What is right???? Getting a little political here.

Winter is nearly upon us so the building season is coming to a close. Time to cuddle in by the fire and contemplate life.

Read the whole thing and I will tie all this to Simple Living.

The other day I came home to find three posters around the house. Each one eluded to the "Golden Rule". Now I am not one to follow any organized religion, but this one rule seems to hold true for both religious types and those of us who find our spirituality in other ways. It seems that this is the one rule that binds all humans together whether you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Gnostic, Pagan, or practice any other spirituality. Some will say that this rule is silly, in that if you are ok with someone stealing from you, then you can go out and steal. This is missing the point. This rule is about being true to your own spirit and holding that each human has the right to its own life on this planet. That we should all first consider how our actions impact those around us and that simple act of consideration can guide our behavior towards others. I have had two experiences recently that have held this belief. The first was my mother telling me about a person who made the statement "Who would Jesus cover". Cover meaning health insurance. I thought about this and surely if we apply the "golden rule" then he would cover his fellow man before himself. The other is who is able to have a civil marriage. I am not talking about a religious marriage, as a religious marriage is between you and which ever god you believe in. I am talking about the legal marriage granted by the government which is supposed to be by the people for the people and blind when it comes to religion. If the golden rule is applied here then any two people can enter into a legal contract (Marriage by the legal definition) that affords them the rights given by a government. I think we have all become hung up on the word marriage. So I propose the following.... From now on we should all refer to each type of marriage with its full name. Kind of like how we name animals (homo sapiens) We have a civil marriage and a religious marriage. You can have one, both or none. You can be married by your god and not have any of the civil rights, you can be married by the government and get the civil rights, you can have both or you can have neither and just live together. As a non-religious person I do not have the right to tell anyone that they cannot have a religious marriage and I would expect the same (think golden rule) that anyone religious person would not deny anyone a civil marriage (we live in a free country able to practice any religion we want or not at all). I am glad that the my government does not tell me which religion to follow.

How does this go with simple living... I think that if we all focused on using just what we need a little more and spent less time on worrying about how others live then we all would get along just a little better. When we resign ourselves to shift our focus from doing what is right to doing what the crowd does we lose our focus and become blinded and society as a whole is drawn deeper into this divide that we now call the right vs the left. We all feel good when we do good for others and we all feel rotten when we hurt someone. Lets all do more good.

Thank you for reading...

Namaste