Common Ground
Spirituality Without Borders for Spiritually Independent People
The first and foremost goal of finding Common Ground is to make a difference in individual lives and the world community.
Common Ground fosters the experience of an open and inclusive worldview as well as a spirituality that helps set a strong foundation for people to grow in healthy ways and experience life's journey at its best.
Finding Common Ground is an expansive, innovative and contemporary way to nurture body, mind and spirit
Common Ground is Spiritual, not Religious
The Box: by Lascelles Abercrombie
Once upon a time, in the land of Hush-A-Bye, around about the wondrous days of yore, they came across a kind of box, bound up with chains and locked with locks and labeled “Kindly do not touch; it’s war.”
A decree was issued round about, and all with a flourish and a shout and a gaily-colored mascot tripping lightly on before. Don’t fiddle with this deadly box, or break the chains, or pick the locks. And please don’t ever play about with war.
The
children understood. Children happen to be good and they were just as good around the time of yore. They didn’t try to pick the locks or break into that deadly box. They never tried to play about
with war. Mommies didn’t either; sisters, aunts, grannies neither. They were quiet, and sweet, and pretty in those wondrous days of yore.
Well, very much the same as now, not the ones to blame somehow for opening up that deadly box of war.
But someone did. Someone battered in the lid and spilled the insides out across the floor. A kind of bouncy, bumpy ball made up of guns and flags and all the tears, and horror, and death that comes with war. It bounced right out and went bashing all about, bumping into everything in store. And what was sad and most unfair was that it didn’t really seem to care much who it bumped, or why, or what, or for.
It bumped the children mainly. And I’ll tell you this quite plainly, it bumps them every day and more, and more, and leaves them dead, and burned, and dying, thousands of them sick and crying. Cause when it bumps, it’s really very sore.
Now there’s a way to stop the ball. It isn’t difficult at all. All it takes is wisdom, and I’m absolutely sure that we can get it back into the box, and bind the chains, and lock the locks. But no one seems to want to save the children anymore.
Well, that’s the way it all appears, cause it’s been bouncing round for years and years. In spite of all the wisdom since those wondrous days of yore and the time they came across the box, bound up with chains and locked with locks, and labeled “Kindly do not touch; it’s war.”
The Dalai Lama's Perspective on War
"The source of war is not the existence of nuclear weapons or other arms. It is the minds of human beings who decide to push the button and to use those arms out of hatred, anger or greed."