Earth
is a School
GEAE's
Spiritist Messenger 060 - February/March 2005
Editorial
Dear Readers,
We have heard that Earth is a school. Yes, it is indeed a great school
and the Master Jesus its foremost teacher. So, no spiritist should be
surprised when he or she witnesses an apparently innocent person loses
his life, wealth or tranquility due to a natural disaster. If such a
thing happens we must know that a lesson is being taught, a class is
being held for that person.
When we visit a school, no matter its size or location, we never find a
class with a single student, do we? So, why should we be surprised with
those events that we call natural disasters? It is because of the wide
spread proportion of the catastrophe, one should reply. But is it
really so? Let’s reason together. When we visit a school we may
find 30
students in each class and, depending on its size, up to some 300
students in the same grade. If we sum up all the students in all the
classes of the same or equivalent grade all over the world, we may find
millions of students learning basically the same lessons at the same
time. So, when a so-called natural disaster kills thousands of people,
destroys the properties of many others and leaves millions homeless why
should we find it strange? Those are the millions of students learning
the same lessons, as happens every single day in the schools all over
the world.
Natural disasters are lessons being taught to a huge number of students
and such an event is nothing different from what happens everyday in
the schools, for the world ought to be seen as a whole rather than a
single educational unit. The difference lies not in the event but in
what is learnt by those who are outside the school when the lesson
occurs.
The fact that millions of students are learning the same lessons every
day emotionally touches no one. However, when natural catastrophes
happen it works as great lessons to those lying in inertia, doing the
same things day after day and to those who are plunged under vices,
apparently immune to external motivations, for they are all called to
action. The man who walks emotionless passing by a body laying on a
street is shocked by the sight of a thousand bodies laying everywhere
around and offers to help. Those who are immune to motivations from
everyday life are overwhelmed by motivations coming from all around and
succeed in making their life useful to others. Charity abounds whenever
a natural disaster occurs. Suffering is so great that even that person
who thinks itself incapable of any deed is filled with additional force
and acts in order to help someone. Unconditional love is the other name
of charity. We love unconditionally when we do our best to help people
of whom we can expect nothing in return, people whose name and
situation in society we completely ignore. And that’s exactly
what many
people do when a natural disaster occurs.
Now we
can say who are the students who learn from a natural disaster: those
who are
suffering because they need to suffer in order to learn something they
had been failing for several lives to learn the easy way and those
who help the suffering because they learn what unconditional love means
and realize that when they help needed people they get much more in
reward from the spiritual world. And
we finally understand which the lesson left to all of us by the Wise
and loving Master of our wonderful school, the Planet Earth, is. A
marvelous method that makes us learn despite our laziness and lack of
will.
Much peace
Renato Costa - Editor