Healing Earth

Our Current Spiritual Crisis and Practice

In this post, I want to share an article by Norman Fischer.  This article addresses the relationship between spiritual practice and morality.  In addition, it discusses the possibility of healing our relationship with the Earth, and with one another.

I’m motivated to share Norman’s article because I think we live in extremely challenging, if not downright crazy times. Our fellow Americans are increasingly divided into ideologically waring camps. They face off along ever widening political, cultural, and economic fault lines.  So much so, in fact, that some of us feel right and  free to demonize those on “the other side” as “down right evil” and beyond redemption.

Spiritual Crisis

As I skim the headlines on any given day, I’m reminded that our response to the Climate Change catastrophe is mired in half measures and cavalier blindness. In addition, everyday, I’m reminded that huge swaths of our world are devastated by ongoing decades old wars.  As a consequence, millions of people risk their very lives desperately seeking refuge in lands far from their war ruined homes.

Consequently, it’s seems increasingly clear to me that as much as our political, economic, and technological failings have brought us to this point, our failings have also been moral and spiritual.

Norman Fischer agrees and reflects on this point, and much more, in the following article.

Norman Fischer is a Dharma Successor to Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and the founder of the Everyday Zen Foundation.  He is a father, teacher, poet, and author.  In this article, Norman writes that spiritual practice and meditation make “denial impossible and truth sustainable.” And he says that with “other forms of serious spiritual practice… we grow in our capacity for patience, fortitude, compassion, imagination, and love. Year by year, decade by decade, our practice helps us become mature, kind, capable individuals—the sort of people a troubled, crazy world will depend on to maintain stability and good cheer” as it works to solve its crises and challenging problems.

Here’s the link: lionsroar.com/topsy-turvy-world-november-2012/