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Saturday, October 18, 2003
October 19, 2003
You have to be careful whenever you want to mention the word "God" these days. The Christian fundamentalists have given God such a bad name among the liberals in this country, that you always run the risk that people will think you are talking about the same God Pat Robertson talks about. This is a great shame, because I believe that without God, without that great inconceivable mystery there to give us humility, and to move us to awe, even those who mean well and want to make the world a better place will have a tough time of it, for they will have too much pride in their own way and in their own answers - they will be too wrapped up in their own egos for the gentle selflessness that real peace in the world will require. The peace movement itself is full of ego and derision and even a kind of psychological violence.
This God that the fundamentalists believe in - the one who burns people in hell - is a pathological, really psychotic monster in need of serious therapy and perhaps institutionalization. I believe that if God follows the golden rule, then God could not possibly have created a hell.
We need to find ways to get our God back - a God that is all-loving and infinitely humble - a God that laughs and dances and that cares for us with a depth beyond human understanding. We need the faith in that inconceivable mystery to allow ourselves to be still enough to create real peace. I fear that any attempt at changing the world simply though the intellect of the human mind and the ambition of the human will can only lead to more war, for that is its consistent history. Remember that it was the human mind that came up with the whole doctrine of peace through strength. But even Einstein, not exactly an intellectual lightweight, said that "peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved through understanding."
We must be careful about being too smart for God. Peace is not a political state. It is a spiritual one. And it is only through the experience of something infinitely wiser and more loving than us, yet within us, that I think we will ever come to know it.
We must be the generation that stands for this.
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Friday, October 17, 2003
October 18, 2003
I have received many e-mails from many of you who walked in the 3-Days and rode in the AIDSRides over the years. It is so good to hear from you, and to re-connect with your energies, and remember what we achieved together, and to imagine the things we can do, perhaps each on our own or perhaps together again one day, to make this world the beautiful place we all know it can be and is, I hope, destined to be. I loved the events every year that we did them, but I most love the early years, when a small group of us, having no idea how on earth we would make them successful, committed to it anyway. We have all seen the wonderful Margaret Meade quotation - "never doubt the ability of a small group of dedicated citizens to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has." It is one thing to read that quote knowing it only as an abstraction. It is quite another to read it after you have met some of those dedicated citizens and after you have created great change in the world, and to know this, not as some cliche, but as a basic fact of life. There is another little poem that I like that the people at Chiat-Day wrote for Apple Computers that ends with this: "the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who usually do."
What I love about you folks is that humility you have that will not allow you to be so arrogant as to be resigned to the fact that you cannot change the world - that misfit craziness in you that allows you to believe in the miraculous. "God Bless the Freaks," the old bumper sticker says. She has, she has. Thank God for you.
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Thursday, October 16, 2003
October 17, 2003
That poor guy who tried to catch the foul ball at the Cubs game. While the security staff were escorting him out, you could see a number of fans shouting obscenities at him. Now this is instructive. Have you ever seen a group of fans not raise their hands up to try to catch a ball headed their way in the stands? In fact, didn't you see about eight hands go up in the area of that foul ball? But then people want to crucify this one guy as if they would not have done the identical thing if they were standing where he was.
So, in this one little incident at the Cubs game is distilled the entire problem of the human race. We see someone do something kind of stupid, and instead of taking responsibility for the part of ourselves that does something stupid every once in a while too, we project all the stupidity onto this poor guy and proceed to hate him for it. What we really hate is something in ourselves. And if we could just all come to grips with how much damage we do to ourselves day in and day out by calling ourselves stupid and worthless and everything else, we could all generate a little compassion for one another.
Now here's a visionary thing that the Cubs could do. They could run a full-page ad with the guy's name and picture saying, "It wasn't your fault. We take total responsibility for losing the game and the series. Thanks for being a great fan." And then maybe the whole team could take this guy out to dinner. Imagine if they turned this into a love fest and everyone got high on some compassion, instead of pointing fingers. And then imagine if we started doing that in the world. If we all got a good taste of compassion every once in a while we'd all want more and more of it, because it is who we naturally are.
That would make the Cubs the real champs.
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Wednesday, October 15, 2003
October 15, 2003
"Security is mostly a superstition. It deso not exist in nature. Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing at all.
- Helen Keller
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Monday, October 13, 2003
October 6, 2003
I just read a disturbing story in the paper about a pit bull in New York that got loose of its owner and pretty much tore the foot off of a young boy. The pit bull's name was "Murder." Carl Jung wrote about the shadow - about how we all have violence and darkness and selfishness inside of us, but that it is when we deny those things in ourselves, and pretend that we are entirely good (and that it is others who are the selfish ones and the violent ones) that these forces find unhealthy expression in our lives. Why do people own pit bulls? I think it is because they don't want to confront the pit bull in themselves, so they find an expression of it outside of themselves. But the destruction that this dog wrought on that little boy is nothing compared to the destruction that human beings bring upon one another each day, from the blood of Iraqi children to the suicide bombings in Israel to the ambushes of American soldiers in Bagdhad.
Until the day we take responsibility for the violence and the war inside ourselves then it will continue to find expression in the streets, and it is mostly the little children who will pay the price for it. The answers we seek are right under our own noses - all the things we hate in others are the things we often hate about, and are unwilling to confront, in ourselves. There's no one else out there. The more we can begin to look at the world's problems in that brilliant light of truth the more we will be able to free ourselves from a future based on a history that no longer works for us.
October 5, 2003
"And after they had explored all of the stars in the univers and all of the planets around each sun they realized they were alone, and they were glad, because they no knew they would have to become all of the things they had hoped to find."
Lanford Wilson
October 4, 2003
People keep asking me what I think about Arnold Schwarzenegger. I think three things. First, he's running on one of those "throw the bum out" platforms, which is so judgmental. More and more I realize that when someone says "throw the bum out," with respect to any of our incumbents, they are actually referring to the "bum" in themselves - the liar, the cheat, the part of themselves that can't keep a promise, the part of themselves that feels stupid and ineffective. This is the part of themselves they cannot face, so they project it onto someone else and relieve themselves of any discomfort. What do I think of Arnold Schwarzenegger? Well, I think he's not the only one doing this. We all do it from time to time.
The second thing I think about is why no one has raised the issue of the example he sets for children. Why has no one raised the point that he has made a life selling the most intense hyper-violence to children, filling their eyes with firebombs and automatic weapon fire and the bashing in of human heads, filling their ears with explosions, and filling their minds with thoughts of revenge and overly simplistic distinctions between good guys and bad guys? I don't have children yet, but if I did, this is not the person I would want them to look to for a world view.
The third thing I think about is the principle qualification I heard he stated at the start - that he grew up on a farm in Austria and managed to become the highest paid actor in Hollywood. To me, this points out only a profound ability to look out for his own self-interest. This is the opposite of what public service is about. This was not the kind of preparation that Gandhi or Mandela or Martin Luther King made for their life of public service. Granted, that should not disqualify him, but it should not do the opposite either.
October 3, 2003
I was walking down the street a few hours ago and heard a loud thump. It was a disturbing noise. Immediately following I heard a woman beginning to scream. I looked in the direction of the noise and the scream. A small child was laying in the street and the woman, his mother, was running toward him repeating "Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God." She was hyperventilating the words more than speaking them. The child was hit by a passing car. This really happened.
The child turned out to be OK, thank God.
One second a mother is leaving a store on a completely normal day having a completely normal moment with her two kids and the next second the child is lying in the street hit by a car. Life leaves us in an instant, shattering all of our illusions of importance and control and omnipotence. And once it leaves it cannot be brought back. Once it crosses that threshold it is gone for an eternity of eternities, and one could search the cosmos and it could never be found. Here. Not here. Never here again.
We know this can happen. Yet we live as if it can't. Most of our existence - most of our culture's "busy-ness" - is to cover over the fact that at any moment we might not be here ever again. We lack the patience to contemplate that greatest of mysteries, and to draw strength and awe from it. So we instead often pretend, through our identities, our homes, our titles, our resumes, our material possessions that our lives are secure and too significant to be taken away. Our jobs "anchor" us. Our promotions "solidify" our jobs. Our portfolios "guarantee" our futures. But somewhere inside we know that none of this is true. And the resistance between what we know to be true and what we pretend to be true is the basic source of our anxiety. And all too often this anxiety takes over our lives. But life is passing us by. The very thing we are afraid of losing we often never even experienced in the first place. This is the thing we must most endeavor to change. We must learn to embrace the present moment.
There is the most wonderful book out there right now which dissects and explores this subject. It's called "The Power of Now" - a best-seller by a man named Eckhart Tolle. It has made a profound difference in my own life and I highly recommend it. There is an abridged version called, "Practicing the Power of Now" which is a good introduction.
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