Each religion and secular morality has a translation for this message. Please tell me how you would phrase it.
“I never have enough time,” began the ministry of a Berkeley Friend (Quaker) many years ago. “But time is all I have.”
People frequently tell me that they don’t have time to learn about the environment, to ponder their behavior and the policies they support, to move the environment high up on a long to-do list.
Friends have a simplicity testimony (testimonies describe how we testify to our faith in our lives). “Simplicity is the right ordering of our lives, placing God at the center. When we shed possessions, activities, and behavior that distract us from that center, we can focus on what is important. Simplicity does not mean denying life’s pleasures, but being open to the promptings of the Spirit.” (from Pacific Yearly Meetings Faith and Practice) Focusing on what is important, being open to the promptings of the Spirit.
Time is all we have.
Thomas Kelly quotes Meister Eckhart on Holy Obedience: “There is a degree of holy and complete obedience and of joyful self-renunciation and of sensitive listening that is breathtaking. Difference of degree passes over into utter difference of kind, when one tries to follow Him the second half. Jesus put this pointedly when he said, “Ye must be born again” (John 3:3), and Paul knew it: “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Cor. 5:17).”
Not all of us are Christian, but we all know the joy that comes with walking in God’s path, living in a manner that we know is right.
Our task is not to do less, but to choose better what we do.
Comments that go beyond praise and nays Michael Moore has a set of comments addressing evolution, reproduction, and a variety of other issues. Check him out on these topics.
