Dan Pallotta

4.02.2004

Saturday, April 3, 2004

Our founding fathers were relatively young people. With no evidence that it was possible, they set about the terrifying task of creating a new nation. It was a time for new ideas, for the old ideas had outlived their usefulness. It was time to chart a new course, for the old course offered no future. They made it their mission to create America where no America had existed before. They made it their mission to create tomorrow. That's what America was when they created it - it was tomorrow - a tomorrow for all the world to see. We, by contrast, have made America about yesterday. We have falsely concluded that the best way to honor their courage is to protect what they created. But in so doing we find ourselves playing the role of those they sought to overthrow. We cling to old ideas. We have no dream of our own. We hold tight to what they created, and in so doing, we bastardize it.

To be a true American means to have the courage to create tomorrow - in this age - in this time - from this vantage point. The true meaning of America is not limited to democracy. The true meaning of America is enlightenment. To be a true American is to dream of a world where the American flag sacrifices its own ego in the name of a new world - a world of unity and peace - and in so doing earns itself a place in history for all the ages - and continues to inspire America on into millennia in the future.

The more we cling to the idea of America the more it eludes us. We must muster the courage of Jefferson and Franklin, and let go of all we have known to create a new nation that can, as did theirs, create a new world. Anything less dishonors their courage, and misses the lesson of their lives.

4.01.2004

Friday, April 2, 2004

One time I went to Hawaii and late one night took a trip up to the top of Mauna Kea, where many of the world's largest telescopes are situated. It was pitch black, and there were a zillion stars lighting up the endless sky. With a pair of binoculars, I was shown a fuzzy little star - a dot that I could not even see with my naked eye. I was told that this was the M31 galaxy - a galaxy not unlike the Milky Way, that was 2,000 light years across. In other words, to get from one end of that speck to the other end of that speck, traveling at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second, or 669 million miles an hour) it would take 2,000 years.

The fastest speed human beings have ever traveled is about 24,300 miles per hour in the Apollo command modules as they headed for the moon. We have never traveled at a speed anything close to the speed of light.

How long, I wondered, would it take to get across that speck in the sky if we were traveling only as fast as the Apollo astronauts? If my math is correct, then it would take about 60 million years. 60 million years to cross a speck in the sky - a speck I can't see with my own naked eye.

It is fun sometimes to float off into the unimaginable. It allows us to touch at the mystery of life. It also reminds us that the unimaginable is very real. That helps us to believe that the unimaginable could occur in our own lives. It certainly helps us to realize that we are in no position to doubt it.

Thursday, April 1, 2004

April Fool's Day. The modern paranoid macho world labels anyone a fool who believes that peace and love are the answer to the world's violence. Given the track record of hatred and militarism, I would label anyone a fool who believes otherwise.

3.31.2004

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Today we have more murder in the news in Iraq.

Murder is the surest sign that our way of life is broken. When we destroy a life we are rejecting the idea of life itself. If we compared life to a game, then murder is like cheating. Once you've cheated, you've rejected the game itself. You've decided to play God by changing the rules unilaterally.

Now it is one thing when a person murders another person. That only rises to the level of an individual rejecting the game. But when entire nations murder people, then it becomes a matter of all humanity rejecting the game.

Do we have a better game? Is that why we reject life? The idea of it makes me want to cry. Our arrogance is the saddest thing I've ever encountered. I picture a young child, working for hours on a painting to give to her best friend as a gift. Can you think of a sadder scene than one in which the friend tears it up right in front of her face upon receiving it, and stomps it into the ground? God comes to us as our best friend, bearing this gift of life on earth - a magical fantasy ride that she created just for us. We tear it up in front of her very eyes. We reject the gift. We reject the idea of the gift. In a rage, we stomp it into the ground.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not humanity that needs to fear God. It is God that needs to fear humanity.

3.30.2004

Tuesday, March 30. 2004

Someone wrote to me the other day asking how it was that I could believe in God in a world where so many children die of AIDS and hunger, and where bigotry opposes gay marriage.

What did he mean by "God?" What do I mean by "God?" I don't mean the God that the fundamentalists offer us. That is not my God. The fundamentalists give us a mutually exclusive choice between their God and no God at all. That is a horrible choice. Given that choice, I choose no God at all. I think that's the choice God would make as well. God exists for me somewhere in that paradox - that given a choice between an evil God and no God at all, God would choose no God at all. But God is the one who gets to make the choice. Even the absence of God is a choice made by God. God is the context. God is nothing and God is everything. It is a great tragedy that the fundamentalist influence has been so strong that many people cannot even conceive of a God of their own understanding. They think they have to take the white bearded guy or go with nothing.

With respect to all of the evil in the world, I got my most profound insight on that watching the movie, "Oh God" about twenty-five years ago. John Denver asks George Burns how he can allow so much suffering in the world. God says, "I couldn't figure out any other way. I couldn't figure out how to have hot without having cold, or light without having dark. If I took away suffering, I'd have to take away joy too." Nothing can exist without its opposite.

But on another level, I think it's irresponsible for us to lay the blame for suffering at God's doorstep. Didn't God give us everything we need to stop all the suffering? Even if we couldn't find a cure for AIDS, couldn't we stay by the bedsides of all the dying children as they transition? Couldn't we make sure they all have a nice warm bed and good medical care in the first place? And the simple fact is, we have a way to stop the death toll. God gave us the intellect that developed protease inhibitors. Is it God's fault if we choose not to spend the $20 billion or $40 billion a year it would take to get them to everyone with AIDS, even while we spend $450 billion a year on defense? If we're not defending humanity against the death toll of AIDS - 3 million people a year - what on earth good is it to have defense spending?

As a kid, I used to listen to the "prayers of the faithful" in church on Sundays. The reader would list all the problems in the world and then ask God to solve them, and we would all say, "Lord, hear our prayer." I could never understand why we were asking God to do something about things we weren't willing to do anything about ourselves. We should be getting busy getting food to these kids ourselves. That's what God wants. He put the food here. He put us here. What more do we want from God?

So anyway, this is how I reconcile the existence of God with the existence of suffering. But like I said, if the only choice I had was their God, I'd choose no God at all. Thank God it's not.

3.29.2004

Monday, March 29, 2004

Sometimes I get very carried away with the physical world and let my spiritual practice lapse. This is always a recipe for disaster. I begin to think that the physical world is what's real and I forget all about the existence of an inner world. Consequently, I become wrapped up in my fears and anxieties about the physical world - about money, about achievement, status, the future, and all that distracting stuff. I lose my peace. My mind takes over and starts running all of its movies on the big screen between my eyes and the world, and I start watching. Thomas Merton wrote a lot of good things, but there's a tiny little synopsis of his whole outlook, I guess, that is a very powerful reminder of what is important and what is not - "Without a life of the spirit our whole existence becomes unsubstantial and illusory." I love that. There's another line that has a similar impact on me by Paramahansa Yoganada - "Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait."

My spiritual practice has gone in cycles - I get into it and I fall out of it, back into it and back out of it. I am always much happier when I am in it - when I take the time to meditate each day, to go for a quiet walk, to pray, to listen, to take care of my body and my diet, to exercise, to practice gratitude, to write in my journal. Neither John Kerry or George Bush or any other candidate will ever be a substitute for these kinds of things. If we seek our happiness from an external hero it will always elude us, I suspect.

Life is to be savored, not woofed down, like a cheeseburger. Meditation and quiet and candles and journaling help me to savor it. They give the appropriate reverence to the gift that life is. They honor it. They dignify it. The rush and the mania of our materialistic world do just the opposite of that. They diminish life. They dishonor it. They bring me down too. If I can't maintain the highest pitch of stimulation I get low. That's not much of a choice.

Don't know what put me in this mood today or what reminded me of it - well, actually - must be God that put me in this mood today and reminded me of it, and I let my guard down just a little bit and that was enough for her to come in, I guess. God's not resentful. I find that you can ignore God for months but she's always there, waiting, and the minute I ask her to come in she does so with great love and enthusiasm and gentleness. Thank God for that. Imagine if God was stingy with her love?

Hope you all are having a good day, and that something slows you down enough to make you stop and distinguish what's real from what isn't, and that that brings you some peace.

3.28.2004

Sunday, March 28, 2004

It is a beautiful day. The sky is blue and the birds are chirping. The air is warm with a little morning breeze and sweet with jasmine. There is much to be grateful for.

Saturday, March 27, 2004

"Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live." Robert F. Kennedy, To Seek a Newer World, 1967

Friday, March 26, 2004

"There is something basically wrong with America right now. We are not ourselves. Unhappiness, negativism, 'againstness,' seems to be the predominant current. Everybody is against something - against the war, against the students, against the president, against the press. We spend most of our time and energy and reaction being against. We do not chart courses, we plan battles. We do not have goals, we have targets. We do not work together, we choose up sides. We do not act, we react." Edward M. Kennedy, Commencement Address, Manhattanville College, May 30, 1970.