Tag: Liberation theology

Liberation Theology: Seeing Divine Intervention on Behalf of the Poor

Readings for 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time: HAB 1: 2-3; 2:2-4; PS 95: 1-2, 6-7, 8-9; 2 TM 1: 6-8, 13-14; 1 PT 1:25; LK 17: 5-10

Last week’s homily on “Dives and Lazarus” evoked an interesting comment from one of the most faithful and thoughtful readers of this blog. The point of address was a statement in my related reflections on liberation theology, viz. that in the biblical tradition “God passes from being a neutral observer of earth’s injustices to an active participant with the poor as they struggle for justice here on earth.”

In response, the reader commented, “The disheartening truth is that I see no evidence of this ever having been the case in the literal sense. Metaphorically, yes, and in prophetic but unfulfilled texts, but I fail to see even one concrete example. The rich and the poor seem to be equal in that both will have to wait for some nebulous afterlife to receive their reward. Meanwhile, the rich, proverbially, get richer.”

The comment is providentially related to this Sunday’s readings, which address the question of unanswered prayers and the frustration of those who look for evidence of God’s presence in the world and find none. Before I get to that, however, let me respond directly to what the reader said.

To begin with, I agree with his comment in that:

  1. It is often “disheartening” to look for God’s intervention on behalf of the poor (or any of us for that matter) and to see none.
  2. No one will see or ever has seen “literal,” “concrete,” and undeniable evidence of such intervention.
  3. So, in relation to faith and speech about God, metaphor used by “seers” (i.e. prophets gifted with capacity to see what’s opaque to the rest of us) is all we have.
  4. Contrary to biblical tradition, our inherited, domesticated religious culture insists that the rich and poor are equal in God’s eyes and that we must endure obscene wealth disparities till after death.
  5. As a result, wealth disparities flourish; the rich get richer.

So, relative to such observations and according to liberation theologians, what do the seers (those who can see beyond the shadows in our “Plato’s Cave”) tell us about God’s siding with the poor? Just this:

  1. God is Love and has established a loving order with room for everyone. This loving order of Universal Intelligence represents the larger, unchanging dispensation in which we live and move and have our being. It is the world as God created it.
  2. Throughout history, human structures (familial, economic, social, political, etc.) have been set up by the rich and powerful in opposition to the divine order. This is the origin of race-consciousness, nations, borders, latifundial holdings, slavery, poverty and wars. None of these represent the world as it comes from the hand of God, where the world belongs to everyone.
  3. The spokespersons for that other world are the “prophets” who have always been among us pointing out the in-breaking of the Love that is always there (e.g. Krishna, the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Marx, Gandhi, King, Greta Thunberg . . .) Uniformly, they point out the opposition between the order of Universal Intelligence and the “wisdom of the world;” they indicate where Love is manifesting Itself; they invite the rest of us to “see” and to align with Love’s order.
  4. Those who listen to the prophets are the indispensable agents of Universal Intelligence for the “salvation” of humanity from the inevitable destructive results of the world’s “wisdom.” They are everywhere for those with eyes to see.
  5. In the end, however, Love’s order will prevail regardless of human activity; it alone is Real; the rest is illusion and doomed to pass.

With that in mind, please turn your attention to today’s liturgy of the word. You can find the readings here. In the meantime, what follows are my “translations.” As you’ll see, they directly address unanswered prayers and Love’s order as decreed by Universal Intelligence. 

 HAB 1: 2-3; 2:2-4
  
 I’ve been praying
 Dear God, 
 For your Kingdom to come,
 For violence to cease
 For relief from our misery.
 Yet you seem deaf
 To my pleas.
 After all,
 Wars continue
 Violence increases
 Everyone’s at 
 Each other’s throat.
 What should I think?
  
 Only this:
 (And write it in stone!)
 My timetable,
 My order
 Is vastly different
 From yours.
 What’s invisible,
 What seems delay to you
 Is always there
 And perfectly timely for me.
 So, be patient
 Keep your commitment
 To my just order.
 My answer to prayer
 Is never late.
 It’s omnipresent.
  
 PS 95: 1-2, 6-7, 8-9
  
 I have heard your response,
 Dear God
 I’m thankful and happy
 For the reminder.
 Your words
 Are solid as rock.
 It’s true:
 You know far more
 Than us.
 You have never
 Let us down.
 I will therefore not ever
 Lose faith
 Against your 
 Proven fidelity.
  
 2 TM 1: 6-8, 13-14
  
 Such words of response
 Are wise.
 They are the expression
 Of a Holy Spirit,
 Within us all.
 It can set
 The world ablaze
 With love.
 It is courageous
 And disciplined,
 It expresses the
 Strength of God.
 It enables us
 To endure even prison
 And hardships
 Of all kinds.
 It is the very Spirit
 Of Jesus, the Christ.
  
 1 PT 1:25
  
 We’re happy to say that
 We share 
 Such enduring faith
 With sisters and brothers
 Past and present.
 What joy to live
 In such holy company!
  
  
 LK 17: 5-10
  
 When Jesus’ followers
 Prayed for stronger faith,
 He reminded them
 That even a little bit
 Can change
 Expectations profoundly.
 Never forget, he said,
 That you are not in charge;
 Love is.
 You are only Love’s servants.
 God is not
 Your errand boy
 Beholden to
 Culturally-shaped 
 Plans and needs.

With those readings in mind, i.e. when we allow God’s word to open our eyes and ears, when we listen to the prophets (God’s spokespersons), we see concrete manifestations of God’s presence and siding with the poor everywhere. Right now, they’re evident, I think, in:

  1. Nature Itself: Regardless of human efforts to obscure and deny the divine, its presence calls constantly to us in events so close to us and taken-for-granted that they’ve become invisible. I’m thinking about the sun, the ocean, trees, the moon, stars, wild flowers – and our own bodies whose intelligence performs unbelievable feats each moment of our lives.
  2. Liberation Theology: This rediscovery of God’s preferential option for the poor has changed and is changing the world. One cannot explain the pink tide that swept Latin America during the 1970s, ‘80s, and 90s – not Brazil, Argentina, Nicaragua, Venezuela – without highlighting the inspiration provided by liberation theology. Neither can one explain the rebellion of the Muslim world against western imperialism without confronting Islam’s inherent liberating drive – again on behalf of the disenfranchised, impoverished, and imperialized.
  3. Contemporary Social Movements: Think Occupy, Black Lives Matter, the Sunrise Movement, Yellow Vests, Standing Rock, the Green New Deal, and prophetic figures like (once again) Greta Thunberg, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, and Pope Francis with his landmark climate encyclical Laudato si’ . All of these movements and figures stand on the side of the poor and are having their effect.
  4. Marianne Williamson’s Campaign: Of all the current candidates for president, Marianne Williamson most articulately and faithfully bases her “politics of love” on the five prophetic insights referenced above. The mere fact that she is actually running for president signals an actual and potential awakening of American consciousness far beyond what’s (thankfully) portended even in the candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Martin Luther King once famously said that the moral arc of the universe is long, but that it bends towards justice. “Justice” in his vocabulary meant overcoming the laws and social structures crafted by the rich and powerful to keep the poor in their place. King (and Malcolm as well) was a practitioner of African-American liberation theology. As such, he was gifted with eyes to see differently — to see the Judeo-Christian tradition as revealing a God on the side of the poor.

That’s what our Sunday liturgies of the word reveal consistently. This week is no exception. It invites us to open our eyes.

Dives & Lazarus: a primer on liberation theology

Readings for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time: AM 6: 1A, 4-7; PS 146: 7-10; I TM 6: 11-16; LK 16: 19-31 

Today’s liturgy of the word provides us with a virtual catechism of liberation theology – Christianity’s most important theological development in the last 1500 years, and the West’s most important social movement of the last 150 years.

I have come to those conclusions over a period of more than forty years studying liberation theology. My interest began in Rome during my graduate studies there, 1967 through 1972. There I first heard Peru’s Gustavo Gutierrez speak. (Fr. Gutierrez is considered the father of liberation theology.)

Subsequently I read Gutierrez’s book, A Theology of Liberation (1971) and was completely taken by it. Reading the book gave me the feeling that I was hearing Jesus’ Gospel for the very first time.

You might ask, what is liberation theology? To answer that question fully, please look at my blog entries under the “liberation theology” button. I’ve written a series on the question. In my blogs, you’ll find that I always define it in a single sentence. Liberation theology is reflection on the following of Christ from the viewpoint of the world’s poor and oppressed. That’s the class of people to which Jesus himself belonged. They constituted the majority of his first followers.

When read from their viewpoint, accounts of Jesus’ words and deeds – the entire Bible for that matter – take on depths of meaning and relevance to our contemporary world that are otherwise inaccessible to people like us who live in the heart of the wealthy world. From the viewpoint of the poor, God passes from being a neutral observer of earth’s injustices to an active participant with the poor as they struggle for justice here on earth. Jesus becomes the personification of that divine commitment to the oppressed. After all, he was poor and oppressed himself. The Roman Empire and its Temple priest collaborators saw to that.

My interest in liberation theology deepened as my teaching career developed at Berea College in Kentucky from 1974 to 2010. There I was encouraged to continue my study of liberation theology. So, I spent extended periods in Brazil, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Cuba, Mexico, Zimbabwe, South Africa, India and elsewhere studying under liberation theologians, dialoging and publishing with them. The poor in all of those countries were suffering from the aggression the United States directed against them.

Meanwhile at Berea, I found the conclusions of liberation theologians validated by the college’s very fine scripture scholars. They had almost no acquaintance with liberation theology, and yet what they were teaching perfectly harmonized with its central tenets. It’s just that they stopped short of drawing what seemed to me the obvious political conclusions from their work.

More specifically, Berea’s scholars identified the Exodus (Yahweh’s liberation of slaves from Egypt) as God’s original and paradigmatic revelation. The whole tradition began there, not in the Garden of Eden. Moreover, the Jewish prophetic tradition emphasized what we now call “social justice.” Even more, Jesus of Nazareth appeared in the prophetic tradition, not as a priest or king. Jesus directed his “ministry” to the poor and outcasts. The Gospel of Luke (4: 18-19) has Jesus describing his program in the following words:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

After his death, Jesus’ followers continued along those lines. They lived communally, having sold all their worldly possessions and distributed the proceeds to the poor.

All of that finds vivid expression in today’s liturgy of the word. As I said, it’s a kind of catechism of liberation theology. The reading from Amos the prophet describes the sin that most offends God – wealth disparity in the face of extreme poverty. Amos decries a “wanton revelry” on the part of the wealthy that sounds like the “American Way of Life” or the “Lives of the Rich and Famous” that we Americans find so fascinating.

The prophet describes a rich class that lives like King David himself – in luxurious houses, overeating, drinking wine by the bowlful, and generally ignoring “the collapse of Joseph,” i.e. the poverty of their country’s most destitute. For that, Amos says, the rich will ultimately suffer. All their wealth will be confiscated and they will be driven into shameful exile.

In railing against the rich and defending the poor, Amos was calling Judah back to the worship of Yahweh whose attributes are described in today’s responsorial psalm. There God is depicted as loving the just and thwarting the ways of the wicked. The psalm describes Yahweh as securing justice for the oppressed, giving food to the hungry, and setting captives free. He gives sight to the blind and protects resident aliens, single mothers and their children.

Then today’s excerpt from 1st Timothy outlines the characteristics of those who worship that God by following in Jesus’ footsteps. They keep the commandment which is to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

According to St. Paul, that means pursuing justice and living with devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness.

Finally, the gospel selection from Luke chapter 16 dramatizes the sinful relationship between rich and poor and the destinies awaiting both. Luke tells the story of the rich man and “St. Lazarus” who is honored by the poor throughout Latin America.

It is significant that Lazarus is given a name in Jesus’ parable. Usually we know the names of the rich, while it is the poor that remain anonymous. Here matters are reversed. To remedy this anomaly, tradition has assigned the wealthy man a name. He’s called Dives, which is simply the Latin word for rich man.

For his part, Lazarus is quintessentially poor, hungry, and lacking medical care. His sores are open and the only attention they receive are from dogs that lick his wounds. Meanwhile, Dives seems completely unaware of Lazarus’ presence, though the beggar is standing at his very doorstep. Within the sight of Lazarus, the wealthy one stuffs himself with food to such a degree that the scraps falling from his table would be enough to nourish the poor beggar. But not even those crumbs are shared. How could Dives share? He doesn’t even know that Lazarus exists.

So, the two men die, and things are evened out. The rich man goes to hell. We’re not told why. Within the limits of the story, it seems simply for the crime of being rich and unconsciously blind to the presence of the poor. For his part, Lazarus goes to the “bosom of Abraham,” the original Hebrew patriarch.

Lazarus is rewarded. Again, we’re not told why. Within the story, it seems simply because he was poor and Yahweh is partial to the poor, just as he was to the slaves God intervened to save when they were starving in Egypt.

Seated with Abraham, Lazarus feasts and feasts at the eternal banquet hungry people imagine heaven to be. Dives however is consumed by flame in the afterlife. Fire, of course, is the traditional symbol of God’s presence, or purification, and of punishment. This seems to suggest that after death, both Dives and Lazarus find themselves in the presence of God. However what Lazarus experiences as joyful, Dives experiences as tormenting.

And why? Simply, it seems, because Dives was rich, and Lazarus was poor.

Does the parable tell us that what awaits us all after death is a reversal of the economic conditions in which we now find ourselves? The first will be last; the last first. The rich will be poor, and the poor will be rich. That in itself is highly thought-provoking.

In any case, Yahweh is presented as champion of the poor in this parable, just as in the reading from Amos, in today’s responsorial psalm, and in Paul’s letter to Timothy. And according to liberation theologians, that’s the central characteristic of God throughout the Judeo-Christian tradition. God is on the side of the poor and hates obscene wealth disparity.

You can well imagine how such insight inspired the poor and oppressed throughout the world when it emerged as “liberation theology” following the Second Vatican Council. Poor people everywhere (and especially in Latin America) took courage and were inspired to demand social justice from the rich who had been ignoring them in the New World since the arrival of Columbus 500 years earlier. In fact, Liberation theology motivated social movements more powerfully than any thought current since the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848.

And that’s why the reigning empire, the United States of America took action against liberation theology. It initiated what Noam Chomsky calls “the first religious war of the 21st century.” It was a war of the United States against the Catholic Church in Latin America – yes against the Catholic Church. The war killed hundreds of thousands of priests, nuns, lay catechists, social workers, union organizers, students, teachers, and journalists along with ordinary farmers and workers.

Today’s liturgy of the word reminds us not to let the United States have the final word. We are called to divest ourselves of our wealth and to take notice of St. Lazarus at our gates. God is on the side of the poor, not of the rich.

Sunday’s Readings “Translated”

Here are my “translations” of the liturgical readings for the 26th Sunday in ordinary time. As we’ll see more explicitly in my Sunday Homily, they provide a virtual catechism of liberation theology, which I consider the most important theological development of the last 1500 years.

AM 6:1A, 4-7
  
 The Spirt of Life informs us that:
 Complacent “religious” people
 Are in for a sad surprise.
 They might be enjoying
 Their “Sleep Number” mattresses
 And Lazy Boy chairs;
 While gorging on Wagyu Beef
 And meats 
 No one else can afford;
 They might be attending 
 A-list concerts
 And drinking Chateau Lafite
 While reeking of Chanel Grand Extrait.
 But the world’s on fire!
 And its flames will soon consume
 Even the decadent lifestyles
 Of the super-rich.
  
  
 PS 146: 7, 8-9, 9-10
  
 For the poor,
 There’s a certain Schadenfreude
 In all of this.
 For God’s future assures
 Downfall for the rich
 While promising 
 Justice for the oppressed
 Rich food for those now hungry
 And liberation for the imprisoned.
 The obtuse will see,
 We’re told.
 The overworked
 Will be relieved.
 Immigrants and refugees
 Will be safe at last.
 Children born out of wed-lock
 And abandoned women
 Will finally know peace.
  
 1 TM 6:11-16
  
 So, be of good heart.
 Despite appearances,
 That golden future awaits
 Those who live like Jesus.
 He was so committed 
 To the poor 
 To justice, non-violence
 Patience and love
 That the imperialized world
 Could not stand it.
 Nevertheless, his powerful
 Christ-consciousness
 (That you btw have promised
 To live by)
 Will bring the world
 A completely new order
 And enlightenment beyond
 Our wildest imaginings.
  
 2 COR 8:9
  
 In fact, Jesus accomplished
 All of that
 By becoming a poor man
 Not a rich one
 So that we might know
 Where true wealth lies
 And live accordingly.
  
 LK 16: 19-31
  
 Jesus illustrates
 His meaning
 With the story
 (Told to the complacent believers)
 Of poor Lazarus
 Who often begged
 From a rich man.
 But soon had Dives
 Begging from him
 And experiencing
 The awful frustration
 Of unbridgeable gaps
 In consumption
 And in ability
 To communicate
 The desperation
 And torment, 
 Of hunger and thirst
 Even if revealed
 By a ghost from the other side.

Announcing: A New Series on Presidential Candidate, Marianne Williamson

[The quadrennial election-season is upon us. Accordingly, today’s posting is the first in a series on Marianne Williamson and her candidacy for President of the United States. The series will explore parallels between her platform (as articulated in her 20th anniversary edition of “Healing the Soul of America”) on the one hand and “A Course in Miracles” (ACIM) on the other. Postings to follow will also connect ACIM and Williamson’s policies with liberation theology – the most important theological development of the last 1500 years, and the inspiration for the Global South’s most effective social movement since the middle of the 19th century. The thesis here will be that Marianne Williamson is actually a U.S. liberation theologian, but in the tradition of 19th century abolitionists, as well as that of women suffragists, Martin Luther King, and Mohandas Gandhi. As such, her candidacy promises our country the revolutionary impetus that liberation theology provided for the profound socio-political changes Latin America has experienced over the last six decades.  Apart from more formal explanations of this thesis, the latter’s point will be made in the form of weekly Sunday homilies reflecting on the narratives of Jesus’ words and deeds as presented in each week’s liturgical readings.]

Marianne Williamson for President! She’s a Liberation Theologian

On Monday, January 28th, Marianne Williamson declared herself a candidate for President of the United States. In making her declaration, this great spiritual leader, who has a larger social media following than any Democratic candidate declared so far, implicitly proposed addressing in 21st century, non-religious ways the spiritual hunger that Williamson and others in the “higher consciousness community” consider endemic to the human condition, whether that hunger is recognized or not.

However, the difference between Williamson and others in that community is that she consistently applies her spiritual insights to the public sphere. And as we shall see shortly, she does so in a manner that completely respects the convictions of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs – and atheists, along with those who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.”

Because of its inclusive approach, Ms. Williamson’s candidacy promises to build on the accomplishments of 19th century abolitionists, and on those of 20th century women suffragists, and participants in the American civil rights movement. The abolitionists and many suffragists were highly committed Quakers. And, of course, King was a Baptist minister.  Following in their footsteps, Williamson promises to at last offer progressives (and the country at large) entry into a sphere that conservatives – Christian fundamentalists to be exact – have controlled at least since the 1980s. It’s the essential realm of faith and spirituality.

Failure to enter that sphere has hamstrung the left whose “enlightened” tendency has been to reject and ridicule rather than embrace what many consider the deepest dimension of being human. That tendency has not simply cost progressives votes on election day. Even more fundamentally, it has incapacitated them by its implied blindness to the spiritual hunger shared even by humans in general. Put otherwise, Williamson is confronting the right on its own turf.

In daring to do so, she is boldly following in the footsteps of Martin Luther King who demonstrated the ability of faith to awaken critical thinking capacities belonging to ordinary people. King as well as Malcolm X, and the abolitionists that preceded them all tapped into the undeniable power that religious language, symbols and metaphors possess to actually motivate ordinary people to work for social justice and profound political change. The same, of course, is true of Mahatma Gandhi and the liberation theologians of the Global South. In fact, I’ll argue in future postings that Marianne Williamson could easily be classified as a liberation theologian.

Before I get to that however, please recognize that during her campaign Williamson does not plan to wear her identity as spiritual teacher on her sleeve. And that’s her strength too. Instead, she’ll employ her spiritual consciousness and conviction fostered by years of spiritual discipline to guide her campaign in the right direction which will inevitably call for deep psychological – not to say – spiritual – transformation for all of us.

Recently, she described that transformational direction in an extended interview with CNN’s John Berman. Williamson said her most prominent issues would be:

  • Medicare for All
  • A permanent tax cut for the middle class
  • Free education for all children (including tuition for public colleges)
  • Government support for children’s services
  • A Green New Deal

Those, of course, are proposals similar to what have been proposed by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, whom Williamson supported in 2016.

Why then run, Berman asked, before Sanders and Warren have officially announced? Won’t her campaign be somewhat redundant in the face of two veteran politicians who, he intimated, have a much better chance of getting elected?

Williamson’s response was significant in that it clearly underlined not so much her competitive edge even over candidates like those just mentioned, but the added value her candidacy represents. Ms. Williamson wants to expand the conversation, she said, to address the psychological and spiritual issues underlying what she sees as the severe disease that mortally threatens the American body politic. As long as those remain unaddressed, conversation and policy proposals, however excellent and whatever their sources, will remain at less-helpful superficial levels. It will be like watering the leaves of a plant, when its roots remain dry and shriveling.

And what root causes is Williamson referring to? Basically, she says, it’s an amoral economic system. It is capitalism-as-we-know-it that has focused on short term gains while allowing market forces instead of common-sense spiritual principles (as elementary as the Golden Rule and democracy) to assume their irreplaceable and decisive roles in the organization of our country’s politics.

Such assumption now has millions of children living in chronic despair and trauma. (Williamson always begins with child welfare.) The system has also created layers of racism and fostered wars across the planet. It has made our country destructively expert at waging wars but unwilling to wage peace.

Williamson reminded her interviewer that Franklin Roosevelt considered the administrative aspects of the presidency as secondary to the moral leadership the position affords. She pointed out that her 35 years of naming and addressing such moral dimensions of public policy is what qualifies her to exercise the moral leadership F.D.R. referenced. That’s Williamson’s competitive edge. It’s her added value. It’s what no other Democratic candidate offers so clearly.

When asked about paying for her program, Williamson chuckled. She asked: Isn’t it interesting that interviewers always raise that tired canard? When it comes to giving a $2 trillion tax break to billionaires, very few, she said, will ask, “Where will the money come from?” Even less do they raise that question when it comes to fighting wars – not even wars like the one against Saddam Hussein in Iraq that was entirely illegal and based on lies.

Marianne Williamson had a similar response when asked about the reparations she advocates for African-American descendants of slaves. She’s proposing a fund of $100 billion for the purpose. It would be paid out over a period of 10 years to finance economic and educational projects to benefit the community in question.

There are precedents for this she added. After World War II, Germany paid out $89 billion in reparations to Jewish organizations in the country. President Reagan signed into law the American Civil Liberties Act to similarly repair harm done to every survivor of the internment camps set up for the Japanese-Americans during the same World War. Moreover, following our nation’s Civil War, General Tecumseh Sherman proposed giving every freed slave 40 acres and a mule. Instead, former slaves were given the Black Code Laws that plagued them till the mid-1960s. It’s time, Ms. Williams said, to make good on Sherman’s reparational promise which was never kept.

From all of this, you can see that Marianne Williamson with her huge social media following is a serious candidate. For people of faith and advocates of social justice without a shred of religious faith, she presents a strong antidote to the religious right that has cornered the field of language, symbols, and metaphors by which most people in the world make sense of the world.

Williams knows that field inside-out. She recognizes that surrendering that field to reactionary forces is what renders progressives relatively weak before the 75% of Americans who identify as Christians. In the spirit of the abolitionists, women suffragists, and civil rights activists – in the spirit of Gandhi and liberation theologians – she wants to reclaim that turf and the specifically moral influence missing in the Democratic White House since the FDR era.

(Next week: My Meeting with Marianne Williamson. )

My Interview on Rob Kall’s “Bottom-Up” Podcast/Radio Program

Two weeks ago, Rob Kall posted an interview with me on OpEdNews. It centered on my book, The Magic Glasses of Critical Thinking: seeing through alternative fact & fake news. I had great fun doing the show. Here it is.

My Meeting with Marianne Williamson

Marianne

[This is my second blog entry in a series on the relation between liberation theology and A Course in Miracles (ACIM).]

More than a year ago, I met Marianne Williamson directly for the first time. I say “directly” because at the time I felt I already knew her. I had read her book, A Return to Love, which Marianne herself describes as ACIM Cliff Notes. And every Tuesday evening from 7:30-9:30, my wife, Peggy, and I watched Marianne’s livestream lectures from the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City. On top of that, I had been a student of A Course in Miracles for more than a year. (I’ll say more about that presently.)

In any case, at Peggy’s invitation, the great spiritual teacher and eloquent interpreter of A Course in Miracles came to Berea College as a convocation speaker. As expected, she charmed and inspired us all with her insightful connections between ACIM and the crisis of leadership and truth discernment in the age of Donald Trump whose presidency had begun just two months earlier. Her message emphasized that spirituality and higher consciousness have political consequences.

The evening of Marianne’s presentation, Peggy had arranged a lovely dinner at Berea’s Boone Tavern Hotel. In a group of fifteen or so Berea faculty, the president of Berea college and I were the only males present. Conversation was light and filled with small-talk until Marianne asked us all to introduce ourselves with some brief words about our personal spiritual journeys.

When it came my turn, I shared my background as a former Catholic priest. I spoke of my training in meditation as part of my seminary experience. I confessed that I had eventually abandoned meditation’s practice, but how a Christmas gift from Peggy in 1997 had renewed my commitment to its twice-daily practice.

The gift, I said, was a book by Eknath Easwaran called Passage Meditation. It explained how to meditate and recommended Easwaran’s “Eight Point Program” that changed my life. His eight points included meditation, spiritual reading, selection and use of a personal mantram, slowing down, one-pointed attention, training of the senses, putting the needs of others first, and practicing community with similarly committed friends.

I also mentioned that professionally I considered myself a liberation theologian. Marianne asked what I meant by that. I answered as I always do in a single sentence. I said: Liberation theology is reflection on the following of Christ from the viewpoint of the poor and oppressed who are socially aware in the sense of knowing who their oppressors are and of being willing to work for oppression’s end. Its emergence since the Second Vatican Council (1962-’65) represents, I claimed, the most important theological development of the past 1500 years. It is the most significant social movement of poor people since the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848.

That evening Peggy and I drove Marianne and her secretary, Wendy, from Berea to the Cincinnati airport two hours distant from Berea. The whole time, the four of us discussed A Course in Miracles and liberation theology. Marianne expressed interest in the latter and as we parted for the evening mentioned that perhaps the two of us might collaborate in writing a downloadable web series she was planning specifically about Jesus and connections between his person and the gospels on one hand and A Course in Miracles on the other. I was thrilled by the prospect.

At that point, I had been working with A Course in Miracles for almost a year. And it was profoundly changing my understanding of everything – of God, the world, truth, Jesus, the spiritual life in general – and myself and my life’s purpose. In that sense, the book was an answer to my prayers, for I had long experienced a burning desire to deepen my spiritual life and practice. I was surprised by ACIM’s impact.

(Next week: ACIM: Its Content)

“A Course in Miracles” Meets Liberation Theology: A New Series on This Blog

ACIM Image

Introduction

Today I begin a series on the spiritual classic, A Course in Miracles (ACIM). I feel the need to share these thoughts, because the book has exercised such a strong and beneficial influence on my life since, under the tutelage of Marianne Williamson, I began studying it a couple of years ago.

My hope is that these blog entries will acquaint readers with the richness of A Course in Miracles, which Williamson describes as “basically Christian mysticism.” After all, according to the great Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, such spirituality remains the last best hope for saving Christianity. Rahner, said “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist at all.”

The same might be said for the world in general: either it will attain mystical consciousness of creation’s basic unity, or the world itself will cease to exist. That is, far from being irrelevant, mysticism as understood by all the world’s Great Religions as well as by serious human beings who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious” is the only thing that can save us now.

My hope in writing these pieces is also that the articles to follow might lay the foundation for a book I intend to write. It will connect ACIM with liberation theology, which I consider the most important theological development of the last 1500 years, and the most significant social movement since the publication of The Communist Manifesto in 1848.

The connection, I believe, is necessary, since without it, the Christian mysticism presented in A Course in Miracles – despite Marianne Williamson’s brave efforts – runs the risk of skimming over the most pressing socio-economic problems facing our contemporary world. I’m referring to the so-called war on terrorism, the threat of nuclear war, and the omnicide represented by human-induced climate chaos. I want this series to centralize those problems directly in the light of liberation theology’s historical Jesus.

Put otherwise, what I will recommend here is an engaged mysticism based on the magnificent insights of ACIM. But I intend to link them directly to the even more magnificent teachings and practices of Christian mysticism’s inspiration, Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth as understood by those he addressed historically during his brief life on earth – his poor and oppressed neighbors in imperialized Palestine more than 2000 years ago.

Jesus’ neighbors were like their counterparts in today’s Global South – brown and black people, impoverished by colonialism, considered terrorists by their imperial masters, and tricked by religious leaders who lay in bed with the rich and powerful.

It was to these nobodies that Jesus of Nazareth spoke when he announced the program he called the Kingdom of God. He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.” (LK 4:18). Notice the people addressed here: the poor, the imprisoned, the oppressed and blind.

To repeat: the problem with Christian mysticism even as presented in ACIM is that it too quickly spiritualizes those categories. In doing so, it forgets the actual condition of those listening to Jesus for the first time. They were illiterate peasants seated before one of their own who articulated their fondest hopes.

Those hopes centered not on abstract spiritual enlightenment, but on a homeland free from imperial invaders who raped their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters and who tortured and crucified their insurgent fathers, husbands, sons and brothers. That was Jesus’ audience. And when his words are interpreted with them in mind, they take on a meaning that is revolutionary in every sense. They turn everything upside-down.

The same is true of A Course in Miracles. When its words are interpreted with the historical Jesus and his Jewish audience in mind, they take on a revolutionary meaning that inverts the world’s “truth” that (the course reminds us) stands 180 degrees opposite the truth of God. For starters, consider what that means relative to the practice of Jesus:

• The religious world tells us that God is neutral and loves everyone the same. The Judeo-Christian tradition itself along with God’s choice to incarnate as a poor person, and the programmatic words of Jesus quoted above, all express God’s “preferential option for the poor.” The poor and oppressed are God’s chosen people. They are special in God’s eyes.
• The world says that capitalism and private property represent the height of human economic development. In contrast, Jesus appearing in the Jewish prophetic tradition, held that the earth belongs to everyone. Private property as understood by capital’s apologists is a distortion of God’s plan.
• Similarly, the world maintains that market mechanisms of supply and demand will solve every problem. Jesus, on the other hand, proclaimed a Jubilee Year. As explained in the Bible, its intention was to reverse market distortions by having property lost to creditors and bankers revert back to its original (poor) owners. That was Good News for landless farmers.
• The world claims that the poor are guilty and deserve their lot in life. Jesus’ incarnation as a poor person directly contradicts such conviction. As noted above, the incarnation itself says the poor are God’s special people.
• The world lionizes the history of emperors, kings, generals, popes and bankers. Jesus had harsh words for all such oppressors. The historical memory guiding his life was that of a God whose first revelatory act in history was the liberation of slaves from bondage in Egypt.
• The world claims the right to use violence (even nuclear) against the insurgents it deems “terrorists.” Meanwhile, Jesus himself showed sympathy towards those Rome considered terrorists. In fact, he himself was executed as a terrorist by the Romans. He incorporated into his inner circle at least one Zealot insurrectionist and advocated a social program that paralleled in many ways (such as land reform) the program of the Zealot Party.
• The world (at least in the Global North) interprets religion as a mind-centered collection of beliefs compatible with nationalism and war. Jesus transcended all of that. He was a genuine mystic who crossed boundaries in the name of universal divine love and human brotherhood.

My hope is that this series will highlight contradictions like those and will embody the intersection between two splendid revolutionary sources – A Course in Miracles on the one hand, and liberation theology on the other.

So, let me get on with my project. In my next posting, I’ll begin by sharing my remarkable encounter with Marianne Williamson. Then I’ll move on to explanations of A Course in Miracles as explained by Marianne and to liberation theology as understood in the Global South. All of that will prepare for entries that will connect specific parts of ACIM with Jesus the Christ.

The Truth Behind Mr. Trump’s Crude Metaphor

Shithole

President Trump’s done it again. He’s snatched away the patina of political correctness that normally conceals the brutal realities of a U.S. policy. His recent words about “shithole countries” say more than most imagine, not only about Haiti and Africa, but about history, colonialism, immigrants in general, and (surprisingly) about faith-inspired anti-colonial resistance. In other words, the offensive imagery is profoundly revealing and worth probing for its subconscious meaning and implications for immigration policy.

Begin by considering the operative words themselves. They were pronounced in the context of a White House meeting about immigration policy. There Mr. Trump wondered “Why do we want all these people from ‘shithole countries’ coming here?”

Such poetic metaphor suggests two meanings. On the one hand, it might imply that Haiti and Africa are somehow anal sphincters. They are orifices from which excrement exits a body. In other words, Haitians and Africans are nothing but human waste.

Alternatively, the geographical locations themselves would be places of defecation. They are toilets or outhouses. They exist to receive excrement – presumably from the likes of Mr. Trump and the country he represents. Accordingly, the countries he referenced are thereby reduced to wastelands.

Either comparison (sphincters or toilets) distorts the brutal history of colonialism. In every case that process has impoverished previously prosperous populations of countries and whole continents characterized not by poverty, but by a wealth that far outstrips that of the colonizers.

In fact, the colonial world’s wealth (three growing seasons, lavish biodiversity, rich rain forests, herds of exotic fauna, expansive acreage, abundant mineral deposits, and, in many cases, oil) are the very reasons why European and American colonists invaded them in the first place. They forced their ways in to transfer the colonies’ wealth to the “Mother Country” to feed her voracious bestial, but resource-starved industries.

In other words, rather than receptacles for receiving waste, the colonies’ function became the enrichment of the much poorer imperial centers whose conquistadors invaded and plundered them. In that sense, Europe was the shithole. As sphincter, it exuded sickly white marauders who plundered the lavish wealth of thriving black and brown indigenous peoples.

And in every case, after the Second Inter-Capitalist War (aka World War II), when the colonized rebelled to reclaim their own abundance, the colonizers intervened repeatedly to keep the stolen resources flowing to the shitholes up north – to keep in poverty those they had impoverished.

Ironically, Haiti represents a case in point. There attempts at re-appropriating stolen land and other resources have repeatedly been repulsed by foreign invaders.

Haiti’s rebellion began in 1791 shortly after the French Revolution. It was then that Toussaint Louverture led the first successful black slave rebellion – against the country’s French imperialists. Such effrontery to white supremacists has never been forgiven.

The unacceptability of blacks and browns in rebellion explains the U.S. support of the brutal Tonton Macoute under the Duvaliers (“Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc”). Their death squads were responsible for the assassinations, torture, and disappearances of thousands of Haitians from 1957 to 1986. The CIA supported them at every step.

The threat of Haitians struggling for liberation from foreign control also explains U.S. opposition to former priest and liberation theologian, Jean Bertrand Aristide. (And it’s here that the previously-mentioned connection to faith enters in.) In 1993 Aristide was elected with 67% of the vote. Aristide’s popularity and the reason for CIA opposition to his presidency is suggested by the connections the former priest made between his faith and his rejection of the U.S. rape of his homeland under the Duvaliers. In a January 1988 interview, he said “The solution is revolution, first in the spirit of the Gospel; Jesus could not accept people going hungry. It is a conflict between classes, rich and poor. My role is to preach and organize….”

Even before the 2010 earthquake (which killed 300,000 Haitians!!), Haiti’s infrastructure and social fabric were devastated by reactionary outrages against faith-inspired struggles for national control of the country’s own resources. Haitian society still reels from the policies of American clients concerned only with preserving their own wealth and cooperating fully with the foreign agendas of their D.C. puppeteers.

None of this is acknowledged by the Trump Administration, the mainstream media, our TV talking heads, or even by the leadership of the Catholic Church. Instead, everything has disappeared down the shitholes (Again, please excuse the crudeness of Mr. Trump’s metaphor) residing between the ears of those concerned.

The fact is that all colonized countries particularly in Africa have rich histories like Haiti’s.

This means that the poverty and desperation of immigrants from those places is explainable by a combination of colonialism, counter-revolution, and (very often) religious persecution.

The president’s crudeness has afforded valuable opportunity to recover all of that hidden history. It provides occasion for appropriating the memory so important to denizens of the Global South in general.

Their people are not human waste. Their countries are extraordinarily rich, not poor. Instead, both have been systematically plundered and impoverished. Our lavish lifestyles are the direct result.

Put otherwise, all of us can benefit from Mr. Trump’s vulgarity. It can lead us to flush the toilets our brains have become.

Such cleansing can reveal the real reasons that the United States must accept immigrants not only from Haiti and Africa, but from other Global South countries its policies have devastated repeatedly for so long. The immigration question is one of justice and reparation.

Flush away!

(Sunday Homily) Jesus’ Anti-Imperial Parables: How to Resist (State) Terrorism

ISIS & Jesus

Readings for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Despite what you might hear in church today, this Sunday’s liturgy of the word is not about the end of the world and the condemned spending eternity in endless fire.

No, it’s much more relevant than that. It’s actually about non-violent resistance in a context of imperial aggression and war. It summons all of us to withdraw our support for the U.S. military and from Washington’s policy of state terrorism against impoverished Muslims in the Middle East.

More specifically, today’s gospel reading, on the one hand, calls those living in the belly of the beast to stop approving of our imperialist overlords who currently sow their weeds of destruction throughout the Middle East. This means actively opposing their wars of choice in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere.

On the other hand, the three parables attributed to Jesus also suggest a message for Middle Eastern followers of Mohammed. The parables address them precisely as victims of imperialism and hence the closest analogue to what the Bible calls “the people of God.”

I mean: in today’s world, the situation of Muslims closely tracks that of Jesus’ audience in first century Palestine.  As such, all three of today’s readings call followers of Mohammed [who recognize Isa (Jesus) as the second greatest of the prophets (after Mohammed and before Abraham)] to lay down their arms in favor of Jesus’ own non-violent resistance.

To get my meaning, begin by considering our liturgy’s first selection from the Jewish Testament’s Book of Wisdom. It is particularly relevant to “Americans,” identified by Dr. King as the world’s “greatest purveyor of violence.” The reading says explicitly that God’s power is not expressed in violence but in leniency to all.

That theme is repeated in today’s responsorial psalm with equal relevance to USians. There God is described as belonging to all nations.

Similarly, in the second reading, St. Paul insists that the divine Spirit dwells within all humans regardless of nationality. It is slow to anger, good, forgiving, abounding in kindness.

From this, Jewish wisdom insists that believers must in turn be kind, lenient and forgiving to all – even (Jesus says elsewhere) to their worst enemies. This is directly pertinent for the U.S. described by Noam Chomsky as the one of the most extreme religious fundamentalist countries in the world. Those who claim to follow Christ (as 83% of Americans do) must be as pacifist as their Master.

The second theme of today’s liturgy is less easy for an outsider to comment upon. It implicitly addresses the victims of American aggression – most prominently the Muslim community and whether or not (as people of The Book) they should resist with violence.

I mean that Jesus’ parable of the weeds planted by an enemy in a landlord’s field can be read as addressing the Roman occupation forces encumbering Israel during Jesus’ lifetime. [According to John Dominic Crossan, Matthew’s allegorizing of Jesus’ parable – making it about the end of the world – is more reflective of the situation of the Jewish diaspora (following the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE) than of the actual revolutionary situation of Jesus’ own day.]

In Jesus’ occupied Israel, the suffocating Roman presence (like our own country’s in the Middle East) was as unwelcome, alien, and destructive as weeds in a garden or field.

The question was how to deal with such odious foreign occupation. Like ISIS and others today, Zealot revolutionaries had their answer: Uproot the weeds here and now. Take up arms; assassinate Romans and their collaborators; drive them out mercilessly. Be as cruel and vicious as the Romans.

Jesus’ response was different. As a non-violent revolutionary, he could surely understand such apocalyptic energy. After all, much of his teaching expressed sympathy to the Zealot cause which included land reform, debt forgiveness, and expulsion of the hated Roman occupation forces. Many scripture scholars even identify possibly five members of Jesus’ inner circle as Zealots themselves.

But Jesus’ Parable of the Weeds is more prudent and sensitive to civilian casualties than the strategy of the impatient Zealots – or that of ISIS.

When the landlord’s workers ask, “Should we uproot the weeds?” Jesus’ landlord answers: “No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them.”

In other words, Jesus agrees with El Salvador’s Oscar Romero and with Brazil’s Dom Helder Camara that revolutionary violence, though understandable (and justifiable on the grounds of just war theory), is imprudent at the very least.

This is because when faced with a vicious, overwhelmingly armed oppressor (like the United States) resistance inevitably leads to state terrorism – to the war crime of collective punishment impacting women, children, the elderly and disabled. At the very least, that’s why Jesus eschews Zealot violence.

How then respond to increasing American domination of the Middle East since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire?

Jesus’ response? Be like mustard plant, he says. Be like yeast in flour. Both puzzling recommendations are relevant not just to Muslim victims of United States imperialism, but to Christians in our country who wish to dissent from their government’s policies of endless war.

First of all think of the puzzlement that must have struck Jesus’ listeners. Jews didn’t have much use for yeast. They preferred unleavened bread. Neither would any farmer sow mustard seeds in her field or garden. The mustard plant was like kudzu – itself a kind of weed that eventually can take over entire fields and mountainsides while choking out other plants weeds or not. The mustard plant was unstoppable.

So Jesus is saying:

* The Romans are enemy weeds in your garden.
* Don’t try to uproot them by force.
* That will only lead to slaughter of the innocent.
* Rather, become weeds yourselves – like the mustard plant which is much more powerful than simple Roman (or U.S.) weeds.
* Resist the Romans by embodying the Spirit of God that is slow to anger, good, forgiving, abounding in kindness.
* Only imitation of Wisdom’s God can defeat the evil of imperialism – or any evil for that matter.

What does that mean for Christians wishing to express solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters against their cruel “Christian” oppressors? At least the following:

* Reject U.S. militarism in general as counterproductive, since fully 90% of the casualties it inflicts in war are civilians.
* Be instead like the yeast a homemaker puts into 60 pounds of flour, “infecting” the greater culture by non-violent resistance rather than “supporting our troops.”
* Recognize and take sides with the real victims of terrorism – those plagued by U.S. policies of aggressive wars and regime-change – i.e. of state terrorism.
* Lobby against absurd proposals to increase U.S. military spending, when already “our” country spends more on “defense” than the next ten countries combined.

* Refuse to honor the military, and dissuade your children and grandchildren from entering that corrupt and corrupting gang of outlaws.

Surely Jesus’ Way of non-violent resistance, forgiveness and love of enemies will strike many (non-believers and believers alike) as unrealistic. But according to the faith we Christians (and Muslims) pretend to embrace, Jesus’ Way is God’s way.

But then perhaps we Christians think we’re smarter and more realistic than Jesus — or God?

What do you think?

Aging Miraculously: Life’s too Short to Give Up on Faith & Activism!

Aging

I’m currently enrolled in an extremely thoughtful on-line course about aging led by the great spiritual teacher, Marianne Williamson. The course is called “Aging Miraculously.”

As I approach my 77th birthday, Marianne is stimulating me to rethink this Third Act of my life. Her course is making me less willing to “retire” from it all as one mistakenly identified with this rapidly changing body. I’m more anxious to “re-fire” the spirit I truly am – the Self that never ages. I’m realizing that the time I have left on earth is far too short for me to surrender to the life of an elderly spectator.

Such awareness was reinforced last night during a conversation with five dear friends of mine. The youngest pair among us were in their mid-60s; the rest of us were in our late 70s and early 80s. (Even writing those words frightens me!)

In any case, there we were reviewing the ills of the world:

  • Trump
  • The gradual disappearance of democracy
  • Its replacement with plutocracy and authoritarianism
  • Class warfare: the unending wars of the world’s richest (the U.S. the E.U., Israel, Saudi Arabia) against the planet’s most impoverished (e.g. in Palestine, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. . .)
  • Terrorism

The question of faith came up and its power to change all of that.

Now, mind you, all of us in the conversation identified ourselves as followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Nevertheless, my friends (none of them taking Marianne’s course) seemed convinced that faith has no power to alter the problems we were busy rehearsing.

Selfish human nature reigns supreme, one friend insisted. It’s unredeemable. So nothing can ever really change – except for the worse. What we do in church is meaningless as far as engagement with the world is concerned. No one really understands any of it anyway. But that’s the best we can do. It’s naïve and a waste of time and energy to think otherwise. We must settle for the mediocre.

And, in any case, we’re all old! So all that’s left for us is to finish out the few years we have left with our low expectations intact – just enjoying the moment and (cocktails in hand) being happy. Our work is over. God expects no more from us. The world’s problems are no longer ours. They belong to our children. And good luck to them with that!

With Marianne’s instruction in mind, I wanted to shout: “Stop, stop! Cancel! I don’t want to hear that! Precisely because I’m a community elder, I have no time left for such small-time thinking and pessimism.

“In fact, it’s all an insult to God. We’re talking about faith here. – about the power of God and of God’s Word to change the world and its consciousness that condemns us, our children, our grandchildren, and the very planet to destruction. Don’t you see that despite the faith we claim, we’re denying that power? We’re arrogantly claiming that we and the world’s thinking and technology somehow have more clout than God himself – that the Almighty stands impotent before the likes of The Donald, Mad Dog Mattis, our computers, robots – and desperate fears!

“I refuse to believe that. Please stop! Cancel!

“And besides: the power of faith to change the world has been undeniably demonstrated. It’s just that as successfully propagandized, relatively comfortable white “Americans” we’ve bought into the “official story” as narrated on Fox News.  It wants us to believe that it’s all hopeless.

“We’ve fallen into their trap!

“However, the fact is that the world has already been changed dramatically by faith-in-action. And for more than 60 years, it’s scared the hell out of the fearful little people at the top. Since the Civil Rights Movement (beginning with Brown in 1954), they’ve been desperate to cram that genie of faith-inspired human liberation back into its bottle. But it simply won’t fit.

“Since Vatican II (1962-’65) and the emergence of liberation theology at Medellin (1968), backward church authorities (like Paul II and Benedict XVI) have been doing the same thing – with the same result. The genie is loose forever. Thank God.

“I’m referring to the undeniable fact that the Civil Rights Movement and liberation theology have changed the world. Without them, you can’t explain Black Lives Matter or the pink tide that has swept Latin America in the past 20 years. You can’t explain the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Bolivarian Revolution of Hugo Chavez, Standing Rock in the Dakotas, the revival of the women’s liberation movement, or LGBTQ activism.

“Without recognizing the power of faith to change the world, you can’t explain movements for independence in Palestine and throughout the Islamic world. Face it: what’s happening there is intimately involved with faith!

“And it is precisely those movements that have given birth to a counter-revolution waged by the fearful little people who pretend to lead us. Don’t be misled: the right wing co-optation of faith has not arisen spontaneously from selfish human nature. Instead, it was part of the well-funded Nixon Southern Strategy to distort Christian faith to counter a growing black power that faith itself had inspired among African Americans everywhere. All of that eventually resulted in the Tea Party and the control of the GOP by Christian conservatives.

“Moreover, fostering and bankrolling evangelicals throughout Latin America (and here at home) was part of Reagan’s response to liberation theology. Already in 1969, Nelson Rockefeller had identified it as a danger to national security. Similarly, the rise of ISIS and Islamic fundamentalism has been nourished by counter-revolutionary forces in Saudi Arabia and the United States. It was Zbigniew Brzezinski who originally assured fighters in Afghanistan that their resistance to Russia had Allah on their side.

“As community elders, we should know all of that. We’ve lived through it. We are products of the hope-filled ‘60s. More importantly, the Catholics among us are products of Vatican II and liberation theology and of the unlimited horizons of faith those movements opened. As a result, we have experience, knowledge, and (hopefully) wisdom unavailable to our children, grandchildren, and to the young in general.

“Keeping those memories and hopes alive represent our specific contributions to saving the world. But time is running out.  To retire now without passionately sharing what we’ve learned is not just irresponsible. It deprives us of the joy that comes from fulfilling our very life’s purpose.

“What’s left of this particular incarnation is too short for wasting it on despair and surrender. It’s too short to live as though we are primarily aged bodies rather than the ever-youthful, experienced, informed, and wise Selves that God has created.

“It’s time to get on with Act Three and to finish the performance with a flourish and deep bow.”