A Story on perseverance and faith

Here is a children’s story on the power of perseverance and faith that I wrote :Once a long time ago, there was busy town called Santa Tecla. Santa Tecla was filled with big giant buses who choked out smog . It had large malls filled with department stores and everyday more and more people started to stumble into the bustling town.

Yes, it was growing at a fast pace. The problem was that as it grew, they were cutting down all the trees around there. And the earth was so dry that it was very hard for anything to flourish…almost impossible.

Pretty soon the town awoke and realized how hard it was to breathe, and they tried very hard for something to grow. But it was in vain, as the sky was choked with darkness.

Many gave up and decided to leave. Pretty soon, Santa Tecla was a dry abandoned city. They called it the Dead City for a reason.

One day, a man came about who wanted to change things. He was young and impulsive and decided that he would give things a try.

Everyone warned him that it was fool’s game and it was not a good idea to try to let anything grow there. The city was festered with disease and darkness and there was no way out.

But Roberto Mendez smiled at them kindly. He told them ” Darkness is only the absence of light my dear friends. I am going to help dispel the darkness”.

They shook their heads and realized how stubborn he was. A reporter came in and wrote a piece on him, talking about the crazy man who tried to make things grow. Every day Roberto Mendez would get up and go to a small little patch of land in one of the most abandoned part of the town. It was near a large cracked wall and a huge ruined mansion. The dirt was so dry that it seemed like concrete.

But the crazy man would just sing to the earth and tell it ” Grow, grow my beautiful land try to grow grow
We all know know
You can sow sow beautiful flowers and trees
So we can attract all the bees
And dispel the dark
and make a beautiful park

People would come from all over to laugh at him. He would water the land but it seemed just as dry as before. ” Even if he does manage to get that little tiny patch of earth  to grow things what would be the point? The town is filled with concrete, the darkness in the sky will always continue”.

Time passed. Roberto continued to rise every day and water that dry patch of land. He would never despair if he saw no results. He believed with all his heart that it would happen. He would smile up to the sky and pray for the rain to fall.

One day, a 12 year old girl saw Roberto happily working on the dust.  Her name was Diana. Diana was small and kind and did not like it when people would come and point and laugh at Roberto.

She would watch him closely everyday. She even would sing along to his strange little song. One day , she saw a water can that her grandmother had abandoned. She grabbed some orange seeds her grandmother kept in a box and ran to Roberto with them.

She told Roberto ” Tell me, everyday you see no results yet you continue to water the land. Why do you persevere so much?”

He smiled and told her ” The sun is in the sky even when there are clouds. The ground still has dirt even if it is dry. We must always continue to try”.

She smiled at him and felt the ray of sun shine through her giving her strength. She felt that God had given them this gift. “We are the first people to accept this challenge, but soon there will be others, and they will continue the work long before we are gone…”

One day, the dirt became browner in color. The next day they were able to plant a seed in the ground. It was but a tiny seed yet they kept watering the seed day by day. The next day they planted another until they had a lot of tiny little seeds in the patch of land.

After awhile, Diana’s friends came to help and learned from the way they watered the ground and tried to do the same thing near where they lived. Little by little, patch by patch the land started to grow.

The reporter Mr. Fuss Bucket came back after many years of being away. By then, Diana and Roberto were older but they had a large group of people helping them . The garden was becoming large with big and powerful trees. Always the cynic, Mr. Fuss Bucket asked them ” How can you be sure we won’t make the same mistake again?”

Diana and Roberto told them ” We can’t really. We will never really know. The important thing is , mainly that we try  and we keep trying. And we share that learning with others ” Diana looked down and patted the head of a small boy that looked a lot like her.

The sun was setting. The clouds were begining to leave and you could feel the air was sweeter. The fruits were starting to show and Roberto gave them the quote of Abdul Baha once again :

The wise man does not work for the present moment but for the good results of the future. See in the winter how bare and lifeless the trees and plants seem, without leaves and without fruit. Suppose one should pass by at this time who knew nothing of the condition of the earth and saw a man ploughing it up and casting grain in the furrow. Would he not say, “How foolish this man is. He is troubling himself for no result, working for no purpose and wasting that which would give him food”? But in due time the showers descend upon the earth, the sun shines, the breezes blow and we see the result in great beauty and production. So is the work of the Holy Spirit in your hearts. The earthly sun is like the Sun of Truth; the rain is the shower of the mercy of God; the seed is the word of God; the air is the fragrant waves of His Holy Spirit and the soil is the hearts of the people”

As time passed, different people started to grow in their garden , and then dispersed the seeds in other places. It took a long time, but Santa Tecla became green once again.

Reexamining the Paradigm Shift of Religion and Science

The only way we can possibly all come together is by changing our current concepts of how we see the world. The time has come to break paradigms , and to redefine our current definitions of things are.  We need to have a serious paradigm shift in order for anything to get done.

What the heck is a paradigm anyway?  It describes distinct concepts or thought patterns in any scientific discipline or other epistemological context. ( According to wikipedia ). What it basically means is that we have certain concepts that we all have that we believe to be truths, and we stick to it until something comes along to challenge that paradigm and we adopt new ones. What makes it dangerous is how defines how we see the world, and our behavior as well. While we are not conscious of it, it is how we define a known reality. Paradigms are a bit like an internet meme, it spreads like wildfire without really having a clear idea how it started. In this day and age, we just naturally take things on as truth without knowing necessarily WHY  this is the case.

But paradigms does not have to contain truth, they are merely a way or a tool for us to make sense of the world. And our current paradigms are seriously messing with our heads. Our concept of religion, spirituality, men and women, education , relationships,etc are all following dated paradigms which I believe no longer work.  In the next couple of posts I am going to explain this a bit further ( or more like explain what I have learned from other people haha)

There is a reason why we live our lives in constant contradiction and fragmentation.  Our values at work, in how we treat others, in the world around us is consistently clashing, and this drives us to be a little like this :

 

How we choose a paradigm is sometimes arbitrary

A theory is tested, people adopt it and then consider it to be truth. Usually, though, it has more to do with the fact that it is what the majority believes than anything logical. In the advent of pseudo science this becomes even more evident. We follow a paradigm merely on the assumption that ” medical experts say so” . We believe science to be infallible and the truth. Actually, science has a lot to do with faith and has elements in common with religion.
Within our society, we think of certain concepts with a certain defnition, and a lot of times it is based on a historical assumption that this is how we should see things. However, perception is a tricky thing and at times how we define things might differ from one person to the next even if the ” concept” is clear to us.
Let’s take a very controversial topic : religion.

For Atheists : Religion is something that has caused great harm to our society, and has given way for men to force their views on others, wars, adopting falsehood and superstition, among other things.

If you consider their point of view, it’s not exactly wrong. In the name of religion , people have caused great harm and corruption. But was it really religion or the men behind it? I highly doubt that the Manifestations of God advocated superstition over investigating the truth, war and hate over love and service. All of them lead Their lives dedicated to others.

Religion, like science , is not static, but changes with action and reflection evolving constantly over time. The basis of it will remain the same, just as there are scientific principles which do not change however become sophisticated over time through investigation as does religion.

And what is spirituality? Spirituality adheres to a core belief that we all have virtues inside us. They are not material, we cannot bottle them but they are vital for our growth as human beings . When we increase our capacity to love others, others benefit and grow with this. When we increase our intellectual abilities with a desire to care for others, it has positive instead of detrimental effects in us.

When we think that we have a spiritual side, we will exploit those basic core values. Laughter, happiness, strength of love , generosity are all spiritual in nature. But this is not a spirituality that sits down and meditates all day without taking action. It is through going to serve others in some way that we increase our spiritual nature. It is by giving up our self to the benefit of others. By tossing aside the competitive nature so plagued by our current society we can progress spiritually. By deepening on what

I give this example but there are thousands more… we need to believe that our current notion of certain core concepts in our lives need to be redefined. There are basic parts of our lives that follow a broken model. Our concept of what family means, what religion is about, our concept of spirituality and the meaning of our lives. We blindly follow a set of archaic rules which no longer have any reason for being so. We need to start questioning why we do the things we do. We are living our lives surrounded by dichotomies , and it causes us to have split personalities. We need to have some balance in our lives. What’s true is that we need to grow as a society, and try to do it together by sharing our common beliefs and virtues.