last couple of weeks: expect HS to nudge you to earth-ownership
• starting place: own the community of God; own NRCC
• I mentioned extending self to others: join the breakfast
• I mentioned owning the spiritual climate of NRCC
• Someone missing, find them, someone hurting, help them
• Don’t know people well enough to do so, extend yourself
But I also said this is an important starting place
• That beyond this, people of Spirit are owners of the earth
• carry a responsibility to make peace for coworkers in conflict
• To bring healing to a friend who has been wounded
• To comfort an acquaintance who is downhearted
Lots of people are afraid about the economy these days
• Some are losing their homes, their jobs
• And HS may nudge you to help someone if you are looking
Today I want to talk about why it’s so hard to be owners of the earth…
Some historical reasons we’re comfortable as renters, users, consumers
• How did we get this way?
• How did our earth-owning instincts become so atrophied?
• I want to suggest 4 reasons, and then one thing we can do.
1. we live in a society that has taught us to say “yes” inappropriately
America is the land of opportunity…
You can do anything here
(a small step from: “You can do everything here”)
• You can work do the extra project and earn the boss’s favor
• You can watch all your favorite TV shows each week
• You can join that organization that interests you
• You can be on the sports team, your kids can too
You can purchase that bigger and better widget
You can go out to eat X times each month
You can do more, possess more, experience more
This is America, follow the culturally imposed “yes” and have it all!
• Voices cry to us to say “yes” so many things
• Lots of people’s livelihoods depend on getting you to say yes
• Doesn’t matter to them if you should or not
• They go home with a paycheck if you do, they don’t if you don’t
So we often say yes to things w should never have
• to relationships we should never have said yes to
• to obligations we should never have taken on
• to adventures we should never have undertaken
• to purchases we should never have made
of course each yes seemed a good idea at the time
• Each yes promised wonderful benefits
• But the cumulative effect of all those yeses…
…when the spiritual life calls us to own some portion of the earth
…we feel a sinking sense of duty, obligation, pressure
• No space left for the obligations of owning the earth
• We’re too busy owning the things we said yes to yesterday
So we remain renters of the earth and do not own
2. a culture of specialization
Another force that conspires to create a renter’s mindset…
Ours has become a very specialized society
• As technology has advanced…
• As the educational requirements for things that used to be the realm of a generalist have continued to climb…
• As more and more areas require a specialized skills…
• More and more areas of life require us to keep our noses out
It took a laptop, an Ethernet cable, and a guy w/ 15 years of IT experience to program my stupid TV remote
Eg. There was a day when people fixed their own cars’
My grandmother told me about a trip she took during Depression
• from family home in Maine to Los Angeles, where I was born
• She had a crescent wrench, a screwdriver and a hammer, and between her mechanical inclination and my grandfather’s grit…
• They nursed an aged Model XXX across a freeway-less continent
Even when I was in college I could fix about anything on my ’69 VW
• But now, I wouldn’t think of working on car w/o computer degree
• I can’t own that part of my life any more
As specialization ratchets up in our society…
As more and more areas succumb to specialist-demanding complexity…
• we feel ill prepared to own more and more areas of our lives
• And that broad sense that we ought to keep our noses where they belong bleeds in to a basic posture toward life
• so we stay away from earth-ownership. It’s what we’re taught
• the specialists are the ones who own the earth
3. extended adolescence
I’ve read a lot of articles about how we as a society don’t help adolescents transition into adulthood
• There’s no agreed-on sense of when adulthood begins
• 13? 18? 21? College? Marriage? Career? Children?
• We hope people will transition into adulthood, but have no clear process to help them do so
Add to that, the breakdown of systems that help us mature
(families, schools, churches, neighborhoods)…
• and people tell me all the time..
• on paper I’m in charge of a lot, but I don’t feel in charge
• I’m in a man’s body, a man’s job, but I feel like a boy
There is a collective but unspoken sense that somebody is really in charge out there, but it’s not me
Another reason this happens is living a lot of our lives in a hierarchy
After Industrial Revolution, the pyramid org chart became ubiquitous
• Used to be just businesses but now it is schools, charitable organizations, fraternal organizations, even churches
• We seem to be always in a position where somebody is above us
• Somebody always our superior, somebody more expert than us
• the buck always stops w/ somebody else instead of me
sense that we’re not owners… somebody else is
• Better stay here as an earth-renter, earth-user, earth-consumer
4. the loss of venues that grow us up
In the past there were places people used to pick up experiences that made them feel like owners
• Large families, family farm, family-run business, church, small business, neighborhood
• But these organizations have begun to decline in our emerging social organization
Families have broken into smaller and smaller units
• And so there is less and less opportunity for us to be in charge
• Farms are now run by agri-business specialists, and the kids don’t learn to do the really big, hard stuff that made them feel adult
• Businesses are run by multi-national corporations so we aren’t really that responsible, the home office tells us to do
• Churches are run by highly-trained clergy sitting atop a spiritual hierarchy
• There’s no formative places left for people to be in charge
• When I was 17, I was in charge of a class of 2nd graders at church
• Not that way in most places any more
Front porches and back yard fence have gone away
• Places people used to take responsibility for their neighborhoods
• Places they could see and influence one another
• Now we have garage door openers, and A/C inside
I don’t particularly regret these changes in our society…
While we have lost some things, we have gained many
• But we must recognize that these forces keep us from taking our place as owners of the earth
• They steal away our collective sense of earth-ownership
• More time? We could have added how excessive individualism has given us sense that ownership reserved for stellar individuals
But that second one: the specialized society…
That one is particularly virulent in our spiritual and religious lives
• General population people don’t feel qualified to own their own spiritual and religious lives
• Church-ownership has been taken from the people of God
When ownership of these really important areas of life…
Family, neighborhood, workplace, church, are taken from us
When we are reduced to just a pitiful little realm of ownership…
• Making our own lives good
• Making our own houses nice
• Making our own careers fulfilling
• Making our own retirement secure
These really important areas die a slow death of attrition
I talked about how that happens in community last week when I used 540 and the toll roads as an example
But when spiritual/religious people don’t own the earth…
The planet really suffers
• People of the Spirit listen for divinely-inspired impulses
• They act on those impulses
• And those actions are water to a thirsty earth
• But when spiritual people are robbed of a sense of ownership for the earth, the earth is thirsts in vain
so…
I’m primarily concerned about loss of ownership in spiritual community
• About people taught to defer ownership to the experts…
• To the preacher, those more religiously inclined
You may have heard recently geneticists have discovered religion gene
• Some people are more inclined to religious fervor than others
• Some people are more inclined to the clergy role than others
• Not really surprising, we look around and can tell this is so
• And, doesn’t mean we don’t all benefit from owning religious life
In fact, it is especially dangerous if we allowed the religiously inclined to be sole owners of the church
If only they own the church…
If only the ministry-inclined own the church…
• Spiritual community and religious forms become sick very quickly
• Absent the full complement of human strengths, spiritual life and religious forms become unbalanced very quickly
Jesus has given us all a Mission to make the earth right
• to fix what is broken
• to bind up and heal what has been wounded
• to comfort where sorrow has attacked
• to bring wisdom when confusion clouds minds
• to bring peace where conflict destroys
and when ownership of this Mission is usurped by a few…
• when it is abandoned to hands of the religiously inclined…
• the mission is weakened
• the full complement of contributors is lost
and that’s what we’ve done w/ the spiritual community
• we send our clergy off to school; probably graduate school
• they come home w/ a certificate of specialization
• they come home with authorized list of truths, spiritual principles
• they come home w/ pressure to make sure we all stay orthodox
• to make sure no heresy tries to cull some of us from the fold of truth into the danger of false belief
armed w/ their specialization, we defer ownership of religion to them
• We defer ownership of spirituality to them
• And in the process, an area that demands that we all be owners…
• An area that can’t survive without lots and lots of owners…
Falls into disrepair because we handed it over to a handful of specialists
And here’s the primary reason this concerns me
• When people don’t think of themselves as owners
• When people don’t carry the responsibility of our own religion…
• The ability of the general population to sense the Spirit atrophies
• And when this happens, there is a general decline of religion
And that’s the state of things as they exist today
So…
Those were five historical reasons it is so difficult for people to sense the ownership of the earth to which God has called us
Now, I want to talk about one thing we can do.
What can we, a handful of people who make up this spiritual community… What can we do?
• This group, that has been hidden away for years…
• Learning the ways of Spirit…
• Learning to live a community-based spirituality…
• Learning to listen carefully to Inner Voice of Spirit, and learning to obey what we hear…
This little community that is now sensing Spirit nudges to step out…
• To become an influential spiritual community in our city…
• To find the people God has assigned us…
• To invite them into the life and light we have experienced…
What are we to do?
• Well, we can do this.
• We can begin to flex our owning-the-earth muscles and start moving
For the reasons they’ve listed above (and more), they’re atrophied
• We’re not used our ownership muscles
• As such, when we begin to flex them, it feels awkward at first
• We’ll feel slightly spastic, so we tend to stop trying
• But if we stay w/ it, we advance, but with fits and starts
• And not without a lot of mistakes
• We’ll knock over lamps when we try to move forward…
• But we only learn by beginning to flex the muscles
What can our little community do?
Since God has been dealing w/ us in one particularly area for so long…
• We can flex our muscles and start moving forward there
• We can start flexing our listen-obey muscles
• I’m imagining that as I’ve been speaking on owning the earth, something has stirred inside some of us
• I’m imagining that as I spoke about our mission to bring kindness to the world…
• As I spoke about being agents of forgiveness
• As I speak about an area that is ours to attend…
There is, for some of us, a sense, a nudge, a prompt…
• Yes, this is something I need to pay attention to
• Something inside me says “yes” to being more than a renter
• Something says “yes” to being more than a user
• More than a consumer
You sense an internal “yes” to moving toward some point of earth-ownership
• And you can attribute that internal “yes” to a HS nudge
• And as such, you can begin to move forward in response
• Fits and starts! Spastic mistakes! But move forward
It was noted in the discussion last week…
Responding to this internal “yes” does not usually go smoothly at first
• People who have atrophied start moving, and fall down
• Knock things over
• Spill milk on the floor
• Trip and have to be caught by other people
But when they do start flexing the muscles, they get stronger
• They find themselves less weakened, less convulsive, less clumsy the next time out
• People who begin flexing their spiritual muscles are awkward, inept at first
• Their gait is ungainly, their speech is lumbering and they are sometimes embarrassed
• But the more they flex
• The better they get
• And soon they are not only owning the earth
• But they are doing so with a relaxed, comfortable ease
For us at NRCC, when we think about owning the earth we must think about the central organizing principle of life in God
• HS is w/in us
• Each point of surrender/release, fresh baptism of HS
• And this is the currency of earth-owership for us
As Robin said last week: if you sense HS is leading you to live generously, all you have to do is get out there and try
• Don’t wait for a mystical moment
• If you get an internal sense of “yes”
• Then move
Remember…
• Your Spirit sensitivities have been dulled by 1800 years of organized religion stealing ownership of your religion
• But you can have that ownership back; it’s yours to have
• But you must start moving forward
Start flexing your atrophied muscle
• Talk to Alea about a handful of children or teens you can influence
• Listen for a chance to help Robin w/ projects we’re working on
• And as I said, start moving to make this place community
• As I’ve said, the breakfast is a great place to start
Come at 10, look for people, ask after them
Log the time necessary to become familiar
Then ask people out to get to know them better
To out for coffee, for lunch, to your home
And make the agenda simple
“I’d like to get to know you”
“Tell me about your life and I’ll tell you about mine”
Its’ really simple: sense an internal “yes,” and start moving forward
And start moving…
• Go ahead and be a bull in a china closet
• If you make mistakes, welcome to being human
• If you err, you will correct
• If you give too much, you will correct
• If you hold on to too much for yourself, you will correct
But start to move
Look around for a place to own and ask HS for a “yes”
Sense a nudge, take a step
Hear a need for money, give money
See a need at your job/neighborhood, challenge your selfishness
It is time for us as a community to step forward and own
• It’s time for the internal “yeses” of HS to make some demands on our previous yeses
• Our HS yeses, will begin to demand some internal “no’s”
• Let something go to make space for your internal “yes”
How many times have we ended the service by praying…
Revive our hearts awaken our city
It would be an honor to be used by you to touch your people in this city
Now is the time
Flex your earth-ownership muscle
It will recover from its historically induced atrophy
Society and religion conspired to make many of us renters
We were taught we couldn’t own the earth
But now it is time to respond to our internal “yes”
Like the owner of a vacation cabin we talked about last week…
Look for the loose dock
Look for the broken hose bib
• Look for what is broken on the earth that needs fixing…
• Look for what is broken in people’s lives that needs fixing…
• And when we see it, ask if this is an assignment for you
• Maybe HS has given that assignment to another, but ask!
And if there’s a yes, drop whatever must be dropped to follow it
That’s what owners do
last couple of weeks: expect HS to nudge you to earth-ownership
• starting place: own the community of God; own NRCC
• I mentioned extending self to others: join the breakfast
• I mentioned owning the spiritual climate of NRCC
• Someone missing, find them, someone hurting, help them
• Don’t know people well enough to do so, extend yourself
But I also said this is an important starting place
• That beyond this, people of Spirit are owners of the earth
• carry a responsibility to make peace for coworkers in conflict
• To bring healing to a friend who has been wounded
• To comfort an acquaintance who is downhearted
Lots of people are afraid about the economy these days
• Some are losing their homes, their jobs
• And HS may nudge you to help someone if you are looking
Today I want to talk about why it’s so hard to be owners of the earth…
Some historical reasons we’re comfortable as renters, users, consumers
• How did we get this way?
• How did our earth-owning instincts become so atrophied?
• I want to suggest 4 reasons, and then one thing we can do.
1. we live in a society that has taught us to say “yes” inappropriately
America is the land of opportunity…
You can do anything here
(a small step from: “You can do everything here”)
• You can work do the extra project and earn the boss’s favor
• You can watch all your favorite TV shows each week
• You can join that organization that interests you
• You can be on the sports team, your kids can too
You can purchase that bigger and better widget
You can go out to eat X times each month
You can do more, possess more, experience more
This is America, follow the culturally imposed “yes” and have it all!
• Voices cry to us to say “yes” so many things
• Lots of people’s livelihoods depend on getting you to say yes
• Doesn’t matter to them if you should or not
• They go home with a paycheck if you do, they don’t if you don’t
So we often say yes to things w should never have
• to relationships we should never have said yes to
• to obligations we should never have taken on
• to adventures we should never have undertaken
• to purchases we should never have made
of course each yes seemed a good idea at the time
• Each yes promised wonderful benefits
• But the cumulative effect of all those yeses…
…when the spiritual life calls us to own some portion of the earth
…we feel a sinking sense of duty, obligation, pressure
• No space left for the obligations of owning the earth
• We’re too busy owning the things we said yes to yesterday
So we remain renters of the earth and do not own
2. a culture of specialization
Another force that conspires to create a renter’s mindset…
Ours has become a very specialized society
• As technology has advanced…
• As the educational requirements for things that used to be the realm of a generalist have continued to climb…
• As more and more areas require a specialized skills…
• More and more areas of life require us to keep our noses out
It took a laptop, an Ethernet cable, and a guy w/ 15 years of IT experience to program my stupid TV remote
Eg. There was a day when people fixed their own cars’
My grandmother told me about a trip she took during Depression
• from family home in Maine to Los Angeles, where I was born
• She had a crescent wrench, a screwdriver and a hammer, and between her mechanical inclination and my grandfather’s grit…
• They nursed an aged Model XXX across a freeway-less continent
Even when I was in college I could fix about anything on my ’69 VW
• But now, I wouldn’t think of working on car w/o computer degree
• I can’t own that part of my life any more
As specialization ratchets up in our society…
As more and more areas succumb to specialist-demanding complexity…
• we feel ill prepared to own more and more areas of our lives
• And that broad sense that we ought to keep our noses where they belong bleeds in to a basic posture toward life
• so we stay away from earth-ownership. It’s what we’re taught
• the specialists are the ones who own the earth
3. extended adolescence
I’ve read a lot of articles about how we as a society don’t help adolescents transition into adulthood
• There’s no agreed-on sense of when adulthood begins
• 13? 18? 21? College? Marriage? Career? Children?
• We hope people will transition into adulthood, but have no clear process to help them do so
Add to that, the breakdown of systems that help us mature
(families, schools, churches, neighborhoods)…
• and people tell me all the time..
• on paper I’m in charge of a lot, but I don’t feel in charge
• I’m in a man’s body, a man’s job, but I feel like a boy
There is a collective but unspoken sense that somebody is really in charge out there, but it’s not me
Another reason this happens is living a lot of our lives in a hierarchy
After Industrial Revolution, the pyramid org chart became ubiquitous
• Used to be just businesses but now it is schools, charitable organizations, fraternal organizations, even churches
• We seem to be always in a position where somebody is above us
• Somebody always our superior, somebody more expert than us
• the buck always stops w/ somebody else instead of me
sense that we’re not owners… somebody else is
• Better stay here as an earth-renter, earth-user, earth-consumer
4. the loss of venues that grow us up
In the past there were places people used to pick up experiences that made them feel like owners
• Large families, family farm, family-run business, church, small business, neighborhood
• But these organizations have begun to decline in our emerging social organization
Families have broken into smaller and smaller units
• And so there is less and less opportunity for us to be in charge
• Farms are now run by agri-business specialists, and the kids don’t learn to do the really big, hard stuff that made them feel adult
• Businesses are run by multi-national corporations so we aren’t really that responsible, the home office tells us to do
• Churches are run by highly-trained clergy sitting atop a spiritual hierarchy
• There’s no formative places left for people to be in charge
• When I was 17, I was in charge of a class of 2nd graders at church
• Not that way in most places any more
Front porches and back yard fence have gone away
• Places people used to take responsibility for their neighborhoods
• Places they could see and influence one another
• Now we have garage door openers, and A/C inside
I don’t particularly regret these changes in our society…
While we have lost some things, we have gained many
• But we must recognize that these forces keep us from taking our place as owners of the earth
• They steal away our collective sense of earth-ownership
• More time? We could have added how excessive individualism has given us sense that ownership reserved for stellar individuals
But that second one: the specialized society…
That one is particularly virulent in our spiritual and religious lives
• General population people don’t feel qualified to own their own spiritual and religious lives
• Church-ownership has been taken from the people of God
When ownership of these really important areas of life…
Family, neighborhood, workplace, church, are taken from us
When we are reduced to just a pitiful little realm of ownership…
• Making our own lives good
• Making our own houses nice
• Making our own careers fulfilling
• Making our own retirement secure
These really important areas die a slow death of attrition
I talked about how that happens in community last week when I used 540 and the toll roads as an example
But when spiritual/religious people don’t own the earth…
The planet really suffers
• People of the Spirit listen for divinely-inspired impulses
• They act on those impulses
• And those actions are water to a thirsty earth
• But when spiritual people are robbed of a sense of ownership for the earth, the earth is thirsts in vain
so…
I’m primarily concerned about loss of ownership in spiritual community
• About people taught to defer ownership to the experts…
• To the preacher, those more religiously inclined
You may have heard recently geneticists have discovered religion gene
• Some people are more inclined to religious fervor than others
• Some people are more inclined to the clergy role than others
• Not really surprising, we look around and can tell this is so
• And, doesn’t mean we don’t all benefit from owning religious life
In fact, it is especially dangerous if we allowed the religiously inclined to be sole owners of the church
If only they own the church…
If only the ministry-inclined own the church…
• Spiritual community and religious forms become sick very quickly
• Absent the full complement of human strengths, spiritual life and religious forms become unbalanced very quickly
Jesus has given us all a Mission to make the earth right
• to fix what is broken
• to bind up and heal what has been wounded
• to comfort where sorrow has attacked
• to bring wisdom when confusion clouds minds
• to bring peace where conflict destroys
and when ownership of this Mission is usurped by a few…
• when it is abandoned to hands of the religiously inclined…
• the mission is weakened
• the full complement of contributors is lost
and that’s what we’ve done w/ the spiritual community
• we send our clergy off to school; probably graduate school
• they come home w/ a certificate of specialization
• they come home with authorized list of truths, spiritual principles
• they come home w/ pressure to make sure we all stay orthodox
• to make sure no heresy tries to cull some of us from the fold of truth into the danger of false belief
armed w/ their specialization, we defer ownership of religion to them
• We defer ownership of spirituality to them
• And in the process, an area that demands that we all be owners…
• An area that can’t survive without lots and lots of owners…
Falls into disrepair because we handed it over to a handful of specialists
And here’s the primary reason this concerns me
• When people don’t think of themselves as owners
• When people don’t carry the responsibility of our own religion…
• The ability of the general population to sense the Spirit atrophies
• And when this happens, there is a general decline of religion
And that’s the state of things as they exist today
So…
Those were five historical reasons it is so difficult for people to sense the ownership of the earth to which God has called us
Now, I want to talk about one thing we can do.
What can we, a handful of people who make up this spiritual community… What can we do?
• This group, that has been hidden away for years…
• Learning the ways of Spirit…
• Learning to live a community-based spirituality…
• Learning to listen carefully to Inner Voice of Spirit, and learning to obey what we hear…
This little community that is now sensing Spirit nudges to step out…
• To become an influential spiritual community in our city…
• To find the people God has assigned us…
• To invite them into the life and light we have experienced…
What are we to do?
• Well, we can do this.
• We can begin to flex our owning-the-earth muscles and start moving
For the reasons they’ve listed above (and more), they’re atrophied
• We’re not used our ownership muscles
• As such, when we begin to flex them, it feels awkward at first
• We’ll feel slightly spastic, so we tend to stop trying
• But if we stay w/ it, we advance, but with fits and starts
• And not without a lot of mistakes
• We’ll knock over lamps when we try to move forward…
• But we only learn by beginning to flex the muscles
What can our little community do?
Since God has been dealing w/ us in one particularly area for so long…
• We can flex our muscles and start moving forward there
• We can start flexing our listen-obey muscles
• I’m imagining that as I’ve been speaking on owning the earth, something has stirred inside some of us
• I’m imagining that as I spoke about our mission to bring kindness to the world…
• As I spoke about being agents of forgiveness
• As I speak about an area that is ours to attend…
There is, for some of us, a sense, a nudge, a prompt…
• Yes, this is something I need to pay attention to
• Something inside me says “yes” to being more than a renter
• Something says “yes” to being more than a user
• More than a consumer
You sense an internal “yes” to moving toward some point of earth-ownership
• And you can attribute that internal “yes” to a HS nudge
• And as such, you can begin to move forward in response
• Fits and starts! Spastic mistakes! But move forward
It was noted in the discussion last week…
Responding to this internal “yes” does not usually go smoothly at first
• People who have atrophied start moving, and fall down
• Knock things over
• Spill milk on the floor
• Trip and have to be caught by other people
But when they do start flexing the muscles, they get stronger
• They find themselves less weakened, less convulsive, less clumsy the next time out
• People who begin flexing their spiritual muscles are awkward, inept at first
• Their gait is ungainly, their speech is lumbering and they are sometimes embarrassed
• But the more they flex
• The better they get
• And soon they are not only owning the earth
• But they are doing so with a relaxed, comfortable ease
For us at NRCC, when we think about owning the earth we must think about the central organizing principle of life in God
• HS is w/in us
• Each point of surrender/release, fresh baptism of HS
• And this is the currency of earth-owership for us
As Robin said last week: if you sense HS is leading you to live generously, all you have to do is get out there and try
• Don’t wait for a mystical moment
• If you get an internal sense of “yes”
• Then move
Remember…
• Your Spirit sensitivities have been dulled by 1800 years of organized religion stealing ownership of your religion
• But you can have that ownership back; it’s yours to have
• But you must start moving forward
Start flexing your atrophied muscle
• Talk to Alea about a handful of children or teens you can influence
• Listen for a chance to help Robin w/ projects we’re working on
• And as I said, start moving to make this place community
• As I’ve said, the breakfast is a great place to start
Come at 10, look for people, ask after them
Log the time necessary to become familiar
Then ask people out to get to know them better
To out for coffee, for lunch, to your home
And make the agenda simple
“I’d like to get to know you”
“Tell me about your life and I’ll tell you about mine”
Its’ really simple: sense an internal “yes,” and start moving forward
And start moving…
• Go ahead and be a bull in a china closet
• If you make mistakes, welcome to being human
• If you err, you will correct
• If you give too much, you will correct
• If you hold on to too much for yourself, you will correct
But start to move
Look around for a place to own and ask HS for a “yes”
Sense a nudge, take a step
Hear a need for money, give money
See a need at your job/neighborhood, challenge your selfishness
It is time for us as a community to step forward and own
• It’s time for the internal “yeses” of HS to make some demands on our previous yeses
• Our HS yeses, will begin to demand some internal “no’s”
• Let something go to make space for your internal “yes”
How many times have we ended the service by praying…
Revive our hearts awaken our city
It would be an honor to be used by you to touch your people in this city
Now is the time
Flex your earth-ownership muscle
It will recover from its historically induced atrophy
Society and religion conspired to make many of us renters
We were taught we couldn’t own the earth
But now it is time to respond to our internal “yes”
Like the owner of a vacation cabin we talked about last week…
Look for the loose dock
Look for the broken hose bib
• Look for what is broken on the earth that needs fixing…
• Look for what is broken in people’s lives that needs fixing…
• And when we see it, ask if this is an assignment for you
• Maybe HS has given that assignment to another, but ask!
And if there’s a yes, drop whatever must be dropped to follow it
That’s what owners do