It’s funny, two weeks ago when I last saw my garden most of the weeding had been done, many of the rows were mulched and everything looked orderly. Then I go away for a couple of weeks, come back and the weeds are taller than the plants. My garden has become an incredibly disorderly jungle. Hours of weeding later I am just beginning to make a head way, clearing away the weeds so that my garden vegetables have a chance to grow and ripen.
It is amazing all that can happen in just two weeks. Everyday there seems to be a new catastrophe, bombing, shooting, attack, or whatever. The news is full of horrendous murders, killings, wars, coups. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, we are bombarded with accounts of unspeakable horror. It is easy to feel hopeless and helpless in the face of apparently increasing levels of violence and disorder. The more I pay attention to the news the more I fear for our future. One solution is to turn off the news once in a while.
I used to be a news junkie. Every morning I got up and read the newspaper. I listened to news radio in my car. I watched the six o’clock news when I got home and the ten o’clock news before going to bed. I was up on everything. I was researching situations around the world, attempting to understand political situations and the players in world events. That was until my son came along.
One night while watching an extremely negative news broadcast, I was playing with my son on the floor and I asked myself if I really wanted him to be exposed to such awful news at his impressionable age. I turned off the television. That was over twenty years ago and I still selectively expose myself to the news, preferring to research events rather than watching the sensationalist news media who turn everything into a media circus.
One thing I know about the news is that it is the news because it is unusual, it is not the normal; it is new, out of the ordinary. It is not real in the sense of lasting and eternal. It is unreal in the sense of it being short lived and passing. What we don’t hear about is the good news of love and peace and joy because it is not new or unusual.
What is lasting and eternal is love; “God is love, he who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.” 1 John 4:16
Jesus spoke several parables about planting seeds. He spoke about planting them in good soil, watching their orderly growth and about separating out the weeds to be burned and turned into fertilizer for the new growth.
We are constantly planting seeds of ideas, beliefs and feelings into the soil of our hearts and minds. The good soil is soil that has been cleared of weeds, rocks and twigs; it is our minds and hearts which have been cleared of error beliefs and feelings resulting from the false evidences appearing real of fear and doubt. Guided by love we can gently remove the weeds of doubt and fear that will continue to sprout up because we are human and we live in a world populated by humans.
In Unity and New Thought we practice denial and affirmation. Denials are release statements, they are not the psychological denial of facts but the spiritual releasing of the power we have given to facts and circumstances to control how we show up to life. We can release the seeds of fear and doubt, worry and anxiety, hate and misgiving that the world has planted in the soil of our hearts and minds. We can affirm the unchanging Truth of God Love active in our bodies, in our minds, and in our lives.
We are made in the image and after the likeness of God, God is love and God is Spirit (John 4:24). Therefore, we are inherently loving and spiritual. It is our choice how we show up to life and which seeds we allow to grow, which one we nourish: the seed of the world or the God seed.
Blessings of peace, joy & love. Rev. Matthew E. Long, Peace Unity Community