Pardigm shift

Imagine a Better World

(rerun from February 2, 2010)
Over the dim roar of the newsroom, running feverishly on deadline, I heard the phone ring, followed by the editor's attentive silence. I looked over, caught his wrinkled brow and waited. He glanced back with an expression I knew all too well. There's a kind of coach - team rapport among editors and reporters. On this particular morning, that relationship was going to change my life forever, not in a big dramatic way, rather as a subtle awareness that would open a door through which I would never return.

The day after Christmas was often bleak, even dismal, in the declining old industrial city, with its weary store fronts, various bars, lower income housing dating back a century or more. It had a kind of morning-after feeling to it, that had spilled into the streets from the holiday before. A rancid silence hung in the air as I drove past empty liquor bottles, an occasional McDonald's bag, cigarette boxes and butts on my way into the police station at 5:30 a.m.

It was the beginning of a typical day at the paper. After the usual, perfunctory chat with the officer at the counter, I was ushered into the inner sanctum to gather the police reports from the night and day before, Christmas Day.

I wrote down all the details from the day's and night's activities. Since reporters are no stranger to humanity's depravity, especially depravity from binging on alcohol and drugs, too prevalent in decaying old cities,  I wasn't particularly alarmed or really even interested in the low-level behavior of the town over the holiday weekend.

I turned away from my editor's phone conversation and returned to writing up the usual police blog. It's easy when you don't care.

When my desk phone rang from an inside line, I looked over as my editor nodded to me to answer my phone.

"Can you take this call? This guy's pretty upset. He says he got arrested last night for a domestic and he doesn't want it to go in the paper," my editor said, with a slight, only barely distinguishable hint of concern in his voice.

"I have the reports from last night here. Do you know which guy he is? There's a lot of them," I said, wincing at the thought of what I was going to have to deal with.

"I think he's the guy who smashed in his wife's car with his fist," he said matter-of-factly.

"Yeah, I got it. I'll talk to him," I said, as my editor backed out of the call leaving a very distraught middle-aged sounding man on the line.

In the course of that conversation, some of which my editor listened in on from across the newsroom, I went from complete apathy to a deep concern for this man's plight: alcoholism, possible mental illness and probable domestic violence. He didn't beat his wife, only threatened her and was possessive and jealous. I didn't know how to deal with this angry, sad man. I felt completely at a loss. He begged me not to run the incident from the night before. He didn't hurt anyone and it was too embarrassing to have his friends, and the other guys at the local VFW Post, see what had happened. I put him on hold and went over to my editor.

"Is it possible to not run what happened?" I asked him.

"No," he said, unequivocally.

"Do you think we could make an exception just this one time?" I heard myself pleading, unaware that I'd picked up the caller's cause and wanted to run with it for him.

"Sorry. No. We can't. I get calls like this all the time and if I did it for him, we would have to do it for everyone, and that's not journalism. Journalism is telling what happened regardless of how remorseful people feel after the fact."

I really heard that. He was right.

I went back to my desk. As I told the caller I had to run the story, he began to cry, sobbing, and then my heart broke for him. This man was so broken, so low, in so much despair that he was begging a reporter at a small daily newspaper in a very dismal town not to tell his story. I wanted to just accidentally leave him out of the blog, but I had to run it. It was not my problem.

A few minutes later, my editor looked over at me again, must have seen my drawn face, and came back over.

"You can't weep with 'em," he said. "Tell him that you have to go. We've got a paper to get out this morning."

For days, I reflected on that man's sorry existence. While I wished I could help him, I couldn't. Even then, I knew he had to help himself.

That man's cry still rings in my heart. He was the voice of humanity, regretting his choices from a less lucid state the day or night before. The entire human race is sobbing in a kind of perpetual state of despair, without any hope, living in what has become one big, corrupt, dismal old town. Where is our hope?

I know now that we can change our lives and our world simply through our will to change our thoughts and words. We can take a small, dark, broken life and become a lighthouse of vibrational energy and love for our own lives and those all around us. We have the power to live our lives as large and as beautiful as we choose. We can also, alternatively, focus on the small, dark, nasty things that happen in the world. It is as simple as a matter of choice. We can stop and think about what we're thinking about. We can stop the madness and think differently. Each time we choose to look up, pray for, wait for and expect help, it will be given to us.

Help comes when we ask for help, especially when we ask for the help to change our small, dim lives of pettiness or not let our anger take control of us, or think or speak negatively about a neighbor, engage in gossip, or even focus generally on the negative rather than the positive, bright and creative.

We can also choose to stop worrying and thinking about what we don't want to have happen and consider what we do want to happen, ask for it and then have trust and have faith that love is all around us and we can have what we want. We completely flip our minds around, from hell to heaven, when we think about what we do want, about what is beautiful in another human being, and realize that any act of violence or hate is only a cry for more love. Love stops violence and brokenness; defensive rage only propagates it.

Hate and violence are weaker customers than love and creativity. By raising your own spiritual vibration by thinking and speaking positively, you strengthen your mind where the disease of negativity cannot thrive, and you magnetically attract into your life positive, loving and creative events and friends. And, just in case you don't believe me. Try it. Try it for just one week as an experiment and see what happens.

What if we did that? What if every time someone said something unkind, you realized instead that they were asking you for love, then you wouldn't react to them. Instead, you'd respond to them with kindness, compassion, even forgiveness.

I believe we can choose to care, to look at what is beautiful and bright, healing, hopeful, noble and dignified. We can choose to be kind, to reel in our tempers, disappointments and hurts. I don't mean not to feel them. I mean not to give them the power to bring us down. It may be the hardest thing some of us will ever do. But, we must. To find deep within ourselves the light of our divinity, is to get up out of the gutter, turn off the nightly news, put down the evening newspaper, and listen to what is beautiful.

Imagine a better world. Whenever you can, at every chance, when you meet someone, speak kindly, send them joy and love in just a smile, with a positive intention. That man back at the News could have turned his life around. I'll never know if he did, but his misery can be a lesson for our abounding joy.

I believe we can evolve into noble beings of light, of immeasurable value, so greatly loved, if we would only try. Our Creator loves us and waits for us to receive His love and live in the sunshine of that love, allowing it to heal our lonely hearts, and make us the magnificent beings we were always meant to be and restore our Earth home into a paradise.The choice is simply ours. I believe we can do this. I believe in us.

Journey into the Night

"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; 

on those living in the land of the shadow of death 

a light has dawned." 

Isaiah 9:2 (New International Version)

The darkness of these days is becoming increasingly more evident even to the least observant person.  As the spiritual journey goes, one must enter into a "dark night of the soul," before emerging into the light of spiritual consciousness.  This is true for the individual, and now - as is obvious to many of us - is true for the collective, the world. 


The very earliest church knew this and made this truth first and foremost among all the other truths Jesus would teach.  The "birth of Christ" occurs at night, set in the darkest period of the year and seen first by the poorest of the poor.  The mythic dimension of the story can be unraveled to discuss the birth occurring to a virgin. While I truly believe the Blessed Mother was a virgin, a virgin soul is one who has no darkness within, whose inner hidden brokenness has been repented of, healed, cleansed, purified (made holy) and can give birth to the true self, that child within who will lead us into the eternal light of life, immortality. The Christ is within all of us - not just Christians.  It is the ultimate truth of our a priori condition as human (divine) beings.


In order to emerge from that dark night, washed and born anew (as in "the old has passed away") as spiritual beings, equipped with the gifts of the spirit, conscious and aware, fully alive in our beloved relationship with God (Divine Father/Mother) we must die to the world after a long sojourn in the desert, into the darkest parts of our soul. Even the Jewish Exodus story is a reflection of this deeper, more eternally real spiritual journey from slavery, through darkness and despair, into an internal spiritual promised land. While it actually happened, it's eternal application is on a mythic dimension.


Those who argue for the historical authenticity of the Christmas story in a search of the historical Jesus will miss the message.  This is not meant as a historical record.  It is a spiritually eternal truth buried in a parabolic story, and yet, I truly believe it was real and historically true as well. 


These hard economic times may be an outward expression of our collective inward reality.  They mirror the poverty and darkness of our collective cultural soul which Mother Teresa called  a "culture of death" in which our externally-directed consciousness that once sought after wealth, even at the expense of our souls, now reveals a spiritually dying world.  


There is another scripture in which Jesus says that which is hidden in the dark will be revealed or uncovered and made visible in the light.  This isn't to condemn us.  It is for us to see who we have become, or rather to see who we are so we can alter our paths.  It is an invitation to change, to transform our consciousness from being focused on material gain to being focused on what is real and lasting, which is the eternal soul both individually and collectively. The early church called this altering of our path, this call to change, "metanoia," or more commonly called "repentance."  Try to hear this call to repentance in the voice of a gentle mother who truly, dearly loves you and wants to guide you into safety and growth.


As in that first century, today the poor are among us, perhaps more so than we ever realized. I once knew a beautiful Maryknoll missionary priest who worked with the poor in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, who remarked that in America the poor kept out of sight - in inner cities while the wealthy moved further away into rich rambling suburbs, bordered by sprawling malls.  In Rio, he said, the poor are everywhere in sight, often attending the same churches on Sunday as the wealthy.  There they can't be ignored nor are they invisible.  


Maybe we're all aware the times are changing.  Maybe we're all aware that everything as we knew it, is radically fading into the background of time, while something new and unsure is emerging on the landscape of our collective consciousness here and throughout the world.  


Maybe we're also in denial, hoping to beat the prevailing hurricane of economic decline and eventually get that great job, make enough money to buy a bigger house, send the kids to a top notch college - all dreams of that fast fading old paradigm of American life. Maybe we don't want to see the old pass away. Maybe we don't know how to understand this shift in the ages, this shift out of a material age into a spiritual age.

Some of us can smell the smoke of a distant fire. Things are never going to be the same. Somehow we know it.  The economists are predicting a "double dip" to this unending recession. I have no clue what that means.  I've asked those who know about the economy and even they don't know what it means, really. It feels totally useless to even try to succeed by the old standards.  

Here in rural Oregon, the poor are more visible than in the larger cities.  Lately, I've seen many people in the early morning heading - not to work or waiting at red lights in their Mercedes as in more prosperous times - out onto the streets with old blankets rolled up on their backpacks, dirty hair, some with toothless smiles, wearing old clothes - headed to the nearest coffee shop or food kitchen.  As others might arrive at work, they find their usual street corner, pitch their backpacks - some even with their dogs - and hold up their cardboard signs asking for donations. Their work day has begun.

Maybe these precious souls are the silent voice of these changing times.  I can't help thinking that even Jesus might not be a success by today's standards.  His radical spirituality would not have been embraced by the church and certainly His refusal to sell out for a buck wouldn't have made Him a golden boy in the corporate heirarchy of greed and exploitation at the expense of the innocent consumer.  In areas of America, like these in rural Oregon, where there is no industry, downward mobility has almost become a cultural accessory to a pre-existing counter-cultural millieu.  


All these folks remember warm beds, food on the table, hopes for a good job and a productive, creative career.  As you know, the reduction of a middle class forced a large percentage of middle class into abject poverty.  They have - with what little dignity they had left mixed with their instinct to survive and creative aculturation - created a village down by the creek where tents line the creek which winds out of town for miles.


These precious souls are both symptomatic of the changing times and archetypal of who we really are spiritually.  That which was hidden is coming into view.  We were - and still are - spiritually poor - as Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas.  This deep inner spiritual poverty has been a cultural cancer growing in our collective soul for a long time and now it is evident on the streets, in the inner cities, in the growing unemployment rates, in Europe's struggle to remain economically solvent. 


Those folks who walk among us in the predawn darkness, who've packed up their tents and blankets to emerge from the creek beds they call home, may be like those to whom He came in the first century.  Like the shepherds who first saw the star, they may be able to see many stars at night and may again be the first to meet Him in their own agony, in their emptiness and in their longing. They've at least cleared the way to embrace the spiritual journey, which may lead them to the star within which points them closer to the Christ light.

Today, Americas corporate crimes against our people is headlines and the poorest, the outcast - those literally cast out of their homes -  are those who are seeing the light of Christ within their hearts and minds first.  For them, there are no more illusions, the bubble has burst, and they are face-to-face with their own inner selves, tormented perhaps by the haunting voices of those who oppressed and formerly controlled them, and now out there to see the night stars and be reminded of the one true light that is constant within them. For them the light has come as has spiritual rebirth.  They will make the way for the new paradigm.


"According to U.S. Census Bureau data released the nation's poverty rate rose to 15.1% (46.2 million) in 2010, up from 14.3% (approximately 43.6 million) in 2009 and to its highest level since 1993. In 2008, 13.2% (39.8 million) Americans lived in relative poverty."*


I don't believe you have to hit this kind of terrible bottom to realize that the great illusion is cracking open.  I also don't believe that you have to become this bitterly poor to encounter Christ who lives within your own soul as a pearl of great price. But when the layers of American life are peeled away, it seems there is nothing else to block your vision - and now you don't seem to be able to pull the mask back on in order to live among the sleeping many who control and manipulate the world's grid. 


Someone once said that if Jesus were to be found in our world today, He would be found among the homeless.  If that's the case, then I would look for Him there. And He may be there in a very real spiritual sense.  He may be with the poor because He is all they have - unless they've managed to spare their food stamps for some meth or booze.  But, even among those, He is with them.  They are in the midst of their dark nights. Although they may still be asleep in their poverty, they are not swinging from corporate American trees squeezing yet another dollar from the poor through innovative clever marketing schemes.  They've surrendered to what is coming and may even be better prepared for the next economic shock wave that may wash upon our shores.


St. Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart, Sr. Francis and Clare of Assisi, among the many mystic voices who have gone before us, have all warned us of the perils of excessive materialism. They urge us to remove the masks of our culture of death and let go of our attachment to anything other than the light of God within.  This detaching and stripping of our artificial identities is the beginning of the journey to God and  to our real selves within.  This ancient message has always been externally ritualized as the Church's celebration of "Advent."  


Their guidance  applies today as much as ever as it crisscrosses all countries, cultures and religions. The mystics may represent the wisdom of western culture.  The East and Middle East have their wise men and women, who also sought and found the light in the dark cave within, where the light of heaven would be found in the discovery of that inner child, that Holy Child, who resides even deeper within your own authentic self.


Poverty isn't for everyone.  It may be only for those courageous enough not to, or are unwilling to,  or are just unable to, play by the rules of this quickly dissolving, transforming and reenvisioning of itself, hi-tech world.  If you're lucky, you may find yourself among them in so many different ways and interpretations of "poverty."  We all will experience this "dark night," in some form.  Usually it shows up discreetly, vaguely and through prayer you will discover that it is the nudging of an invisible Other who is lovingly leading you into a greater reality - Your true self which is the narrow gate, the stargate, into ultimate reality.  


But, for now the journey continues, pulling us in both directions until finally God wins and we find ourselves on our knees deep within the inner cave, before the light of lights, face to face with the truth - the timeless truth - that only God is real and God's love is the energetic creative force that still runs the universe.




Sources:


"Revised Government Formula Shows New Poverty High:  49.1 Million." Yahoo! News. November 7, 2011


"Poverty Rate Hits 15 Year High." Reuters. September 17, 2010

Symptoms of Inner Peace

The following is from Carly who is a most peaceful woman of the light.  Thank you for sharing this.  It's perfect for this season of anticipation of the birth of light who brings us that real and lasting inner peace.

Be on the lookout for symptoms of inner peace. The hearts of a great many have already been exposed to inner peace and it is possible that people everywhere could come down with it in epidemic proportions. This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world.

Some signs and symptoms of inner peace:

• A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.
• An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
• A loss of interest in judging other people.
• A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
• A loss of interest in conflict.
• A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom).
• Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
• Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
• Frequent attacks of smiling.
• An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
• An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.

A Christmas Story (music by Enya)

Inside the Cosmic Pearl

Hildegard de Bingen (1098-1179)

I, the fiery life of divine wisdom,

I ignite the beauty of the plains,

I sparkle the waters,

I burn in the sun, and the moon, and the stars.

With wisdom I order all rightly.

I adorn all the earth.

I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.

I am the rain coming from the dew

that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.

I call forth tears, the aroma of holy work.

I am the yearning for good.

Art: http://irupert.com/HILDEGRD/hildegard.htm

Verses:

Gabriele Uhlein,  Meditations with Hildegard de Bingen (Bear & Co., 1983) 

Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988) p. 110.

Celestial Choirs Call

Angels of light, dance with delight rejoicing in You. Always loving you beyond your wildest imagination, these vibrant messengers of divine wisdom, love and creative power have been waiting for eons for you to see what they see, inviting you to fathom the depths and heights of who you are, what you are, who and what we are all together. 

As their strong radiant wings reach out to you, they invite you to step out of your sad, lonely, solitary cell; and accept the sword of the spirit imbued with the master's creative alchemy to stir you from your cosmic coma, radically change your mind, your life and the world, even reaching beyond this one into countless other worlds. 

Aching and longing, they hope you would see the magnificence of which you are a vitally important and creative part.

Anonymously, their harmonic light lifts you higher with each cresting and falling breath you take, weaving among your dreams and prayers, gently awakening you moment by moment until one day you see you are a radiant brilliant creative being, more lovely than a summer shooting star and in the company of others equally as priceless and precious with whom you share your divinity on our beautiful blue sphere, spinning in space to the sound and rhythm of their joyous symphony.

Oh, you cool, logical scientists can't you see this magnificent creation extending beyond your telescopic reach? Could it really just be a random cosmic soup that somehow created itself out of chemical spark plugs and autonomic reactions?  What if you loosened your grip on your heart, opened your mind to another dimension within you which can see, which can feel and love and enter into this gorgeous wildly out of control dance of life that extends far beyond your limited horizons and deeper within your dim consciousness, connecting the inner mind with the outer expanding universes?

Do you really think the eyes that see these beautiful Hubble space photos, the mind which gasps in awe at the grand infinity which stretches the soul beyond its tiny compartments aren't seeing through an even larger lens, a universal intelligence, that Whom we have for millenia called "God"?

  

Just to wonder at creation's onward movement to life is a miracle.  Just to allow yourself to be freed from its temporal prison cell and expanded by your joy in the awareness that you are part of it all, is marvelous beyond words.  

You who are a conscious child of an ingenius universal creative intelligence of ultimate conscious being hood, hold a vitally important place on this cosmic cobweb. Without you there would be a hole, a rip, in the fabric of all that is.  Can you imagine for just one sparkling moment how important you are and in that imagining see how your cooperation with life, with love, with creation itself, makes it more, lifts you - and all of us - higher into the finer states, brighter lights through which we all might spiral closer to heaven, like a flock of sparrows flying as one over the sea. 

While it is your destiny to join the angelic choir, it is also your choice. In this moment, in this very tiny fleeting second, you will choose divinity and eternity or more despair.

Don't you think we've kept our holy custodians waiting long enough?  Isn't it time we listened more closely to their love radiating back to us in the eyes of another, in the longing and love of another, in our own heart's compassionate embrace of another?   

Today we could begin the journey back to who we always were meant to be, divine children of an awesome, breathtakingly beautiful, loving, creative universal genius. 

Today we could remember who we are - each and every one a star in the night sky, part of the canopy of creation, brilliant and wise far beyond anything we know.  We just have to let go of this tightly clenched tarp which blocks our view.  It's old and tattered anyway and it's high time we let it fly away in the wind to behold that ancient city of light, still glistening in the moonlight and beckoning our return.

Cresting Worship

"Woe is he who has gathered riches and counted them over, 

thinking his riches have made him immortal!"

         Islam. Qur'an 104.1-3 

"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the 

one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one 

and despise the other.  

You cannot serve God and mammon."

    Matthew 6:24 

"Riches ruin the foolish, but not those in quest of the

Beyond. Through craving for riches the ignorant man 

ruins himself as he does others." 

             Buddhism. Dhammapada 355

A light dusting of snow in the Willamette Valley turned the drive from Portland to Eugene into a magical place, tinted by winter's lighthearted antics. The late afternoon sun illuminated the Cascade mountains, etched in snow in the east, as it slipped across the Pacific ranges in the west, cradling the valley in shadows of light. 

The 100-mile stretch between these two very different cities is often a time to shift out of the big city attitude of Portland into the laid back hippie hospitality of Eugene.  The drive usually takes close to two hours, time well spent in reflection, accompanied by Mother nature's unpredictable display. This time was unique only because it was her show that took top billing as she languidly spun around, dancing in sun and wind and snow and rain cast against the landscape, swelling and dipping in the ancient volcanic waves of earth.

Concerns about the slipping U.S. economy weighed heavily on my mind as I reflected on a conversation I'd had with a friend back in Portland.  As usual, the conversation turned theological bringing a ray of hope into the mix of meaning these treacherous times are experiencing, indicating a time of spiritual purification was underway.  

"You know I don't care about money," he said, suggesting his simple home, even with its lovely and carefully chosen belongings, did not take priority over his faith, his worship of what or who is eternal.

"I don't either," I agreed. "Money is only the means to purchase the tools for our creating." 

I wondered privately if I was somehow selling out to the nation's obsession with wealth, that has seeped into absolutely every cell and fiber of American life, if I justified money at all, even as a means to a creative end.  

"Isn't it what we worship that matters," I added to the random thoughts we were sharing, again personally thinking about the final chapters in the Book of Revelation, though disturbing in many of its mythic archetypal images and metaphors, which reveal a startling message. It challenges even the most devout by offering a strong warning not to worship the religion, rather only to worship God, Allah, who is on the throne of heaven (and our hearts) and not even to worship God's messenger or Son. 

"Who we worship is of highest importance," my Muslim friend softly suggested.

"Yes," I agreed.  "Absolutely," and then wondering exactly  how does one authentically worship. "Authentically worship?"

"We pray five times a day," he said.  I knew he did and admired his devotion. 

"I admire that.  It  takes a lot of dedication and a real focused commitment to do that.  I wonder if Christians and Jews also prayed five times a day, what kind of world would we have?"

He smiled, nodding, listening.

Silently we knew about the megalithic boundaries that separated the major world religions and yet if we all went to the center of our religions, we would all enter the throne room of God, Allah, and find that the doors to all the major religions all opened into that throne room and together we would all kneel before our Creator, who has drawn us to Himself through the power of His love: the  Holy Spirit,  the Spirit of Truth, the Shekina, Holy Wisdom.

"If we worship the form of our faith, we remain separated, but if we worship the essence, the center of our faith, we find union," I said, again wondering what authentic worship entails.

Not rote prayers, not reading sentimentally from the Book of Common Prayer, not reciting Hail Mary's or Our Father's on a string of beads, not sitting cross legged for hours contemplating nothingness, none of it is worship.  So, "what is worship?" I wondered even long after we left that conversation and moved on to political and economic issues forcing the world to its knees.

The question lingered long after I left.  

It was getting cold out, nothing like the battering winter gives the eastern U.S., but a damp chill was in the air.  I knew what was coming as I wrapped a scarf around my neck and slipped my hands into gloves.  As I approached my car, I was grateful that at least there wasn't frost on my windshield. A dark sky hung in the west, and I was eager to get home, even welcoming the long drive ahead.

I turned up the music, and headed for the interstate.

As the bustling malls fell away into my review mirror and the traffic lightened, I began to relax and forgot about the question.  I forgot about the worry.  I forgot about everything and found myself entering into the magnificent landscape that greeted me again, welcoming me back as I entered the beautiful grand valley that stretched from Oregon's stem to stern.

As the cresting farmland melted into the day's last amber embrace, I slipped into another dimension of time, of space, of light, of feeling and of absolutely nothing tangible, totally ineffable.  Even now, as I reach for the words, they escape me.  Yes, it was beautiful, but that wasn't it, really.  It was something that spoke through just being....... ah ...... ah ....... la...la... there You are...

No words, no name, nothing .... just a simple human being witnessing something indescribable and the only worship, the only word is simply breathing out ah...la..... ah......le....lu....ia......... 

Unceasing Prayer

An amber radiance seeped through the late fall foilage diffusing an incandescent awe among nature's artistry unnoticed by those few who awakened to embrace her in an early morning run or walk. 


Quiet light, rich rivers of harvest hues gently swaying, coursing, resonating with an invisible presence swept the canvas of space in which it was immersed in breathtaking gasps of being and beauty.

Cathedrals of time and space lingered effervescently among the vibrant colors of light surging in the mystical morning prayer.  Whispered before and within as it swayed gladly, freely in its unknowing, the morning prayer was its surrender to a calling of which it was unaware and yet fully engaged.

Ecstatically, the magical essence danced in the blurring misty vibrance of joyous being in which it surged, exhaling its own expanding self.  


Yet still, like blind mice, the morning visitors saw not the cosmic prayer through which they ran, racing away from and as much as into the breath of life, lingering invisibly in the beauty and wisdom, an open window to eternity, waiting endlessly to be seen.

Embracing Holiness

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, 

when the kingdom of God  should come, 

he answered them and said, 

The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. 

Neither shall they say, Lo here or, lo there! 

for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
Luke 17:20-21 

'If your leaders say, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the 

birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' 

then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within 

you and it is outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be 

known,and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. 

But if you do not know yourselves, 

then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."  

Gospel of Thomas

"We just need one more thing," he said, announcing a last minute run to the store.  Everything necessary for a weekend celebration had already been purchased.  The pumpkin and apple pies were baked.  The house was scrubbed, laundry done, beds made. Everything was in order for our company. Then he remembered something and we needed to run out for just one more thing.  The spell of joy had been cast, the anticipation was knit into the very air in preparation for the great day of thanks with a large family and some dear friends.  But, now, we had to go out in the rain, the cold, the dark for one more thing.  

I begged not to go, but finally relented, at their insistence.

"We just have to run into Wal-Mart for something," he said.

"Batteries," I hoped, feeling that anything else wasn't worth the effort.  Lately, I'd surrendered almost completely to all these little unforseen, unexpected things because I've found the divine speaks through them.  So, I threw on my oversized fisherman's sweater and hopped into the back seat of the car.  My daughter, who was still an amateur behind the wheel, needed additional driving guidance from her father. So, I was exiled to the backseat where I would be less stricken by the inevitable near death experiences of her close encounters with the strange kind on the road. 

The bright lights of the mega shopping complex were blinding as I stepped in out of the dark rainy night.  Strangely, there were few shoppers there, but the store sales and management staff were engaged in a kind of frenzied ritual, pulling large pallets, tightly wrapped in plastic, bursting with toys and other Christmas shopping "stuff."  They were drunk with the excitement, almost how one would imagine Santa's elves might be delighting at loading the sleigh.

It wasn't so much the orgy of materialism that was about to erupt the next night, on the eve of Black Friday, midnight of our national day of thanks, it was the surreal strangeness of it all that sruck me.  Then, I realized how disgusted I was by it all.  I knew that any  minute they were going to start to play the Christmas hymns, Silent Night, etc. over the loud speakers to "get shoppers in the mood." 

This isn't about Wal-Mart or any other mega shopping complex, rather it is about us.  We have missed the mark, we are charging like sheep into the wrong pasture, one of a pack of wolves in sheep's clothing and not heeding the direction of our beloved Great Shepherd. 

We know we've defamed these two holidays with our gluttony and materialism. In fact why don't we all be honest and admit it that we are feeding the Antichrist when we pretend to celebrate the birth of the Sacred Child who urged us to surrender our love of riches as we search for (and find) the kingdom of God through the narrow gate? And, that's especially the case when we shop in greed, seeking the best bargains to over consume.  You don't need me to tell you that any kind of materialism is swimming upstream from the HOLY, especially when half the world's population is in poverty.

However, that's not even the point really.  It's not so much about what we are doing as much as about what we're not doing.  The point is we really would rather be searching for that kingdom within, that is also all around us.  But, how? Where is it?  What is it? And, without understanding, we return to our old madness. 

The words of these two explicit gospels point to a spiritual kingdom, which brings us into communion with the holy, where we are transformed into beings of light and love.  These are ancient words that are meaningless unless we translate them into ideas which we can comprehend.  The "kingdom" to which the child will lead us is both an altered state as much as it is another dimension.  That child also taught us that we need to give up our addictions - all of them - including those things that bind us and those things we bind to us.

The sad news is that as much as we'd like to enter it, our attachments to stuff, blocks our passage through the narrow gate. We just can't seem to get over our materialism addiction because we're hooked by the media, the traditions, our culture and even our own lack of confidence in ourselves to step outside that foolish fold.  

Throughout the Gospels and all Orthodox, Gnostic and other mystical writings we are challenged to see things differently, to renew our vision, to lift the veils by which this world blinds us, to be "born again" so we will have "eyes to see" that deeper, radiantly authentic "other" dimension which reveals another world, a "kingdom" of light, and love which we all seek and search for among the dark things of this life. 

Worship is not in the rehearsed and well worn act of chanting or praying five or a hundred times a day. Rather it is entering into that kingdom within - which is also spread out among us - that exists for us all to see on another dimension, perhaps a fifth dimension or a 27th dimension, but it is clearly not here in our heavily materialistic third dimension. For those who are able to live in the kingdom, they are those who are "in the world, but not of it."

So, how do we even begin to shift dimensional gears?  Yes, the first may be in thanksgiving, but it may also mean detaching from the materialism around us.  We've become gluttonous and we have to stop.  Just stop.  Don't feed the Wal-Mart machine or cut down our evergreen forests.  That is not how we enter the narrow gate.  Even Santa couldn't get through it. Maybe America needs to do a 12-Step approach to ending her addictions.  The first step is to ask for help, and my guess is heaven is happy to help.

That's a beginning.  Then, we will feel within us a sense of gratefulness, of thankfulness, for what we don't have.  Yes.  We will be thankful that we aren't rich, that we don't have enough to eat, that we are poor,  BECAUSE then we can be filled by the holy when there is an empty vessel into which it can flow.  Then, we will be blessed with what is real and everlasting, which is an inexplicable joy that scents everything around us and within us with the fragrance of heaven.  


While there's more, so much more about the parabolic journey to that gem of great price within us, buried deeply and waiting quietly in the midst of the dark soil of our lives and being, changing our direction and wanting to find it, wanting to enter the kingdom, wanting to leave all this insanity behind - that's at least a good beginning, an important first step, on the heels of which Advent now follows.

This is our moment .... by Michael Moore

Where Does Occupy Wall Street Go From Here?

                                   ...a proposal from Michael Moore

Friends,

This past weekend I participated in a four-hour meeting of Occupy Wall Street activists whose job it is to come up with the vision and goals of the movement. It was attended by 40+ people and the discussion was both inspiring and invigorating. Here is what we ended up proposing as the movement's "vision statement" to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street:

We Envision:

[1] a truly free, democratic, and just society;


[2] where we, the people, come together and solve our problems by consensus;


[3] where people are encouraged to take personal and collective responsibility and participate in decision making;


[4] where we learn to live in harmony and embrace principles of toleration and respect for diversity and the differing views of others;


[5] where we secure the civil and human rights of all from violation by tyrannical forces and unjust governments;


[6] where political and economic institutions work to benefit all, not just the privileged few;


[7] where we provide full and free education to everyone, not merely to get jobs but to grow and flourish as human beings;


[8] where we value human needs over monetary gain, to ensure decent standards of living without which effective democracy is impossible;


[9] where we work together to protect the global environment to ensure that future generations will have safe and clean air, water and food supplies, and will be able to enjoy the beauty and bounty of nature that past generations have enjoyed.


The next step will be to develop a specific list of goals and demands. As one of the millions of people who are participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement, I would like to respectfully offer my suggestions of what we can all get behind now to wrestle the control of our country out of the hands of the 1% and place it squarely with the 99% majority.


Here is what I will propose to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street:

10 Things We Want
A Proposal for Occupy Wall Street
Submitted by Michael Moore


1. Eradicate the Bush tax cuts for the rich and institute new taxes on the wealthiest Americans and on corporations, including a tax on all trading on Wall Street (where they currently pay 0%).


2. Assess a penalty tax on any corporation that moves American jobs to other countries when that company is already making profits in America. Our jobs are the most important national treasure and they cannot be removed from the country simply because someone wants to make more money.


3. Require that all Americans pay the same Social Security tax on all of their earnings (normally, the middle class pays about 6% of their income to Social Security; someone making $1 million a year pays about 0.6% (or 90% less than the average person). This law would simply make the rich pay what everyone else pays.


4. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, placing serious regulations on how business is conducted by Wall Street and the banks.


5. Investigate the Crash of 2008, and bring to justice those who committed any crimes.


6. Reorder our nation's spending priorities (including the ending of all foreign wars and their cost of over $2 billion a week). This will re-open libraries, reinstate band and art and civics classes in our schools, fix our roads and bridges and infrastructure, wire the entire country for 21st century internet, and support scientific research that improves our lives.


7. Join the rest of the free world and create a single-payer, free and universal health care system that covers allAmericans all of the time.


8. Immediately reduce carbon emissions that are destroying the planet and discover ways to live without the oil that will be depleted and gone by the end of this century.


9. Require corporations with more than 10,000 employees to restructure their board of directors so that 50% of its members are elected by the company’s workers. We can never have a real democracy as long as most people have no say in what happens at the place they spend most of their time: their job. (For any U.S. businesspeople freaking out at this idea because you think workers can't run a successful company: Germany has a law like this and it has helped to make Germany the world’s leading manufacturing exporter.)


10. We, the people, must pass three constitutional amendments that will go a long way toward fixing the core problems we now have. These include:

A. A constitutional amendment that fixes our broken electoral system by 
1) completely removing campaign contributions from the political process; 
2) requiring all elections to be publicly financed; 
3) moving election day to the weekend to increase voter turnout; 4) making all Americans registered voters at the moment of their birth; 5) banning computerized voting and requiring that all elections take place on paper ballots.


B. A constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people and do not have the constitutional rights of citizens. This amendment should also state that the interests of the general public and society must always come before the interests of corporations.


C. A constitutional amendment that will act as a "second bill of rights" as proposed by President Frankin D. Roosevelt: that every American has a human right to employment, to health care, to a free and full education, to breathe clean air, drink clean water and eat safe food, and to be cared for with dignity and respect in their old age.

Let me know what you think. Occupy Wall Street enjoys the support of millions. It is a movement that cannot be stopped. Become part of it by sharing your thoughts with me or online (at OccupyWallSt.org). Get involved in (or start!) your own local Occupy movement. Make some noise. You don't have to pitch a tent in lower Manhattan to be an Occupier. You are one just by saying you are. This movement has no singular leader or spokesperson; every participant is a leader in their neighborhood, their school, their place of work. Each of you is a spokesperson to those whom you encounter. There are no dues to pay, no permission to seek in order to create an action.

We are but ten weeks old, yet we have already changed the national conversation. This is our moment, the one we've been hoping for, waiting for. If it's going to happen it has to happen now. Don't sit this one out. This is the real deal. This is it.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!


Yours,
Michael Moore

MMFlint@MichaelMoore.com
@MMFlint
MichaelMoore.com

We are One

You are a master number.  We all are because we are all, at our center, perfectly in tune with the Great Master. You are one with the Great One. You are the vessel through which the power of Love can be operative in our world.  Today, 11/11/11, is a trinity of the master number 11, a divine, powerfully creative, dynamic energy force for enlightenment.  


Today we can commit to changing, to healing, to bringing forth that which is within us, which is the intelligent creative power of Love sourcing itself from the Great Creator and Lover whose very self fills the cosmos with His Spirit.  You are home to that great spirit, as we all are.  At our center, we are all connected, and that connection is a connection to all that is.  And, all that is, is One completely unified intelligence.  Together we can heal all that is within us which blocks us from that center, which keeps us separate, disconnected - our memories of abuse, our fear, our sense of aloneness - so that we,   one by one, can heal and then resonate together as a perfect symphony.  We can heal ourselves and we can heal our world.  


Over the past couple of years writing Tiger Lilies the most beautiful prayer I've written about is the Hawaiian Ho'oponopono prayer of reconciliation.  


Through it, together, we can share in our collective sorrow and offer a collective apology to our world for "those things we have done and those things we have left undone."  Together, we can ask forgiveness from each other.  Together, we can enter into a genuine feeling of grief. And, together, we can find our way out of that grief through seeking and offering forgiveness.  Forgiveness will begin the healing of ourselves and our world.  


And, as in a great collective Amen, together we can exhale in a great sigh of gratefulness for that forgiveness, for that healing, which closes the great wound, the ancient wound out of which we have all operated.  Now, cleansed, healed, restored and whole, together we can whisper into the endless Cosmos, into the very heart of God ..... Thank you ..... We love you.