The Global Conversation

Category: Headline

  • OUR WORLD MUST COME TO
    AN END THIS MONTH

    We have gone as far as we can go. We can’t go any further. I know that nobody wants to hear this (it’s been said over and over again now for 25 years), but the way we are living — what we are doing spiritually, politically, economically, environmentally, educationally, and socially — is totally and utterly unsustainable.

    In every one of those areas, it is unsustainable. The world as we are running it must end. Now. That is what the whole “2012 Phenomenon” is all about. It is not about the end of the world, it is about the end of the world as we know it. It is about re-birthing ourselves. The question is not whether something needs to be done about the way humanity has been living, the question is: What?

    The answer is not a mystery. We must change. But what must we change, specifically? And how do we change it? Those become the operational questions. Those become the functional inquiries. Those become the central issues of our time.

    We have the answer here.

    We must change our Cultural Story. We must rewrite it, from the very first chapter. We must launch a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its beliefs in a virulent, violent, and vindictive God.

    Why? Why bring our beliefs about God into this? Because the beliefs held about God by billions of people — including the belief that there is no God — is what creates the belief of billions of people about themselves, about each other, and about the purpose and function of Life Itself. And that is what creates the world around us. The unsustainable world around us.

    We can no longer survive as a species by holding the beliefs that we hold. This is not an answer that I just made up. This is the answer that has been given to us by God.

    In the book The New Revelations (2002) the following dialogue with God appears. Have you ever read it? More important, what are you willing to do about it?

    Tell you what. Decide, after you read this interaction with God. I dare you to do it. Read it all the way to the end. Right now. Dare you.

    I understand that our world now lives in a 120-word sound-bite mentality, but I put this opening dialogue before you nonetheless. Is it worth ten minutes of your time to find out what’s really going on here? What appears below are the first few words in a dialogue with God that occurred at this time of year ten years ago…

     

    God, please be here. We need help.

    I am here.

    We need help.

    I know.

    Right now.

    I understand.

    The world is on the brink of disaster. And I’m not talking about natural disaster; I’m talking about man-made calamity.

    I know. And you’re right.

    I mean, humans have had disagreements before, and serious ones, but now our divisions and disagreements can lead not simply to wars—which are bad enough—but to the end of civilization as we know it.

    That is correct. You have assessed the situation correctly.

    You understand the severity of the problem, you simply do not understand the nature of the problem. You do not know what is causing it. So you keep trying to solve it at every level except the level at which it exists.

    Which is?

    The level of belief.

    The problem facing the world today is a spiritual problem.

    Your ideas about spirituality are killing you.

    You keep trying to solve the world’s problem as if it was a political problem, or an economic problem, or even a military problem, and it is none of these. It is a spiritual problem.  And that is the one problem human beings don’t seem to know how to solve.

    Then help us.

    I am.

    How?

    In many ways.

    Name one.

    This book.

    This book will help us?

    It can.

    What do we have to do?

    Read it.

    And then what?

    Heed it.

    That’s what they all say. “It’s all in The Book,” they say. “Read it and heed it. That’s all you have to do.” The problem is, they all hold up a different book.

    I know.

    And every book says something else.

    I know.

    So now we should “read and heed” this book?

    It’s not a question of what you should do.
    It’s a question of what you may do if you choose to.
    It is an invitation, not a requirement.

    Why would I want to read this book when I’ve already been told by True Believers that all the answers are in the other books—the books that they are telling me to heed?

    Because you have not heeded them.

    Yes, we have. We believe that we have.

    That’s why you now need help. You believe that you have, but you have not.

    You keep saying that your Holy Book (each of your cultures has a different one) is what has given you the authority to treat each other the way you are treating each other, to do what you are doing.

    You are able to say that only because you have not really listened to the deeper message of these books. You have read them, but you have not really listened to them.

    But we have. We are doing what they say we should be doing!

    No. You are doing what YOU say that they say you should be doing.

    What does that mean?

    It means that the basic message of all the sacred scriptures is the same. What is different is how human beings have been interpreting them.

    There is nothing “wrong” with having different interpretations. What may not benefit you, however, is separating yourself over these differences, making each other wrong because of these differences, and killing each other as a result of these differences.

    This is what you are now doing.

    It is what you have been doing for quite some time.

    You cannot agree even within a particular group of you, much less between groups, about what a particular book says and what it means, and you use these disagreements as justifications for slaughter.

    You argue among yourselves about what the Qur’an says, and about what its words mean. You argue among yourselves about what the Bible says, and about what its words mean.  You argue among yourselves about what the Veda says, what the Bhagavad-Gita says, what the Lun-yü says, what the Pali Canon says, what the Tao-te Ching says, what the Talmud says, what the Hadith says, what the Book of Mormon says…

    And what of the Upanishad, the I Ching, the Adi Granth, the Mahabharata, the Yoga-sutras, the Mathnawi, the Kojiki?

    Okay, we get the point.

    No, actually, you don’t. And that’s the point. The point is, there are many holy writings and sacred scriptures, and you act as if there is only one.

    It is your sacred scripture that is really sacred. All the rest are poor substitutes at best, and blasphemies at worst.

    Not only is there only one Sacred Scripture, there is also only one way to interpret that Scripture: your way.

    This spiritual arrogance is what has caused you your greatest sorrow as a species. You have suffered more—and caused other people to suffer more—over your ideas about God than over your ideas about anything else in the human experience.

    You have turned the source of the greatest joy into the source of your greatest pain.

    That’s crazy. Why is that? Why have we done that?

    Because there is one thing for which human beings seem willing to give up everything.

    They will give up love, they will give up peace, they will give up health, harmony, and happiness, they will give up safety, security, and even their sanity, for this one thing.

    What?

    Being right.

    You are willing to give up everything you’ve ever worked for, everything you’ve ever wanted, everything you’ve ever created, in order to be “right.”

    Indeed, for this you are willing to give up Life itself.

    = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

     

    (End of this excerpt. Next in this space: take a step with us. Help create a New Cultural Story for our species. Answer the following question: Who will join Humanity’s Team? Place your answer in the Comment section below. But be careful. Because if your answer is yes, you’re going to be asked to take part in the biggest civil rights movement in the history of humanity. A Civil Rights Movement for the Soul.)

     

     

  • N.Y. COP GIVES HOMELESS
    MAN THE BOOT IN TIMES SQUARE

    A New York policeman has given the boot — two boots, actually — to a homeless man who was doing nothing but sitting peacefully on the sidewalk on a recent frigid night.

    Police officer Larry DePrimo, of New York’s City’s Sixth Precinct, has drawn the attention of hundreds of thousands of Facebook users as a result of his actions. He was away from his usual precinct, assigned to patrol Times Square a few nights ago.

    Officer DePrimo saw the homeless man sitting on the sidewalk on Seventh Avenue near Forty-Fourth Street, with bare feet. No shoes, no socks. So he gave him the boot. First, he bent down beside the man and said, “Hey, what’s up? Where are your shoes and socks?” The man replied simply, “I never had a pair of shoes.”

    “All I remember.” the cop told the press later, “is that it as extremely cold outside, and all I wanted to do was help this gentleman.”

    The policeman went to a nearby shoe store and said, “Look, this gentleman has no shoes and no socks. I need to get something for him. Something that will last. I don’t care what it cost.” He then spent $100 of his own money to buy a pair of thermal socks and insulated winter boots. The store clerk used his employee discount to cut the price in half.

    The officer then knelt down next to the homeless man and put the socks and boots on him. A passerby from Arizona snapped a picture of the kind act and posted it on Facebook. It went viral within minutes. Soon, the officer was the subject of massive media coverage. He was brought before a press conference. He was on the morning talk shows. He was honored by the NYPD, personally presented special cufflinks by the city’s police commissioner.

    “I feel very humbled,” he said, to be on the same force and in the same company “with all the officers who are real heroes,” who’ve put their life on the line in extreme situations. What he did, he told the press, with “nothing. I was just doing my job. But I just want to say that all cops really aren’t bad….and this is just something we do every day.”

    All of us know this is true. For every rare instance where police have behaved poorly, there are thousands of moments such as this. We all know that. It is good to be made aware of it again with such heart-warming evidence.

    To see the snapshot of Officer Larry DePrimo kneeling down to help the homeless man (who thanked the policeman profusely and then quietly walked away), click here.

  • WORLD MOVING TO TOTALLY
    TRANSPARENT SOCIETY

    Should people’s “privacy” be protected, even if it allows them to get away with breaking the law? Even if it allows them to get away with murder?

    Should women be allowed to travel without their husbands being notified by the government?

    Should businesses be allowed to pay two different employers different wages for doing the same work in the same way in the same amount of time?

    Should anyone ever have “secrets” from anyone? And if so, why? Why is it so hard for human beings to simply live with the truth?

    These are the questions that are going to be placed before humanity in the years just ahead as technology races ahead of individuals’ ability to control it, and governments seize more and more power to use it to enter people’s “private” lives.

    A remarkable police case in Rhode Island in 2009 brings the case for transparency home in major ways, and in very clear ways. In that case, a woman had called emergency services at 911 to say that she had found her 6-year-old son was not moving that morning.

    An ambulance crew arrived at the woman’s apartment, found the child unconscious in his bed, and raced him to the hospital. A police officer who also responded to the call stayed behind for a moment, talking with the mother’s boyfriend, who was in the apartment at the time, as the child was taken to the hospital with the mother.

    The officer heard a cellphone beep in the kitchen, papers filed with a court said, and when he picked up the phone from the counter he saw a message: “Wat if I got 2 take him 2 da hospital wat do I say and dos marks on his neck omg.”

    The message appeared to be from the child’s mother to her boyfriend, court documents said. The man was taken to the police station for questioning, and his cellphone was seized.

    The boy died by nightfall, court records indicating that the cause of death was “blunt force trauma to the abdomen which perforated his small intestine,” according to press reports.

    Police then obtained search warrants for the cellphones of both the man and the child’s mother, as well as their relatives. In addition, they obtained records from the cellphone companies that provided carrier services to the phones in question, with records of phone calls and voice mail messages.

    But a judge in the case ruled almost three years later that police had no right to look at the phone without a search warrant. The phone, she said in her ruling, was not in plain view, nor did the owner of the phone give consent to have it searched. The boyfriend should be able to have a reasonable expectation that text messages to and from the child’s mother would not be seen or seized, the court ruled, and then threw out all the evidence that police had gathered with their warrants. The judge also suppressed evidence regarding the original text message that had drawn the police officer’s attention to begin with.

    That case is now on appeal to the Rhode Island supreme court, with the defendant remaining in custody during the appeal process.

    Meanwhile, in a far less serious, but nonetheless groundbreaking incident last week, a Saudi Arabian couple was traveling outside their country when the husband received a text message on his cellphone alerting him that his wife had left the country. Both the husband and the wife were surprised — and outraged — that the government had informed the husband of his wife’s travels without her permission or his request.

    They found out that in Saudi Arabia, when a woman presents her passport to border control agents, her “guardian” is immediately notified — whether he requested to be told or not.

    Every female in Saudi Arabia has a male “guardian,” or mahram. Traditionally this is a father, husband, or brother. The mahram can register with the country’s Interior Ministry to be notified if the woman over whom he has guardianship has traveled outside the nation’s borders. But apparently, as of last week, mahrams are now being automatically notified whether they registered and requested to be or not.

    This may not seem strange in a country where women are not given the right to drive (the only country in the world where this is true). They are also not allowed to go to school or hold a job without permission from their “guardian.”

    But the question of a mahram being notified by text message of the travels of the woman of whom he is the “guardian” raises larger issues within the context of the new world within which we now live — and are going to increasingly be encountering. The question is: What, if anything, is “wrong” with Total Transparency as a lifestyle? And, of course, the same kind of transparency would have to apply to men as well as women. Wives would then be notified of the whereabouts of their husbands at all times.

    Conversations with God says that in highly evolved societies there would be no secrets of any kind, and that all things would be known by everyone. Moreover, says CWG, highly evolved beings would have no need or desire for secrets or privacy of any kind.

    Total transparency in personal relationships, in governance, in business and industry, in commerce, and in all areas of life would be the standard practice.

    Prices and costs for goods and services, for instance, would be transparent, with businesses voluntarily placing two figures on their price tags: “Our Cost/Your Price.”

    Companies, likewise, would voluntarily pass around information sheets each month to all employees, listing the income and benefit packages of all workers, so that everyone would know to the penny what everyone else is getting for the services they are providing.

    What do you think? Assuming the standard of complete visibility was applied equally to all companies, agencies of government, and individuals (which, many would argue, will never happen…but, assuming that it did)…would you be willing to live in a society of Total Transparency?

    What “secrets” and “privacy” do you think people, companies, or governments should have a right to maintain…and why? What reason would anyone have to keep something a secret from anyone else? If all things were known by everyone, wouldn’t the world be a better place? Does WikiLeaks make you angry, or happy, that government maneuverings are becoming more and more revealed?

    Your comments…?

  • ANGLICAN CHURCH DECIDES:
    NO PENIS, NO MITRE

    The lay members of the top legislative body of the Church of England have voted never to allow any priest among its clergy who does not have a penis to be consecrated as a bishop within their church.

    In a vote that defied outright the wishes of a striking majority of its own present bishops and priests, members of the House of Laity of the General Synod of the church fell a handful of votes short of reaching the two-thirds majority within their category of the synod required to approve a change of rules that would allow persons with a vagina to rise to the level of bishop within the leadership of the church.

    The synod is divided into three units: the House of Bishops, the House of Clergy, and the House of Laity. All three units must each separately reach a two-thirds majority of its voting members in order to overturn present church law, according to media reports.

    On the matter of allowing females to become bishops, the three houses voted collectively to approve the measure by a 75% majority. But the breakdown came when one of the houses did not reach a two-thirds majority in its indivivdual vote. The House of Bishops last Tuesday voted 44-3 in favor, with two abstentions. The vote in the House of Clergy was 148-45 in favor. The vote in the House of Laity was 132-74 — just six votes short of the two-thirds majority needed in that body, the New York Times and CNN both reported.

    Women are presently allowed to be ordained as priests in the Church of England, and indeed, one-third of its priests are female. Women may hold other senior positions as well, such as canons or archdeacons, so it is apparently not a question of the spiritual or intellectual qualifications of females that causes conservative lay members to consistently vote against female elevation to the highest offices within the church. It is, it would seem, a lack of a particular physical characteristic. The church’s lay persons have laid down the law: No penis, no mitre.

    The overwhelming support of the House of Bishops itself could not persuade enough of the church’s regular members to support a reform that has been 15 years in the attempting. A sufficient number of lay people within the church have made it clear: In the House of Bishops it shall always be: Vaginas Not Allowed.

    Unless something radical occurs within the Church, the three houses of its General Synod will not even have another opportunity to vote again on the proposal to allow female bishops for another five years, according to procedural rules.

    Reaction to last week’s vote was negative and strong from the majority of priests and bishops within the church — perhaps the most candid from the spiritual leader of the church himself, the Archbishop of Canterbury. After the vote, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams told the General Synod: “We have, to put it very bluntly, a lot of explaining to do. Whatever the motivation for voting…whatever the theological principle on which people acted and spoke, the fact remains that a great deal of this discussion is not intelligible to our wider society. Worse than that, it seems as if we are willfully blind to some of the trends and priorities of that wider society.”

    Somewhat startling is the fact that, even in this first quarter of the 21st Century, when the question of women’s equality seems that it has been asked and answered by human society in most places, in the very sector of society where one would expect it is to resolved absolutely without discrimination toward any human beings — namely, Religion: the major institutions promoting God — the proclaiming of women as Second Class Citizens continues to be a major pillar and principle of its most sacred beliefs.

  • PUBLISHER CALLS FOR ABOLISHING
    THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY

    Thanksgiving Day, of course, is one of the biggest family holidays of the year in the United States. But I have an idea about this holiday that is different from most Americans. I think that the holiday should be abolished.

    I don’t think that Thanksgiving should be a holiday at all. I think it should be a holy day, and placed on the calendar of all sacred days and events.

    I also think we should change the way that Thanksgiving is celebrated. Forget about sitting down to a big meal and offering thanks to God for all the bounty that has been received during the past year. Instead, create a new ritual. Sit down together and thank God for all the goodness that is to come.

    Do not go around the table and have each guest tell what he or she has to be thankful for. Rather, go around the table and have each guest say what they are going to be thankful for in the coming year — and then have everyone give thanks right then and there, ahead of time. For that matter, repeat the ritual every day for the next year. Sincerely believe and be grateful for receiving the gifts that you just know will shower down upon you from God’s limitless bounty.

    In Conversations with God the message about gratitude is clear. It is the most powerful form of prayer. Gratitude in advance, not gratitude after the fact.

    This is because to thank God in advance for something is the highest form of faith. It is a statement of supreme confidence. It is the Ultimate Knowing.

    When we come from this Place of Knowing, we move into an energy that creates miracles.

    The most powerful prayer that I ever heard is only 17 words long:

    Thank you, God, for helping me to understand that this problem has already been solved for me.

    So, while it is well and good to say “thanks” for things past, especially with other human beings to whom we owe a word of gratitude, it is extremely empowering to thank God ahead of time for all the goodness that will flow to you in the coming year. It is even more powerful to decide ahead of time what that goodness will be.

    Make a list. Check it twice. Write down all that you choose to have happen between Thanksgiving 2012 and Thanksgiving 2013. Read your list out loud at dinner. Encourage others to do the same. Share and Declare. There are few things more inspiring and powerful than public declaration.

    Suddenly, Thanksgiving 2012 will have a new meaning. It will now be about Sharing and Declaring. It will be about Knowing and Growing. We grow into what we know.

    So I think that Thanksgiving should not be a mere holiday. It should be elevated to a Holy Day. It should be the holiest day of the year. The day on which we say “thanks be to God” for all the wonder, all the abundance, and all the joys of life we anticipate and that we know in our hearts God is sending us in the coming year.

    It should be the holiest day of the year because gratitude is the most sacred tool in the Creator’s Toolbox. With it anything can be produced, anything can be created, anything can be experienced!

    Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

  • WHAT WOULD IT TAKE FOR HUMANS
    TO STOP KILLING EACH OTHER?

    “All attack is called Self Defense.”

    I have been reminded of that insight over and over again for the past week as Israel and Hamas have inched closer and closer to the next level of their seemingly endless combat that could lead to an all out war in Gaza.

    Humanity has been trying to figure out how to bring an end to war since living beings evolved into self-consciousness on this planet. From those very first moments we have found reasons to oppose each other. From those very first moments we have found reasons to fight each other. From those very first moments we have found reasons to kill each other. It has never stopped, from those very first moments to this very moment.

    I would venture to say that there has not been one day — not one single day — since the beginning of recorded history when one human being has not killed another. And I don’t mean by accident. I mean deliberately. With purposeful intent.

    Not one.

    Single.

    Day.

    …in thousand and thousands of years.

    And now here we go again, on this particular day, trying to see just how many people we can kill in the main cities of Israel by showering rockets down upon them, or in the populated areas of Gaza, with air strikes raining bombs.

    And as I write this, the talk is of a massive build-up of Israeli troops on the Gaza-Israeli border, prepared to launch a ground assault on a moment’s notice.
    What has caused, and “who started,” this latest up tick in the hostilities between these parties is almost irrelevant at this stage. Each side, of course, insists that it is only defending itself. And it is. Seen from each side’s point of view, all each side is doing is defending itself.

    Aggression is always called defense. And aggression takes many forms. Not all of it is military. And so it is true that each side in this ongoing conflict has “aggressed” against the other repeatedly over the years. And one has to go back a half-century or more to get to the root of the cause of all of this. And even then the history doesn’t matter. All that matters today is what it would take to end the killing, to end the aggression and counter-aggression that is threatening to embroil a whole region — and even, conceivably, the entire world at some level, if not directly — in a war that could prove unspeakably tragic for the entire human race.

    In the past several days I have been reading a wonderful book by MSNBC’s commentator Chris Matthews, Jack Kennedy/Elusive Hero. America’s slain President was personally and intimately familiar with the savagery, barbarity, hideousness and atrocity of war, having served as a PT boat commander in World War II, losing a brother and a brother-in-law in the conflict, and earning the Navy and Marine Medal for “extremely heroic conduct” when he swam for hour hours to a tiny island in the Pacific, tugging a wounded comrade behind him, the strap of the fellow soldier’s life vest between his teeth, after his PT boat had been rammed and split in two by an enemy destroyer. Kennedy lost two men under his command in the incident — and saved the lives of 8 others. The ordeal was something that he, of course, never forgot.

    Chris Matthews writes that shortly after the war ended, the future president wrote in a letter to one of his war buddies, “We must face the truth the people have not been horrified by war to a sufficient extent to force them to go to any extent rather than have another war.”

    Those words, written 60 years ago, are as true today as they were then — and as they have been for centuries.

    Indeed, for millennia.

    I have always thought that any human problem can be solved by talking about it. I have said this to my children. I have said this to my wife and to my extended family and to my friends. I have said this in public, at lectures and in spiritual renewal retreats and personal development workshops. I have said this on-the-air in radio and television broadcasts, and in writing in newspaper stories and magazine articles. I still believe that. But we have to talk about the right things.

    There are some who say that human beings cannot — simply cannot, for reasons of biology, genetics, you name it — stop themselves from needing to be right…to say nothing of killing each other over their differences.  And the problem becomes, what do you do when the other party won’t listen? What’s left when all the talking has achieved nothing? When one or both parties are intractable? When no one will give an inch? Or when one gives an inch and the other takes advantage of it?

    How do you solve it when talking simply does not, will not, has not, and cannot?

    The answer is that we all need to talk more — but in an entirely different way. We need, as an entire group called humanity, to talk about not what is going on, but why.

    And that is something that no one wants to talk about.

    Or, at least, very few people do. Because it is going to put the spotlight on — and may be even ask people to change — beliefs. And that is something that many people would rather die than do. And so, they are achieving exactly that outcome.

    Conversations with God famously said, “No one does anything inappropriate, given their model of the world.” This is the same as saying that everybody believes that they are acting correctly — given the way they see themselves and see life in any given moment.

    What humanity needs to do, then, is talk about its model of the world. When our model of the world, our whole idea about Life and what it is and what it’s for and how it works and why it exits and who and what God is (if there even is a “God” at all) — when the whole construction produces nothing but anger, crisis, violence, killing, and war…and has done so for thousands of years…isn’t it time to question some prior assumptions?

    We need to talk about Who We Are and What We Believe and How We Imagine Life To Be and Where We As A Species Wish To Go, and When We Are Willing To Do What It Takes To Get There.

    And we need to request, invite, plead, beg, implore, entreat, petition, ask, call on, and beseech our world’s leaders in government, politics, economics, religion, the military, education, and every area of human endeavor to place these subjects at the top of their agenda. We need to call these the Five Required Topics at any meeting that any of them have about anything whatsoever anywhere in the world at any time.

    Let’s call upon our leaders now. Right now. Our world’s leaders need someone to lead them. We thought they were going to lead us, but they can’t. Or won’t. So we need to lead them.

    You know who to write to. Write to them. You know whom to contact. Contact them. Then post The Agenda to Save Humanity From Itself on every website, in every newspaper or magazine Letters-to-the-Editor column, on every feedback forum of every television show, every week of your life. Do it. Once a week, every week.

    Are you willing to do it?

  • MAJOR CRIME SPREE HITS SARASOTA

    A series of horrible crimes has hit the golden city of Sarasota, Florida, according to news reports, and the city government itself has had to marshal all of its forces — from the city manager to the police department to the depart of public works — to forestall a complete collapse of civility and safety, law and order there.

    First to be arrested in a crime sweep last Sunday was 28-year-old Darren Kersey, a homeless man, who was charged with charging. He did not charge the officer who arrested him on the charge of charging, and because he was homeless he could not charge on a credit card the $500 bail required to be released on the charging charge, so the charge of charging landed him in jail for the night, where the police were put in charge of him.

    To explain further, Mr. Kersey was charged with charging his cell phone at a public electric outlet in a picnic shelter in the city’s Gillespie Park. The arresting officer was not a mere patrolman, but a sergeant on the city’s police force, Anthony Frangioni, who wrote in his arrest report that he told Mr. Kersey that the “theft of city utilities will not be tolerated during this bad economy,” according to a news report in The Sarasota Herald Tribune which may be found here…

    http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20121112/ARTICLE/121119888

    Sgt. Frangioni, as a 14-year-veteran of the police force, knew a serious crime when he saw one, and took immediate action to protect the citizens of what in 2006 was labeled the “meanest city” in the nation by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty and the National Coalition for the Homeless.

    The charge of charging against Mr. Kersey, standing alone, might be considered a minor offense — if an offense at all — but his crime is part of a larger and escalating problem at Gillespie Park, according to news reports. Apparently, more than a few homeless people use the electrical outlet there to charge their cell phones. They carry the phones, they say, so that they are able to call 911 should they ever need to. They also try to stay in touch with whatever friends or family they have left, the Herald Tribune story said.

    Residents living near the park have started complaining, not only about the charging of cell phones, but the escalating situation when a homeless woman in an electric wheelchair stopped to charge her chair. And the crime spree goes further, the Gillespie Park Neighborhood Association says. According to the Herald Tribune report, the association president said in a letter to city officials that the stealing of electricity was not the only crime being committed at the location by the homeless. They were also burning wood in the park’s grills to keep warm, sleeping in the park overnight, and smoking and drinking in the park, her letter said.

    To stop at least the first of these rampant crimes from continuing, the municipality recently sent a crew from the city, accompanied by a police captain, to the park to shut down all electric power at the location.

    This left the homeless lady, identified as Maura “Cookie” Wood, with only an hour’s power left in her wheelchair, but it did stop the electricity theft crime wave. At least for an hour. Sixty minutes later that the park’s power was turned back on, with the city manager calling the shut-off a misunderstanding. Or, as he termed it in his own words, an “oops,” according to a follow-up Herald Tribune story, found here:

    http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20121113/ARTICLE/121119842?p=4&tc=pg

    Meanwhile Mr. Kersey, the criminal originally arrested for the flagrant broad-daylight theft of the city’s electricity, said when he was interviewed later by the newspaper, that he wondered if perhaps his arrest on the charging charge might have been motivated by police Sgt. Frangioni being angry at him for walking over to the sergeant’s patrol car and snapping a picture of the car’s license plate after Mr. Kersey observed the officer arresting another homeless man for smoking in the park. Police officers have been known to react with anger when citizens try to make a record of their actions when seeking to put a stop to major offenses such as people smoking in a public park.

    Such lawlessness cannot and will not be allowed in Sarasota, if press reports are to be believed. A major crackdown will apparently be required to keep the members of the Gillespie Park Neighborhood Association safe.

    Oh…a final note: The charging charge against Mr. Kersey was dropped when he appeared in court as ordered the morning after he spent the night in jail. Circuit Judge Charles Williams threw the case out — but not quite soon enough. When Mr. Kersey reported for work at his new job as a laborer at a flower shop, a position he had just landed days before his arrest, he was fired for not showing up because he was in jail that morning, awaiting his arraignment in court.

    But justice had been done in Sarasota, where the citizens can be proud of their police force and their city manager.

  • RECONCILIATION WITH GAYS, WOMEN ON NEW SPIRITUAL LEADER’S AGENDA

    There is hope. Today there is a little hope. Not as much as we might have liked, but a little more than we might have expected. And that’s a better sign than it is a worse one. That’s an Up arrow, and not a Down.

    On Friday the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury (who is to members of the Anglican Communion something of what the Pope is to Roman Catholics — although outside of England more in a titular sense ) promised to bring “a passion for reconciliation” to his new job.

    The 105th spiritual leader of the 77-million member worldwide Anglican Church is having to deal with what all of today’s global leaders — spiritual leaders, political leaders, business leaders, environmental leaders, or educational leaders — are these days encountering: an open and widening schism between “conservatives” and “liberals” in each of their fields, across the planet.

    The newest global spiritual leader, Rt. Rev. Bishop Justin Welby, hopes to resolve continuing discontent within his global congregation surrounding gay marriage and women bishops. Most conservatives within the Anglican church resoundingly oppose both. The Rev. Mr. Welby says he supports “the Church of England’s opposition to same-sex marriage,” although he has stated that he is “always averse to the language of exclusion, when what we are called to is to love in the same way as Jesus Christ loves us.” The new Archbishop of Canterbury does, on the other hand, support the consecration of female bishops. So he is halfway to where a spiritual leader offering a new direction for our world might wish to place himself.

    What spiritual reason there could be to oppose the uniting of loving couples who wish to commit their lives to each other, or to oppose the elevation of female clergy to top level church leadership, in each case simply on the basis of the shape of their body parts, is incomprehensible. Yet there are billions of people across the earth who apparently believe that their views in opposition are God’s views. The new Archbishop of Canterbury can, if he now chooses to, show them that God holds no such views at all. But to do this, he will have to bridge an enormous gap.

    The widening schism in the ideas people hold with regard to “what God wants” was predicted in the Conversations with God books, which said that as the world moved toward the embracing of A New Spirituality, the population of Earth would essentially divide itself into those who wish to cling to the ways of the past and those who wish to adopt the ways of the future (described as more progressive and far less dogmatic).

    The next 30 years will see the final struggle of this dying culture to hold on to its fading ideas, CWG predicts, but will fail to do so — with wonderful results as an outcome in the social, political, spiritual, economical, educational, and environmental arenas. This transformation to a new breed of human will not be without rising and massive opposition, however, because new and untried ideas are almost always considered by humans to be less desirable than old ideas — even old ideas that clearly do not work. At least they are known, at least they are familiar, and so, at least they are comfortable.

    And while Conversations with God observes that “life begins at the end of your Comfort Zone,” it says there will be many persons, glued to Old School thought, who remain stuck, refusing to be pried from what they view not as “ideas that no longer work,” but as their most sacred principles.

    An erstwhile candidate for the U.S. Senate in the State of Indiana, Richard Mourdock, perhaps exemplified this personality type when he spoke to supporters following his loss in the recent American election. In his concession speech in a race that he was widely predicted just a week ago to easily win, Mourdock said, “As I will look back on this night over the weeks, the months, the years ahead…I will look back knowing that I was attacked for standing for my principles.”

    And the “principle” on which he stood? The idea that a pregnancy which results from a rape is something “that God intended,” and for that reason abortion should be opposed and outlawed — even in cases of rape or incest.

    The first half of his thought is actually so radical that it could easily have come from the messages of The New Spirituality. Conversations with God says that all outcomes in life are “what God intended,” or they could not have occurred. CWG does not envision a universe in which God is somehow out of control and relegated to standing by and watching things happen that God did not want to have happen.

    On the contrary, CWG says, everything that occurs — everything — happens for a reason. Everything that occurs is collaboratively created by Life itself, and by all Souls, in order to produce a Contextual Field within which, on Earth, each Individuation of Divinity (that is, each human being) may announce and declare, create and express, become and experience the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever they held about Who They Are.

    And so, Mr. Mourdock was accurate, according to The New Spirituality, in his remark. It was, according to these new spiritual messages, his conclusion that was off the mark. And it was this conclusion that pushed Indiana voters away from him in droves.

    Mr. Mourdock’s conclusion was that because a pregnancy resulting from vicious and violent assault upon a woman was something God intended, the woman should not be allowed by law to have (and, in his view, should not even request or seek) an abortion. Or even the option to have an abortion.

    Never mind if a woman’s idea of the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever she held about Who She Is, is a human being who would never choose to bring life into the world that was conceived against her will and in violence on her person. Never mind if a woman’s idea of the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever she held about Who She Is, is a human being who chooses not to endure and experience the unwanted outcome of an undeserved and brutal physical attack. Never mind if the woman wants to have the baby. She is supposed to have the baby because having the baby is what God wants, or she wouldn’t have become pregnant.

    That is such convoluted thinking that it defies description. It is equaled in its astonishing lack of intelligence only by the remark by another losing Republican U.S. Senate candidate, Mr. Todd Akin of Missouri, who said during his campaign that a woman’s biology automatically prevents her from conceiving an unwanted child in cases of “legitimate rape.” A female’s physiology “shuts that down,” he said — but, presumably, not in the case of illegitimate rape.

    Mr. Akin’s comment is equaled in its conservative, hang-onto-the-dogma-of-the-past-no-matter-what attitude only by the remark offered by incumbent (also losing) Republican Congressional Candidate Joe Walsh in his own 2012 campaign, who said that abortion should not be allowed even to save the life of the mother because “with modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” in which an abortion would be needed to save the life of a mother.

    Faced with an avalanche of protest — not just from “liberals” but from the usually very conservative medical community —  Mr. Walsh amended his foolish remark later by saying that “in rare instances” such a procedure might possibly be needed, but it was too late. His soon-to-be-former constituents could, apparently, only in rare instance embrace this level of mentality. He did not receive enough votes to remain in the U.S. Congress.

    The list of far right wing conservatives who have made statements bordering on the absurd goes on, and typifies the pronouncements of those who insist on clinging to Old School dogma even in the face of clear and obvious evidence that their views are not simply outdated, but flatly and factually inaccurate.

    But inaccuracy is not the greatest offense against the future committed by the “I’m-stuck-and-glued-to-this-place” conservatives around the world. Obstructionism is.

    The Minority Leader in the U.S. Senate, Republican Mitch McConnell, famously and loudly declared just weeks after the first election of Barack Obama in 2008 that the sole and only agenda of Republicans in the U.S. Congress over the ensuing four years would be to stop Mr. Obama from winning a second term.

    From that day on he preached nothing to his GOP colleagues in Washington but obstruct, obstruct, obstruct — even (and especially) it the President’s idea happened to be a good one. The idea was to deny Mr. Obama credit for anything, so that the country would have to eject him from the White House.

    Mr. Mourdock likewise sent a message to his constituents in a television interview months ago, just hours after he won his party’s nomination to run for the U.S. Senate in Indiana. “Bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view,” he said. “The highlight of politics,” he said, “is to inflict my opinion on someone else.” He later claimed that his remarks were either meant as a joke or where taken out of context.

    It didn’t matter. The voters in Indiana found them not at all funny, rejecting Mr. Mourdock in a shocking defeat for the Republicans, who had previously called his election a sure bet.

    Senator McConnell seems equally determined to completely ignore the fact that his tactics over the preceding 48 months had produced utter failure (Mr. Obama was victorious in eight of nine so-called “swing states” and won the popular vote by a margin of more than two million). Within days of Mr. Obama having been re-elected, Mr. McConnell was at it again, issuing what news reports on Politico.com called “a stark warning to Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama who see their election victories as a clear mandate to raise taxes on the rich: He won’t let it happen.”

    And so, America seems to be in for another four years of Republican obstructionism, in which the value of anyone’s ideas is deemed less important than the source of them. If they come from Democrats, they must be labeled bad, and they must be defeated, no matter what. No matter who suffers. Even if it is your own country.

    But what we are seeing is not just about a particular political party. It is about “conservatism” versus “liberalism” all over the world. It is about, in some very large ways, “yesterday” versus “tomorrow.”

    In spirituality it is about Yesterday’s God vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s God. In economics it is about Yesterday’s Commerce vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s Commerce. In the environment it is about Yesterday’s Ecology vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s God Ecology. In politics it is about Yesterday’s Solutions vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s Solutions. In the culture and society it is about Yesterday’s Cultural Mores vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s Cultural Mores.

    (For instance, several states in the U.S. voted to legalize same sex marriage last week; as well, some states voted to legalize recreational use of marijuana. Both stances were considered impossible to consider just one or two elections ago.)

    Soon, these issues — just as the issue of whether the government should have any say, much less be able to intervene, in a woman’s decision on abortion — will be considered Resolved Questions. The American electorate will be ready to move on. On to other cultural/social issues, such as Gun Control, and the Death Penalty.

    Soon, the obvious and painfully hypocritical position of conservatives that an unborn fetus may not be aborted in the name of “life” — not even in the name of saving the life of the mother — but a fully grown adult may be killed in the name of “justice,” will be called out for what it is: another astonishingly unintelligent idea to be thrown on the trash heap of yesterday.

    It is as a reader on this website commented just recently, regarding the American election:

    Comment by Pat on November 9, 2012 at 3:43 pm

    Small steps. We’re still divided, but we did send a message. Some think the message was intended for our leaders and representatives. I think the message is one we sent to ourselves. Some of us realize now that we are not alone – that there are other people who share our desire to get away from the current religious and cultural foundation that is based on ‘hostility to the other.’ The tide is changing, and as always the old and broken will be swept away in due course…

  • MUST FEAR & SEPARATION RULE IN
    POST-ELECTION CULTURAL DIVIDE?

    The headline on the front page of USAToday two days after U.S. President Barack Obama was returned to the White House for four more years said it all:

    “POST-ELECTION DIVIDE SURFACES/Partisan pledges sour conciliatory remarks.”

    Could we have expected anything else? Certainly not from the mainstream media, which only considers that which reflects conflict and struggle to be “news.” And probably not from people themselves, who have been raised having been told that “fear” is the most desirable primal power, not love.

    Instead of celebrating the American political system that produced yet one more decision without violence about who shall be in power, the mood of the country, stoked by opinion-makers and the media, exudes not celebration but consternation, not joy but judgment, not happiness but hatefulness — as if, in a world full of economic downturns, conflict, and killing, the United States was not, in fact, still one of the best places on Earth in which to live.

    Did the USAToday article point out that last Tuesday’s election gave President Obama, House Republicans, and Senate Democrats a “new chance to resolve issues that they could not give in on before, because of the upcoming election”? No. It said that the election gave all parties “a new lease on strife.”

    Why point out the grandest possibility when you can help create the worst?

    Ours is a civilization craving negativity. If there is a positive story in the news that the media just has to report, you can count on it being on page 37. Yet why does humanity have such an appetite for that which it fears? The New Spirituality says it is because we have been told that God wants us to fear Him. Indeed, in many circles the highest compliment you can give a person is to say that he or she is “God-fearing.”

    And so, as it has been explained in Conversations with God, we have equated “fear” with that which is good. We’ve even confused “fear” with “love,” imagining that the second must be based firmly in the first.

    Nothing could be further from the truth.

    There is another way to be human. In this new way, we do not fear God, we do not fear life, and we do not fear each other. We live without fear. Or at least, without fear driving the engine of our entire experience; without fear running rampant over us; without fear ruling our every choice and decision.

    There is another way to be human, but it takes great courage. The new way is to imagine a God that has no reason to judge or condemn us. The new way is to understand and embrace fully who we really are. That is, our True Identity as aspects and individuations of the Divine. In the moment we accept our True Identity, we easily and joyfully let go of fear. And then, our differences no longer have to divide us. Contrast no longer has to produce conflict.

    The people of the United States face a great opportunity right now. They can demonstrate to the world that while they differ in their opinions, they do not differ in their determination to find and create answers to their society’s biggest problems from a place of mutual respect and of willingness to compromise and to forge collaborative solutions.

  • BIG MONEY AND IGNORANCE LOSES
    BIG IN 2012 U.S. ELECTIONS

    Todd Akin lost. Joe Walsh lost. Richard Murdouck lost. Tom Smith lost. That’s four for four of the Republican men who made absurd comments about rape in the past several months and paid the price for their absurdity.

    Elizabeth Warren won. Claire McCaskill won. Tammy Baldwin won. Tammy Duckworth won. That’s four for four of the Democratic women who took strong stands against the Republican establishment and walked away victorious.

    Eight of the nine so-called Battleground States — must win “swing states” that everyone on both sides knew would decide the election — went to President Barack Obama, despite the spending of nearly $150 million more by the Republicans, their surrogate super PACs, and a bevy of Super Rich individuals who poured millions into the campaign of Mitt Romney.

    On social issues, contemporary 21st Century Thought prevailed over Let’s Go Backward Mentality in several striking cases. The electorate of two states — Maine and Maryland — voted to legalize same sex marriage, and citizens in the states of Washington and Colorado voted to legalize recreational use of marijuana. Opponents of same sex marriage have long claimed that, if put to an actual vote, citizens in most states would reject the idea of legalizing it. They were wrong. Likewise, opponents of legalized marijuana predicted that ballot measures supporting it would fail. Washington and Colorado proved otherwise.

    Perhaps most impressively, voters across the United States fought back, and won, against Big Money, defeating candidate after candidate whose campaigns benefited from huge amounts spent by super Pacs (political action committees) and Karl Rove’s direction of phenomenal spending to try to capture seats with the sheer power of money, and the advertising dominance that it can buy.

    In short, People Power defeated Money Power in this election, time and time again — and that is good news for America.

    Huge amounts, for instance — almost unfathomable amounts — where given by big money moguls across the nation to Mr. Romney’s campaign. It just couldn’t “buy” the election.  Neither could it win a GOP majority in the U.S. Senate. According to a news story in The Wall Street Journal by reporter Brody Mullins, “In campaigns for the Senate,  Republican candidates were backed by millions of dollars in spending by well-coordinated pro-Republican super PACs and interest groups that hammered Democratic candidates in televised advertisements starting last winter.”

    The same story noted that “in the presidential race, pro-Republican super PACs spend far more money than those favoring Mr. Obama.” Two of those groups along—Crossroads GPS (created and controlled by Mr. Rove) and Restore Our Future—spent $250 million supporting Mr. Romney, The Wall Street Journal report said. The biggest group supporting Mr. Obama, Priorities USA Action, by contrast, spent just $65 million on behalf of the President, the newspaper report added.

    It did Big Money no good. Try as it might to bend the voters’ views with dollars, it simply could not buy this election.

    An example is what happened in Virginia, where millions were dumped into the state by outside groups to help GOP candidate George Allen defeat Democrat Tim Kaine in the race for the U.S. Senate seat. Mr. Allen lost.

    In Ohio, more than $10 million was spent by outside groups —  including another controlled by Karl Rove (who seemed deeply determined to affect this year’s elections) and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce — in an effort to unseat liberal Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown. Mr. Brown won.

    In Connecticut, Republican Linda McMahon spent $40 million of her own money to defeat Democrat Chris Murphy for the U.S. Senate. She lost. Ms. McMahon spent $50 million of her own money in a 2010 election bid, which she also lost, proving that putting $90 million into two successive campaigns guarantees nothing. Peoples’ votes are apparently not as “buy-able” as some people might have thought.

    Likewise, tens of millions in outside spending money was shipped off to Wisconsin by rich Republican individuals and money-powered groups to bring former Badger State Governor Tommy Thompson to the U.S. Senate — but his Democratic opponent, Tammy Baldwin, batted away the huge dollar advantage of her GOP opponent’s campaign and walked away with the Senate seat. She will become the first openly gay U.S. Senator.

    The U.S. electorate made wonderfully intelligent decisions in many races, defeating GOP candidates who made utterly irrational statements about rape. Mr. Akin, a sitting GOP Congressman looking to move up to the Senate, famously said in August that the female body automatically makes it impossible for pregnancy to occur in cases of “legitimate rape.” Until that remark, he was expected to defeat sitting Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill.

    Embarrassed to high heaven by Mr. Akin’s remark, the Republican Party pulled its endorsement and its funding from Mr. Akin, and begged him to get out of the race so that it could run another candidate against McCaskill. Akin said he was in the race to stay, with or without his party’s support. He lost.

    Mr. Walsh, Mr. Murdouck, and Mr. Smith made equally offensive and/or ridiculous statements on the subject of abortion in the case of rape, and they also lost their races. Mr. Murdouck famously declared that if a pregnancy resulted from a rape, “it is something that God intended to happen.” Mr. Walsh, a sitting GOP Congressmen, was asked a question at a debate about abortion and announced that  he was “pro-life without exception.” Then he added, “The life of the woman is not an exception.” Asked by the press immediately after the debate if he had misspoken, or was serious, Mr. Walsh said he meant every word, and justified his stance by saying that modern medical advances have made abortion unnecessary to save the life of a mother. He lost the election in that moment.

    Mr. Smith, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, was asked by the media in August what his position was regarding abortion. He said he was opposed to abortion without exception. Not even in cases of rape or incest? he was asked. No, he said. Then he was asked by Mark Scolforo of the Associated Press: “How would you tell a daughter or a granddaughter who, God forbid, would be the victim of a rape, to keep the child against her own will? Do you have a way to explain that?”

    Mr. Smith then made the extraordinary comparison of rape with a woman having a baby out of wedlock. In the second instance, he said, he had a member of his own family who chose to have the child. But, the AP reporter, incredulous, asked: “That’s similar to rape?” Mr. Smith replied, “No, no, no…but…put yourself in a father’s situation…yes, it is similar. But, back to the original, I’m pro-life, period.” That was the end of Mr. Smith’s campaign.

    America has re-claimed its intelligence and re-claimed its power. Big Money and Ignorance have lost theirs — and with it, a stranglehold on the U.S. electorate.

    There is hope after all. People can and will think for themselves. People can and will overcome the onslaught of media buys by individuals and groups with millions to throw around. Sometimes when you “follow the money trail,” it leads, alas, to a dead end.

    It is as Mr. Murphy said when he won Connecticut’s Senate seat. “We proved that what matters most in life is the measure of your ideas…not the measure of your wallet.”

    Indeed.