This morning, Carol
Frame Matthews sent around this quote from Matthew Fox’s book Creativity:
“The story is told of Martin Luther King Junior’s bringing a proposition to his board of twenty-two person. The proposition was about his coming out publicly against the Vietnam War. The board was adamantly against it. They had enough troubles already. Their financial situation was tottering. They did not need another huge controversy to add to the other issues they were wrestling with and the other fires they were trying to contain. At the board meeting the vote was twenty-one to one NOT to come out against the war. The next day Dr. King held a press conference in which he announced his opposition to the war.”
So I was inspired to track down what this notorious war was teaching Martin, whose birth we celebrate today! On April 4, 1967, the day my grandmother Miriam celebrated her 66th birthday, in New York City’s Riverside Church, Dr. King said:
“…We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside . . . but one day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that a system that produces beggars needs to be repaved….”
Toward the end of the speech, MLK said – “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late... “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on…” We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.
~ “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence,” Martin Luther King Jr.;one of MLK’s least publicized speeches
In celebration of this
Martin Luther King Junior Day the day before an history-making inauguration, let
me spill my spiritual guts on the page for you. Intestines meander, so this may
too, but the destination is clear. If you get no farther than this, you’ve
already read the most inspiring and challenging words!
What do these words mean to me? Well, I am deeply challenged by three questions. Related to those, I do have one clear intention, but I need so much more clarity and ask for your help. I’ll try to do the same for you if you merely ask me. Okay, here goes.
The Questions:
1) 1) The pace of change is quickening. Big shifts
(e.g. Berlin Wall or climate change awareness) will happen. What changes in
self and society can we make that will increase the chances that the results
will be positive?
1) 2) If the ultimate goal of humankind is for a critical mass of us (or our distant descendants) to realize a constant state of unconditional love that has been achieved, not out of tribal group mind but rather out of individual human freedom so as to complete the mission of the Earth, what is my contribution toward this end? And does my contribution have anything to do with what yours may be?
1) 3) The dominant economic systems of the world are unsustainable. Either we will wipe out Homo Sapiens and the rest of life can get on with it, or we change our values and assumptions, and address the “Powers and Principalities” that perpetuate the insanity (Insanity defined: A tiny percentage of one species on Earth using most of the resources on which that species and the rest of Creation depend.) What does this new economy look like?
According to the late Ian Lungold, the Maya believe that your intention is as essential to your ability to navigate reality as your position in time and space. [These two videos - one on google, one on youtube -of him lecturing on the Mayan calendar are fascinating]
The Intention:
Become more conscious of the unconscious parts of self; ego self to bow to True Self; all but essential ego functions burned away; True Self learns how to float in the ocean and react instantly while free falling.
Okay. I may not
achieve it this year. I mention the intention because I believe it relates to
all three of the questions. What number should we start with? Okay, one.
1) 1) The pace of change is quickening. Big shifts will happen. What changes in self and society can we make that will increase the chances that the results will be positive?
President Obama trusted in and fostered the power of the masses. It worked to inspire many to volunteer and many more to vote for O. And while the United States has had its moments of mass resistance, compared to many countries (South Korea, the Philippines and Brazil come to mind) U.S. Americans currently have neither the strong belief in people power nor skills in community mobilizing, nor the common will to resist and topple unjust systems. The benefits, real or imaginary, that many people in this country accrue from those systems no doubt demotivate people from demanding radical change.
You may ask why radical change is needed. Why not build on and improve what we have? You probably know the answer.
We are at a turning point. The speed of change and the combination of crises, along with social and spiritual shifts happening, all point to this fact, which is often intuited as much as it is explicit, that we are at the start of a major turning point. The economic crisis is part of the mix.
Daniel Pinchback,
author of the fascinating 2012: The Return of the Quetzalcoatl, in
Reality Sandwich wrote these words recently in his short article, The Intentional
Economy:
Over the last decades, the
international financial elite manipulated the markets to create obscene rewards
for themselves at the expense of poor and middle class people across the world.
Using devious derivatives, cunning CDOs [collateralized debt obligations], and other trickery, they siphoned off
ever-larger portions of the surplus value created by the producers of real
goods and services, contriving a debt-based economy that had to fall apart.
Their own greed -- such a meager, dull intent -- has now blown up in their
faces, annihilating, in slow motion, the corrupt system built to serve them.
Daniel Pinchbeck
continues, “When the edifice of mainstream society suddenly collapses, as is
happening now, it is a fantastic time for artists, visionaries, mad scientists
and seers [and Christians, I wish want to add, though that may be redundant] to step forward and present a well-defined
alternative.”
Representing 560
million Christians, the World Council of Churches itself declared that the global economy needs radical changes. A WCC delegation to a recent United Nations
conference on global finance says leaders must “take responsibility and enact
transformations towards building an equitable and sustainable global economic
system that meets the economic, social and cultural rights of all, women and
men, and nurtures the environment.”
Specifically,
they call for a “lasting solution to the debt problem for poor and
middle-income countries beginning with the unconditional cancellation of the
illegitimate debts being claimed from poor countries,"
But the shift
Pinchback is proposing is not about reform. Instead it resembles Christ’s
urging to turn the world upside down:
What is required, in my opinion, is
not some moderate proposal or incremental change, but a complete shift in
values and goals, making a polar reversal of our society's basic paradigm. If
our consumer-based, materialism-driven model of society is dissolving, what can
we offer in its place? Why not begin with the most elevated intentions? Why not
offer the most imaginatively fabulous systemic redesign?
Where do you and
I fit in? To this, I ask my second question.
2) 2) If the ultimate goal of humankind is for a critical mass of us (or our distant descendants) to realize a constant state of unconditional love that has been achieved, not out of tribal group mind but rather out of individual human freedom so as to complete the mission of the Earth, what is my contribution toward this end? And does my contribution have anything to do with yours may be?
Father Keating
gets directly at this in this
short video interview from 2007 called, “Religious, but not spiritual? with
Ken Wilber. I think you’ll find it delightful and brilliant.
More recently, at
the Garrison Institute, he said
emphasizes the importance of meditation and contemplative prayer in our
evolution:
The work of social action involves
getting through the difficulties of seeing people suffer and our inability to
change
things in a short time. You have to work, plan, educate, collaborate.
It would be a help if all the world would collaborate, transcend our
doctrines and different opinions. Imagine if humanity agreed to
cooperatively
address poverty, hunger, healthcare and
problems facing
us everyday, not to speak of ideologically-based
violence. We might
climb out of the swamp of unevolved human pitfalls.
Obviously that's
not happening yet. People aren't free enough in their
attitudes or
behaviors. Millions of people are now serious meditators and
contemplatives--more than we have ever had before. If more did it, we
could
begin to change society.
The Garrison
Institute: Is that the aim of the Contemplative Prayer
movement?
Father Keating: We are trying to
translate the basic teaching that
comes from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount:
But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and
pray to
your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is
done in secret
will reward you. (Matthew 6:6)
Closing the door, praying in secret,
suggests nonduality,
retiring
into a place where you can forget yourself. Then God will reward you,
transform your being, bring forth your full human potential. This is
an
interpretation of the text, but it is deep in the Christian
tradition.
The Garrison
Institute’s integral approach to contemplative practice is exactly what the
world needs now.
3)
The dominant economic systems of the world are
unsustainable. Either we will wipe out Homo Sapiens and the rest of life can
get on with it, or we change our values and assumptions, and address the
“Powers and Principalities” that perpetuate the insanity (Insanity defined: A
tiny percentage of one species on Earth using most of the resources on which
that species and the rest of Creation depend.) What does this new economy look
like?
Ever notice how privileged North Americans and many congregations love to quote Jesus’s “The poor will always be with you,” when discussing God’s will to end poverty. Here is Shane Claiborne’s take, in the excellent The Irresistible Revolution on this:
Many
of the people who whip out this verse have grown quite insulated and distant
from the poor and feel defensive. I usually gently ask, “Where are the poor?
Are the poor among us?” The answer is usually a clear nugatory. As we study the
Scriptures, we see how many texts have misread, contextualized, and exegeted to
hear what we want to. Like this one about the poor being among us, which Jesus
says in the home of a leper and after a poor marginalized woman anoints his
feet with perfume. The poor were all around him. Far from saying in defeat that
we should not worry about the poor, since they will always be among us, Jesus
is pointing the church to her true identity—she is to live close to those who
suffer. The poor will always be among us, because the empire will always
produce poor people, and they will find a home in the church, a citizenship in
the kingdom of God, where the “hungry are filled with good things and the rich
sent away empty.”
I
heard that Gandhi, when people asked him if he was a Christian, would often
reply, “Ask the poor. They will tell you who the Christians are.”
(Claiborne, pp. 160-61)
Accordingly, the question Carol gave us this morning is a perfect way to finish.
How can each of us, on this day, listen for the spirit, follow our hearts, take a risk, speak out for justice, build a relationship, think creatively, be Christ to another?
Love
and peace,
Carol
Love and peace,
andrew
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