A Giant Step toward “Thinking in a New way”
THIS WILL INCLUDE A CRITIQUE ON THE 9/11 TRAGEDY
Dominican Sister Miriam Therese MacGillis’ Keynote Address on the “Fate of the Earth” was copied and distributed around the world in the 1970s and 80s.
That was when the “Window of Honesty and Openness” made possible thinking in a “New Way.” Countless Key Note addresses were presented to scientists, theologians, and ordinary individuals like me.
The Key Note Address I attended was at a Retreat Center in Indiana. When Miriam concluded her presentation, she received a standing ovation.
The crowd quickly moved outside but did not disperse. I was caught up in a human stream of flashlights heading toward a dimly lit building in the distance. The night sky was clear, giving me an unobstructed view of a sampling of billions of stars. Along the way we passed under great oak trees and maple trees that blotted out the pin pricks of light overhead. In the shadow of the trees we were serenaded by swarming cicadas.
Inside the barn, on the floor, a great spiraling pathway had been laid out with white string. The spiral followed the curvature of space-time with candles that represented an historic landmark to the New Story we were discovering.
Each landmark was a breakthrough to a new inner dimension of reality. MacGillis described our Cosmic Walk as we followed the Universe, Earth, life, and consciousness from the first hydrogen atoms and helium atoms to the closing decades of the 20th century.
A path that had been viable for billions of years could now end. Another path would have to take its place.
SERIOUS BUSINESS:
The path that could now end was the path that brought Homo sapiens to Earth’s garden planet.
Dominican Sister Miriam MacGillis knew the path well that we were on. She knew the horror of the Supreme Crisis of the “new path” that is already emerging out of the 9/11 catastrophe.
Miriam is a personal friend. I excerpted the following 34 Lessons I believe it important for all of us to learn from her Fate of the Earth Key Note Address.
1. In this time of “supreme Crisis,” we deeply need a transforming vision that opens the future to new hope.
2. If our images of the future are negative, we will live out of them and bring them about as self-fulfilling prophecies.
3. We must pay attention to, but not be paralyzed by the signs of our time: greed, destructiveness, and moral and ethical failure. They are not the source of our real crisis.
4. Our real crisis is a crisis in cosmology, in our story of a “ready-made” universe with no spiritual dimension, and with humans as separate from that universe.
5. We now see that the universe is not “ready-made” but is “in process” and that it has had a deep spiritual interior from its beginning.
6. As tiny, fragile persons, the life of each of us can be significant; and it is no accident that we are born now; that we find our lives unfolding now.
7. The old woman who planted dates that would not bear fruit for 80 years knew that “hope is a choice.” We must learn that lesson.
8. The cosmology of Native Americans (not their religion) shaped the moral and economic systems which caused them to regard all creation as sacred and everything in nature as related.
9. Both modern science and ancient spiritual traditions teach us that the cosmology of our modern “civilization” is completely inadequate; our institutions are based on assumptions that are untrue.
10. The universe, from the first unfolding of hydrogen, helium, and carbon atoms, has had a divine source. Thus, the universe unfolds not only in an exterior material dimension, but also in an interior spiritual dimension.
11. The human is the being in which the earth has awakened into consciousness; become spiritually aware and self-reflective. You are the unfolding universe thinking about itself. You are irreplaceable and unrepeatable.
12. This is the anguish of our time: we now know that our basic assumptions are not working, and we do not have a roadmap or an ethic to pass on.
13. Human consciousness is now taking control of the creation process itself. That process depended on a finely balanced automatic control which assured the sustainability of life on earth. With powerful new human technologies, we are taking the process off of “automatic.”
14. The most profound question is: Have humans arrived at a level of wisdom and maturity (spiritual interiority) to take control of the creation process on earth?
15. The above question is not one of “ethics.” We don't yet have the ethics we need. We have all kinds of “good people.” But “goodness” doesn't matter if they operate out of an old cosmology and use assumptions that don't work.
16. We poison the fluids of the living earth because we think of them as “oceans,” as distant places convenient for dumping our lethal garbage. When oceans become toxic, rain will become toxic, and our tears will become toxic. We will be unable to baptize our children with toxic water and tell them about God.
17. If, through us, the planet commits its own act of suicide, it won't be because we are evil. It will be because we think we have a full deck of cards and we don't. We're dealing like mad and waiting for the card to come up that will save us. It won't. It's not in the deck.
18. Physicists and astronauts are seeing, empirically, a new revelation of how the universe has been manifested and unfolded. They speak of that revelation in theological and ethical terms. With unprecedented humility, they are leading the earth out of its adolescent fixation to a new level of maturity. They are not “better people,” but they have a whole other view of what life is about.
19. We have buried 50,000 “tumors” under the skin of the planet. They are wired into the nervous system of the earth with computers, so that if one goes off all will go off.
20. The new empirical revelations of physics confirm, rather than deny, ancient intuitive revelations of earth's spiritual traditions. The “new story” expands and compliments our ancient moral code.
21. Following are three principles now understood as the basis for why the universe has unfolded as it has, and why our particular planet is so resplendent with life. The first principle is “Differentiation” which means the universe is coded to become more and more different in its component parts. The second principle is “Interiority” which means that everything has its own truth; and, at its deepest depths, no thing is material. The third principle is “Communion” which means that from the beginning the universe has been in communion with itself. No differentiated interiority can exist alone. It only can exist as a member of a bonded community which has evolved totally mutually independent with itself. (Z43)
22. If you look at the crust of the earth or the oceans, you see living systems in which all of the organisms are essential. At a very deep stage, all are working together to make the earth more capable of life and consciousness.
23. The earth has evolved as a single communion, both externally in the material composition of its living fabric and internally in its psychic development. There are no empty spaces, no islands. In that communion, the electromagnetic field holds everything together, but it does not demand conformity. Conformity and community are diametrically opposed. Uniformity is evil – a violation of truth.
24. When physicists get in touch with the deep, immeasurable interior spaces within an atom, they find that the same interior is the center of all interiors. These spaces are coming into existence and going out of existence in energy patterns from a source that is being created at the moment. And whatever an atom is expressed as – whether it be Mozart or a redwood tree – it is a revelation; it is truth. And in that process of coming into existence and going out of existence, the universe has expanded; and now we are the beings in whom the universe can finally comprehend the truth.
25. Physicists are saying that if we don't learn the above truth fast, we are going to die. In this century close to a million species will be sent into extinction and millions of people slaughtered because of their differentiation; because we don't understand their interiority. This is totally against the laws of the universe. That wisdom lost will never be regained. That voice will never be a revelation of the Creator which it was meant to be. We simply do not understand revelation. We cut down the temples to make temples.
26. Different elements interact with each other and cause each other to change. In changing, what is released from within each is the potential for becoming more. Thus, the microbes interacting in the soil are our farmers. They release the potential for agriculture; and they, not we, produce our food.
27. All humans reflect on reality and seek in the interiority of their being a deeper meaning of things. These reflections are differentiated, and they become the revelations of different religions which hold people together in communion. That is why a Jew isn't a Hindu; a Hindu isn't a Christian; and a Christian isn't a Buddhist.
28. All humans use their meaning systems and their language to reflect on their history and their experiences. These reflections are differentiated, and they shape the different cultures which hold people together in communion. That is why Polish isn't Greek; Greek isn't Russian; and Russian isn't Eskimo.
29. Once humans reflect on reality and are able to say the truth of their being, they are susceptible to seeing their truth as the only truth. Other people who do not have “their truth” may be considered less than human. This makes it OK to enslave them or annihilate them.
30. If we are truly human we will have the capacity to celebrate the differences that come out of the design of the One who coded in the differences to begin with. Rather than “differentiation” being the problem to solve, it is the solution. No one consciousness can totally reflect what is infinite. Delight in our differences is the proper mode of the human.
31. Physicists are telling us that diversity in human consciousness is as essential to life on earth as diversity within the mineral and animal and vegetable kingdoms. If we do not learn this, we will continue (as very good people who don't lie and who love our kids) to live lives that violate the very process by which the universe is coded by its Creator. Whatever institutions do not teach us to love our differences are dangerous and nonfunctional for the future.
32. We are beginning to understand that the human is the being in which earth's communion is understood with awareness and freedom. That understanding is love. Love is the bonding of the planet. Love is to delight in the differences of others. The more you delight in me, the more I become capable of compassion, mercy, gentleness, justice, integrity, and peace. Such love brings out of us the deepest mysteries of the universe. And it is this love physicists are saying we must learn and internalize in our institutions and in our education.
33. Each of our great spiritual traditions represents an intuitive journey in understanding of earth's communion. In the Judeo-Christian tradition the people of Israel came to a new consciousness of God as not many and arbitrary but as loving and life-giving. In that moment of breakthrough Israel entered into covenant to be obedient to God's laws as revealed to Moses. Those laws were an articulation of the three principles of differentiation, interiority and communion – the truth of the universe. And out of obedience to that truth, Israel was to bring the energy of God into time and place.
34. Our new cosmology teaches us two things:
First, we've got to come home. We are literally a star’s way or thinking about a star. We've got to own our identification with the earth and the spiritual dynamics of the universe. We can not have life and nourishment, except that it comes out of the earth, which is our very body. And if the earth is sick, we will be sick. We can't exist unless we can coexist with the unique conditions of biological life in the community we call home. We must learn to live in total obedience to the law (the three principles, the truth), or we will be kicked out as a bad experiment.
Second, we've got to redefine what we mean by security. We are the first humans to go off into space and look back. We have a new image of who we are. We have looked back and seen the wholeness of earth's beauty, the magnitude of it, and the silence in which it finds itself. From space, the boundaries of 150-odd nation states are invisible. Yet, we continue to mobilize to compete; and that very competition is causing the death of the air and the soil and the water. Security means communion and cooperation. It means we must find unity in our differences. There still will be tension and conflict. But if we can get over our obsession with uniformity, we are going to make it. We have a whole “new story” that can give us hope.
Three clues to a bigger big picture of reality: experiencing 9/11 as a bifurcation
What on Earth is going on here? How can we remember our own deep humanity? How can we re-connect our “selves” to our role as participants in the cosmic drama of creation?
Following are three clues, three puzzle pieces that helped me think more concretely about answers.
The first clue helped me better understand my divided inner and outer “selves.” The second clue helped me better understand 9/11 as a sign of the choice I am making. The third clue helped me better understand America’s role as a light to the world that can either lead or blind.
FIRST CLUE: when your Interior World and Exterior World don’t match
This clue came from an American Jewish peace activist Hilda Bernstein Silverman. Her story arrived along with in a batch of e-mails from cyberspace.
When Doug Wingeier introduced me to colleagues in the Israeli and Palestinian peace movement, my e-mail address went out to peace organizations throughout the Middle East and around the world. I communicated daily with individuals I never formally met, but whose paths crisscrossed mine. Each unseen visitor shared insights into a reality that at first seemed inconceivable to me.
Silverman, a 63-year-old American Jewish lifelong supporter of Israel, was one of my valued unseen colleagues. She stayed in close contact with her activist compatriots in the Holy Land. She explained that it took years before the discrepancy between the “Israel of my dreams” and the reality of “Israel as a nation occupying another nation” got through to her.
The mismatch became clear in a now-moment in which she was forced to make a decision she did not want to make. The decision was whether or not to go with friends as usual to an annual “Stand with Israel” demonstration in Washington, D.C. That was the moment when she first realized that her interior world and the exterior world no longer matched. The awful on-the-ground reality graphically described by her brothers and sisters in Israel and Palestine contradicted the beautiful internal image she had wanted to believe in all of her life.
The path Hilda Bernstein Silverman was following abruptly ended. She chose not to go to the “Stand with Israel” demonstration. She contributed the money the trip would have cost to her sisters and brothers in the peace movement in Israel and Palestine. The peace movement included thousands of Israeli and Palestinian citizens who, in spite of government pressure and condemnation by neighbors, refused to be enemies. Who said no to the men chiefs in Israel, Palestine, and America; all of whom insisted that peace was impossible.
The e-mail in which Silverman shared her grief at having to make that choice was forwarded several times before it reached me. Silverman wrote:
“In the Passover Haggadah we read that it is as if we personally came out of Egypt. At some deep psychological level I feel as if I personally came out from the place of Nazi destruction where I had personally cried out for help to an unseeing, unhearing, uncaring world.
“Surely that is part of the reason the recent weeks have been so painful for me. Every day I am the recipient of such desperate messages---coming in a different time, from a different place and about different circumstances--but with profound urgency, nonetheless. As with many in the Jewish left, and especially in the feminist left, I am in regular Internet communication with Palestinians and Israelis on the ground who describe in horrifying detail the wanton cruelty and deliberate destruction by Israeli forces of Palestinian life and civil institutions throughout the West Bank. And the accompanying message is always the same: `Tell the world what is happening here!'
“That is why my interior world and exterior world don’t match.
My universe is divided between those who know and those who don't.”
(For more on Silverman’s clue, see Archives)
SECOND CLUE 9/11: if we don’t bifurcate our interior and exterior worlds won’t match
Following the terrorist attack on America September 11, 2001 many people experienced a time when their interior world and exterior world didn’t match. The second clue gave me a deeper understanding of the experience. We experienced a bifurcation, a now-moment when a path followed for thousands of years ended. We, as individuals and as a nation, were being called to make a decisive response. We were being nudged toward new path.
This clue came from Dr. Raima Larter, professor and Chair of the Chemistry Department at Indiana-Purdue University. In an article she wrote for the March-May 2002 issue of IONS Noetic Science Review, she provided a radically different interpretation of 9/11.
The title of the article was “Lessons from the Newest Science.” The lessons, unlike anything else I had read concerning the tragedy of 9/11, were wonderfully informative and warmly personal. They were more than speculation about what historical factors led to the tragedy and what would be the consequences.
I had studied dozens of such authoritative analyses by experts with opposing views. Each explained how he/or/she believed the terrorist attack on America would impact the future of democracy and freedom. Immediately following the terrorist attack, world-class futurists responded to an urgent request. Future Survey magazine asked them to put into a bigger context the events of 9/11 and the likely consequences. I downloaded many of their responses on TurnTheTide.info where they can be read.
The newest science Raima referred to was non-linear dynamics. From the perspective of non-linear dynamics, a bigger context for understanding the terrorist attacks on America had to do with deeper dimensions of reality. The event could be given a name that would help explain the deeper implications of what happened on 9/11/01; why our interior world and exterior world seemed no longer to match—and what we could learn from the experience. Raima wrote:
“On September 11, 2001, events occurred that left everybody in the United States, and many around the world as well, deeply shaken and unsure how to react or even what to do next; in short, our nation – indeed, the whole world – encountered a bifurcation that day.”
In non-linear science the word bifurcation means a fork in the road. One path ends, and a choice must be made. Bifurcations happen frequently in nature. The choice may require something radical like a mutation into a better fitting species. Or it might be a routine metamorphic state many creatures experience.
A caterpillar comes to the end of its caterpillar life. Its genetic Instruction Book tells it to build a cocoon. Inside the cocoon, genes program cells to dissolve into a soupy substance. Extract a bit of the substance and analyze it under a microscope. The well organized cells of a caterpillar will have lost their bearings. Disorder and chaos will seem to reign. If you do not know in advance what is coming next, the cells in their in-between stage are pure mystery. Wait a bit longer and a butterfly emerges on a new path. From outward appearances the butterfly’s path and the caterpillar’s path are as different as night and day. Seen in a larger context of a deeper reality, the two paths merge into one. The mystery makes sense.
Hilda Bernstein Silverman encountered a bifurcation when her interior world and exterior world didn’t match. She came to a fork in the road where she had to make a difficult choice. Unlike other species, the choice was not dictated by instinct; she was free to choose.
In “Lessons from the Newest Science,” Raima tells of her own personal encounter with a bifurcation. She experienced a time of depression when her interior world and exterior world no longer matched. A path she had taken for granted was ending. She had always assumed, as a scientist, that once she understood everything there was to know about some process, she could learn to control that process. Then she entered a time when her own life seemed out of control.
She said that she found comfort in a concept from non-linear dynamics called the strange attractor. The attractor is a mathematical phenomenon that seems to be embedded in nature, and which triggers a “process of self-organization in which order spontaneously arises out of disorder.”
During her bout with depression, she read the words of a medieval mystic that resonated for her with the “same assurance of stability as that provided by non-linear science through notions of an eternal, unshakable attractor…the attractor is always present, regardless of how many wrenching bifurcations we go through or whether these bifurcations throw us into chaos.”
The words of the mystic expressed a belief in a similar phenomenon from a spiritual perspective: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”
Larter wrote: “Without a sense of the benevolence of the underlying attractor, I am quite sure I would never have chosen the path that led to this very happy life. After all, to take those first steps along the new path required the acceptance of spiritual realities that challenged all I believed as a scientist.
Some scientists, Larter said, accept the depressing view of the molecular biologist Jacques Monod who said, “We are alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity, out of which we emerged only by chance.”
“There are other scientists who do not agree with this widely quoted but depressing view of a cold, unfeeling universe; from the study of both living and nonliving systems, (data) indicate that there is a direction to the flow of time that indicates a rise in order and complexity and a movement toward more diversity.”
She concluded: “The universe is far from a cold and unfeeling place; in fact, the universe seems to be vibrantly alive, moving toward something bigger and better, urging us as part of this universe toward higher degrees of complexity. In short, there seems to be a purpose to the universe—if we pay attention, we can feel the urgings toward this purpose in very personal ways.”
Following are eight lessons drawn from Raima’s personal experience of bifurcation and of her analysis of the events of September 11, 2001:
· First is the understanding that there is value in thinking of 9/11 as a bifurcation, in giving it a name with explanatory power; rather than remembering it only as that awful day when “enemy terrorists attacked America.” In a bigger context, it is reasonable to believe our nation and our civilization have come to fork in the road. We are at a point in our journey where a decision must be made. We must choose: will we turn left or will we turn right?
· Second is the idea that, while upsetting and disturbing, bifurcation experiences are natural. They are typical of the way growth and changes occur in nature. And because we are part of nature, this is the way growth and changes occur in us. Bifurcations are wrenching and far-reaching experiences and not at all pleasant while we are going through them. But they may be the only way real transformational growth can occur – disorienting growth that results in new life.
· Third is the realization that the old life that existed before bifurcation will be largely irrelevant in the future. As in metamorphosis (or mutation), the old forms and driving force will be gone. These will be replaced by a new purpose. What governed our lives before will be replaced by new forms and a new driving force that will not be immediately apparent.
· Fourth is the understanding that, more often that not, we won’t see we have reached a point in our journey where a decision must be made. We will be tempted to close our eyes to the fact that the path we were traveling is ending. That we are being forced to make a choice about a new path. Our insistence on keeping things the way they were and sticking to the original path will leave us far from any path at all.
· Fifth is the realization that by trying to keep things as they were, we may end up unable to find our way back to either the old life (the original path) or to locate our new life. And even if we are able to make our way back to the old path, we will find it has disappeared. We can remain stuck at the bifurcation point, forever in confusion, not knowing how to move forward.
· Sixth is the insight that if we do refuse to “bifurcate,” to choose a new path, then it is likely that life will move forward through the fork in the road without us. Decisions will be made for us, by others, or by life itself.
· Seventh is the reminder that immediately following September 11, leaders advised the nation to get back to business as usual. The same thing happens in times of personal crisis when individuals are advised to snap out of it, and get on with your life. Yet, this advice may seem impossible and not even right – and it will be impossible and not right in times of bifurcation.
· Eighth is the understanding that the confusion felt following a bifurcation, such as the events of “9/11”, results from deep-seated knowledge that our world really has changed. If we rush back to our previous activities we may close our eyes and ears to clues about just what it is we should be doing now. What we should be doing may be something very different from what we were doing before. The clues may be very personal. They may apply to us as individuals, urging us forward toward necessary changes in our individual lives. The clues also may be telling us what we, as members of society, should do now – now that we live in a different world.
(For more on Raima’s clue see Archives)
THIRD CLUE: One path ended on 9/11/01; now choose between two kinds of “atomic bombs”
On September 11, 2002, a Palestinian priest from Israel gave me another way of understanding the path that ended a year earlier on September 11, 2001. The path that ended had been viable for tens of thousands of years when suddenly it came to a fork in the road. That path that ended was the reign of the angry Tribal Gods of Retaliation.
This clue came from Father Elias Chacour, a Palestinian Melkite Catholic priest and an Israeli citizen and now a Bishop. Chacour wa the founding Director of five educational institutions in Israel, all of which teach a curriculum of peace. Students include Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Classes extend from kindergarten through college. Special training is provided to teachers from other Israeli schools. The last government rating of Israeli schools gave Chacour’s institutions 97%, one of the highest in the nation.
At the invitation of Dr. Evelyn Laycock, Father Chacour came to Lake Junaluska, North Carolina September 11, 2002 to lead a three-day conference and a commemorative service on the first anniversary of the terrorist attack on America.
The 9/11 service and the conference were sponsored by the United Methodist Lay Ministry. The title of the conference was “Love’s Response to Violence.”
Participants in the Conference posed two questions for the Palestinian priest from Israel to answer:
· Is Christian love still a choice after 9/11?
· How practical is it to love a terrorist?
CHACOUR’S CHOICE
Chacour addressed the practicality issue directly. In doing so, he provided a very personal clue I would have to deal with as a Christian. “Love” Chacour declared is the only authentic spirit of religion. It is the only practical response to terrorism. Not just for Christians but for all people.
“I was not born a Christian,” he said. “I was born a baby. I was born a baby with an identity, born in the image and likeness of God, like every one of my Jewish brothers, my Muslim brothers—Americans, Brazilians, Chinese, all human beings…
“Have you remembered that God is not a Christian?”
No religion has a monopoly on the authentic spirit of religion.
“Please don’t belittle and impoverish God to make him a Christian,” Chacour said. “Try to enrich yourself, enrich the church, and enrich Christianity to become God-like. This is our vocation…our responsibility: to love God, to love one another, and to love even our enemies…
“God is neither a tribal God nor a regional God.”
To illustrate his point, Chacour told the biblical story of Naaman. Naaman was a wealthy Syrian who was healed from leprosy by the prophet Elijah. After he was healed, he asked permission to take two mule loads of dirt from Israel to Damascus.
Chacour explained: “Naaman wanted to spread the dirt on one of the corners of his palace. Whenever he wanted to worship the God of Israel he would jump on that dirt, worship the God Israel, and them jump back to Syria.
“Nonsense…the message from God is that from now on the true worshipers will no more need to go to Jerusalem or to go up to Mount Garazen in Samaria…they will worship God in spirit and truth.
“We are all called to become adopted children of God, even you Methodists. Let us take that seriously, even with a kind of humor. Yes, this is a kind of atomic bomb to destroy the old conception that divided humanity into the race of lords, the Romans, and the race of slaves, the Arab, and the Jew, and the Gentile…”
Love is the atomic bomb of the authentic spirit of religion.
For Chacour, the practicality of loving terrorists was never in question. He had witnessed the impracticality of not loving terrorists almost every day of his life.
You can oppose those you perceive as terrorists, but it is totally impractical not to love them. In a war on terrorism the more you hate your terrorist enemy, the more terrorists you create. The more you love your terrorist enemy, the harder it is for your enemy to hate you. Terrorism will disappear only when hate disappears.
“Loving your enemies does not mean you do not speak out against violence used against you and others.
“It is their spiritual sickness you are up against.”
The cure for spiritual sickness is the atomic bomb of the authentic spirit of religion: love. The work of authentic religion, no matter what its institutional label, is to “change hearts.”
In his book, Blood Brothers, Chacour recounts examples of “changed hearts” from his lifelong campaign to teach a curriculum of peace to young Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Drews in the Holy Land.
Only when hearts are changed can peace breakthrough. That requires breaking barriers of fear instilled by institutions. To get beyond institutional barriers, Chacour encourages Palestinian student to visit an Israeli kibbutzim, and Jewish students to live short periods of time in a Palestinian village. He urges his Jewish and Palestinian teachers to face each other in frank, head-to-head and heart-to-heart dialogue.
Six lessons for choosing between two atomic bombs
Here are six lessons I took home from “Love’s Response to Violence,” and from reading two books and many articles by Father Elias Chacour following the conference:
· First is the understanding that there are two kinds of atomic bombs loose in the world. One atomic bomb is the weapon of the angry tribal God of Retaliation. It is the bomb that divides and destroys. The other atomic bomb is the weapon of the loving God of Reconciliation in whose image every human is born. It is the bomb that breaks down barriers—that unites and reconciles. Both Gods, with their respective bombs, are waiting for humans to decide which path they will choose.
· Second is the idea that since Abraham’s bifurcation experience with a different God, humans have been in a time of preparation. All the turning points in the universe story were preparation. We now live in the time for which everything was being prepared. It is a time when we can no longer straddle the fence between two Gods. We must come down off the fence on one side or the other. The question for every Jew, Christian, and Muslim is: which path will we choose? Which God’s atomic bomb will we put our trust in?
· Third is the idea that the only viable option for Christians, Jews, and Muslims today is to love terrorists. Just as Chacour’s only viable option, as a baby born in the image of God, was to love the Zionists who evicted his family and neighbors and demolished their ancestral village. The more we hate terrorists, the more terrorists we will create. The more we love our terrorist enemy, the harder it will be for our terrorist enemy to hate us.
· Fourth is the understanding that to get unstuck from the pain and confusion caused by the bifurcation of 9/11, we must go deep within ourselves. We must not rush back to business as usual. We must refuse, like the Israeli and Palestinian “peaceniks,” to treat people of some nations as friends and of other nations as enemies. When we try to go back to a path that no longer exists, we join in an unholy alliance of nations whose leaders talk much about God, but whose real motives are political, economic, and military. When we go deep within ourselves, we will find clues as to what alternatives we have to business as usual.
· Fifth is the idea that the root cause of our crisis of terror is an “old way of thinking” about reality and about God. It is a way of thinking that worked for tens of thousands of years. It is an obsolete religious belief system that once served as glue to hold societies together. A belief system in which sacred violence, ordained by tribal Gods, was used to maintain social order. Give life meaning. Provide scapegoats to shift blame away from leaders. Simplify complex realities. Eliminate paradox and ambiguities. Spell out rewards and punishments unequivocally in black and white.
· Sixth is the idea that this obsolete old way of thinking has become a spiritual sickness. A sickness that some powerful leaders claim serves the national interest. For these leaders, the old way of thinking provides their last hope for keeping power. These leaders use God in the same way leaders used God for thousands of years. For their own agenda. To kill and enslave other people whom they define as “less human.” To declare holy war. To perpetuate the illusion that their side is righteous. Their use of violence is sacred. The enemy’s use of violence is evil.
· Seventh is the most enlightening. It came out of Chacour’s discussion of America’s role in curing the spiritual sickness. In the past America has served as a beacon of light and hope for people everywhere in the world. America still offers hope for many. But Chacour warned:
o America leads when its light emanates from its spiritual center.
o America blinds when its light emanates from its military and economic center.
o America increases the world’s spiritual sickness when it trusts in the greater power of weapons of mass destruction. When it trusts in the lure of material possessions and success in the competitive game of free enterprise. When it trusts that when America is “in charge,” the world will be a better place in which to live.
What does all of this teach us about the difference between our UN-REAL WORLD that humans created, and our REAL-WORLD that evolved and is still evolving?
Do you know when your Interior world and your Exterior do or don’t match?