“Zero-sum” describes a situation or game in which whatever is gained by one side is lost by the other: winner takes all. Our culture thrives on it. Take sports. Rooted in zero-sum attitudes, sports epitomize much else in our culture: politics, our judicial system, business and, of course, war.
The major difference today is that Centers for Spiritual Living, what Religious Science is now known as, has ongoing classes that lead adherents to a point of being licensed practitioners ready to start ministerial classes.
I have to believe that unity must mean something more than one group being right and working tirelessly to get the other group join their side. It has to transcend my own limits as a liberal-leaning Christian, and it has to transcend the limits of conservative Christians as well.
We did a walking meditation the other evening in a class that my wife and I teach. In the meditation the meditators take one step in silence with each breath focusing on their surroundings — coolness, dampness and unevenness of the ground, the leaves, life in the moment.
Sometimes life is like that, we move forward, slowly, yet we are still moving forward.
Once a month, on the third Friday at 8 p.m., a group of people in Spokane use the downtown triangle to meditate or pray. Many cities in the world have started similar recurring “meditation flash mobs”.