Practice

Living a conscious, spiritually attuned life takes continuous practices especially in today’s world, see below:
Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP War on Women
1) Republicans not only want to reduce women's access to abortion care, they're actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven't.
2) A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to "accuser." But victims of other less gendered crimes, like burglary, would remain "victims."
3) In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that could make it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, for real.)
4) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids.
5) In Congress, Republicans have proposed a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life.
6) Maryland Republicans ended all county money for a low-income kids' preschool program. Why? No need, they said. Women should really be home with the kids, not out working.
7) And at the federal level, Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion. That means over 200,000 kids could lose their spots in preschool.
8) Two-thirds of the elderly poor are women, and Republicans are taking aim at them too. A spending bill would cut funding for employment services, meals, and housing for senior citizens.
9) Congress voted to approve a Republican amendment to cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers, one of the most trusted providers of basic health care and family planning in our country.
10) And if that wasn't enough, Republicans are pushing to eliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program. (For humans. But Republican Dan Burton has a bill to provide contraception for wild horses. You can't make this stuff up).
Now, I guess if you’re one of the people who approve of the above ten actions, all’s right with the world and God’s in his heaven. But if you’re like me and have any compassion or see the world differently than our Republican friends, what you’re practicing is the awareness that life is much bigger than any appearance – tho this is not an appearance, this is what they will do, if they can. We are practicing to identify more with the divine source and essence of our lives than with any human circumstance. We are practicing the idea that maybe all this will work out for the best….

I know I need the practice because what confronts my physical senses moment by moment, especially in the US political arena seems to be more real than the invisible presence of spirit at the center of each person. I want to understand and practice that God – love, compassion, inclusiveness, justice and a world that works for everyone, is closer than hands and feet, closer than breath, even in those who’s narrow values and beliefs are full of hate, exclusion, punishment and injustice. Boy do I want to know that and want that to be true!

I practice to know that this power, this God, this presence of love within everyone, even within the most radical, fundamentalist, American ayatollahs, is much more powerful than the conditions that seem to loom so large. With practice, and boy are these people giving me plenty of opportunities to practice, I will know how to evoke the love and compassion in myself and all humanity, that will transcend appearances and I will know, and help others know, the peace, love, compassion and justice that exists without dependence on events or circumstances; and see this peace, love, compassion and justice manifest in events and circumstances.