A Picture I took at Occupy Wall Street

Because the word “God” has so many different meanings, please understand that when I say “God” I mean Love:  the Love that we can experience, the Love that is universally available and that “never leaves itself without a witness,” the Love that flows to us, in us, and through us to others, the Love “in which we live and move and have our being.”

God is Love.  Love wants us to flourish, as individuals, as a species, and as members of an intact and integrated web of life.  We human beings cannot flourish if the earth is being destroyed and if the fabric of human community is being torn apart.  We cannot flourish if we allow huge, for-profit corporations to set the terms for public policy.  This truly is selling our souls to the devil.

The movement of Love is toward healing, flourishing, wholeness, new life, not just for us as individuals, not in a vacuum, but in the context of the great global challenges of our day.  The least we can do is claim our birthright as human beings and stand up for our own rights and the rights of “the least of these,” both human and non-human, who are part of the “beloved community.”  As Albert Einstein said, we must “extend our compassion to all living things.”

Jesus didn’t heal and set people free in isolation, but in community.  The “Kingdom of Heaven” was his way of talking about the “better world” that is possible, and staking his life on it.  Being a person of faith means staking one’s life on the Love that is renewing the world, no matter how impossible things appear.  It means waking up, taking responsibility, and getting in the game.