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Friday, April 23, 2004
Friday, April 23, 2004
All this talk about whether the CIA should have prevented 9-11 or whether the FBI is at fault or whether the White House is at fault. Our priorities are the only thing that are at fault. If we did not prioritize weaponry and self-protection over compassion and grace and generosity and caring, 9-11 would never have happened and we would never ever have to worry about it happening again.
If you are using the wrong system you cannot change outcomes by repairing the system you're using. You can't look for answers inside the wrong system. You have to use a different system. That's why all of these inquiries and all of these new security plans are irrelevant. Inside of this system terror will continue to happen no matter what we do about it. In fact, the more we try to prevent it the more it will occur.
It is as if you have a boat on the freeway and you wonder why it won't go anywhere. You keep trying to fix the boat and still it won't go anywhere. You blame the captain and hold inquiries of the sailors and still the boat is stuck on the freeway. You spend $87 billion on a new motor for the boat and still it remains immovable.
What we are attempting to do is that insane.
Then you have learned experts come in and tell us all about how boat engines work. They have PhDs from Harvard and they have studied boats for years and have written many books on the subject. And we the people are wrapt by their knowledge. We read their books and we put them in positions of extreme power. After all, they're so much smarter than us. Little children are standing outside of the boat yelling at us, "you need water to make a boat move!" but the learned experts tell us not to listen to children. Children are naive. They have no credentials. If we listen to children our whole world could fall apart - this world we love so much and have grown so used to where we are very busy trying to get the boat to move on the freeway. Never mind that no boat has ever yet moved on a freeway.
Trying to get a boat to move on a freeway is like trying to get peace through the use of violence. It's like trying to stop terror by killing all the terrorists. It's as simple as that.
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Thursday, April 22, 2004
"All great truths begin as blasphemies."
- George Bernard Shaw
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Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
There was quite a disturbing story in the Los Angeles Times today about young American soldiers finding themselves in the thick of real battle for the first time, and reporting on their reactions to shooting other human beings for the first time in their lives. The headline reads, " 'It's Real Now,' Troops Say as Bullets Start to Fly,"and the sub-head reads, "Young soldiers fighting in Iraq find that some experiences, including spilling an adversary's blood, can't be simulated in training."
Here are some of the quotations taken direct from the young men:
"To actually shoot someone is different. To see them shot, fall to the ground, and then see blood come out. I'll never forget it. My heart was beating pretty fast."
"I was in full adrenaline rush. Nothing else mattered. I wanted to kill something. After the first few minutes, I started to have fun with it."
"I was smiling."
"I'm ready to go back out again. I want to blow up as many as I can."
You know, the truth, I find, about most things, lies precisely opposite of where you expect to find it. We wonder why we have wars. We say that war is such a terrible thing. But if it were really a terrible thing, we would stop it. There's nothing to explain why we keep doing it if it's such a terrible thing. It's like a person who goes in for abusive relationships time after time and whines about how terrible they feel and how much pain they are in. The truth is, they are loving the pain they are in and it isn't terrible at all.
Today's L.A. Times gave me a real insight into why we have war. War isn't terrible. War is a rush. We have war because of the rush of it. The rush of pulling the trigger. The rush of giving the command to drop the bombs. The rush of watching the buildings explode. The rush of declaring it. War is a rush to the human psyche and we're addicted to it, and like the alcoholic, we will destroy ourselves before we seek help. That's what's terrible.
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Monday, April 19, 2004
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
I woke up this morning to a clear blue sky and the sight of beautiful pine trees and a hummingbird hovering over the shrubs in the yard and the birds sprinkling their little sounds all over the morning. I woke up this morning to a paradise. I layed down on the floor and just took in the sounds and meditated for a little while. There were a hundred DVDs trying to load themselves into my brain - "you have to do this," "think about that," "don't forget to worry about this," "you have to get that budget done," "what about five years from now?" "when are you going to have children?" "you're getting old," "you don't look as good as you used to," "loser," and on and on and on.
We put ourselves through hell while the birds are singing for us. We struggle in isolation, the moment-to-moment struggles of our closest friends and loved ones often unknown to us. We kill one another without ever knowing that the ones we killed were afraid of the same things we were, and the things they dreamed of were the same things we dream of, and that the hatred they felt for themselves was greater than any hatred we could ever have aimed at them. They killed themselves long before we did. We kill one another without ever confronting the fact that under different circumstances we might have been the best of friends. As for us, we need not fear murder from the outside. The killer is inside of us. What good is it to protect our way of life if we have already robbed ourselves of the capacity for real love, for our dreams to come true - of the capacity to feel unbridled joy?
We don't cry at life. We don't feel our sadness and we don't access our joy. If we were in touch with what it is to be truly alive we would regularly be in tears - awed by this place to which we have been invited - by the color of a pine tree, the fragility and magic of a hummingbird, and the infinite mystery within those with whom we share a roof - our lovers, our family, the people we work with - the people we see every day, who wake up every morning with a hundred DVDs trying to load themselves into their brains - "you have to do this," "you don't make enough money," "your car sucks," "your job sucks, "you suck." And only on the rarest occasions, when God has buried us under the weight of her awesome hand, and we are broken by the sudden death of a loved one, or by some humiliating tragedy, do we ever open up enough to tell someone the truth about ourselves - about the DVDs that are trying to load themselves into our brains. It happens three or four times in our lives, and then others open up to us too - and show us the gaping wounds in their hearts - all the abandoned hopes and dreams, all the self-inflicted scars.
We have figured out clever ways to survive but we haven't figure out how to live. What a tragedy - to be given life and to spend our lives avoiding life, and avoiding one another. If only we could learn to help one another learn to live. If only we could learn how to show ourselves to one another in the absence of a great tragedy or the sudden loss of a loved one. If only the Americans could understand the Iraqi sense of humor. If only a Palestinian could understand how frightened an Israeli mother is that half the world wants to kill her children. If only Democrats could understand what drives a Republican to cling to their wealth. If only Republicans could understand the rage that a liberal feels at injustice. If only a mother could understand her child.
If only we could all understand the pressure under which we all struggle to live. That kid William Hung was on "American Idol" tonight. He said that he's studying civil engineering as a back-up if his singing career doesn't work out. When asked how he's doing with his civil engineering studies, he said, "I'm kind of struggling. I'm struggling in pretty much every area of my life." The crowd cracked up. "We are all struggling," he said. They cheered him. William Hung for President. He was more honest in those 20 seconds than we've seen our leaders be in decades.
This was a ramble, huh?
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Sunday, April 18, 2004
Monday, April 19, 2004
Look, if I can do nothing more than relay the words of Robert F. Kennedy to you I regard that as a service, because I am certainly not capable of his eloquence:
"The responsibility of our time is nothing less than to lead a revolution - a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; human if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough - but a revolution which will come whether we will it or not. We can affect its character: we cannot alter its inevitability...America is, after all, the land of becoming - a continent which will be in ferment as long as it is America, a land which will never cease to change and grow. We are as we act. We are the children and heirs of revolutions and we fulfill our destiny only as we advance the struggle which began in Santa Fe in 1580, which continued in Philadelphia in 1776, and Caracas in 1811 - and which continues today." - Robert F. Kennedy, Speech before Peruvian students, 1965
"...a continent which will be in ferment as long as it is America..." Perhaps that is the real question. Is it still America?
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Sunday, April 18, 2004
"All of us, from the wealthiest to the young children I have seen...their bellies bloated by starvation - we all share one precious possession, and that is the name 'American." It is not easy to know what that means, but in part, to be an American means to have been an outcast and a stranger - to have come to the exile's country - and to know that he who denies the outcast and the stranger still among us, he also denies America." - Robert F. Kennedy, Citizens Union, New York City, December 14, 1967
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