Oliver`s sermon

 I have to say each time I read it, it quite blows my mind...How do you do it??? W-o-W~!!

The question is whether or not it is possible for the world to change without either a major conflagration, or a morphogenetic quantum miracle. I say the discussion is fortuitous because here in the States we are facing an election, and depending on whether you are a Republican, a Democrat, or one of the few unfortunates as are merely hanging on to what little remains of their sanity, it looks to most all concerned that the devil himself will take office in the near future.  It is, at this point, really only a question of which devil will rise to the occasion, or, if you prefer, which of the candidates is more suited to bearing the dignity of so fearsome a tittle.

For myself, perhaps because I am a bit of a cynic, or perhaps because I have unshakeable faith in the infinite stupidity of the masses, I feel that the results of the election are a foregone conclusion. Oh ye of little faith…the devil will win this race, carrying a cross, and waving a flag. So has it always been. Or has it?

One of the reasons I try not to express myself in platitudes, maxims, and the anemic abstractions of religion is not only because I truly believe that idealism is inherently dangerous but because, as a wise man once said, there is no lack of love in hell, merely lacking are the means for its adequate expression. Said wise man, by the way, was none other than myself--which is why I do not hesitate to illustrate my point with an aphorism immediately after having said that I frown upon all such utterances as are known to be popular.

Our beloved New Age beats upon the themes of love and light with such terrible insistence that one can't help but think of the Chinese water-torture method, which, by the way, really does prove the point that every little bit helps. But how much love is there really, in a narcissism born of despair? There are things that those in power want you to believe, unquestioningly, and not only can we learn a great deal from the opposition when it comes to saving ourselves and the world in which we live, but we can, and should--to whichever extent possible--take full advantage of the very tools freely given us by our oppressors for the laudable purpose of tying ourselves into intricate knotworks of noble bondage and gracious suffering. Behold, their hands are clean. We ourselves have forged the chains within which we lie moldering.  The difference between a chain that binds and the whip that flays the driver of the ass, however, happens to be the use of ones brain for the purposes for which it was designed, namely for thinking, rather than for sitting on. When it comes to handed-down wisdom, question everything, at all times.

Let us go in for a closer look, then. I have just finished reading a book by Saramago, and feel deeply inspired. The book was called, Blindness, an apt metaphor for our age, as well as for any other. I don't think we can count on Armageddon to save us from ourselves, let alone an armada of angels from the stars.  While we are waiting for the lightning from heaven to carry us into the promised Eden of the Aquarian age those whose lack of scruples is matched only by their cunning will carry the planet into a cycle of irremediable destruction so as to satisfy their craving for violent sensations, be they visceral or cerebral. For some it is the only recourse left to know themselves yet alive.  And but against love they are powerless, though hardly defenseless.  What is in our power is to know that they lie, for they are children of the lie, and deception is all that they still know.

Deep in the mountains of Colorado, is from Washington, with its countless atrocities and shameless transgressions against humanity may as well be on another planet.  Perhaps it is.  For what do mountains and rivers and forest know of such things? From out here, life in its timeless natural rhythms continues far unabated and unconcerned, as it has for countless millions of years.  And yet, in our reflections we discount the earth as though it had neither remedy nor wisdom to impart.

In his, Prisoner for God, the great theologian Bonhoeffer relates how he had, like so many other people of faith, maintained a conspiracy of silence where the National Socialists were concerned.  Like many of us he had come to believe that there was nothing that he could do, and that there was nothing within his faith that might implicate him if he did nothing.  While in prison, awaiting his execution, he came to understand differently, and if before his arrest by the SS for his part in a failed attempt at assassinating Hitler he had been a Lutheran theologian without a faith to defend, he went to the gallows as a true and committed follower of Christ.

So let me be clear on this, that as human beings we have certain obligations, foremost among them being that we do not live for ourselves alone. If we do not then speak out against an injustice which we see before us, we forfeit not only the right to enjoy that which is being denied our brothers and sisters, but their very blood cries out against us before all of creation. If we see a sister raped and murdered and turn away from her in despair, then it is we ourselves that have violated her and taken her life.  Why? For the simple reason that she is another ourselves.

Do the fundamentalists ask themselves and each other, "oh woe unto the Lord, whatever am I to do?" No, they get off their ass and do something, and in taking action thereby accomplish their goal. Would that we could do likewise, for they are shaping our world for us, and we have no right to complain then if the results of their labors are injustice and oppression.

Do you wish to lose your humanity? You need then only close your eyes to tyranny. You need only keep silent, and believe the great lie that you are powerless to effect change for the good.  You need only come to believe that things have always been as they are now and that corruption is universal, and that the fight for justice and human dignity is therefore utterly futile.  Moreover, you must also believe that you are alone whereas evil is well organized, omnipotent and probably omniscient.  Then, of course, you must learn to surrender to what you have come to believe is the inevitability of corruption, chaos and decay, and to surrender meekly, silently, and without protest or prevarication. Being sensible, you recognize that power comes not from the heart but from the pocket book of those who can control the media, and the military. And no matter what, don't forget to remain numb and indifferent.  Never allow yourself to feel outrage over the injustices perpetrated in your behalf, but swallow it all and close your eyes, because this is the way things are.

And but here is the thing.  The only reality that the vast majority of us will ever know about  is the one that has been meticulously constructed for us by those who have a vested interest in making sure that we believe that their version of the truth is nothing other than incontrovertible fact.  Moreover, they will be very accommodating when it comes to helping you select just what is important and worthy of news and what isn't.  And things will be so arranged that every bit of news will be without a context, even as its dramatic, fatal and portentous import will be played to the hilt by self-appointed experts and pundits, all of whom will, in one way or the other, hammer home the obvious, namely that whether it be genocide in Africa, or the melting of the polar ice-caps, there isn't a damn thing that you, as an individual, can do about it anyway.

It is perhaps true enough that unlike the experts we know very little about such things as the environment, politics, science, health, and the economy. Best we leave it to the specialists then--just like we did in the Middle Ages when we believed what we were told merely because we had no choice, for only the experts could read Latin while the rest of us could not so much as read our names in the book of life. But then as now we know in our hearts what is right and what is wrong, if not for others then for ourselves, at least. Provided, that is, we are healthy.

For the healthy animal is an empowered animal, and there is something dreadfully wrong when a first world country like America has a mortality rate out of all proportion to its purported standard of living. I say purported, for the actual standard of living in the United States is unbelievably low, and a mockery of any sane and rational life-way whatever.  And whether it is through obesity, heart-disease, diabetes, depression, chronic stress-disorders, an addiction to pharmaceuticals, or through the highest incidence of cancers in the entirety of the Western World the overstimulated, undernourished, poisoned and tortured peoples of North America are committing mass suicide in protest.  For even a Petunia has the will to die when its quality of life is no longer adequate to support its continued health and vitality and value fulfillment.

Is it any wonder when universities both public and private are forced to offer remedial reading to such incoming freshmen as are incapable of comprehending their own language at an eighth grade level; when what passes for education is nothing other than the systematic destruction of creativity and of critical thinking; and when we are taught to blindly swallow the most asinine religious superstitions along with political ideologies and slogans so that we might shit them back out when the fascists that run this country find it convenient that we do so; and when the so-called family values of the fundamentalist right are presented to the public as though pro-choice, same-sex marriages and the theory of evolution were threats on the same order of importance as a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Iran in the name of Jesus, against all International laws and against all laws of human decency--is it any wonder then that America counts as among the sickest and most spiritual vacuous nations on earth?

And but if the question, "what can I do?" is still running through your head, you have missed the point of this entire reflection. The greatest spiritual philosopher of the last century, Nietzsche, put it this way.  Act.  It matters not how you act, but that you do act, and that you do so with consideration and with forethought and with conscious intention. Act or die. It is that simply, for in responding to our environment rather than blindly reacting to it, we take back our power and our humanity. Whenever we choose not to eat fast-food; whenever we choose not to buy our goods from rogue nations; whenever we take the bus or ride-share or take our bikes to work; whenever we choose not to purchase goods and services that we do not need…whenever we, in any way, form or manner offer resistance to the established order, and say, "no" within our hearts and through our actions to the established way of doing things we are taking back our power, our dignity, our freedom and our health.  Whatever you do then, do it as a negation of what appears to be in a conscious effort to embrace what is and what might be.

Resist, resist, resist then, and never concede, and never close your heart to suffering, no matter how much it hurts. Never loose your outrage, your indignation or your righteousness because in truth, there is not one among us who is not making a mockery of the highest ideals and convictions of their chosen faith when we give passive assent to the lies that control: the lies that tell us that it doesn't matter and that it doesn't make any difference anyway, and that when it comes to faith you can always get something for nothing.  Oh…and the greatest of all the lies…that they exist at all.

Blessings of peace.