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When my son died, the walls of the dark hospital began to squeeze in late in the night, as the entire world pressed in on my heart. In that moment, I realized that the way we "run away from our lives" is all illusion. At that moment, no television program or sports event or tasty food or new car or shiny product could do anything to save me from the reality of life, even though the advertisers promised they could save me from anything, from everything, and give my life "true" meaning. At this moment, I realized that the whole world is in our hearts, and what is in our hearts eventually creates the world around us, and there is no escape from that quintessential reality. The pressure of that experience re-formed my heart, like coal pressured into a diamond. From that dark night, my broken heart opened to refract a new light of awareness, an expansive way of seeing my place in the world. After that moment, I knew I could not be unaffected by what occurs around me. This is why it so saddens my heart to see my nation giving up its soul for "safety." Because the reality is, there is no safety. There never was and never will be. Most of the world knows and accepts this, but we in the United States seem incapable of realizing that ultimately we are at the mercy of the hand of God. There is purpose even in fear and tragedy. To run from it at all costs is to run from the grace of God. Golden calves tempt us to believe that we can escape, that we can become absolutely "safe." But no matter how many bombs we build or fences we construct to keep people out, or to keep people in, it will not make us safe. No matter how many citizens we recruit to spy on one another, and no matter how many of God’s creatures we torture in laboratories to find miracle cures, we will never find the absolute safety that will make us invulnerable. However, in our obsessive quest to fulfill the dream of absolute safety, I fear we are realizing an Orwellian nightmare that is cold and heartless — not the kind of world we want our children to live in. Carl Jung wrote, "there can be no true joy, without being willing to experience appropriate pain." After September 11, 2001, Americans were interviewed on Canadian television. They were asked what they thought about innocent Afghanis killed by our bombing. The overwhelming majority replied, "too bad; somebody has to pay." Rather than feeling our pain, our despair, and our grieving, we lashed out. We continue this avoidance: our government is now asking postal workers, and cable, water, and gas workers to spy on their fellow Americans. We are imprisoning people without charging them for crimes, and we are unleashing bombs on people who have done us no wrong, and our government is calling fellow countrymen and women "traitors" for expressing dissent to this insane behavior. In the case of Iraq, we are about to unleash hell on those poor people, and why? So, that we don’t have to fear the possibility that one day they may do something to harm us. Using this logic, we could justify controlling the world as our fear and obsession expand. The Europeans do not support our preemptive invasion of Iraq because they remember a preemptive invasion of Poland; they realize you cannot attack just so you don’t have to worry anymore. The world has known fear, danger, and suffering, but America had experienced an immaculate grace for some years — until September 11. This could have inspired us to use that grace to lead others in caring for people, our environment, and our world. However, this grace has been wasted. We now supply the overwhelming majority of weapons to an agonized world, we consume half of the world’s resources while we are only 4% of the population, and we spew 25% of the CO2 causing global warming. We employ barbaric farming methods that cause untold agony for the livestock we’ve been given domain over. We imprison more of our children than any nation on Earth (except Russia), and now corporations that build prisons are watching their stock soar as we imprison more and more. Today, prisons and weapons are the choice investments. Golden calves meant to protect us from the will of God. We have become a snake eating its own tail, our obsessive quest for safety leading us to consume our host planet like a cancer, and to chew up our young in the monster factories called prisons. Yet our solutions are here and often simple, like manna from heaven. Six percent of U.S. land equipped with wind turbines could supply far more than our electrical needs demand. Organic agriculture and proper diet could alleviate many health problems. A war-like expenditure on pre-school and education (proven to decrease the likelihood of children ending up in prison) would end our obsessive need for more prisons and create hopeful children who contribute to society. By moving to an environmentally based economy, we could export our cutting-edge green technologies to an energy-hungry world, employ our people, make ourselves rich, and stop wasting vast resources in military ventures to protect foreign oil supplies. Manna from heaven. But, our hearts are locked around fear and conquest, prisons and defense. Our hearts cannot open to the greater truth. Until we can endure the pain of seeing how off track we have become, we cannot open to God’s grace. God waits patiently for our open hearts. It took the pain of my son’s death for me to see. I wonder how much global anguish and suffering it will take for our nation to rediscover its humility and regain its vision? When it does, our science can turn its eyes toward working in harmony with the natural world God has given us (rather than fearing and distorting it through genetic engineering). Social scientists can work toward solutions that nurture hope in our children and society (rather than more effective ways to imprison them). Medical scientists can help people maximize the natural healing abilities they have within, exploring new ways to maximize the benefits of natural health techniques created over centuries of research in China. Farmers can once again become the good stewards God implored them to be, raising livestock not pumped full of drugs or raised in terror. We can begin creating a world of limitless possibility where all life can be nurtured. We can foster generations of Einsteins to dream bigger dreams, until the world becomes so bright that our eyes of today are unable to stand its magnificent brilliance. The solutions are with us; they are often simple, and they are always waiting for us to open our hearts to them. God’s hands are extended. Within the wind and sun and waves, there are many times more energy than we could ever need. Within the forests and plains and deserts, there lie medicines that may hold the promise of alleviating great human suffering. Within the beasts of our world lies an opportunity for us to see ourselves as part of the web of life God wove here. Together, we can work to create a world of compassion, where livestock are not treated as meaningless, lifeless widgets, but as sacred gifts from God. There is so much promise and hope on this beautiful blue orb we call Earth. So much beauty. The vision of what is possible rends my heart. Bill Douglas, author of The Amateur Parent — A Book on Life, Death, War & Peace, and Everything Else in the Universe, writes columns for publications worldwide. He is also presenter in the acclaimed video/DVD program, T’ai Chi & Qigong: The Prescription for the Future. Both are available on <amazon.com>. |
