Talk to Real Human Beings

The popular media are intensifying a sense of "otherness" in our midst: that our fellow citizen is not really one of us. Flourishes of rhetoric, dramatic music, computerized hyper-visuals all can accentuate this illusion and make it feel like reality. But get out on the street, and where do these "alienized" fellow Americans exist? Do you see them at your local grocery store? Do you see them in the places where you do business? It has never been the nature of the human race for everyone to be exactly the same. Only badly written or primitive, naive forms of literature might give this impression. Each of us has a distinct personality -- this has been so since our distant ancestors were mostly covered with hair and used stone tools. Every moment of grief, frustration, fear, anger, doubt, confusion, dismay, incredulity, joy, surprise, hope, fellowship, courage, helpfulness, compassion, forgiveness, love, humor, cooperation and understanding we have shared alike in this life. This world is a place of chaos that humankind can never fully tame. We need to remember that the chaos does not come from some alien other, but from the very nature of the world in which we live. To blame something that is actually a cosmic force on a group of fellow human beings is not the answer. We must give our loyalty to the goodness of heart that dwells within each of us, and from there we can minimize the effects of this chaos upon the communities we create and maintain in good fellowship. But if we attack one another, the chaos will invade our lives at every step. We must understand that all sane people seek food, shelter, health and safety for themselves and those whom they love. How they look and dress is purely incidental. Look at history! Every time there are difficult economic times there have been power-hungry and opportunistic charlatans posing as "statesmen" who incite people to attack a vulnerable group. But doing harm to another group of people will not bring healing to you and those you consider your kind. Driving out people you think are somehow not as fully human as yourself will not put food on the table or a roof over your head. Imprisoning others or taking away their jobs will not enable you to afford better healthcare. A politically polarized population lends itself to the control of those who lust for power and have no one's welfare at heart other than their own. Do not let loud-mouthed pundits on the television or radio dictate how you perceive your fellow man or woman. Go out and meet real people. People who do not attend your place of worship, people who do not work where you work, people who do not eat where you eat. They are real, they are full of hopes, they are full of anxieties, they are like you. They are not the "other", the "alien". If you actually listen you will hear yourself, the good-willed self, speaking back to you. Take the hardness out of your heart. Remember the story of Pharaoh. There is no virtue or strength in callousness and hate. Love is what has made every noble leader and teacher admired throughout the ages.

The Future: We're Apparently Not Included

Passenger trains have been called by conservatives "rails to nowhere". California, so plagued by transportation problems, traffic overload, a highway system that is redundant rather than efficient, having an automotive pollution output equivalent to a whole slew of states combined, is the last vibrant hope for a passenger rail network. Conservative legislators backed by oil companies know that if they can stall it in California, they will have removed what will otherwise become a shining example to the rest of the country of a sustainable and modern form of transportation for the 21st century and the imminent post-fossil-fuel world. Just a few years ago, there was serious talk about creating a national rail network for people, but poor turnout by progressive voters in the mid-term elections caused this prudent design for the future of mass transportation to be sabotaged by the election of a coterie of conservative governors who rescinded federally-funded programs for passenger trains. The conservatives almost have us exactly where they want us: at the utter mercy of a gas-pump with unrestrained price calibrations. But if California gets its peoples' rail system built, the rest of the country will have real food for thought. We will know then that there are material options, possibilities, alternatives. In fact, we will know that the rest of us have a place in the future. The real road to nowhere is the highway system. Fossil fuels are making our climate toxic to living things. Passenger trains are a major economic means and incentive to turning this destructive trend around. Transportation has always been one of the pillars of civilization. And yet, we have conservative political forces that seem to want to set up a new Dark Ages for our future, where only the wealthy will have the means to master distance. I'm with Governor Jerry Brown, and I'm not even from California. I'm from Ohio, one of those states recently robbed of a progressive rail system for the future security of its mass transportation, a state where far too many of our citizens can barely afford gasoline, cannot afford decent vehicles, and cannot properly maintenance the ones they have because it requires a computer rather than their own two hands to fix. So are we going to be included in the future of America? That depends on whether the passenger trains can happily whistle back into our lives. Trains liberated people from poverty a hundred years ago. They can do so again. If California gets its passenger trains, the rest of the country will demand their passenger rails back too, and the tide will turn again in favor of the common citizen of these United States of America. The successful construction of California's passenger rail network could be our signal to grab a second chance at a positive future for all Americans. Let's not get caught sleeping again. There are some that would seek to lock us out forever.

A Space of Retreat -- It's Not Just for Shamans

Does everyone have a place to which they can retreat, in order to recover from the world? For extreme extroverts, this may only be a place to get their requisite hours of undisturbed sleep, and then back out into the delightful social maelstrom for them! But for us introverts, the sacred, singular, private space is necessary to restore our sanity and sustain our sense of well-being. For the poorer members of the introvert tribe, this can be a challenge. Poverty is often the enemy of privacy and quietude, but if you can hop on a bus or put one foot in front of the other, you may be creating a prescription for mental health by putting some distance between you and the daily neighborhood harangue. Find a park. There is such a thing as public privacy. Some of our kind can find it at home, either in a sunlit room simply furnished for time alone, or a quiet shady corner of one's property outdoors, or a place in between, like a back-porch looking out into a pleasant backyard. Sometimes the refuge might be on the move: a winter's walk through the sound-muffling snow, or a spring stroll down a country lane with little traffic. In whatever place it is, spend a little time contemplating a corner of the universe that has no dependency on the noisy madness of humanity: the rustling leaves in the breeze, the society of fluttering birds, scampering squirrels, flitting chipmunks, bellowing frogs, whizzing bees and leaping fish. The flowering trees, the emergent greenery, the tinkling rivulet of Spring: these things have nothing superior to them in terms of tranquility, even in the most finely-designed homes of the wealthy. However and wherever you can find your space of healing and restoration, do it regularly, as the world takes quite a weekly toll on the psyche. We have inherited in the bodies we wear literally millions of years of having our brainwaves attuned by evolution to the relative quiet of Nature, the aural tapestry of birdsong being the most significant sonic transmission, and we now live in the incessant electronic chatter, automotive cacophony and mad media blather of Post-Modern Civilization. We must be kind to our minds, sweet to our souls, merciful to our emotional being. Walk away for a precious while from the anger, bombast, pomposity, nervous talk and fear-mongering. Think like a child, focus on color, become sensitized to the feel of the air, recall what made you happy when you first freely and hopefully contemplated your adult future. And go ahead: listen without distraction to the anciently patterned bird-calls of the spirited cardinal, just like your grandmother and grandfather did while gliding on the porch-swing, back in the days when people still realized the world could wait.

Is There Room in Public Affairs for the Faithful?

Anyone of moral character has a welcome voice and will in public affairs, whether it be religiously or philosophically based. But hypocrites deserve to be tarred and feathered. Jesus frequently talked about those who liked to make a show of their religiosity, but were completely shallow spiritually. Any Christian running for or holding public office who feels they must "brand" their acts and words in religious terms when they must be responsible to and for a spiritually ecumenical community is acting with insensitive arrogance. America never has been a "Christian State". From the get-go we have been a nation of deists, atheists, agnostics, Catholics, Protestants and Jews! And now we can proudly add Hindus, Sikhs, Baha'is, Muslims and Wiccans to our Constitutionally-protected diversity! To speak and act as though the rest of us don't matter is not the behavior of someone who believes in the democracy of America! If you are a true Christian, it should suffice that your actions and words are guided by your humble conscience and informed convictions. There are moral principles shared by every faith and even non-belief system on the planet. You will have respect if your words and deeds truly are moral ones. You need not proclaim that you do this in the name of "Jesus" or "God", or by whatever name your deity goes by. Those who make an issue of such a matter are the enemies of democracy and democratic pluralism. They are also abusing the names of God and Jesus for mercenary purposes. Lead by example, not by religious chauvinism. Jesus looked upon the overtly religious with contempt. He wanted us to act from our inner light -- not for the limelight.

Religious Freedom Versus Religious Dominion

Mixing politics and religion has always led to bloodshed and curtailment of democratic rights. This our learned Founding Fathers knew from history (and for them, even recent history), and that is why they instituted the separation of Church and State. Today we are more and more finding both law officials failing to enforce violations of this separation and lawmakers testing the waters to overthrow this separation. Is it a weak-willed surrender to local/regional pressure by special interest groups, or is it an imposed agenda? In light of this trend, any religious body, sect of clerical/denominational alliance that stumps for a candidate, a political party or lobbies state and federal legislatures should be found in violation of their fiscal immunity, and should be taxed to the fullest extent of the law.

Every religious sect believes it knows the path to salvation better than (or even exclusively over) the rest, and some claim to actually know the "will of God" on every evolving issue, like a private hotline to heaven -- that is the problem. This is old fashioned religious hubris. If one group inveigles itself to undermine the separation of Church and State, they will also have simultaneously destroyed religious freedom. Just to remind people (despite the distortions of political rhetoric) "religious freedom" does not mean that one religion has the right to govern our secular institutions, nor to exclude citizens of other religions. If a religious group were to manage to gain such control, it would not only be unethical, it would go against the mandate of the Constitution of the United States.

Yet we have fundamentalist sects seeking to gain religious dominion over our governing bodies, and the result would in no uncertain terms be a theocracy. If such were to occur (and there have been inroads in terms of the number of our appointed federal judges being graduates of conservative-minded bible colleges (which is perhaps a redundant phrase), the inevitable effect would be the disenfranchisement of the following portions of the nation's population: progressive Christians, all sects of Jews, all Muslims, all Sikhs, all Hindus, all Baha'is, all followers of nature-centered spiritualities, all Buddhists, all Hare Krishnas, not to mention all those honest enough (under the circumstances) to admit they are either atheists or agnostics.

What will happen to our renowned pluralistic nation, our time-honored multicultural democracy? Already we have businesses that are allowed to screen people in job applications and job interviews according to the religious biases of the employer by using questions to ascertain the religious beliefs and values of the job applicant. Using this method, they can deny that person employment not based on their skill or employment record or work ethic, but upon their religious propensities. So why is "private sector" a shield against the principles of democracy? If democratic rights cease to be once one crosses the threshold of a place of employment, that means only children, retirees, government workers and the unemployed remain as the ones theoretically able to retain their full democratic rights. This is patently absurd. That religion is being used to prop up an interpretation of the law that allows private employers to enact arbitrary forms of tyranny over their workers' lives is only comparable to the surrender of certain citizen's rights upon enlistment or drafting into a branch of the military.

Religion has its place: in the heart, not in government. Democracy and theocracy can no more coexist than water and oil. The agonies of the Middle East are largely due to the mixing of religion with public governance. Why should we want to create such agony here in America? Do fundamentalist Christians believe that if we use the Ten Commandments to trump or supersede the Constitution, that if we outlaw birth control and abortion, that if we abolish women's rights and domestic violence laws, the jobs will come back? that the factories will be rebuilt? that the family farms will be restored? and that everyone will willingly and happily suddenly convert not only to Christianity but their particular brand of Christianity? What will these theorists of theocracy do with those who do not convert? How will they judge and care for those who do not find gainful employment, if such a religious coup d'etat were to succeed?

The Christian Right obsess on the Ten Commandments, but the most important one is "thou shalt not kill", and this they zealously support only on the issue of abortion -- never mind those children who would slowly die from malnutrition if we did away with the federal welfare programs they so despise. A far finer edifice for Christians of any stripe to build their foundational response to the problems of this world would be Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. But where does "blessed are the poor" fit in the conservative libertarian scheme of hyper-capitalism, where the winner takes all? Where does Jesus say that thou shalt obey ME under penalty of law? and where did Jesus ever say or imply that women were lesser beings than men, or that birth control was a sin?

I will close with this quote from one of the earliest Christian thinkers, who was writing at a time when Christians were being mercilessly and horribly persecuted by the government of the Roman Empire because of Christianity's resistance to State Religion. Writing in 205 AD/CE to Scapula, a magistrate who was persecuting Christians, these are the words of the brave Christian, Tertullian:

"It is a fundamental right, a power bestowed by nature, that each person should worship according to his own convictions, free from compulsion." [Translation from the Latin into English by Elaine Pagels, PhD; found in her new book of religious history, Revelations, Viking Press, 2012.]