It's a Cultural Sustainability Thing

Dear America,

"So, what if, instead of thinking 

about solving your whole life, 

you just think about 

adding additional good things.  

One at a time.  

Just let your 

pile of good things grow." 

 #yogainspiration 

2/16/18

America seems continuously in motion, trying to solve the many problems on our shoulders, being completely overwhelmed with the things we carry as a nation.

Immigration, problem

Gun control, problem

Gangs, problem
Cultural Divide, problem

Obesity, problem

Hunger, problem

which, as I tap out those last two on the fly, and naturally taking a double take -- to have people over fed and under fed here in America, all at the same time...where is the call for the redistribution of food that is actually good for a healthy nation?  huh. what a splendid idea, and for starters...chew on this.

"Instead of receiving all their food stamp funds, households would get a box of food that the government describes as nutritious and 100% grown and produced in the U.S. The so-called USDA America's Harvest Box would contain items such as shelf-stable milk, juice, grains, cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans, canned meat, poultry or fish, and canned fruits and vegetables. The box would be valued at about half of the SNAP recipient's monthly benefit. The remainder of their benefits would be given to them on electronic benefit cards, as before."

Of course, as expected, the packaging of this idea is a key ingredient; if you get your news only through sources like NPR, they might have you believe Hitler is deciding what impoverished families have to eat morning noon and night.  And to my surprise, have to hand it to money@cnn.com for headlining this report making a comparison to the commercial brilliance of home delivery, like Blue Apron.  Who wouldn't want a bite of that? 

Thing is, what does it hurt to try a new approach?  Many of our poor are both lacking in enough food, as well as, not enough good food; for statistically, socioeconomics and obesity are not only linked, often, just having access to fresh produce in the neighborhood is a major problem, given the growing trend of food deserts of the inner cities.  And the issues don't stop there, for in many instances, simply paying the utility bill seems more pressing in the moment; while, let's be honest -- who has the skills to cook anymore, grabbing fast food is just so much easier.

[See bio, if you will, on the founder of the Robert Wood "General" Johnson II Foundation -- where those stats are linked; fascinating that this "corporate man" left nearly his entire fortune in the compassionate hands of his foundation in order to continue his life's work in the health and welfare of fellow Americans.]

When it gets down to the business of charity

 and taking true care of Americans,

 some of our best problem solving  in America

 is through the individuals with the means and a plan...

When connected to other individuals with the will 
and compassion to make it so,

they can accomplish amazing things.

It's kinda like,

what the yogi said,

Adding One Good Thing 
after another...and another...

See the pile grow.

According to the  Science of Mind  -- in Chapter Nineteen, bringing into practice the mind and body connection, and specifically the practice of speaking a Spiritual Mind Treatment to bring about healing, no matter what problem or area of distress in life may be -- Holmes makes this observation:

"Limitation and poverty are not things, but are the results of restricted ways of thinking.  We are surrounded by Subjective Intelligence, which receives the impress of our thought and acts upon it.   This natural Law in the Mental World is neither good or bad.  It can only be said of It that IT IS, and that we may consciously use It.  The Law is a law of reflection; for Life is a mirror, reflecting to us as conditions the images of our thinking.  Whatever one thinks tends to take form and become part of his [or her] experience.  The Medium of all thought is the Universal Mind, acting as Law.  Law is impersonal, neutral, receptive and reactive."

And in the very next sentence, "a sense of separation from good causes us to feel restricted; while a sense of our Unity with GOOD changes the currents of Causation and brings a happier condition into the experience.  Everything in the physical universe is an effect, and exists only by virtue of some invisible cause."

We are talking about EVERY THING!

Yesterday's devotional reading from Charles Stanley included this thought:

"At times God takes the people 

he plans to use and places them

 in impossible situations -- 

in that way, they discover

 he is faithful.  

He knows the best classroom 

is a place of utter helplessness."

And so it is as we move from one problem to the next....
the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, located in Parkland, Florida, where the  nation lost seventeen beautiful people from the actions of a lone gunman -- a mentally ill, troubled young man, of only nineteen years old.

It is a result of many failures within the system, a lack of communication between agencies, to the extent of not addressing the true cause of each gun related incident that snuffs the life of another. The root of the conversation to remedy the problem -- as a society -- turns immediately into a finger-pointing, name calling, partisan divide on steroids, before the first victim is even buried. (And illegal steroids, at that, having acquired them on the black market.)
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So -- if you have read to this point -- this is where I happened to have left off last Friday, about midday.  Unexpectedly, my old computer with a penchant to annoy the living daylights out of me decided to completely stop.  And for the long and the short of it, it took this girl an entire week to head to Best Buy, find a new gadget, leave it for the Geek Squad to set me up, and all I could do was wait.   And I don't usually wait very patiently.

But here I am -- after walks on the beach with a new man in my life, after making dinner from scratch multiple nights in a row, after a couple long baths, after showing up for my nanny gig in the afternoons, after receiving a bonus of extra time to focus on some DAR committee work, after sitting in my corner window saying my devotions morning noon and night....After not only staying fully engaged while being without the one thing I thought I couldn't live without, what a reawakening its been!

Here I am -- instead of being ripe, rooted in frustration, regretting all that I missed in the keeping of America's days  -- I feel renewed!  And so now, after giving full disclosure of what happened between Fridays, allow me to pick myself up, dust myself off, and pick it up right where we left it....
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So about that TRUE CAUSE thing -- that which constitutes the root of nearly all problems in America...pretty sure we can get it down to one word as merely a place to start:  sustainable.

Of course, culturally wide, the sustainability factor seems be the buzzword for everything in one form or another -- eating sustainable food, buying sustainable clothing, protecting the sustainability of the planet, economic growth, etc....

by definition, from Dictionary.com: Sustainable -- "suh sten huh buh l"
1.
capable of being supported or upheld, as by having its weight borne from below.
2.
pertaining to a system that maintains its own viability by using techniques that allow for continual reuse:
sustainable agriculture. Aquaculture is a sustainable alternative to overfishing.
3.
able to be maintained or kept going, as an action or process:
a sustainable negotiation between the two countries.
4.
able to be confirmed or upheld:
a sustainable decision.
5.
able to be supported as with the basic necessities or sufficient funds:
a sustainable life.

[It amounts to a whole lot of "buh l" if grounded in the wrong thing, a falsehood, an agenda, a lie, an ignorance, a misguided cause that can only lead to the result of misguided, corrupt things in the natural.]

So what makes sustainable humans?  Humans that are kind and respectful of their fellow man; humans that live from a place rooted in principle and accountability; humans recognizing the  importance of responsible self-government, from what we choose to eat to how we spend the many hours of our day; humans fully engaged in the duty of being of good character, being educated, and living a life of purpose that adds to the whole of society....one good thing after another.

How do we -- as a country -- raise SUSTAINABLE HUMANS?

Can we ask that question?

Happy and healthy people just don't go around shooting people.  And moreover, as this girl has said on multiple occasions, the gun is the inanimate object; it is not the gun's fault (just like a car, knife, bomb, or a pair of strong, vile hands hellbent on committing an act of strangulation).

A society that is healthy and happy, more or less, must be actively sustained!
This is called sustainable civility, meeting up with a sustainable civic center, meeting up with sustainable civic duties, for one and for all.  And at the very core, this basically requires every single one of us to comply.

The thing is -- in reality, large and small -- sustainability requires, first and foremost, a sound foundation; being rooted in something truly good, something deep down and everlasting, and with certain, be attended to on a daily basis. As in, routinely weeded out, irrigated properly, given lots of sunlight, and maybe a trellis or two.

It's called a foundation based upon natural law, rooted in a certain understanding that we reap what we sow; it's called a foundation grounded in humility, honoring a Source greater than ourselves; it's called a foundation with our feet firmly planted here, and yet, ironically, with our hearts and minds not of this world at all.

It is the One True Thing; the One Good Thing at the base of All Good Things in the pile.  This connection with the Source of All Good, that which is always Present, universally practiced and honored and recognized in multiple ways -- that which we call GOD -- IS the way through this maze of societal woes...aka these problems on top of problems on top of problems. 

Hard to keep a healthy mind and body within the grand, dysfunctional society in which we live; impressionable minds, young and old alike, are surrounded with unhealthy things.  It takes a constant, conscious effort to insulate ourselves from that which is unhealthy, unwholesome, and everything ungodly.

The crisis of opioid addiction kills, like, 64,000 souls a year.
Auto related accidental deaths number over 40,000/annually.
One in ten of violent deaths -- of victims of domestic violence -- are by strangulation...that's 10%!

Gun-related violence takes the lives of 33,000 innocents each year.

It is all bad.  It is all sad. 
It is all fixable...at the root cause.

Beginning with one good thing...and letting the pile grow.

Our relationship with God is the place to start.

Sound, healthy connections with one another, in community,  demands it.

School prayer -- yes please.
More security, more protection, more guns under concealed carry -- yes please.

And more than that, for a community to be truly sustainable, we must do everything humanly possible to tap into the True Power and Spirit of God, through which all good things come.  As Ernest Holmes says, "The more spiritual the thought, the higher its manifestation.  Spiritual thought means an absolute belief in, and reliance upon, Truth.  This is both natural and normal."

Truth is, what happened in Parkland may not have been avoided in this day and time -- given the open campus, given the failures of numerous agencies, given the absence of someone in the perpetrator's life to teach him well and lead him through what seems to be a clear mental breakdown --  but let us begin to think the thoughts that will change our future right here and right now for the common good.

But it is often said, we learn more in the valley, after rising up and moving through our issues and problems.  It is from these valley experiences meant to take us out, that once we take the proper courage to rise above the circumstances, and give it our best anyway..... digging deeper and deeper.....revealing the strength of our true character, an unstoppable will, and a mighty spirit within....

...this is God,
...this is God working through us, within us, and around us to solve the problem. This is taking the right action, according to natural law; and when we take right action, it is only natural for God, the Universe, if you prefer, to reward us.

It is no accident that America is buried with problems at this point in time.

America is meeting up with a perfect storm, ripping America's foundation from the roots.

As a whole -- we no longer honor our Creator, we no longer honor life itself, and we have allowed government to take the place of God, granting government full control over our lives; doing so, has increased our dependency on government to fix the very issues  we should be fixing ourselves... of course, with a little help from a more dependable Source (the ONLY Truly Sustainable Force). 

Government has proven, once again, that more government is not necessarily better government; for simply put, it grows dependency in a falsehood, not Truth; it takes away our liberties, takes away our freedoms, and hinders any hope for a healthy and happy people living aside other healthy and happy people.

Funny how the Left is so big on the science of things -- and yet, in the science of growing a sustainable culture they fall apart, almost uniformly, denouncing organized religion, ostracizing Christians, poking fun at hearing the word of God....yadi yadi yogi nanda.

The truth is, God is exactly what we need in the general, and in the particular, from sunrise to sunset.  Oh to have something like Religious Science treated in the same manner and respect as the Science of Climate Change and the Sustainable Planet...

Dare I add, that this may be a time -- perhaps if we do it all at the same time--  that if we were to get on our knees and pray for something Good to come of us -- all of us -- God would answer in amazing ways.

Society would be lifted up.
People would feel encouraged and strong.
Communities would live in more perfect harmony.
And all would be more than well -- it would be like really really good...
and this good would multiply... to the extent of being unable to contain itself!
(for life mirrors and reflects back that which we think about)

Truth is -- the way society is leading right now -- we are NOT sustainable in any capacity.

[diets of poor nutritional value, addictions to prescription/street drugs/pornography/alcohol, Hollywood producing immoral, violent messages in film, empty lives rising or falling through effects of social media, general lack of spiritual connection, irreverence to life as a whole -- including the unborn, stigmatizing and black listing opposing conservative views via mainstream media, erasing border lines and the sovereignty of a nation to secure itself........] 

This day, this blog, this is a call to do the things that create more good, that's all.

I believe that if we do that, the good will grow indiscriminate of age, creed, color, race, political spin, or favorite comfort food.  And just to be perfectly clear, it is no accident, that in the every day blog, I choose to end with this....

Make it a Good Day, G

thank you GOD, thank you God.... for this new computer, a new man marking the beginning of a brand new love life, a baby girl about to graduate from college, a safe and beautiful roof over my head and loving family, and of course, this American Girl blog that amplifies my love of God, Country and my fellow Americans as often as I can (sometimes meeting up with unexpected delays, but oh well, such is life); my foundation is based on Truth -- - Something Magnificent and Not of This World.   It is maintained through an attitude of gratitude for all that I am and all that I give, knowing the more I stay in relationship, in constant contact, the better life grows....
May this day be as glorious as the day imagined xox