Same as “GWD.F”
Was Jesus out to lunch?
Really?
Was King flat-out wrong or lying to us? Really?
Was Gandhi a stupid model for us to follow? Really?
The woman who heard gunfire on the street of New York this
year, and placed her body as a shield for a girl I think she didn't know; was
she a bad model of what it means to be alive? The cell that faithfully follows
the instructions of its DNA instead of succumbing to its own desires and
becoming cancer; is that foolish? The heart that for ninety years never misses
a beat, selflessly serving the body; is that silliness?
There's no evidence to suggest that we're some evolutionary
leap away from that. 'Whoever would hold on to their life will lose it. Whoever
would give up their life will win it,' Jesus taught, and lived. Who was more
alive....Dr King, standing up and speaking against the Vietnam war, being
assassinated a year later, knowing it was putting another crosshairs on his
chest, or the millions hiding behind their beloved uncertainty and not speaking
up? Who is more alive? To paraphrase Dr. King with liberties, but I'm sure he
would approve, "A person is not living, a person is not loving, a person
is not fighting, a person's life is worthless who is not dying for, who is not
giving their life for, the neediest of our populations,' that right now are the
two-thousand generations that our apathy and our cowardice are condemning to
hell on Earth. Was he wrong? In that same talk or sermon he said that, he went
on to say "Somewhere in our life we're each going to receive a call from
that still small voice within, (to use Gandhi's term) to put our life on the
line and if we say no to that call we may live another fifty years, we may live
until we're ninety, but we died on the day that we said no to that call.
If you still have a heart, if you search your heart, you
will know that he was correct
And what's infinitely more important than your own life, is
the fact that you cannot escape leading others with your own life. It's
inescapable. The only choice you have is what direction you will lead others
and to what degree.
If you've been dead, if you've been spending your life, as I
spent almost all of my life, turning away from the call, now is the time to
turn toward it. Toward Life. Life is found in racing toward the emergency, no
place else. It's found in dealing with
the emergency of our fellow human beings, no place else. Think of those around
you, think of your children. Think of your children's children. Think of your
nieces and nephews. Think of your spouse, your partner. Are you going to
continue to lead them to living Death? The Death that Jesus gave his life to
save us from, to show us how to save ourselves from, teachings we've been
ignoring and distorting for 1800 years? Are you really going to continue to
embrace that Death and lead everyone you care about toward that same
Death? Or are you going to choose a
different path?
You are not living, you are not fighting, if you are not
dying for our global neediest, during a day, spread over forty days, spread
over eighty years. Teresa of Calcutta was dying for decades to self (though to
her is was Joy) to save her brothers and sisters ... in Calcutta. She was dying for that, every breath, every
fiber of her being, everything she had. Will you continue to submit to Death
and lead others to it, or will you stand now for Life and lead your loved ones
to it? This was the choice that Jesus gave, reminded us of, this was the choice
that Gandhi and King died to remind us of. This is Life, this is heaven, this
is nirvana, this is total peace of heart, and if you don't lead those around
you in that direction, it's very simple, you are leading them away from heaven,
the only one there is, the only nirvana, the only peace of heart, the only joy
– here, now.
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