As Iranian rockets directly kill Druze in Israel, Quaker meditations on pain and dark night

 Our Sunday Quaker discussion group directly addressed a reading on "the dark night of the soul,"

which certainly relates to the situations we all face today. Here is my view of the greater situation now:

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The reading on the dark night of the soul was written from a Christian viewpoint, though Buddhists also discuss the suffering in life, affecting both body and soul. In global dialogue, I urge us always to remember and draw on all our main inheritances -- not just Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and hinduism and Buddhism, but also science and "shamanism" or indigenous people.

As I consider OUR personal suffering, especially as we age, I think of the great movie The Lion King, which my deeply attuned grandson Leo rightly persuaded a whole family of us to watch a few weeks. ago. THAT indigenous view of the Circle of Life addresses OUR kind of suffering and choice (at least the male side of the story) in a way which does NOT make war between body and soul, but addresses both together. 

As scary bad things happen at many levels of life -- including all of humanity this week as the risk of global war ala Armageddon becomes all too real -- I am reminded of the sleeping Vishnu I saw in Kathmandhu, to whom we might say "let us dream a better dream."  Rosicrucians, as in the book Seeing With the Mind's Eye (I?), by Samuels and Samuels, would urge us to hold strongly tow two visions at once... what is coming now, and a very vivid and real alternative. What I have seen of two state solutions is simply not viable as they stand. They are like the old apartheid invention. Always see at least two options, and always choose life.. real life, not some muddy distorted image in a muddy pond, as local self-serving fake spiritual leaders often do.

WHY must we endlessly be confused and challenged and frustrated, forced to change, EVERY week... especially if we are on a higher path? Rosicrucians say it is like school. BETTER students must expect to be challenged every day,

and learn to adapt to THAT fact. Ever agile. Ever aware BOTH of their limitations and ignorance, as they look above with wonder, and listen, with curiosity and will to see deeper... but also with humility, looking below, not to step on anyone's toes, including their own. 

And... as the Lion King... we are called to connect as part of a MIX, and to listen with love to and from voices of higher dharma.