If you already are. Hello, beloved. It's me, James, again, coming to talk to you about what's on my heart and mind. Can I say to you? I can.

That recently my time in meditation, in my chair studying and journaling has been a heavy time. I I look at the world in which we live, that we share together, and I see, I see chaos and uncertainty. I experience it even more than just see it. There is kind of a dissonance that I feel when I look around, as if we're trying to move in a different direction from recognizing, the beauty of the world in which we live, the beauty of, the gift that is given to us in this world. So I've been pondering a bit about a word that's apparently become a bad word here in the United States.

That word is diversity. And yet, as I think about it and I ponder my knowledge of, sacred texts, the first creation story in Genesis, as the world is being formed and made over that time period as order is emerging out of chaos, points to all the aspects, light and dark, day and night, stars, all the animals and plants and vegetation and minerals, and, yes, even human beings in their diversity, all are called good by the divine. In fact, on day 6, very good, not just good. Good. And as I ponder, this reality and, the celebration that I see of a God who loves the diverse, loves variety.

Else, why would there be such variety? I wonder at people who purport to be, religious, feeling that diversity is not a good thing. I think when they do, they miss out on what a wonderful celebration of all creation that there is throughout throughout the biblical text. I think of Jesus in the sermon on the mount when he pointed to the lilies of the field. And their fine, you know, their fine attire, if you will.

How beautiful it is. And the things that weigh us down about human life don't seem to concern the lilies sometimes. As I was thinking about it this morning and journaling, I I was reminded of a song that I haven't heard in probably 30 years. Song by, a singer in the in the Christian from the Christian tradition, Rich Mullins. And the name of the song is ICU.

If you're a podcast watcher, I'm gonna put the link to a video on YouTube, for that particular song if you wanted to listen to it. If you don't have access to access to it in some other stream. But the song celebrates how, when the eagle flies, in the sun down and the sun up in the world all around, that everywhere I go, the song goes Rich Mullen says, everywhere I go, I see you. And he's talking about the divine. He's talking about the infinite beauty of the divine that is available for us to see everywhere.

And I I think about how even my own faith and the faith tradition to which I belong has minimized anything but humanity. And in the west, we've minimized everyone but white men, oftentimes. And we've missed out because of that on so much of the rich blessing that comes to us in the diversity God passes our way. We don't treat our streams, our water, our oceans with respect, with dignity, with grace as the gift that they are. We don't treat the air that way.

We don't treat the land that way as we, wipe away entire sections of mountains and hills so that we can get at the minerals we want for a cheaper price for a cheaper price. And we leave behind devastation and garbage and trash in so many ways, not in the caring way that God seems to want for all that is made. It should be no wonder to us that we can't treat each other very well when we can't seem to treat the other gifts God has given us very well. I was walking yesterday and passing, just a piece of street, just along on a sidewalk. And there was trash everywhere.

I'd like to tell you that I stopped and picked it all up. I didn't. It was cold and windy. And I saw it. And, it didn't drive me to action.

Perhaps it should have. But I look at that and I say, if we can't care for that which sustains us, if we keep abusing the earth, if we keep abusing the water, if we keep abusing the air, that there will come a time when, earth will go on, but we might not. I don't mean to sound apocalyptic or, to point to the negative, but I think as I look around and see the lack of our celebration for all of God's diversity and realize that everywhere we go, there is God in the way the grass grows, in the flowers, in the beginnings, the very early beginnings here in the northern hemisphere of some of the signs that spring is just around the corner, in the longer days, in the light that we have, in the way we throw trash down. If if we don't begin to recognize God's presence all around us, we're gonna miss out on celebrating the gift God has given us of this beautiful life. Because this beautiful life God has given us, I know in the west, we're all about the individual and individual rights and what the individual matters.

But we've lost sight of the collective good. Not only the collective good for humanity, but the collective good for all that God has made. The collective good of taking care of that which is because it takes care of us. It's because in part we miss our connectedness to one another. At least one way to understand heaven, in the Semitic tradition is to understand it as the relational connectivity of all.

We have come to think of it in the west as a place. But, the relational connectivity of all to which we all belong. Yes. There are individual pieces of it. Earth, the earthy pieces.

But there's also the vast connectedness of it all. And if we can't learn to see and love our neighbor as an extension of who we are, Not just as much as we love ourselves, but as an extension of who we are. My neighbor is me. If my neighbor is suffering, I'm suffering. And we live in a world that seems to invite a kind of harshness these days.

In fact, that harshness is celebrated in ways that concern me as a person of faith. Perhaps it concerns you too. Perhaps it doesn't. So recognizing the challenges that lie before us, as as people in this world of caring for one another in the world, I challenge myself and you to look for ways that we might be kind to nature and to our neighbors. We include nature if we're being really honest.

How can we be kind? What can we do to make the world a better place? Not an imagined safer place or a more monochrome place where white hegemony continues to reign? What can we do to celebrate the diversity of all the God made, the diversity of human beings and their color and gender and all of the other pieces we might look at. The many different species that we seem to be willing to, oftentimes exterminate, to make extinct without a second thought.

Because we want those trees and, or we want that land. We're willing to do those things. What can you and I do? What is ours to do, each of us, to stand up for all the rest of us? Some of whom can't really speak for themselves.

So that's my thought for today. I wish you all the very best as you look for the connectedness of everything. Don't look for what divides us, what separates us, but look for the places where we're connected. Because then perhaps, like the Rich Mullen song says, everywhere you go and I go, we'll see the divine. Until the next time, remember you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.

Until that next time, all the very best to you.