Children - The Number One Threat to National Security

"Its use (Passive Resistance*), therefore, is, I think, indisputable, and it is a force which, if it became universal, would revolutionize social ideals and do away with despotisms and the ever-growing militarism under which the nations of the West are groaning and are being almost crushed to death, and which fairly promises to overwhelm even the nations of the East." -'Theory and Practice of Passive Resistance,' Indian Opinion, Golden Number, 1 Dec. 1914 (from The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi edited by Raghavan Iyer)

 As I watch my country try to balance it's budget by slashing money for children, the poor, and the sick, and I hear almost no voices talking about reducing the number of soldiers, guns, bombs, and weapons of mass destruction, I can only hang my head in shame.  The richest nation in the world can keep enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, can develop the most high-tech weaponry for the slaughter of other human beings, can fight three wars, but won't take care of it's own neglected, abused, and orphaned children.

And the irony is, that even if they cut every dollar for every child in this country, we would still have a massive debt because of the money we spend on military weapons to abuse, orphan, or kill other people's children.

Apparently the politicians in this country consider children to be the biggest threat to our nation's security.

This is not higher mathematics.  You don't have to be a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to figure this stuff out.

The truth is that the politicians in this country are liars and we want to be lied to.  If we didn't want that, we would stop voting for these people.  And it's not one party or the other.  Both parties are in this together.

The Policy of the United States of America:  Neglect, Abuse, Orphan, and Kill Children - ours, other peoples, doesn't matter.

Neglect, Abuse, Orphan, and Kill Children.

*Gandhi explained earlier in the quoted article that the term 'Passive Resistance' was really a misnomer for what he called satyagraha, Truth-Force and what Tolstoy called Soul-Force or Love-Force.

Deep Down Inside, I'm Really Very Shallow

"Everyone should follow his or her own inner voice.  If he or she has no ears to listen to it, he or she should do the best he or she can." - 'Non-Violence,' Harijan, 29 June 1947

My mother used to say about herself that 'Deep down inside, I'm really very shallow."  I've always felt that this described me.

I pray.  I meditate.  I daily seek guidance from a Higher Power.  I have a spiritual community and I am an active member.  But 'Deep down inside, I'm really very shallow.'

I won't say that I have never heard from my inner voice, but it's rare.  I, apparently, often, have 'no ears to listen.'  That's why I read Gandhi and others who do have 'ears to listen.'  That's why I have a spiritual community.  These people had and have 'ears to listen,' and I seek their wisdom and guidance.

I don't think I have to reinvent the wheel.  Better people than I have shown the way.  I can walk in their footprints.

And I don't worry about being sheep-like.  My life and experience , my personality, the place I choose to live, the things I think are important, are different from anyone and everyone else.  The way I am guided by the those who have ears, will not resemble anything anyone else has done.

I will continue to try and follow my own inner voice, but when that voice is silent or I am unable to hear, I have voices from the past who have marked the path and I have friends and companions whom I trust who help steer me back onto that path when I go astray.

I'm grateful.

Gratitude List

"It is our actions which count.  Thoughts, however good in themselves, are like false pearls unless they are translated into action."  A Letter (G.), Mahadevbhaini Diary, Vol. II, p. 15

I am basically a lazy person.  I love television and computer games.  As a writer, I can delude myself into thinking I am 'doing something' when actually all that I am accomplishing is wasting time.

I'm not even sure that little projects like this blog count as 'doing something,' even though I pat myself on the back every time I post and tick off as something accomplished on my to-do list.

When I am 'doing something,' I often feeling as though I am flailing about.  "When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream, and shout."

But then I stop and count my blessing, make a gratitude list:

1. My family and I are healthy.
2. There is food in the refrigerator.
3. There is a roof over our head.
4. There is more than enough money.
5. I have people who love me.
6. I have friends who like me.
7. I have more than enough work to keep me busy even if I don't always know exactly what my priorities are.
8. I live in country where I am not persecuted for what I believe or what I say or how I dress or much of anything that isn't destructive or harmful.
9. I have happy memories and little mementos that remind me of many of  those memories.
10. I have leisure time to study or meditate or just relax.

And the list goes on and on and on.

And I am inspired to get back to work.

A Quack like Me

"The optimist lives delighting in thoughts of love and charity...The pessimist, being himself prey to violent attachments and dislikes, looks upon every person as his enemy..." - 'Optimism' (G.), Navajivan, 23 Oct 1921

My wife has told me often over the years that when ever we talk about the future, I always see the bad things that can happen and never the good, and I believe she is telling me the truth..  It is a hard thing for me to hear.

I want to believe that I am an optimist, but that is not the truth.  I live in fear.  I seem to have been that way as long as I can remember.

When I was a boy and would tell my father that I was afraid, he would look at me sternly and tell me there was nothing to be afraid of. 

My father had a difficult upbringing.  His mother was married either seven or nine times, he wasn't sure which.  At the age of sixteen, he beat up his then current step-father and went to live in the oil fields of California with his real father, working for him on his wild-cat oil rigs.  At seventeen, he joined the Navy and was in port in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.  His first ship was sunk there.  Two more ships he was on during the war were sunk in the Pacific.  I don't think he could ever let himself feel scared and he didn't want his son to be fearful.  But I was, and I felt like I was a failure.  I was never the son my father wanted.  He wanted a man's man.  I was far more comfortable with women.

In recent years, I have begun to accept that I am a fearful person.  I don't like it, but I have stopped trying to change this fact about myself.  It is not in my power to change.  However, what is in my power to change is how I react to my fears.

I pray for courage.

The Contribution of Non-Violence

"Dr. Mott: 'What do you consider to be the most valuable contribution that India can make to the progress of the world?
Gandhi: Non-Violence."  - Interview with Dr. John Mott, Young India, 21 Mar. 1929

And what a valuable contribution it has been.  Gaddafi condemned and sanctioned for killing peaceful civilians.  The amazing video of the lone man standing up to the tanks in Tiananmen.  Rosa Parks and lunch counters and the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  Draft card burners.  Labor unionists occupying the Wisconsin State Capital.

The list goes on and on.

And in my own life, my wife and I ride our bicycles for ten years and don't own a car.  We decide to become foster parents.  I write scripts and novels and poetry that emphasis non-violent methods for resolving problems.  (They don't sell, but that's a whole different can of worms.) 

I know in these blogs, I have often written about my failings (and they are legion), but there are many, many successes.

And that's why I started and continue this blog.  It is one of my daily disciplines to help me remember what is important in my life today.  I consider it prayer.

What Would Jesus Cut?

"If evolution of form takes aeons, why should we expect wonders in the evolution of thought and conduct?  And yet the age of miracles is not gone.  As with individuals, so with nations.  I hold it to be perfectly possible for the masses to be suddenly converted and uplifted.  Suddenness is only seeming.  No one can say how far the leaven has been working."  Speech at Buddha Jayanti, Bombay, CW 5176

I went to the first protest rally I'd been to in many years yesterday.  I chanted.  I sang.  I talked to friends.  I listened to speeches.  I took pictures.

There were a lot of angry people.  There was a lot of sarcasm and demonization of others.  There was a lot of talk of fighting.

There were also moments of grace.  There were moments of warmth and humor.  There were moments of a spiritual connections with others who struggled and with God.

I've had a theory for many years that the next evolution in Homo sapien would not be spiritual and not physical, Homo anima.  I found the quoted passage in Gandhi's speech reassuring.

The only visible sign of a presence by the forces of authority were a couple of friendly cops on bicycle.  Gandhi's and Dr. King's methods of non-violent protest have become the norm.  The crowds are no longer physically threatening even if they might be politically threatening.

And it's not just here in America as several signs reminded the protesters.  "Walk like an Egyptian."

Perhaps the next evolution is upon us.  Miracles happen.

The Beginning of My Understanding

"That is why I can take the keenest interest in discussing vitamins and leafy vegetables and unpolished rice.  That is why it has become a matter of absorbing interest to me to find out how best to clean our latrines, how best to save our people from the heinous sin of fouling Mother Earth every morning.  I do not quite see how thinking of these necessary problems and finding a solution for them has no political significance and how an examination of the financial policy of Government has necessarily a political bearing." - 'A Fatal Fallacy,' Harijan, 11 Jan. 1936

I believe this is the statement that began my understanding of Gandhi.

I am not a political creature.  I know that many of you are.

The grand scheme of things is not my focus.  The dark and dirty corners of my life are.

I have organized and lead mass protests, but the energy and time I spent doing so were not as valuable as the time I spend each morning doing my dishes.  Even if the results of the protest were positive and productive, my own household clean and well organized, living a life of service to my family and friends, helping those around me who struggle to joyously accomplish the very valuable day to day tasks that we are all faced with, brings me closer to an understanding of what God is calling me to do.

When I read about Gandhi's vision of non-attachment to the things of the world, I begin to understand when I think about all the things I am responsible for maintaining in my family's life.  Simply keeping that much stuff clean often seems like a nearly overwhelming burden.  Less stuff means more time to contemplate my navel and less time sweeping the floor.

But this is what I have been given, right now.  And least you misunderstand me, I love driving my kids to school, and picking up the trash they leave in the living room, and cooking the meals even when they hate what I have cooked and dig into the pantry for the Hot Cheetos®.

Quibbling

"Our besetting sin is not our differences but our littleness.  We wrangle over words, we fight often for shadow and lose the substance." Letter to G.S. Arundale, Young India, 6 Aug. 1919

I'm afraid anything I say will only muddle or obscure this simple analysis of what besets modern politics, modern life.

Maladjusted

"...there are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted... It may be that the salvation of the world lies in the hands of the maladjusted."            Dr. Martin Luther King

 The temptation to anger about...our political system, the environment, the economy, the starving millions, the way we treat animals, the war...the list is endless, leads generally to only to one of two things.  Violence - lashing out at the perceived institution responsible for the injustice, and make no mistake, these are injustices. O inertia, apathy, at the size and number of things that need to be fixed in this world.


Most of us choose apathy.


Oh, we recycle or become vegetarians or vote or use energy-saving light bulbs or stop wearing fur, small gestures that soothe our conscience, but have little effect on our actual ways of living.  

Don't get me wrong - these things are better than nothing.


But...How many of us are willing to stop driving?  How many of us are willing to stop paying taxes?  Hell, how many of us are willing to stop voting Democratic or Republican and look for an alternative to these two sad sacks.


I am not maladjusted.  I drive.  I pay my taxes.  I eat meat.  I have stopped voting for either of the two parties, but I put no money or time into the effort to make a third party viable.


I want to be maladjusted.

Collateral Damage

"We should understand that the less violence a religion permits, the more is the truth it contained in it."  The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, edited by Raghavan Iyer, p 103

Translations of the Bible vary on what exactly is meant by the Sixth Commandment.  Many scholars say that the intent was not "thou shall not kill," but rather, "thou shall not murder."  The difference makes killing in self-defense or defense of kingdom or kin acceptable.

Faced with the choice of killing or being killed, I don't know how I would react.  If someone attacked my wife or daughters, I would defend them.  I would like to think that if a neighbor was attacked I would go to their aid.  But what of a total stranger?

And what kind of aid would I provide?  What kind of defense would I put up?  I don't own a gun, but their is a baseball bat next to my bed and on more than one occasion when a noise has waked me in the night, I have taken it with me when I investigated.

And then there is the whole question of the food I eat?  Is it murder to eat a steak for dinner?  I know that I didn't kill the cow, but the cow died for my sins.  I'm trying to reduce the meat I eat, but I'm not vegetarian yet.

But what if the commandment really is "thou shall not kill?"  I don't see any 'if, ands, or buts' in that statement.

My money supports the killing of thousands in far away lands.  People who intend no harm to me, my kin, and my country .  Women and children caught in the crossfire.  I am responsible for their deaths.  Directly responsible.

Lucky Man

"(Modern Civilization's) greatest achievements are the invention of the most terrible weapons of destruction, the awful growth of anarchism, the frightful disputes between capital and labour and the wanton and diabolical cruelty inflicted on innocent, dumb, living animals in the name of science..."  The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, edited by Raghavan Iyer, p. 83

I am a lucky man.  I don't have to think about these things if I don't want to.  I can indulge myself with wonderful food, mass entertainment, and tons of stuff to make my life easier, softer.

And I do.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/373116/february-07-2011/exclusive---the-seven-deadly-sins---gluttony-mash-up

FYKSYAR4G3GH

"Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross"

This morning I read the first half of the Introduction to "The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi" edited by Raghavan Iyer.  I read the book many years ago and have referred to it many times since.

In the first paragraph, Mr. Iyer writes about one of Gandhi's ideals of political philosophy, sarvodaya (universal uplift or the uplift of all), "treat all possessions as if they were sacred and priceless."  Then I look at my messy desk, a clutter of papers, books, computer hardware, photos, and precious mementos.  Some of it is sacred and priceless.  Too much of it is bookkeeping, or simple accumulation due to laziness or fear that I might dispose of something that I will later 'need.'

"It is only through daily moral choices and the meritorious and sagacious employment of limited resources in the social sphere that individuals sustain their inherited and acquired entitlements.  For this very reason, the divisive and dangerous notion of exclusive ownership is systematically misleading and, at worst, a specious and subtle form of violence."

"Daily moral choices" - I'm not good at this.  It sounds like hard work.  I guess that's why the Jacob's Ladder is crowded with angels climbing up and down - to help me with the choices.

"He (Gandhi) translated his painful insights into daily acts of tapas - self-chosen spiritual exercises and the repeated renewal of lifelong meditation in the midst of his fervent social activity."

Does this mean that every scrap of paper is a moral choice?  Every television show I watch?  Every web site I visit?  Every choice is a moral choice.

I have a long way to go.

Duck & Cover

In 1962, I was in the 2nd grade in south Denver, Colorado.  We started having Air Raid Drills during school.  (Much later in life a I put together the facts.  Cuban Missile Crisis and a big mountain in southern Colorado that housed NORAD.)  The drills scared me.  I dreamed of tiny planes dropping black bombs on my school.  The Cold War was in full swing.

Somewhere during my early teens, I started thinking about atomic bombs.  We had thousands.  The Soviets had thousands.  It seemed clear to me that if you exploded that many hydrogen bombs on the surface of the planet that it would probably destroy the atmosphere.  Nuclear Winter became a popular concept some years later.

And when had we as a species not used a weapon in a war.  And when had there not been another war.

I didn't think I would live to 30.  If the balloon went up, I intended to sit on the roof of my house and watch the incoming missiles.

In 1977, my wife was pregnant and I was a college drop out with no marketable skills.  I joined the Air Force.  They made me an F-4E Crew Chief.  My name was spray painted on the left side of the front cockpit.  I followed my "aerospace vehicle" to Germany for an exercise.  In a concrete revetment, on the final day of the exercise.  We loaded a live nuclear bomb on my plane.  We'd loaded lots of dummies during exercises in the states, but here in Germany, a man with a gun guarded us at all times.  I started the engines and taxied my plane out of the bunker and saluted the pilots and prepared for the end of the world.

A month later I was baptized.  I believed we as a species needed a miracle to survive.  I only knew one place to look for a miracle.

In the early '90's, I became involved with a bunch of Episcopal Radicals.  They talked about non-violence.  I didn't know what that meant, so I started reading.  Being a small "f" fundamentalist, I went back to Gandhi.

I've lost my way over the intervening years.  I'm going back to Gandhi.

Join me.