Common Ground

When you can step back away from the center, and look around a bit, your opportunity there is to see things from a new perspective. You can see your past, present, and potential future. You can look around and compare the way you think and act with the thoughts and actions of others, and if you're willing to open your eyes you can peer past the shallow surface differences and find at their core that we are all just alike. Rite and ritual, words and books, sacred places and things are but a shadow of the truth. Those things only help us focus our attentions on the divine aspect of the universe, the world, and the divinity within ourselves. It is at our core where our humanity is no different than any other. And our humanity wants, needs, hungers, thirsts, desires love and attention. It sweats, stinks, gets chilled and overheated, lusts, we're greedy, get fat, skinny, old, and none of us by being holier than the next or focusing on our desired spiritual path can escape our own demise. A warm blanket or a hot bath or good tasting food holds the same value as it did for the first human, we're no different. No culture, people, or race is immune to these things. We all like children play make believe, we talk to ourselves and often answer, we all want to feel important and special. Some belief systems frown on these ideas, that the cultivation of basic human desires is categorized as 'evil'. But we were made in God's perfect image and likeness, and instilled in us all are those innate wonderful characteristics we are often taught to repress. But it is our humanity that is the common ground on which we can all agree. And there's something incredibly powerful and spiritual about those ties that bind us all together.