Common Ground
"With a cultured of mistrust, how do we create community?
How do we find common ground?
Common ground.
Perhaps that is the place to start. No matter what we think of one
another's religious beliefs or practices, we do all stand on the same ground. We share the same earth. The same sun rises and sets
on all of us. Doesn't this transcend our doctrinal differences?
Millennia ago, early people's personified the sun and earth─ made deities of
them, worshipped them. Our modern scientific understanding of natural
phenomenon makes it unreasonable for us to do that. But surely we can
share their reverence. Surely we can follow their example of respect for
the earth, the air, the water─ and be healthier and happier for it.
If there is a theme that runs through the history of rituals
related to the earth's seasons, it is renewal. The wheel turns and the old
season gives way to the new, the old year to the new, the old life to the new.
Each planting of seeds promises new possibilities. Each harvest brings
sustenance for yet another year. each fallow time regenerates the life of
the soil. The sun deities retreat and return. The grain goddesses
are lost and restored. The vegetation gods die and rise again. The
cycle of life goes on and on, birth after death after birth. Perhaps what
all the rituals celebrate is this continuity of life, the miraculous natural
world that makes it possible, and our abiding connection to it."
- By Patricia Montley,
In Nature's Honor, 2005.
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