Peace, Justice and the Care of Earth

Stage One: Relationships – Intentional Caring

Welcome! Whoever you are, whatever your beliefs, wherever you come from, Welcome! We journey together, you and I, on this planet somersaulting in its orbit. We share its air, its water, its life…as well as its suffering, its pain, its hurts and tragedies. Welcome, friend.

Step Three: Prioritizing Relationships with our family, our friends, our community and the world around us is third step toward a healthy planet. (The first two steps in relationships are more intensive and we will discuss them later. But here we shall break every rule and start with step number three!) The planet can not be healthy, if it’s caretakers are not healthy. Peace, justice and the care of earth are relationship intensive. So our goal for this blog today is to get us to be in the habit of prioritizing relationships above all other things. We can own a billion dollars, but if we do not have healthy relationships that are worth more than our billion, and relationships we are willing to give our billion up for – relationships that equally treasure us for who we are – we will be covering our deep sense of loss with many lesser things. No fear. No guilt. Just growth in love. If this is scary because we’ve been hurt, that’s ok. Just let us be honest and acknowledge the loss and move one baby step forward toward healing, kindness and love.

In every blog I will place a challenge and action steps. I give my word, I will not place a challenge or action step on you that I will not strive to accept and implement myself.

This Week’s Challenge: For one week, I will be less self centered and more concerned with those suffering immediately around me – in my family, in my circle of influence and in my community. The homeless, single moms, those persecuted for gender, religion or race. For just one week, I choose to consciously reduce as much as I can my spending of time, energy and money once I have reached what I need for basic life, and I will give wisely to those in need without judging whether or not I think they deserve it. I will call a friend, say sorry to a partner or spouse or sibling and choose for one week to intentionally put others before myself at least once, but as much as I can, not to make myself feel good, but to help them see how much they are valued.

This Week’s Action Steps: (Choose one or more.)

• I choose to not eat out or buy coffee shop drinks this week. I choose to donate whatever monies I save this week on those suffering around me.
• I choose to invite one or more friends to join me in this week’s mission with an exciting goal of seeing how much we can donate this week to a chosen charity.
• I carefully and wisely choose to invite a homeless person out for a meal, not just feeding them, but sitting down and hearing their story, without judgement. (If you aren’t gifted in discernment or street smarts, please don’t choose this option. This can be dangerous. People have different gifts, so choose an option that fits your gifts.)
• I choose to learn about lessoning my carbon imprint and to take just one step to do that.
• I choose this week to donate $5 to feed the poor locally or globally every time I catch myself death scrolling for more than 8 minutes. (This could end world poverty if we all did this all the time….!:))
• I choose this week to thank God or be thankful in the realm of my belief system intentionally for my food and drinking water, and especially if I am one of the privileged few in this world to have hot running showers.
• I choose not to be afraid of the suffering around me. I am not packing on guilt, I am growing in love.
• This one is special – If you are someone coming out of abuse or a person who is giving and giving to others and completely burned out, please choose this option: I choose to take quiet space for myself amid the hectic world and just for this week focus on my own health and healing. I choose to put money that might go to something more practical, instead on giving myself a break and helping myself find the much needed balance. (Special hugs to you, friend. um, yes, I’m a cyber hugger… sorry….)

So join me on this journey to impact this world as best we can, and if we fail, to seek the One who doesn’t fail to help us on our journey.

Thank you for taking this time to share with me. Your time is an honor and a treasure I do not take for granted.

Eternal peace be yours, my friend. (Cyber hug….)

This site will growing bit by bit over the next few months. Join us on the adventure as we learn to grow together for the passion of peace, justice and the care of earth.

Buy Peace, Justice and the Care of Earth on Amazon (Kindle $4.99 or Print $35.89)

Note: As I write things dear to my heart, I encourage, when you comment, to speak freely what you believe about life, about this world of ours, about our lives and death in this planet we call home, care for and love. As I would never force you out of your mouth – or fingers in text or screen… – to speak what I believe, so allow me, friend, that grace here. There is a lot of suffering in the world today, and though I can’t fix it all, there is a lot we can share together to change the direction of this world, for better or for worse – but prayerfully, friend, for better.