More galaxies than grains of sand on every beach of this world.
Taken with the Hubble Deep Field, January 15, 1996

Since it’s a lovely morning, why don’t we take stock of a few things that most of us take for granted. Let’s start with some practical aspects of “reality.”  Here we are— billions of us— whizzing through time and space, on a molten-core spheroid, which is spinning in circles about a thousand miles an hour. We are orbiting a pale yellow star at nearly 67,000 miles per hour. That star is traveling at roughly 559,232 miles per hour;  or 150 miles a second. That’s right;  150 miles per second.

We are buffered from all that velocity by a thin blanket of air.

We are living, sentient beings;  creatures that can think and reflect about our life, and wonder if it has a meaning.  We have learned we are made up of an amazing variety of discrete, infinitesimal “particles” that aggregate for a time in space, giving us each a temporary physical presence; we also know this state of affairs is largely illusion.  That is to say, comparatively speaking, that there is as much relative “space” between our corporeal “particles” as there is between the planets of our solar system.

Somewhere near the top of this collection of atoms we casually call our “selves,” is an even more unique and astounding collection of electrochemical particles that produce “thoughts,” and even attach a sense of “realness” as well as personal identity to them;  we think they’re “ours.” 

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Pursuing The Right: Inside this Week’s Urantian Sojourn Magazine

Oooh you’re so jaded! Not the neocon “right,” you silly jelly beans, but the real “Right,” as in the Right Stuff.~ This week’s headliners tell the story of real love between the Obamas, the kind of love that we all search for; real love, given freely, without conditions. The Love that “conquereth all.”

Forever in contrast, the purveyors of hate in all its forms will one day disappear like dew before the sun, but until then, they should be exposed to the growing light of a new day dawning; the dawning of The Right Stuff. As the World Court War Crimes tribunal began deliberations, George W. Bush began groveling for leniency by spilling his guts about Darth Cheney’s evil plans for subjugation of the world. Cheney’s already famous quip, “I don’t recall doing evil” is just a portent of the unprecedented trial which continues to produce new indictments nearly every week. And don’t miss Angelina Jolie’s remarkably persuasive entreaty for summary execution of all public officials who betray the public trust, and her powerful call to recognize social and political disloyalty as being the most heinous of all crimes.

Rush Limbaugh, the man Ronald Reagan once called “the Number One voice for conservatism in our Country,” began serving a federal prison term for incitement to riot at the Democratic Convention of 2008. A grateful nation has welcomed his self-imposed “vow of silence” pending his “vindication of all wrong-doing” through the appeals process. You go, girlfriend.

Meanwhile, John McCain, already stumbling around the rapidly shrinking neocon talking head circuit fresh from divorce court, was blathering on in Dingus, Missouri this past week, where a trio of POWs handing him both sides of his own lying ass. A must read.

Even before the dust had settled from Obama’s landslide victory, the implosion of the GOP was a fait accompli, as Bill Krystal knowingly mused, “The pie will not go back in the pan.” The end of the two-party stranglehold on American politics just may be the biggest change wrought yet by the Obama revolution; get the big picture with our special report.

Until next week. . .

“Red Stripes” by Terry Kruger

The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) stated in a 2002 Memorial Day Address, that:

“Changing the date [Memorial Day is celebrated] merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed a lot to the general public’s nonchalant observance of Memorial Day.” Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye, a World War II veteran, has repeatedly introduced measures to return Memorial Day to its traditional day of May 30th, since 1987.”

Perhaps our most recent involvement in a war of choice and it’s resulting fall-out both socially and financially will challenge the “nonchalant observance” of Memorial Day this year. The truth is, those families who have lost fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters— family— to the insanity of war need no special day to remember their lost loved one(s), for theirs is a daily remembrance, and often a daily heartache that can never be characterized as “nonchalant.”

The grateful war dead themselves have moved on of course, to a higher estate, as sleeping survivors, or souls resurrected on the third day, in the manner Jesus demonstrated on Easter Sunday. We do not know if those who are resurrected are able to follow our doings, our current wars; but we can be sure they are no longer victims of the tragedy of the war that cut their mortal lives short, and that they are advancing in a universe of love and unending life. They are living in a progressive universe dedicated to the higher values of spirit existence and the divine values of truth, beauty, and goodness.

As we reflect on these “lost” loved ones, let us realize that we are the ones who remain in jeopardy from the hatred and animosity among so many nations and peoples on this backward little world of ours. This Memorial Day, may we be more determined than ever to find the ways and means to live in peace, harmony, and love with our fellow men, women, and children of all the nations on this planet.

Becoming the Trusting Child

IN OUR SEARCH FOR THE WAY, some attitudes are more helpful than others. When you were a small child and were gently pushed ahead by your mother, you had a knowledge that you were being safely guided through the unknown. That was a spacious open faith; an intuitive trust in a being you loved. Try to recapture today a feeling only half remembered deep within your memory, and in your imagination lie back in confidence and face the future with an open heart, knowing the Divine Presence that is gently pushing you is loving and kind; true, beautiful, and good.

Give out love; give generously of it, but keep in your silence. Build an area about yourself of a shock-absorbing substance, make an image of protection that will neutralize the natural alarms you may be called upon to experience. Laugh and be joyful, for that is healing to you and those around you who despair. Be humble, and human, and tender; be selfless and patient with the forgiveness that permits you to go to the altar; be simple. In fact be the trusting child pushed ahead, having the knowledge that you are in safekeeping, in loving hands.

If you can live like this in the midst of everyday confusion, then you have nothing to fear. Fast and pray; keep in this core of light within your within-ness and you will be free from dread and ache and fear. Fast in the mind, pray by accepting the joy of God and keep within where he abides. Go your way, blessed, before the holy company of the Divine Gift.

Restated from Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood 1948

• • •

The hope of a better nation— a better world—
is bound up in the progress and enlightenment of the individual.

• • •

[Due to formatting limitations in the comments section, I have chosen to reply on the main forum.]

Hi Stan:

Thanks for reminding us of the bigger picture. I’ll have fewer bald patches from frustrated hair-pulling that way.

A few passages from The Urantia Book (TUB) lit up my synapses as I read along. But in the ecumenical spirit you showed by quoting Wallace Stevens, let me first add this related thought from the great German idealist, Immanuel Kant:

“Enlightenment is the emergence of Man’s self-incurred immaturity.”

You wrote:

For two days following nine-eleven terrorism had already been defeated in a spiritual sense, by the unity of the world community, and needed only forward-looking leaders who could help people sustain that unity and expand on it, calling not only for the capture of the perpetrators but also for a truly reflective investigation into what had led people to want to do such a thing. Without this curiosity, we began just another endless conflict. . . This need for reflection before action, especially when gripped by fear, is something self-righteousness will only blind us to.

There’s a lot to unpackage here. Explicitly: fear, world community, forward looking leaders, curiosity, reflection. And implicitly, the roles that intelligent patriotism and emotional maturity should play in the response to events like 9/11.

Adjusting the lenses in my UB kaleidoscope accordingly (i.e., making those kaleidoscopic adjustments in the comprehension of meanings and values), I find the following passages instructive:

1. Unreasoned fear is a master intellectual fraud practiced upon the evolving mortal soul.

2. Political wisdom. Emotional maturity is essential to self-control. Only emotional maturity will insure the substitution of international techniques of civilized adjudication for the barbarous arbitrament of war. Wise statesmen will sometime work for the welfare of humanity even while they strive to promote the interest of their national or racial groups. Selfish political sagacity is ultimately suicidal — destructive of all those enduring qualities which insure planetary group survival.

3. The ideal state functions under the impulse of three mighty and coordinated drives: Love loyalty derived from the realization of human brotherhood. Intelligent patriotism based on wise ideals. Cosmic insight interpreted in terms of planetary facts, needs, and goals.

4. A moral society should aim to preserve the self-respect of its citizenry and afford every normal individual adequate opportunity for self-realization.

Since the last shall be first, I’ll start there.

(4) Self-realization is, naturally, a product of reflection and curiosity. Imagine a society where reflective meditation was actively encouraged, if not mandated outright. (”Woman, get thee to a nunnery!” would have a radically different meaning.) Europe seems to have a head start on us, where shorter work weeks and much longer vacations are de rigeur. Locally, initiatives like employer tax incentives and community zoning variances could help establish appropriate mediation and reflection centers. (Inspired by this passage, I started a non-profit 503c corporation some years back to network otherwise vacant vacation homes, time share condos and the like, for the purpose of “serving the servers”— providing the necessary space to recharge one’s physical, emotional and mental batteries.)

(3) While the whole tone of your piece underscores the need for the realization of human brotherhood and the role that cosmic insight plays in the context of planetary facts, needs, and goals, I would add a word about “intelligent patriotism.” Intelligent patriotism naturally stands in contrast to the kind of knuckle dragging nationalism reflected in the “My country right or wrong” slogan that leads to an end-justifies-the-means, “Kill’em all and let God sort’em out’ ethic— the implicit and explicit mantram of so much right wing media. One can lay claim to loving and being loyal to one’s country, but until we shift our individual and collective identities to the brotherhood of all humankind, war and lesser conflicts will continue as population pressures and resource demands escalate.

(2) If one needed to provide an example of the exact opposite of how an ideal state functions, one need only note the track record of the Bush Administration. Led by an incurious, emotionally arrested adolescent who has never had to account for his actions, it has brought monumental suffering to untold millions of innocent people. It’s neocon driven, “unipolar” foreign policy, and its “might makes right” national security strategy is exemplified by its self-proclaimed right to wage preventive war on anybody it wants— the very definition of war crimes that emerged from the Nuremberg Tribunals.

(1) Like the modifier “intelligent” used with patriotism, the modifier of “unreasoned” with respect to fear is a typical use of nuance by TUB’s authors. Evolutionarily speaking, fear is a survival function of our repto-mammal limbic system, a highly efficient threat assessment computer that emerged from millions years of adaptation to various environmental challenges. (This legacy of animal fear is what TUB refers to as “the mark of the beast,” so powerful that it isn’t completely expunged until considerable adjustments are made in the afterlife.) Politically speaking, it is the target of so much right wing Republican propaganda that it has succeeded it painting the Democrats as weak on national security. This, in turn, has prevented them from bringing the Iraq war/occupation to a close by the simple device of refusing to provide further funding for this highly immoral and destructive enterprise.

The good (and bad) news is that the economy has finally reached the breaking point where further expenditures cannot be sustained. Foreign countries (like Kuwait), which have provided the money (at interest) no longer seem willing to do so for sheer economic, if not political, reasons.

I would close with this very timely passage from TUB, which can be excused for being a bit self-referential, given the problem it addresses. It also serves as a useful theme for what I see as the purpose and potential of UrantianSojourn.com:

Hunger and love drove men together; vanity and ghost fear held them together. But these emotions alone, without the influence of peace-promoting revelations, are unable to endure the strain of the suspicions and irritations of human interassociations. Without help from superhuman sources the strain of society breaks down upon reaching certain limits, and these very influences of social mobilization— hunger, love, vanity, and fear— conspire to plunge mankind into war and bloodshed.

There’s a common misconception rampant in political and other discourse in the world today, and it leads to all kinds of injustice, terrorism, and other spiritual horrors. It’s the idea that love of what’s right is the same thing as hatred of what’s wrong. The two are like day and night. One heals, the other leads to endless conflict and destruction.

The world at this time of crisis on many levels needs to focus on strengthening what’s good, not just trying to destroy evil and enemies. We need to keep in mind the warning about the beam and the mote – what’s in your own head and heart when you’re condemning the faults of others – and remember that argumentative defense of any idea or agenda is missing the point not because the idea or agenda is wrong, but because the truth is not in our ideas but in the quality of our relationships with others, at all times, even especially in moments of disagreement.

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Thanks to Cartoonist: Mark Fiore