On Earth Day / Good Friday

I know that normally today is the day reserved for an installment of my own back story, and we will get back to that next Friday. But today is too special a day for me to write only about myself, because today marks both a day of awe inspiring self sacrifice and a day of critical reconciliation that have coincided for the first time in at least 100 years. Today the Christian observance of Good Friday, and it is also the global observance of Earth Day.

When I first began this post, I was very tempted to begin a tirade based on my own personal religious beliefs against one holiday in favor of the other. But I look back at certain points in my life and I realize that there were never more ignorant times I have lived through, than when I had worn my religion on my sleeve. I am old enough now to prefer the more dignified approach to spirituality by keeping it to myself and judging no one else on theirs. If only current mainstream religious leaders could do the same, we would live in a much brighter world. At least from the standpoint of not having my Sunday afternoons interrupted by roving Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses knocking on my door.

Here in Costa Rica, a heavily Catholic nation in addition to a very environmentally conscious one, it's easy to see which holiday will come out on top today. In this particular rural and somewhat back woods area that I live in, there will be people actually and literally without exaggeration being nailed to crosses and being paraded around the neighborhoods. They definitely go full out. I do not allow my children to watch this, not out of animosity towards the religion, but more out of not wanting them to see a bloody and often times screaming man going down the street. Call me a party pooper...

Not only will there be scenes like this, but every single business from small store to multinational corporation has been shut down since Thursday and will not reopen until Monday. So if you didn't stock up on anything you may need in the span of this four days, you are pretty much screwed. Yes it is inconvenient, but who am I to question faith?

Today isn't really a holiday in my faith inasmuch as it is more a day of observance. The actual holiday isn't until later. But I do take this time and this day very seriously, as I sincerely hope others do as well. A consciousness was awakened on this day and a very important one that speaks very truly up to this very moment. And I believe the message is more important today than it has ever been in any other point in our history as a species. Do we use this day to focus on compassion, understanding, and humility? Or do we focus on the pain we have inflicted that we can never take back, but must always strive to make amends for? If you see how both of these different days that have come together carry the same meaning in their own ways, then you are beginning to get my point.

These two days have never been separate. Not in the most philosophical sense of the word anyway. One honors our Father, while the other honors our Mother. Both have lived separate lives (at least in regards to Europe and "Western" society) for thousands of years. And in that time Western society, from the standpoint of children, have been raised by only one parent since the "Burning Times"when that critical energy of the feminine was burned at the stake for acts of "sorcery" like having the audacity of healing illness with herbs. It doesn't take that much effort to see how even in our enlightened 21st-century, we are out of balance with ourselves and the world around us. Sure we have walked on the moon, mapped the human genome, split the atom, and conquered the skies. But we have also poisoned our waters, choked our skies, and committed acts of genocide against so many species including parts of our own.

Is it heresy to say that this balance can be achieved by welcoming back the power of the feminine and the reverence of nature? Offhand it seems like a very simplistic solution to a complicated problem, but it least it's a place to start. Is there room in our hearts and minds for the notion that God itself is made up of both of these energies? There cannot be a Yin without a Yang, there cannot be a positive without a negative, and there cannot be male without female. The Bible itself quotes God as saying "I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end..." So the notion of duality should not be so foreign to the mindset of the Judeo-Christian adherent.

If all of us are created in God's image, do we truly expect that image to be a bipedal higher primate like ourselves, or was God referring to our soul which is timeless and holds no physical form? I don't really see God being able to traverse from one galaxy to another with a thought by using feet like ours, so I am going to go with the second possibility. I could also see where controlling supernova and quasars with bodies like ours could be quite problematic as well...

So today, I meditate on balance. I think of the undying and unquestioning love of the Heavenly Father and the soft compassionate embrace of Mother Earth and pray that these two forces reconcile soon before it is too late for all of us. Being the optimist that I am, I give us a 50-50 chance of this happening at least with our descendants when they inherit the war-torn and polluted world that we were so careless with...