, to be loving in your actions and compassionate in your understandings.

Yes, you are blessed, indeed all human beings are equally blessed.

Share in that light.

Share abundantly.

Give what you can give.

Love as you can love.

Pray as you can pray.

And live your lives as you can live them, knowing in full measure that you are indeed where you are meant to be and you are indeed doing as you are meant to do.

God’s light illuminates all of creation. Bathe in that light with gratitude and joy.

Amen.