The Rosicrucian Fellowship An International Association of Christian Mystics dedicated to preaching the Gospel and healing the sick

As individuals, members of the Rosicrucian Fellowship have been experiencing a gamut of thoughts and feelings incident to the Tuesday, September 11 acts of terrorism.

The Fellowship, in spite of its name, does not have one opinion, or one point of view, because we are not a we but an association of Christians, and no one speaks for the other.

That having been said, because we are Christians means that the Being of Christ serves as the model for our thinking, feeling, and doing. That we subscribe, as individuals, with differences and agreements, to the Rosicrucian view of life may also be inferred.

We believe that humans are spirit beings, eternal in and ultimately as God, and are therefore infinitely perfectible, and that we have, and must have, free will to attain that perfection. It is not something that can simply be conferred.

The Teachings, then, contain information on which we can draw to shed light on Tuesday's attack against humanity. Two observations stemming from these Teachings may be advanced:

(1) Nothing occurs in life without sufficient cause, and

(2) there is, generally speaking, an ideal, or at least preferred basis, for responding to any event--in this case, an act of extreme aggression. People need to do deep soul-searching to get to the why of what has happened.

At heart, it is safe to say, the motivation stems from frustration, ignorance, and a radical devaluation of individual human worth. If people live under oppression and without opportunity, they can be psychically and mentally molded and manipulated to think and act in ways that violate their God-given nature--which is, above all, to love and honor the inestimable value of each person.

While free and sane persons around the world are in shock, and grieve for the dead and for the living, we have work to do, all of us, as individuals, as nation groups, and as members of an indivisible global unity.

The United States needs to look long and hard at its self-presentation in the world, objectively assess and change its relationship with other countries and peoples so that it may better and more equitably share and prove what it professes for, believes in, and gives to its own people. It needs to export and internationally demonstrate the conviction that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are the birthright of all humans. We need to become internationally American, looking to the needs of poor, oppressed, uneducated persons wherever they live and to provide for and encourage their whole self-becoming and their right to dignity.

With respect to how the Rosicrucian Teachings might help us to best respond to this crisis, Max Heindel makes clear that we, as Americans, must go beyond our territorial borders and relate to all of humanity as our brothers and sisters. Our patriotism, healthy in that it unites us , should extend to the world, should be global, should exclude no one, for now the world mourns the death of the innocent, and the world fears for its security and faces a common peril that knows no race, no national boundaries, and no religion, for God does not kill his children: they themselves do this.

Heindel is clear about patriotism: if the world is not the patriot's country, he is parochial and partial and fights against his best interests. The sun shines on all humanity. This planet Earth shares the same moon and is girded by the same infinitude of stars. There is no chosen country, no chosen people: that way is a sure recipe for division, separation, and war.

If we each in quiet seek in our hearts causes and answers for this recent outrage, and all its predecessors, and all that are yet to come, the answer will be found, as will the solution to the threat of enduring fratricide. Yes, it is love, but if love is not clothed in intelligent deeds, in difficult doing, in radical self-transformations, it is not love, and all the religious litanies and righteous invocations and avowals of love will avail nothing if we are not sincere and active on all fronts, with all people, at all times.

We are the world, all of us. No human is outside the human family, because there is one God and we are His children, and whom He did not make does not exist. On this premise we must intelligently and courageously and confidently act. There is no other way.

In Christian Fellowship,
The Rosicrucian Fellowship

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