• Kim’s Dream
  • Orlando R. Ravanera

Being members-owned (no one shall be left behind), value-based and principle-driven (giving high adherence to spirituality) and sustainability (for social inclusion and ecological integrity) as its DNA, cooperativism has come of age in a world immersed in gross inequalities and now facing its 6th extinction. In the darkness caused by coronavirus pandemic, let us reflect for a while and read the book that God Himself has written.

That reflection has become imperative in the frenzied pace to accumulate whatever it is to amass in a throw-away, materialistic and consumerist society. Let us pause for a while. Let us detach ourselves temporarily from the mundane and reflect on the sublime to imbibe new spiritual consciousness on the essence of our very own existence. To partake of that consciousness, it behooves upon all of us to read seriously the book that God has authored, written in His own handwriting. That book is opened 24 hours a day and has no literacy requirement for it is not written in alphabets and can be well understood using not one but five senses.

That book is said to be a manifestation of the Unseen using the great void as its pages and the four elements of the Universe as its alphabets, namely, Fire, Water, Earth and Wind. It is called the Book of Nature written through the ages that contains all the mysteries of life and the laws that must be obeyed irrespective of race, color, belief, gender and class.

The 250 million stars in the cosmos can well speak of that element called Fire that touches us through the glorious sun.  Every time the sun proclaims a new day, that bursting of the light in the horizon shows that darkness can only be had in the absence of light and no way can the darkness defeat the light.  In the same breath that truth always prevails over lies, righteousness over diabolic acts, love over hate, the just over the unjust, and life over death.

But we also read in that book that even the darkness has some good in it because it shows us the stars.

From that element called Water we have learned that flowing is the essence of life as to stagnate means diseases, sorrows and death. For it to flow, it must seek a lowly path as it gains more power by falling down.

In the 70s during the height of the First Quarter Storm, we always heard the adage, “Let not a single drop of rain go out to the sea without serving the people.”

There is also that cleansing and healing power of water. It has been said that sometimes the passions of the heart emit so much heat which only dies down through the cooling effect of the water we drink.

From the lowly Earth grows the mighty tree and the beautiful flower. It may contain all that rot but even the wise, the powerful and the beautiful have to return to the earth as their final destiny.

The message is resoundingly clear:  man has to continuously move on to seek his destiny but only by being humble can he be exalted.  Once he flaunts his arrogance in utter disregard of the book of nature, he dictates his own death sentence. He cannot continuously arrogate upon himself that false belief that he has been bestowed dominion over God’s creation. On the contrary, there is now the increasing consciousness of bio-equality recognizing the right to life of all God’s creation.

Collective insanity has been flaunted time and again that has caused so much destruction and suffering through world wars when the egoic mindset and arrogance of leaders like Hitler, Pol-Pot and Stalin violated that law that only by being humble that man can be exalted Let us therefore be connected with the Unseen Being by freeing ourselves from the control of the egoic mind! Deep inside, feel the deathless and unmanifested  Essence of the Being by connecting to the Power of Now! That is the liberating force!

Often disregarded, even the unseen Wind has its own story to tell as its fundamental role is only recognized in its absence. How can one live without air to breath yet it is always taken for granted, like our love ones whom we have more often than not, taken for granted, yet so integral to us that we cannot live, in fact, without them.

The book of nature presents laws which are very easy to understand but have been violated all these years. It says that everything is inter-connected. When forests are denuded, soil erodes forming silts which are carried by the rivers to the sea, destroying the coral reefs which are the habitats of fish and other marine life. This scenario gives credence to that saying that what evil deeds man does in the uplands are felt by those in the coastal communities.

The worsening ecological disasters are the concrete evidence of why it has become imperative for us to now give high reverence to that book as indeed, there is no such thing as free meal in nature.

Knowing the essence of that “Book,” the 18,581 cooperatives with some 11.5 million members must now be that long awaited robust movement to claim back the lost ecological integrity and be a countervailing force against climate change and violent extremism. This is our response to the United Nations’ call to advance the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and become Transformative Cooperatives for People, Planet, Prosperity and Peace!