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Saturday, February 21, 2004
Saturday, February 21, 2004
This is from Thomas Merton's "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander," written in 1965 during the Vietnam War:
"A letter arrives stamped with the slogan 'The U.S. Army, key to peace.' No army is the key to peace, neither the U.S. Army nor the Soviet Army nor any other. No 'great' nation has the key to anything but war. Power has nothing to do with peace. The more men build up military power, the more they violate peace and destroy it."
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Friday, February 20, 2004
Friday, February 20, 2004
Resist the tendency to listen to fools who tell you that everything is basically all right with the world and that we are headed in a generally positive direction. Especially expert fools like military analysts and people in high positions of power. Think about how often experts and people in high positions of power have been on the wrong side of reality and wisdom - the British Empire in the face of the independence of India - the Pope on Galileo's understanding of the universe - over a dozen American Presidents on the issue of slavery and a thousand other examples. The world is headed in the wrong direction - more and more fear, more and more militarism, more and more speed and less and less thought. Deaths in the millions every year from hunger and AIDS and no goal to stem the tide - not even an interest.
The world could be headed in the right direction if we made it so. The world could be headed in a miraculous direction, and it ought to be. And we the people ought not to resign ourselves to the suicide mission on which the learned experts would instead convince us to join them. Great titles and great power have nothing to do with great wisdom or great direction or great vision. There's an old cowboy saying - "If it doesn't make sense to you, don't believe it - no matter who's telling you." On the spectacularly beautiful planet called earth - the only one we know of in the cosmos, with so much beauty - with the brilliance of the human mind and the strength of the human spirit - does it make sense to you that half of humanity's resources are going into weapons and armies to battle one another if we have to? It makes no sense.
There is a better way. There is a wiser way. If you believe that in your heart, don't ever let the rhetoric of fools convince you that you are stupid or naive. Trust your heart and trust your wisdom. Because you usually don't find out a fool is a fool until after it's too late and after the damage is done. Witness Hitler. Witness what would have happened to the United States during the Cuban missile crisis if the learned military leaders had their way. We wouldn't be here right now.
Trust yourself and the wisdom God has given you. Remain true to your convictions, no matter how childish they may seem. Innocence is the basis of wisdom and childish dreams are what have sparked most of the great positive advances of humanity.
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Thursday, February 19, 2004
Thursday, February 19, 2004
If you are worried about the future remember this - the future is not real. It doesn't exist. It is always now and it always has been. Eckhart Tolle said that you cannot cope with the future because you cannot cope with something that doesn't exist. So let go your troubles today and go get an ice cream cone. The things we worry most about are usually things that never happen, and the things we never thought to expect are the things that usually come our way. So relax today and let God work some magic. She exists. Right here, Right now. "Rest your head. You worry too much," as Peter Gabriel wrote. Go do something nice for yourself. Go have some fun. You deserve it.
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Wednesday, February 18, 2004
What has been going on in San Francisco is so miraculous. It is so human. So real. So joyous To watch people who have been beaten down all their lives - told that they are immoral, told that they are diseased, told that they are degenerate, told that they are not welcome - to watch them come face to face with the truth - with reality - that they are none of these things - that they belong fully to the human race - to watch decades of lies be obliterated by nature's truth - this is the true meaning of joy. Truth is joy, and the truth is being told in San Francisco this week.
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Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
What do we do when our dreams are broken? What do we do when we feel that our dreams will never come true? What do we do when we get down about ourselves and our lives - when we have songs inside of us that are still unsung - when we worry that time will run out on us before they ever can be? What do we do when our hearts hunger to play in a big game and no big teams are asking us to join them - when we want to be out on the field and seem to be forever in the stands spectating?
We are inundated all day with images of people who are in the game - John Kerry running for President, Jude Law starring in a new movie, Oprah Winfrey traveling to Africa to help children with AIDS, Outkast winning a Grammy, Steve Jobs introducing the most cutting edge technology to the entire world - there are a thousand other examples. Sometimes this inundation can make the rest of us feel like losers. We compare ourselves to others in a society that measures everything by levels of achievement and we don't measure up.
We are not alone in this feeling that we don't measure up. Almost everyone around us feels that way, and a lot of times, even the John Kerrys and the Jude Laws feel that they don't measure up. Presidential candidates feel like losers when they don't get elected, and in every election, one is chosen and the rest are sent back into obscurity. Even elected Presidents feel like losers when they don't win a second term. Famous actors feel like losers when they don't win an Oscar, or worse, are not even nominated. And Grammy winners feel like losers when they don't win again. We are not alone. We live in a world of people who often feel like losers, and who feel that way because we compare ourselves to others who, unbeknownst to us, feel like losers at times themselves.
Perhaps we should all stop trying so hard to stay on top of the game, but should instead turn to one another and offer a sympathetic ear, a supportive thought, or an honest revelation about ourselves. "You feel like a loser sometimes? - I feel like a loser sometimes too. But you don't seem like a loser to me." Perhaps that is the game we really want to be in - the game of being connected in a meaningful way to other human beings. Maybe we don't need to be in a big game - maybe we just need to be big enough to be real with other people. And maybe that would be the answer to all the world's problems. And maybe that's the real song we all want sung - the real dream we all want to come true.
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Monday, February 16, 2004
The Thoreau quotes of the past few days come from a wonderful site called transcendentalists.com. There you can find great information on the lives of Emerson and Thoreau and links to other great sites about them. That Thoreau and Emerson are overlooked by our modern culture is a great tragedy. These are people who extracted themselves from the homogeny of their own times and went off to think, to contemplate, and to reflect on the nature of humanity and of life and of the direction of modern society. Their thoughts come not in sound bites, but in long, carefully considered essays. Thoreau's essay, for instance, on civil disobedience should be required reading for anyone interested in a transformation of society.
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Monday, February 16, 2004
Sunday, February 15, 2004
"Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate oddfellow society." - Henry David Thoreau
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Saturday, February 14, 2004
"On tops of mountains, as everywhere to hopeful souls, it is always morning." - Henry David Thoreau
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Friday, February 13, 2004
"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer." - Henry David Thoreau, "Walden"
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