SPIRIT IN MATTERS: Taking a Higher View of Life on Earth
By Dianne Eppler Adams

Vol. 2, No 5 – March 11, 2004

GUIDING PRINCIPLES
...Ours is an interconnected, interdependent, sacred world.
...All relationships – personal, communal, national, global – are equal and best approached with fairness, respect, honesty, and compassion.
...Darkness is overcome, not by avoidance, but through shining the light of awareness on it and choosing otherwise.
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FROM THIS VANTAGE POINT...

         God has no religion, race, gender....

Naturally, everyone has an opinion about God. Even atheists hold a view, albeit one of non-existence. We’ve likely reached our opinion through parental influences, church involvement or perhaps reading scripture or other spiritual books. How ever we’ve come to our understanding of God, of one thing I am certain – none of us holds the whole picture or knows that whole truth about God.

As parts or aspects of Creation (or God), how can we possibly know about the whole of which we are a part? We have only our individual point of view with which to look out at Creation. From that partial point of view, are we not arrogant to assume we know God – what God is and what God wants from us?

Major wars have been and continue to be caused by differing views of God and perceptions of the rules for living that go with those views. While some religions are tolerant of differences, many belief systems hold that their views of God are the “one way to salvation.”

Yet, if all Creation has emanated from God, then he hasn’t created just one religion or just one race or favored just one gender. God (“the all that is”) includes all religions, all races, and all genders.

Okay, so what does this realization mean for me in my everyday life? Whenever I act as if my way is the only “right” way, whenever I view my religion as “the only true religion,” whenever I criticize and separate from people, cultures and religions, I am separating myself from God, from my own Source. My thoughts of separation harm me as they shut down my openness to the wonder and blessings streaming to me from God in every moment, in every situation.

God has no religion, race, gender....yet includes all religions, races and genders – and God includes me.

(Your comments are always welcome at SpiritInMatters@aol.com.)
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"The common error of ordinary religious practice is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then to suck it for comfort rather than follow it."
---Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

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COMING EVENTS

The Power and Glory of Your Uniqueness
Saturday, March 20, 2004 - 10-5 PM
501 Slaters Lane #422, Alexandria, VA
Limited to 6 people - $85
Call to register (703-548-4553) and provide birth data by March 16.

Through a group astrological experience, we will explore each person’s unique attributes, confirming the importance of honoring who we are, and acknowledging our vital contribution to the wholeness of life. The goal is enhanced self-love, appreciation of diversity and recognition of our unity. 
 

An Astrological Appetizer – Spring Equinox
Sunday, March 21, 7:30-9:00 PM
501 Slaters Lane #422, Alexandria, VA
Call to register (703-548-4552) - $15

What do the next three months hold - in economics, politics, and your personal life? Come enjoy a lively discussion of probabilities!

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FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION...

IN DEFENSE OF BIBLICAL MARRIAGE
Protestants for the Common Good
http://www.thecommongood.org/CGN/3_3/biblicalmarriage.html

[Dianne: This tongue-in-cheek review of biblical teachings on marriage points out the folly of applying 2000 year old cultural mores to our constitution.]

The Presidential Prayer Team is currently urging us to: "Pray for the President as he seeks wisdom on how to legally codify the definition of marriage. Pray that it will be according to Biblical principles. With any forces insisting on variant definitions of marriage, pray that God's Word and His standards will be honored by our government."  This is true.

Any good religious person believes prayer should be balanced by action. So here, in support of the Prayer Team's admirable goals, is a proposed Constitutional Amendment codifying marriage entirely on biblical principles:

A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)

B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)

C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)

D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)

E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)

F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one
shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)

G. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)


STUDY: WE’RE EATING OURSELVES TO DEATH
By Lindsey Tanner, AP Medical
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040309/D81718IO2.html

Inactive Americans are eating themselves to death at an alarming rate, their unhealthy habits fast approaching tobacco as the top underlying preventable cause of death, a government study found.

In 2000, poor diet including obesity and physical inactivity caused 400,000 U.S. deaths - more than 16 percent of all deaths and the No. 2 killer. That compares with 435,000 for tobacco, or 18 percent, as the top underlying killer.

The gap between the two is substantially narrower than in 1990, when poor diet and inactivity caused 300,000 deaths, 14 percent, compared with 400,000 for tobacco, or 19 percent, says a report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


CREATING AN OPEN ELECTORAL PROCESS
By John B. Anderson
February 29, 2004
http://www.fairvote.org/articles/openprocess.htm

Ralph Nader's announcement of his independent candidacy brings back memories. In 1980, I ran for president as an independent after abandoning the Republican primaries. Even though polling near 25 percent when declaring my candidacy, I was labeled a spoiler. My candidacy was said to deprive voters of the clear choice between incumbent Jimmy Carter and his Republican challenger Ronald Reagan. Never mind that my platform clearly attracted many people uncomfortable with this choice.

Ever since then I have grappled with how we can structure our electoral system to accommodate an increase in choices and the better dialogue and greater voter participation coming with those choices. Having an election between two candidates is obviously better than a one-party dictatorship, but having an election among more than two candidates is better than a two-party duopoly.

The American people know this. When Ross Perot ran for president in 1992, viewership of the presidential debates soared, and voter turnout rose sharply in nearly every state. When he was shut out of the 1996 debates, polls showed that Americans wanted him in the debates by a margin of three to one. In 2000, a majority of Americans wanted to include the Green Party's Nader and Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan in the debates.

But there is a fundamental, if easily correctable, problem with our electoral process. We use a plurality voting system where voting for your favorite candidate can contribute directly to the election of your least favorite.

Unlike most democracies, our states have set up presidential elections so that the candidate with the most votes wins all electoral votes, even if opposed by a majority of voters. That makes third-party or independent candidates "spoilers" if they split a major party candidate's vote. It's this concern that drives the major parties to exclude other voices from the debates, and for the current condemnation of Ralph Nader for entering the presidential race.

Fortunately, there's a solution, one already practiced for top offices in London, Ireland and Australia and in Utah and California for key elections: instant runoff voting. Any state could adopt this simple reform immediately for all federal elections, including the presidential race. There has been legislation backing instant runoff voting in nearly two dozen states, and former presidential candidates Howard Dean and John McCain advocate the system.

In instant runoff voting, people vote for their favorite candidate, but also can indicate subsequent choices by ranking their preferences as 1, 2, 3. If a candidate receives a majority of first choices, that candidate wins. If not, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and a second round of counting occurs. In this round, your ballot counts for your top-ranked candidate still in the race. Rounds of counting continue until there is a majority winner.

With instant runoff voting, we would determine a true majority winner in one election and banish the spoiler concept. Voters would not have to calculate possible perverse consequences of voting for their favorite candidate. They could vote their hopes, not their fears.

Under this system, progressives, who like Nader but worry about George Bush, could rank Nader first and the Democrat second. Similarly, libertarian-minded conservatives upset with the Republican Party’s positions on government spending could rank the Libertarian nominee first and Bush second. Rather than contributing to a major party candidates' defeat, these candidates instead could stimulate debate and mobilize new voters.

Our primitive voting system is this year's biggest spoiler. Instant runoff voting would give us a more participatory, vital democracy, where candidates could be judged on their merits and the will of the majority would more certainly prevail.


IT WILL BE A SMALLER WORLD AFTER ALL
By Ben J. Wattenberg, Senior Fellow
American Enterprise Institute
http://www.aei.org/include/pub_print.asp?pubID=16549

[Dianne: Link to the entire article for some surprising consequence of this fact.]

The United Nations has finally changed its demographic predictions. Instead of foreseeing population growth or even explosion, the new estimates acknowledge that world population is on course to shrink--with significant social, economic, and strategic implications.

Remember the number 1.85. It is the lodestar of a new demography. It should change the way we think about the environment, economics, geopolitics, culture, and our current Middle East dilemma-and about ourselves.

Demographers have typically worked on the assumption that human population would level off by achieving a "Total Fertility Rate" of 2.1 children per woman. Why 2.1? Two parents have two children. Sooner or later the parents die and are "replaced" by their two children. (The .1 accounts for children who die before their own age of reproduction.) Were the projection substantially higher, the result would be wall-to-wall people. If substantially lower, before too long there would be no people at all. Either trend moves in a relatively rapid geometric progression. So 2.1 it was. Very nice, the base line of a symmetrical, perpetual, and ordered universe.

But no longer useful. For the last five years UN expert meetings have examined a trend that has been ever-more apparent for several decades: Never have birth rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, so surprisingly, for so long, in so many places. Now the United Nations has made it official, breaking demographic crockery everywhere. Its 2002 World Population Prospects uses 1.85 children per woman as the point to which human population is tending in this century.
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"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
---President Dwight D. Eisenhower

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©2004 Spirit in Matters: Taking a Higher View of Life on Earth - 501 Slaters Lane #422, Alexandria, VA 22314.   All rights reserved.  Permission is granted for reproduction or redistribution of the e-newsletter in its entirety only.