So I was thinking about the stories about the Promised Land and how God said to Moses that His people will be show to the land flowing with milk and honey. Some will argue that this land is the life yet to come once we have departed from this mortal coil and entered the kingdom that awaits us. Others will say that this land has been realised with the people that followed Moses into the land that they dwelt in. But as I look around, Heaven and Hell is right before our eyes, depending what we choose to see.

We live in a society that provides us with food from around the world, even when it is out of season in our own part of the world. We have been lucky enough to be bourn is a country that is not griped in public poverty, which supplies all these luxuries. If you wish to have cherries in the middle of winter, there are people or companies that will transport them from another part of the world to your local shopping centre for a price. Walking through the shopping centre we see cans of tropical fruits and premade meals that needs no effort to prepare for the dining table. Going to the bread aisle, there are breads from all types of cultures, and you have so much choice of white bread that brings on confusion because of the different marketing ploys. If you want fish you can have your choice of fish, fresh delivered from the fish markets two or three hundred kilometres away.

I am too well aware of countries that do not enjoy these luxuries’, and of the companies that market this fact on TV to raise money for them as aid, and only deliver approximately 5% of what they raise. Furthermore other governmental organisations and the United Nations send food and relief packages that are then usurped by corrupt people to sell to their own people. Likewise when money is given, this too is diverted to places other than that to help the population. Medication is also denied to people because of cost, because large pharmaceutical companies are not willing to make them affordable in those countries.

But let’s not digress too much. I find it remarkable that with all the technology and luxury items at our finger tips and servers to help us make lives easy, that we still strive to make life hard for ourselves and others. Some couples fight over how money is spent when others in the world just fight to survive. Some people abuse their power to hinder others, and become corporate psychopaths.

We live in a time that does supply us with everything. So this is the time of flowing milk and honey. But I feel at times that it is also flowing with distractions that take our eye from what is important. I remember a few years ago, in 2003 or 2004, a man was given an arts grant of $50,000 to put on a public arts performance. He set him-self up in a shop window rubbing honey into furniture with great detail and passions, then at other times he would drink up milk and then regurgitate the milk on the floor where he was either kneeling or laying. Also he transported milk from one bowl to another with his mouth while ensuring that he spilt much of the milk outside the bowls on the floor. I also remember the public outcry of the amount of money that this one man was given to put on this art demonstration. But if we look at what he was symbolising with such a display, it hit home to me, that he was mimicking our decadent society, along with the waste that is within it.

In conversation with others about this man and his art performance, I have not had one person talk about the depth of his message. Though we do see on the surface an egocentric person that wants attention and an easy way to get money from the arts council, although the publicised amount that he received may have been part of the performance and his message.

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