Back during two weeks in December 2001 and a week in March 2002 I sent a 3-part email to a list of over 600 friends around the world. It was entitled "Holy War! The Rubber Meets The Road," and was my response to the events of September 11, 2001. Recently, one of those friends wrote to me after rereading those eletters. I reread them myself and decided to merge them and post them to this weblog.

"HOLY WAR! THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD"

Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes said that after the events of 9/11/01, he found that he was at a loss as to what to write. I understand that very clearly. We probably all understand it in our own way. What can we say? What can we do? Personally, I have given much thought and prayer to what I should write; what I want to write. And as time goes by I become aware that what I want to write may alienate some of those who receive our weekly eLetter. My only response to that is: so be it. If the thoughts and feelings that we share here today move you to unsubscribe, know that we love you and bless you and that our desire is for the best for everyone. What I have to share with you today, however, must be said, by myself and by many others, over and over again, until it begins to enter its way more fully into our individual, national, and international lives and consciousness. If we don’t take positive action now, what happened on 911 could well be merely a harbinger of things to come.

Shortly after the collapse of the twin towers at the World Trade Center, I said to my wife that this was going to backfire, on a number of levels. It was going to backfire on the perpetrators and their supporters because many of them, and others associated with them, would surely be killed in retaliation for the acts. For many of those, this would not really be the martyr’s death that they desired, for it would probably occur with very little individual fanfare. After all, how can one really be a martyr if the press isn’t there to report upon the fact?

But there was also a second way that the horrendous acts would backfire, and that would be that the acts themselves, and many of the responses that they engendered, would bring about a groundswell of support to work for true, lasting efforts toward establishing more peaceful cooperation in the world. Now, if you were to look at the polls and the media’s reporting, you might think that the second backfire was actually a back fizzle. But, as often happens in life, appearances are deceiving.

It’s often been said that the two topics that one should steer clear of discussing with others are politics and religion. Well, by the very nature of what has transpired and what is happening in response to the events of 911, religion and politics are not only committed bedfellows, but also they are both entwined at the forefront of our attention. So, although I usually attempt to steer clear of politics in our weekly times together, I’m certain that the topic of politics will crop up from time to time in what I wish to share with you today.

I value each one of you as individuals and I am protective of the tenuous relationship that we share through these weekly missives of mine. From time to time I receive emails of a nature that the sender asks that they be forwarded to “everyone on your email list.” And, quite honestly, there are times when I am sorely tempted to do just that. However, such an action would violate the intent of the PTM eLetter, which is a weekly sharing of truth principles from the wellspring of our own knowledge, experiences, and perceptions. We’re aware that the mere size of each weekly eLetter is a challenge in itself for some, so we try not to compound that challenge with multiple mailings of other material.

Today it is my intent to expose us to a number of viewpoints and to present some perspectives upon why this tragedy has happened and what I believe are the most effective ways of responding to these terrorist acts. In order to make any sort of sense out of the events of 911 and to develop a rational response, it is necessary for us to get beyond the actual events themselves and all of the horror that is so closely associated with them. The purpose for this is not to deny what has happened or to attempt to escape the valid feelings of sadness, revulsion, and a sense of loss. The feelings are all important. In spite of the rush of some whining talk show hosts to condemn the expression of our feelings, our emotions are a valid part of our experience, and they need expression. For those not yet ready to go beyond that point, I recommend printing this eLetter and referring back to it when the time feels right. But the rapidly developing events surrounding the U.S. government’s response to the hijackings and the destruction of the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon, and the lives of thousands of innocent people, require a sober examination of what has happened and what options are available to us now.

So, how could this happen? Well, from one perspective, it is just the continuation of similar events throughout the long history of mankind. I usually try to steer clear of words that might be taken to imply gender, such as “mankind,” but I feel that there is some justification in the use this time with the masculine connotations that the word has for some. A good deal of what led to these events and to their aftermath is testosterone driven. A particularly male characteristic is the drive to compete and to conquer. We were all taught in school that this is a carryover from our evolution from more animal-like states. But that’s not exactly true. Seldom in nature do we see even the hint of organized revenge. In the animal kingdom, it is largely a case of survival through individual combat, not a question of survival by plotting how to defeat or destroy an entire segment of a species, whether one’s own or others. That particular action resides mainly in the human species. Payback is largely a human invention.

Lest we mistakenly think that the responsibility for these horrendous acts rests only with the masculine half of the world, it has been my observation that many male acts are precipitated or encouraged by feminine emotions. This is particularly true where religion is concerned. Many times the depth of a woman’s faith results in the instigation of a man’s action. This is not only a process in gender relationships but also a process that takes place in each of us between the feminine and masculine parts of our own being.

As I have gotten older, it becomes clearer to me that the acts and practices that we, as a people, try to legislate and otherwise control most vehemently are those very acts which we, ourselves, are capable of carrying out. This is currently evident when many, though certainly not all, of the most vocal people speaking out against these acts are the same ones who champion all out slaughter as the remedy for these terrorist acts. In other words, they can willingly and readily do to others what they vehemently object to having had done to them by others.

I have pointed out before that in the 1976 book, “Shockwave Rider,” by John Brunner, the lead character states “if evil exists in the world, it is in treating people as though they are things.” By “things” I believe that Brunner is speaking of stripping away their humanity. This is often done by speaking of people as a group, as a label, rather than as individuals. The history of racism and nationalism and many religions is a history of just such labeling of other human beings. It seems that it is much easier to hate those who aren’t considered to be human. And once they have been dehumanized, it is much easier to kill them without remorse. Or, shall we say that it is much easier to speak of killing them. The actual act of the killing, itself, is still swayed by the question of whether or not the killing is done face to face. That’s why what happened in New York City, and Washington, DC, and the fields of Pennsylvania is so despicable, because they were acts which ignored the face of humanity, except, of course, on the planes themselves, where some killing was apparently done on a one-on-one basis.

The people who speak of the terrorists as “animals” are really little different from the terrorists themselves, for to the terrorists, we probably likewise appear to be animals. Besides, such a claim is an insult to animals. We speak of these people as murderers, yet many of them believe that our country has committed, or otherwise condoned and supported, acts of criminal killing that they find just as despicable as anything that they might do to us. And if one wasn’t aware of that aspect of our country’s actions, then one hasn’t really made the effort to keep up with current events. Instead, one has probably chosen the easy way out by accepting a narrow, biased view usually presented by the government and the media, or sometimes by distorted teachings of religious doctrine, and they’ve further chosen to refuse to even listen to those who differ from their perspective.

Some years ago, I coined a term for addressing this exact situation. I call it SCOFS. That’s an acronym for “Small Circle Of Friends Syndrome.” (I tip my hat to Phil Ochs for first making me aware of the phenomenon.) SCOFS is a disease from which we all suffer, in one form or another. We have a tendency to seek out, or to gravitate towards, those who are similar to ourselves, those who are in agreement with our own beliefs. Sadly, we seldom realize that our group is a very small circle, particularly when compared to the overall masses of everyone else. But, it gives us some feelings of comfort and that’s probably a good thing. However, when we decide that everyone else should also join our small circle, things sometimes get out of hand. Our perceptions of reality can get distorted.

I discovered this personally many years ago. During the Vietnam War the U.S. Congress passed a law creating a tax on telephone service for the sole purpose of raising additional monies to fight the war. I decided to refuse to pay the tax – at least not directly to the telephone company. There were acceptable rules that the government iterated on how to do this. Each month, one must deduct the tax from their payment and write a note, to be included with the bill, on exactly why they were not paying the tax. So each month, I would write my note. Looking back, I was rather juvenile about the way I went about this process. Knowing that these notes were going to the IRS, I would include comments like what a hassle it must be to have to wear black shoes all of the time. Stupid stuff like that. And I would write my notes on whatever was most readily available: napkins, paper bags, or scrap pieces of paper. I further stated, every month, “I agree that I am a ‘tax payer’ and that I must pay this tax. You, however, are ‘tax collector’ and must, therefore, collect the tax. I refuse to pay the tax to the phone company. If you want the tax, do your job and come to ‘collect’ it and I will do my job and ‘pay’ it.” Believe it or not, they eventually did their job and I, in turn, of course, did mine. I was proud of myself for what I was doing. I felt that it contributed to changing the world. I saw myself as part of a large, important movement.

Then one day, about 25 years later, I was back in Ohio where this had all taken place, and there was an article in the local paper about the “War Tax Resistors.” Wow, I thought, they finally wrote about us. And how big was us? How big was my “small circle?” Well in a county of over a quarter million people, there were 13 of us. Hell, I probably knew most of them by name. A small circle, indeed.

While I’m telling stories on myself, I have another pertinent tale to share. This is one of which I am not particularly proud, though I’m grateful for the fact that it taught me a very important lesson about what we’re talking about here: labeling people. I was a Junior in high school in Decatur, Georgia, and a member of the high school band. The school was having a special activity highlighting athletics and at the rehearsal practice on the football field, the band was seated on the sidelines where we were to provide musical accompaniment. Well, boys being boys, several of the guys in the band started flipping pennies out onto the field when the girls were doing their athletic routines. The kid sitting next to me finally said, “Boy, you guys are really stupid, just throwing your money away like that.” And I responded, without even thinking, “what’s wrong with you, are you Jewish or something?” To which he replied, “yes, I am; is there a problem with that?” I was speechless and ashamed. I was not a racist person, yet I discovered in that moment that I had some racism in me. It was something that I had picked up from some previous friendships, though that was no excuse for what I had done. I apologized and gave thanks to God for the lesson.

Another real life example demonstrating the insidiousness of this problem of labeling one another comes from my longtime friend, Johnnie Coleman. Johnnie was once talking with a visiting fellow minister who was quite important in his position within church organization. At one point in their conversation, the other minister said, “well, I’m certainly not racist.” Johnnie quickly replied, “oh yes, you certainly are.” “How can you say that,” the offended minister complained. To which Johnnie replied, “every time you and I get together to talk, you always bring up the subject of race. I’m quite sure that you don’t talk all of the time about blacks and whites when you are with your white friends, but you always talk about it when you are with me.” And she was right. Like so many of us, black, white, brown, yellow, whatever, we have often categorized others by the color of their skin, their religion, their political beliefs, their ethnic background, their gender, their age, their culture, their economic means, their sexual proclivity, or their ability to function in society. Furthermore, we take people’s actions and turn them into traits. When someone fails at something, we call them a failure. When boys are emotionally moved, we call them sissies. When girls excel competitively, we call them tomboys. When someone makes a mistake, we call them losers. Labels. Pigeonholes. Dehumanization.

Allow me to share one more example. In 1968, my brother and I attended a Minister’s Conference. We were neither one of us ministers, but our mother was and we knew, and were known by, so many ministers that we were included. We were both serving in the military at the time, myself in the Navy and Larry in the Air Force, and we’d taken leave to see our mother during the conference. Larry had previously been stationed in Iceland and had visited various parts of Europe on leave, during which time he purchased a wide range of interesting clothing. During the week of the conference, we would go out to eat with a large group of minister friends every evening. At the beginning of the week, Larry was dressed somewhat like a hippie, with beads and sandals. During the course of the week he worked his way through bellbottoms and turtlenecks and Nehru jackets. He had some very mod clothes that he had actually bought on Carnaby Street in London. By the end of the week he was dressed in a neat suit and tie.

At our final dinner together, Larry said, “During the course of this week, you may have noticed that my appearance has changed from night to night as we’ve eaten together. I’ve been hip and mod and conservative. And I’ve noticed that many of you have treated me differently over the course of the week according to how I looked. I’ve known all of you for several years and you’ve known me. No matter how I’ve looked from evening to evening, the real me has not changed. Yet the way you have acted towards me has changed, as though I were a different person. I just wanted to say that because you are all ministers, I’m surprised. I hope that you can each learn in the future to accept people for who they are rather than for who they appear to be.”

Labeling others is a symptom of SCOFS. SCOFS is alive and well and rapidly spreading during this time of “crisis.” Now we have many people, too many people, vocally demanding “war” and “revenge” and “vendettas” and the use of weapons of mass destruction to stop these “terrorists” from doing what they themselves are desiring, or willing, to do when sufficiently provoked. And I become gravely concerned when this country’s leaders and those who have a greater access to the powerful outreach of the media than you or I speak in inflammatory terms.

The headline in the 9/16 Sunday Atlanta Journal/Constitution was “Bush: ‘This Is War’” Sorry, but somebody must have skipped their civics lesson. Article I.8.11 of the United States Constitution states that the Congress shall have the power “To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.” It is the Congress of the United States who decides whether or not we are at war. It is not the President or any verbally abusive media figure or a flamboyant preacher or the over-enthused patriot down the street. The United States is not at war, and to claim that we are is irresponsible. And the proof of my claim is in how quickly various leaders originally started backing away from that unfortunate claim.

When the polls claim 80% support for the President they can be a bit misleading. This is presented as a black and white issue: the terrorists vs the United States. President Bush is the captain of the home team and Osama bin Laden is the captain, by default, of the visiting team. But so far, since the events of 911, most of what has taken place has been a lot of “wolfing.” Behind the façade of 80% support, however, is a growing groundswell of opinion and support for doing the correct thing. And the correct thing appears to be to endeavor to determine how to seek peace rather than how to start war. So the United States is on the verge of an internal strife perhaps unlike any it has seen since the Civil War. For in the past, the voices for peace were often intimidated into silence because of their small numbers and the overpowering din of the purveyors of the war machine. But we’ve had enough time since the last real war of any length and substance that we have an entire generation that doesn’t really understand what this whole war thing is all about.

For those who are quick to espouse war as the proper response to the actions of 911, I want to ask questions like, have you, yourself, served and fought and killed? If you killed, did you do it face-to-face, eye-to-eye, hand-to-hand? Do you think you will be one of the soldiers this time? If you, yourself, don’t go, how do you intend to tell your children that you intend to send them in your place? If you’ve already figured exceptions for your own children, then how are you going to explain to them that you intend to send someone else’s children?

I received an email from someone who said that they were going to write to Present Bush quite regularly and ask, “what would Jesus do?” The answer, of course, is not what our “faith-based” President is proposing. The truth is that anyone who proposes going to war and who also claims to be a Christian is nothing more than a hypocrite of the highest order. Jesus Christ did not teach killing people, for any reason whatsoever, under any circumstances, no matter what. Some of Jesus’ followers might have gotten carried away in moments of ecstatic vision and made extremely exotic claims, but that has NOTHING to do with the teachings of Jesus, the Christ. And I defy anyone to prove differently.

There’s a website out on the Internet offering $1 million to Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson or any of these other Christian hate mongers to identify a single passage attributed to Jesus condemning homosexuality. Look for yourself:

http://www.mobydicks.com/bible/Malachihall/messages/5.html

Anyone who twists the Bible, or the Quran, or the teachings of Jesus, or the teachings of Islam, or the teachings of Mohammed, or any religious teaching to justify their own prejudice and hatred is an enemy of all humanity. If people want to teach hatred, let them do it without cloaking themselves in religious scriptures. The two are incompatible. If people want to teach hatred and prejudice, let them do it without wrapping themselves in the flags of countries, particularly a country whose Constitution begins with the words, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, do hereby establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

My friend, John Crockford, in Dayton, Ohio, was very originally profound when he said, “War is just a cowardly escape from the challenges of peace.” If we look at what is happening in government and in the news, we see that the talk of war has become of paramount importance. All else has taken a back seat. Such, I’m sure, have been the blatherings of all those who would bring terror into the lives of others. Everything else becomes secondary. If one looks, historically, at wars, one discovers that they very effectively occur when people find themselves unwilling to deal with the real issues of peace. These are issues of communication, and understanding, and caring for all of our fellow human beings. Every one has been guilty of using conflict to cover up the failure to cooperate, to one degree or another, including our own government. The results of our cowardly attempt to escape from the problems of coexistence with one another on our shared planet are acts like those of 911.

But let us not be sidetracked by the events of 911. When the final death toll is in, it will still pale against other daily realities of life. 5,000? 6,000? 7,000 people? Even if the count should reach 10,000, what is that number when compared to the fact that 35,000 children starved to death on that very same day all over the world. They starved to death in Africa, and in Asia, and in South America, and in Europe, and in Australia, and in North America. Yes, on that very same day, children starved to death even in the United States of America. And who’s to say which death is the more gruesome? The rapidly violent death in the fiery crashes and collapses in New York and Washington, D.C.? The slow, wasting, agonizing death of an innocent starving child? The reality is that the importance of these events often depends upon how closely these events personally affect us.

And yet, all of these deaths, those of the 14 million children who die of starvation worldwide every year, and those of the people on hijacked planes and in the WTC and the Pentagon, and on streets and in homes throughout the Middle East and Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka, and Sudan, and Pakistan, and China, and North Korea, and Cambodia, and Indonesia, and Columbia, and Oklahoma City, and on and on and on; those deaths need not happen, and they should not be in vain. Please make note: War will never make up for those deaths. It will only add to the toll and to the suffering.

In 1969 at the first big anti-war rally in Berkeley, California, the rally organizers invited a fresh young writer to be one of the speakers. When Ken Kesey, author of “Sometimes A Great Notion,” and “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” took the stage, he was joined by friends with bodies painted in dayglow and with musical instruments that were psychedelically tuned. You can read the details in Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” chapter XVI, “The Frozen Jug Band.” In a nutshell, Kesey blew everyone away when, between verses of “Home On The Range,” played on his harmonica, he said that if you want to bring an end to war, “there’s only one thing to do…there’s only one thing’s gonna do any good at all…And that’s everybody just look at it, look at the war, and turn your backs and say…F**k it…” Perhaps those words are too harsh for some of our readers, but it’s a fact, and the word “f**k” isn’t anywhere near as harsh as the words, “war,” or “starvation,” or “terrorist,” or “camel jockey.”

So, I’ve had it. I’ve decided to declare my own Holy War. I’m fed up with the self-proclaimed prophets who selectively hijack religious teachings and twist them to justify their own greed, hatred, and over-inflated self-importance. God, Allah, or whatever you want to call the creative a-priori of the infinite universe did not create us so that he/she/it could then sit back and watch us kill one another. I believe that we’re all on the planet together, all 6 billion plus of us to learn from the experience. I don’t believe the lesson is how to decimate one another, but rather how to learn to live together according to the sacred teachings that have been handed down to us from all major religions.

I once shared with you that the one thing that appears throughout ALL major religions of the world is to “do to others as we would have them do to us.” It’s called the “Golden Rule,” though it seems to be seldom followed, particularly in business and in politics. Somehow we’re always trying to find exceptions. What a joke.

For the Christians out there who want to go to war, I have a few scriptures for you. The first two are from Jesus; the third is from the Psalmist. The first scripture comes from the Sermon on the Mount; the source, also, of the Golden Rule. Matthew 5:38-48:

“You have heard that it is said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.
“But I say to you that you should not resist evil; but whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.
“And if anyone wishes to sue you at the court and take away your shirt, let him have your robe also.
“Whoever compels you to carry a burden for a mile, go with him two.
“Whoever asks from you, give him; and whoever wishes to borrow from you, do not refuse him.
“You have heard that it is said, Be kind to your friend, and hate your enemy.
“But I say to you, Love your enemies, bless anyone who curses you, do good to anyone who hates you, and pray for those who carry you away by force and persecute you,
“So that you may become sons of your Father who is in heaven, who causes his sun to shine upon the good and the bad, and who pours down his rain upon the just and the unjust.
“For if you love only those who love you, what reward will you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same thing?
“And if you salute only your brothers, what is it more that you do? Do not even the tax collectors do the same thing?
“Therefore become perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

This is not telling us to be sniveling wimps. It’s telling us that the only way to win is to stop playing the game. Duh! Are we so blind that we can’t even see what Jesus was saying? Furthermore, Mohammed recognized and honored Jesus and his teachings so these words are also relevant to Muslims. We’ll look at this scripture more deeply in Part III.

Next, in Matthew 22:34-40, we’re told:

“But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.
“And one of them who knew the law, asked him, testing him,
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?
“Jesus said to him, Love the Lord your god with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might and with all your mind.
“This is the greatest and the first commandment.
“And the second is like to it, Love your neighbor as yourself.
“On these two commandments hang the law and the prophets.”

Jesus does not talk about exceptions here. Exceptions are created by human beings who, as my friend John would say, are looking for the coward’s way out. The action word in both commandments is love. To truly love God automatically results in a love of God’s manifestation, God’s expression. Humankind, created in the image and after the likeness of God, is therefore the highest order of God’s manifestation. It is therefore impossible to love God without also loving all of humanity. Those who claim that they can love God/Allah while at the same time killing their fellow human beings is a self-deluded liar. And they are, by their actions, subhuman.

Finally, we have the fourth Psalm:

“When I have called thee, thou hast answered me, O my God and Saviour of my righteousness; thou hast comforted me when I was in distress; have mercy upon me and hear my prayer.
“Men, how long will you obscure my glory? How long will you love vanity? Do you want deception forever?
“But know that the LORD has set apart for himself that is wonderful; the LORD will hear when I call to him.
“Be angry and yet sin not; commune with your own heart and meditate upon your bed.
“Offer the sacrifices of righteousness and put your trust in the LORD.
“There are many that say, Who can show us a good man so that he may shine upon us the light of his countenance?
“O LORD, thou hast put gladness in my heart more than in the time that their wheat and their wine and their oil increased.
“In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for thou, O LORD, alone makest me dwell in safety.”

Fourth verse: “be angry and yet sin not.” That’s where many of us are right now. There is anger, and it is natural, but our anger does not compel us to violate the commandments. Be angry and yet sin not. Being angry does not mean that we have to express that anger by randomly killing others. It goes on to say “commune with your own heart and meditate on your bed. Offer the sacrifices of righteousness and put your trust in the LORD.” What are the “sacrifices of righteousness?” Perhaps they are the sacrifices of the ego that we make when we choose to not let our anger get the better of us. It is when we choose the correct and right use of our God-given faculties to look beyond the evil acts of our fellow human beings and seek ways to help one another to grow in our awareness of our innate Divinity. The final verse points out, “for thou, O LORD, alone makest me dwell in safety.” With those words in mind, I say to those who choose to kill others in retaliation not to seek or claim God or Allah’s help or blessings.

The game of war is a game that has been played for thousands of years. It has no winners, in and of itself. It is an ongoing game. The game, itself, wins by being endless, by being self-perpetuating. The only way for us to truly win is not to play. Kesey was right. We can’t bring an end to war by “winning” others into submission. The terrorists attacked the United States in retaliation for actions that they found objectionable. For us to attack them for actions that we find objectionable makes us no different than them. If we don’t take the time to look at the circumstances which have brought the world to this series of events and determine how to take steps to rectify the tremendous dehumanizing inequities in our world today, then perhaps we deserve whatever we get.

In the Quran, it says “oppression is worse than murder.” That sentiment is reminiscent of the words of Patrick Henry, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Like it or not, we must all transcend the game of war if we are ever to escape it’s control over our lives. How do we do this? The answer is through forgiveness.

Although we may never forget, we can always forgive. Pope John Paul demonstrated the power of forgiveness when he came out and stated that as a part of its celebration of the new millennium, the Roman Catholic Church was openly asking forgiveness for the sins which it has committed over the centuries. Of course, we know that those sins are enormous. Just one of them was what we, in the west, call the Crusades, an attempt by Christians to wipe out infidels, non-believers. Who were those “non-believers?” They were Muslims. Now we have a small group of Muslims retaliating in an effort to “wipe out the non-believers.” Only this time the non-believers are us. It’s a never-ending game that feeds upon itself and results in a centuries-long road of gruesome death. But forgiveness can stop the game.

Forgiveness begins with the self. One must forgive one’s self before one can receive the forgiveness of others or begin to forgive others. In the Lord’s Prayer, it says “forgive us our offenses as we also forgive our offenders.” Asking and giving forgiveness doesn’t, however, then give us permission to turn around and commit new atrocities that will later result in our once again seeking forgiveness. For the very next line of the Lord’s Prayer is “and leave us not in temptation, but deliver us from error.” This is a recognition that it is through God’s Grace that we are able to avoid the temptation of replaying the game. Forgiveness is a break from the cycles of the past by creating a new direction in our lives.

Whether we like it not, those who choose to ignore the words of the Lord’s Prayer, and instead feel compelled to seek retribution for the atrocities that have been committed are choosing to remain upon the merry-go-round of death and violence. And all efforts to use scripture to justify the blood lust for war are as abominable as the efforts of people like Osama bin Laden to twist the teachings of Islam, and Mohammed, and the Quran to justify their hatred and murder of Americans.

People like Osama bin Laden and Jerry Falwell want to enlist God or Allah as their cohort, to give credibility to their evil little deeds. Well, I’ve got news for you boys, God and Allah are not interested in your evil and wicked ways. The Supreme Being is, if anything, appalled by your distorting scriptural teachings to your own selfish ends. You choose to look only for those scriptures that you can twist to justify your perverted views. In the process you ignore the core teachings themselves of love, peace, joy, cooperation, forgiveness, and all-inclusiveness. All religions seem bent on excluding the “non-believers,” even though the teachings at the core of each religion are usually of inclusiveness. We are all one through our creator. And, as the Quran says, even the believers were once non-believers. So we would best put our weapons away unless they should be turned upon ourselves by others who are equally misguided in their enthusiasm to set things right for the believers by extinguishing the non-believers.

To fight in my Holy War, one must make an individual determination to live their lives in accord with all of the great spiritual teachings throughout history. These teachings have all been revealed through elevated states of consciousness. They have often been distorted when the Institute of Religion co-opts them, claiming sole Divine Origin for their particular ritual, doctrine, and dogma.

With that in mind, let’s explore more deeply our possible responses to 911. The events of that day have had varying impacts upon people. The type of impact has to do with how each of us was, and is, connected to the catastrophic events of that day. That connection could have to do with who we are, where we were, who we knew, what we saw, or how we deal with, or process, events. I even know members of the clergy who were, and still are, profoundly struck by those events. One happened to be in the White House at the time. Another apparently has old issues from a military background to deal with. Still another is very emotionally involved with recurring images of what happened. Then there are those people who have responded, with time, as though it was just “Die Hard 4 With Patriotism” that they saw on that eventful morning. Just another over-the-top special effects movie on the tube.

No matter what our reactions, either then or now, an underlying question that plagues many is the question, “Why?” That is not an easy question to answer, and those who come up with easy answers, easy labels, are not only insulting the intelligence of humanity, but they are also doing us all a great disservice. The roots of what happened on 911are buried in thousands of years of religious and political struggles. These roots have produced a worldwide plant whose blossoms are ignorance, apathy, poverty, greed, and self-absorption. Make no mistake about it friends, there are few, if any, who are innocent. Hang with us, and we will explain why. Then we will explain what we can do about it.

It is difficult for us to know our, humanity’s, origins, for the records that do exist do not penetrate far enough into the past to give us a clear picture of how humanity has developed. This is not due merely to too few documents being written, for far more have been written than exist today. Most of them were deliberately, or sometimes unintentionally, destroyed. Then, we must remember that what has been written that has survived to the present era was written for particular reasons by people who had their own motivations, and therefore their own unique perspective. The printed word is not infallible. It is usually through the work of scholars that we have any insight into the origins of humanity. And then those insights are never 100% true. They, too, are merely perspectives, and a study of the history of scholarship, or institutional knowledge, reveals that those perspectives change with time. This change is understandable, for as people grow and develop, their understanding, their perspectives, their viewpoints, change as well.

There are times when I see people on the street whose lives appear to be far worse off than mine and I am reminded then of the times in my own life when my life was a lot closer to theirs that it is to my life now. I remember what it was like to run in darker circles where hope doesn’t even appear to be an option. I recall the perspectives, which are largely molded by fear. Those memories are like those of a completely different person than the one I am today. And that is precisely correct. I am not now who I was then. I have changed with time, and for the better, I feel. For that fact alone, I am grateful every day of my life.

So I’m personally aware of how different life can appear to be to each one of us. Although I am who I am, and have always been who I am, nevertheless the me that I am today sometimes seems to have little in common with many of the me’s that I have been in the past. There was teen youth leader me and band me and Navy me and hippy me and disco me and cowboy me and computer nerd me and ladies man me and bum me; so many different me’s. So many different perspectives. So many different realities. Life is like that for most people, although many people have commented that I have had more me’s than the norm. But each of us has, or rather creates, a reality for each of the me’s that we are, and those realities can appear to be as different as day and night.

And so it is with the views of reality which some of us might document under the guise of scholarship and history. It is all, more or less, a matter of perspective. With that in mind, one might then ask the question, “Just what, then, is the true reality?” Well, they are all true. It’s like the old saw, “if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” If someone is there to hear the tree fall, then we have evidence that the sound is real. But is it real to one who is not there in the forest? For those who were not there to experience the fall of the tree, it is necessary to rely upon the reports of others, of those who were there. When that first hand observer is not physically present to report to us, we must then rely upon secondhand hearsay. Scholarship in historical matters is nothing more than organized hearsay. And that hearsay is often a poor interpretation of a poor translation.

If we were to look beyond the individual perspectives to their commonality we might obtain a viewpoint that is closer to what is going on, but only closer, not really right on the money. To understand what is really happening, we need to look beyond appearances and discover what is behind the scenes. Imagine that you’re in a movie theater watching a film that gets you really involved in its plot. Your thoughts and emotions can get wrapped up in the action on the screen. But this isn’t really real. What’s really going on is that we are viewing a projection. And that doesn’t even begin to deal with what’s on the other side of the screen. Life is not that much different.

Life is like that Movie Theater. And the whole world is wrapped up in what is being projected onto the screen. But wouldn’t it be nice to know what’s beyond the screen, to know who’s running the projector, to discover who made the movie and to be able to communicate directly with them? Well, we can do that. But it is not easy. The reason it is difficult is that we are so used to looking at the screen that it’s hard for us to look anywhere else. The screen is just too mesmerizing.

Years ago when some of the more graphic computer screen savers began to appear, I got hold of one called “Dazzle.” It was constantly changing size, shape, position, color. It was truly hypnotic. So much so that I used to deliberately run the program when “important” people came to call. It was incredible to watch and see that, no matter how important they might feel the business was that they had to share with me, that they could not keep their eyes off of the computer screen in the background. Every time they would glance away, they were quickly drawn back to its sparkling image. They were trapped by a vivid projection in the world of appearance. We are all trapped by the dazzle of this world of appearance that we so often refer to as “reality.” Commercial television takes tremendous advantage of its own hypnotic abilities.

Yet, if we stop to ask ourselves questions like, “Where did this world of appearance come from?” “What makes it appear to be one thing to me and another thing to someone else?” “If, in fact, the sensory reality around us is similar to a movie screen, then what’s beyond the screen?” It’s these kinds of questions that lead one to begin to seek deeper levels of experience and understanding that lead us into realms which are realities that are different than the reality of the physical senses. These are realities in the realm of our emotions, our minds, and our spirit.

In the past century, through the perspective of quantum physics, science is gaining a closer harmony with ancient spiritual teachings in understanding who and what we are. We are now told that we are the creators of our “reality,” and that the reason that is possible is because all possibilities exist in an infinite number of parallel universes. Yet most people still believe that they are subservient to “reality,” that reality is what it is and it’s our job to figure out how to survive it. And that’s not surprising because “reality” is so damn dazzling. But, as dazzling as it may “appear” to be, it is still merely an appearance, and until we break free of the hypnotic hold that it has on us, we will continue to be mere bit players in this movie instead of the directors of our own lives.

The events of 911 were another example of a dazzling burst upon the screen of appearances. Because of the horrific, sudden, unexpectedness of the events of that day and the way in which it personally touched so many in the United States, our response to those events, redirected the future course of history. Now, that shouldn’t be any big surprise. The fact of the matter is that we are constantly redirecting the future course of our own history with every choice that we make. That, by definition, is what being the creator of your own reality means. But 911 had a tremendous, graphic impact that caused a quantum shift.

Now, in some ways, we shouldn’t have been so shocked. In motion pictures we had seen incredible destruction on a regular basis. We saw the White House blown to smithereens in “Independence Day.” We saw the broken remnants of the Statue of Liberty in the original “Planet Of The Apes.” We saw Los Angeles graphically destroyed in “Terminator 2.” We’ve seen buildings destroyed, planes blown up, meteors impact the planet, nuclear destruction, tidal waves, war, and terrorism. One would think that after all of that exposure to the appearance of horrific violence that we would be a little more used to it. But on 911 it touched us more deeply on a personal level. The effect that it had upon us was further exacerbated by the rhetoric that developed around those events and the aftermath of retaliatory reactions.

In the midst of the early 911 aftermath, I was reminded how, almost a year earlier, in October 2000, a massive cyclone hit the state of Orissa in northern India. A 35-meter (100 foot) high tidal wave and 48 hours of gale force winds decimated the state, killing around 35,000 people and leaving 3 million more without homes. And the funny thing was that it hardly even got a mention on the news here in the states. The headlines in the U.S. had to do with the upcoming National Election, which was to become a debacle in its own right. We pick and choose the reality that is important to us. And that leads us to my thoughts for today.

Every piece of currency in the U.S., metal or paper, contains the words, “In God We Trust.” There are many who claim that America is a Christian nation, although we’re gradually becoming aware that it is also a Jewish nation and an Islamic nation and a Buddhist nation and a Hindu nation and an atheist nation. We are a melting pot. But in the melting of different cultural, political and religious backgrounds, there are some commonalities that we have. True, some of those “commonalities” sometimes appear to be a common hatred for one another, but I’m thinking here rather of roots that run deeper than the superficialities of individual ignorance.

In God we trust. Personally, I think that is a lie of great proportion. When I see that our country’s retaliation to the events of 911 resulted in our killing more innocent civilians than were killed in the events of 911, and I see that polls appear to overwhelmingly support this retaliatory killing, then I say that if we trust God, that it is a God of distortion rather than the “God of our fathers.”

When I speak of the “God of our fathers,” I am going back to Abraham of the Old Testament, of the Torah. According to the 1990 World Almanac, 32.9% of the world are Christians, 17.4% are Moslems, and 0.3% are Jews; that’s a total of 50.6%, or just a smidgen over half of the world’s population. Understand that each tenth of a percent here is approximately 5 million people.

Anyway, the Jews, although they comprise only 0.3% of the world’s population, are the fountainhead for the Christian and the Moslem (or Islamic) religions.

That means that the religious beliefs of a mere 18 million people are the foundation for the religious beliefs of 2.5 billion people, or about one Jew for every 140 Christians and Moslems. Of course, since the world’s population has grown by a billion in the last decade, there are now over 3 billion self-proclaimed descendant believers in the religious beliefs of Abraham, compared to a mere 18-21 million descendants of the Jewish religious state.

Prior to the rise of the Jewish race and their belief system, most people, in an effort to understand the incredible forces active around them on this level of existence, believed in many different Gods, many different influences, many different origins.

We have very few records about those earlier beliefs because time and people have, over thousands of years, obliterated the records of those beliefs.

Many different belief systems changed with the advent of Judaism; there was, of course, the change created by this belief in one and only one God; then there was a switch from a matriarchal society to a patriarchal society; and extremely profound, there was, eventually, beginning with the time of Abraham, an end to human sacrifice.

These influences all filtered down over thousands of years through religious beliefs and practices to affect, today, directly, over half the population of the world, and indirectly, the entire world, because of the tremendous power of religious beliefs.

But the 3 billion plus people on the planet who comprise the Jewish, Islam, and Christian religions all trace their roots back to one man, Abraham, a man who, the scriptures report, walked with God. He was a friend of God. His was an intimate and personal relationship with God. Yet, he had no Bible, no priesthood, no synagogues, no churches, no mosques, no rituals, no religious images, and no statue of his God. He was not a Jew, but was an Aramean and a Chaldean citizen.

That personal relationship with God has been lost to Abraham’s descendents over the past 4,000 years. It has been lost under a pile of ritual and dogma and judgment. For those who are able, however, to find their way back to that personal relationship with God, a relationship, incidentally that Jesus came to resurrect in our consciousness, they realize that as creations, children, of God, they are blessed and they therefore live a life of being a blessing to others.

Now, here’s where the rubber meets the road. The United States of America does not have a conscious personal relationship with God. Christianity does not have a conscious personal relationship with God. Islam does not have a conscious personal relationship with God. Judaism does not have a conscious personal relationship with God. God did not create religions. God did not create nations. God created humanity in God’s image and after God’s likeness. And God saw that creation and said that it was good. We, the creation, have, unfortunately, over the millennia, distorted that close relationship with God by dogmatizing it and then trying to convert (force) others to agree with our doctrinal precepts.

Pure poppycock! God’s kingdom does not come through doctrine. It does not come through dogma. It does not come through ritual. These are all creations of humanity to try to remind us of the underlying truth, the underlying foundation, the underlying commandment as expressed by Jesus: “Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul….and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Abraham’s faith was his action. Jesus gave his life to that same faith in action. He stood for God’s truth, even if it meant his death. He was a beautiful example of humanity‘s potential and the church that sprang up around his memory and his teachings has grossly tarnished his memory.

And this is what he said: “Love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you.”

If you consider your life to be comfortable, then I hate to inform you of this, but you are in the minority on this planet. Every day, 35,000 children under the age of 12 die because of starvation or malnutrition on this planet. It doesn’t have to be that way any longer. 2.8 billion people on this planet, that’s almost half, make less than $2 per day. It doesn’t have to be that way any longer. I want to say that again, in a paragraph all by itself.

It doesn’t have to be that way any longer.

We have finally managed, for the first time in history, in spite of ourselves, to reach the place in our evolutionary growth back to an understanding of who and what we are that we can, like Abraham, walk and talk with God.

Now, here’s what we’ve got to do in order to achieve that experience in our lives.

First, as I said a few weeks ago, we must begin each day anew. Know that every day as you awaken from sleep that it is a new beginning. Be on the alert. There are monsters waiting to entrap you before you even get out of bed. Those monsters are the habits which have become old hat and have trapped you in what Thoreau called a life of quiet desperation. Now, if you don’t feel that I’m talking to you here, then you’ll just read on. But if you don’t feel that I’m talking to you and you object to what I’m saying, then you best read on, because I am talking to you.

We are each spiritual beings living in a physical universe. I can’t prove that to you, but neither can you disprove it. I am taking about that which cannot be conceptualized nor described by our normal modes of perception or communication. Everyone’s got the choice: one either believes that they are spiritual, temporarily manifesting as a physical being, or they believe that they’re merely physical beings. If you’re not certain where your beliefs fall, you might take a hint from the Pascalian wager. No matter what the reality is, you’re ultimately better off acting as though the former is the truth.

So that leads us next to what we’re going to do with each new day. Well, we must be alert. The forces of distraction are awaiting us around every corner. Life is a constant series of realignments, readjustments to the focus of our attention. One of the things that makes believing in good so difficult is that we are so constantly inundated with the opposite. I presently have a close personal family member who has gone over the top. I’m certain that part of the reason is too much exposure to crap like the Jerry Springer show.

Now, I want to make certain that I’m real clear on what I’m about to say. I believe that the media, in all of its forms, is an incredibly powerful tool that assists in self-transformation. Radio, television, telephony, computers, the Internet, reproduced audio and video, and other sensory apparatus are phenomenal tools. As with any other tool, they can either be used for good or for ill. There are a lot of people who are using many of these tools for ill. I don’t believe that that justifies censorship or the abolition of any of the tools. They are just tools. I believe, however, that the more evolved and elaborate the tools, the more imperative it is that we learn how to use them to the shared advantage of ourselves and others. I’m not saying ourselves at the expense of others. It’s ourselves and others. When it’s at someone else’s expense, it is greed, and that’s destructive and ultimately self-destructive.

Telephony, radio, and television are still very limited in their ability to reach multitudes quickly for the benefit of the individual. The Internet, on the other hand, is still radically open. I just heard the other day that “internet usage” is dropping off. Don’t you believe it for a minute. There are those who would like for it to drop off, and they are quite possibly the one’s who originate such stories. In reality, usage might have dropped in the past 6 months in the U.S., but globally it is on the rise.

Only 2% of the Net is X-rated. The overwhelming majority of the Net (98%) is positive and solution oriented. I have personally visited over 30,000 websites, and I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface. I discover new sites everyday. And there are still so many sites that I have yet to discover. If you have not yet visited the part of our own website called Surf City, do yourself a favor and take an afternoon or an evening and cruise around Surf City. There are over 5,000 links there to all kinds of sites. And although we haven’t updated that part of our website in 2 ½ years most of the links are still good. Just choose any of the many categories and begin clicking on the links and see what you discover.

Take time each day to avail yourself of something positive to read or to look at or to think about. Spend time with positive people, sharing in positive ideas and activities. Invest time in helping others lovingly. Take time to become still and listen, to still the cacophony in your own head and let own your heart have its say. Your entire body is a symphony of sound and feelings. Let it speak to you.

And, for God’s sake, and for all of our sakes, do not spend any more time investing in the thoughts and feelings of revenge, of payback, of winning at someone else’s expense. Each of us has an important choice to make in our lives. We are either going to choose to live a life that is directed toward loving ourselves and others and putting that into action every day, or we are going to choose a life directed towards a lack of love. Either way, we will reap the results of the seeds that we sow. If we plant loving, helpful seeds, they will yield a harvest of good and abundance that is beyond our imagination. If we choose to plant thorns, and thistles, then our lives will be a garden of weeds. The choice is ours, a choice given to each and every human being by a loving creator.

My friends, I have invested a lifetime, over a half century, in discovering what is true and right in this experience that we call life. That is why I have chosen to devote a part of my life to sharing with you and hundreds of others from what I have learned, and am still learning. And so I say this to you all.

Although there is currently a tremendous buildup in arms construction and secret governments and the dismantling of civil liberties and talk of widening the “war” to other countries and polls that support this indiscriminate blood lust, this should not be our focus. This should not be our faith in action. Hear me well. The popular road of killing that this country has been tricked by the events of 911 into embarking upon only ends with incredible destruction beyond our wildest imaginations. This is not God’s intention. We were not created so that we might destroy one another.

I pray that each and every one of us rises to the test, that we love one another, even our “enemies,” that we pray for those who persecute us and would do evil towards us, and that we begin to prove that it is truly “in God that we trust” by putting our spiritual beliefs into action through working diligently to make this a better world where people learn to get along and to help one another. That is the true heroes’ way. To shoot or bomb others into submission is the coward’s way; it is the way of those who have given up on their own innate God-given ability to solve the crisis at hand.

To all of those who misinterpret scriptures, no matter what their source, so as to imply that God ordains that humanity commit bloodshed upon one another, I say, “Shame on you. You are an abomination. You are the epitome of hypocrisy.” Please take the time to look deep within your own hearts, your own souls, and rediscover the love that has been planted in you for your fellow human beings by the divine creator of all.

It is a well-known fact that my country spends far more on ways of destroying people, even to the extent of ways to destroy “all” people on our small planet, than it does upon ways of helping people. We have come to a place where the weapons that are used against us are often the weapons of our own creation. I ask that this insanity stop. History has proven over and over again that war does not work. It does not make things better. It only destroys indiscriminately and inhumanely and causes power to shift. It is an insult to humanity.

My blessings go out this day and every day to all people in the world, no matter what their beliefs. Humanity is one giant family, no matter how dysfunctional. It is time that we began treating one another as family rather than as enemies. For many people, to do this will require time and effort at changing whatever destructive beliefs they may have been programmed to believe as true. But the time to start that change is now. Today is the day. Not tomorrow. Not next week or next month or next year. Today! Carpe diem!

Go out this very day and show love to your fellow family members in this great family of the human race. Let us rededicate ourselves this very day to more diligently expressing the divinity that is within each of us and begin to bring an end to the conditions that lead to 911 and its aftermath.