Google, Political Correctness, and Much Ado About Nothing.

A few thoughts on the Google controversy:

First, thank you Donald Trump for dialing it back long enough for me to turn my attention toward something else. It is nice to have a break.

An engineer at Google named James Damore circulated a controversial 3,300 word memorandum, decrying the hyper-liberal bias of Google and suggesting that women are less suited for advanced careers, particularly in software engineering, due to their biology. It sounds to me like he struck a few notes that are by definition "sexist." I want to put aside the details of his memo and look at the bigger picture for a moment. 

Had Damore published that memo on a personal blog prior to applying for a job with Google and been denied the job for no reason other than that publication, it would in principle be no different than relieving him of his duties solely for circulating the memo while employed by Google. Therefore, it is in principle no different than NFL teams refusing to hire Colin Kaepernick because they are afraid of the effects his presence will have on team morale and cohesion. It seems you may either agree that NFL teams and Google Executives are both within their rights or both are exceeding their rights, but not one without the other.

Google is being accused of "group think." This seems obvious. Yes, they are engaged in group think. They have invested millions of dollars in what their critics pejoratively call "group think," only they call it corporate culture. To be honest, I don't think they fired Damore because he thought these things. I think they fired him because he circulated those ideas in a memo, which threatened both the Google brand in the court of public opinion and the corporate culture they have cultivated over the years. Google's interests are first and foremost with their bottom line, not social issues. They are far more interested in protecting their brand and the culture of creativity and productivity that has made them one of the most successful companies on the planet. Perhaps, you don't believe their decision is in the interest of creativity and productivity--and you might be right--but the evidence rests with Google's success.

Furthermore, people talk about "group think" like it is a new phenomenon. I would remind them of religion, which issues the harsh punishments of heresy and excommunication for breaking from the mold of their group thought. In recent times you can look to the Southern Baptist Convention's handling of Russel Moore's criticism of Trump for an example of religious group think (as well as political), though it did not reach the severity of heresy and excommunication.

The world religions--for better or worse--are the most sophisticated examples of group think this planet has ever seen. Coming in a close second is political parties. Both overlap in another favorite target of group think accusations, universities. Harvard, Yale, Princeton all began as institutions with loyalties to one denomination or another. Group think at our places of higher learning is hardly a new thing. Ralph Waldo Emerson was practically excommunicated from Harvard for 30+ years after giving a speech the Divinity School administration found distasteful in 1838. Yes, many of our institutions of higher learning exhibit similar biases toward politics now. I think it often gets blown out of proportion by adherents--student bodies rioting in protest of a disagreeable speaker--and conservatives who bemoan it as some new form of political correctness.

In my estimation political correctness is sometimes confused with just being a decent person. But there certainly are instances where it is taken too far. People should have the right to respectfully offer thoughtful criticism without fear of being labeled a bigot. Often this is an attempt to hide a particular position behind a taboo, an attempt to make it improper, for example, to question Islam. However, this is not new either. Religions have long since tried to hide their beliefs behind taboos, claiming for them a special class of ideation that is off limits. Skillful right-wing politicians like Ted Cruz try to hide their politics behind religious beliefs because in casual conversation the ban on questioning someone's religious convictions gives his politics extra shelf life. Similarly, left-wing politicians try to hide their politics behind certain social sensitivities. It is our job to sift through this garbage and figure out when "political correctness" is really a call to respectful of others rights, and when it is a political devise being used by politicos to advance their agenda.

It is not that I agree with either side of this debate. I think both sides often blow it out of the water. I am simply saying it is not a new phenomenon. In fact, I think if we look at it through the lens of human history we will find "group think" is probably getting a lot better than worse.

What do you think?

Letter From a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Perhaps it is a few days late, but it is nevertheless timely. 

Dr. King's letter to white, moderate clergyman serves as an urgent reminder for our time. It is a reminder that, yes, it is easy to avoid confrontation, to smile and change the subject, to segregate politics and morality and hide behind the vacuous platitudes of an unearthly religion. But as King reminds us, "Only a dry-as-dust religion prompts a minister to extol the glories of Heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an Earthly hell." It is in this spirit that King addresses his fellow clergyman from his jail cell.

King clearly states "that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends." But the central thrust of his letter is "that it is just as wrong, or even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends." 

The Letter from a Birmingham Jail also demonstrates the socio-political dimension of a vibrant religious life. King doesn't try to advance his theological concerns within the political arena, but rather the morality to which that theology binds him. He is concerned with universal principles, not articles of faith. King defends and promotes love, dignity, truth and justice for all. As he so eloquently states in the letter, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

"Just as King {original text: Socrates} felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood." 

With the dawn of Trump upon us we must hold fast to our values and principles, remembering that those values and principles live through us. They live through our voice and our actions, not as abstractions. 

We must speak truth to power and hold our leaders to account. Note, I did not say we must speak to power. There is no progress to be made by raising unfounded claims or advancing senseless arguments. It is not about opposing him, but about affirming truth, justice, and equality. 

With that, I give you The Letter from a Birmingham Jail

16 April 1963
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants--for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoral election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run off, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies--a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . ." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some -such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle--have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as "dirty nigger-lovers." Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation. Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.
When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators."' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation -and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

I wish you had commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Difference Between Religion & Spirituality.

Spirituality is not self existing or natural. 

It is not pre-ordained by some divine force, nor is it inspired by nature. The path of spirituality co-emerges with the path that gives rise to suffering.

There is a journey erupting in our heart. It is pouring over into the field of our experience, the present moment. This is the human journey. Every time we deviate from this journey—that is to say, try to become non-human or what we think we should be—we take one step toward suffering. We take one step, two steps, three steps, four, and five, and eventually we find ourselves mindlessly wandering around in a world of discontentment.

Spirituality—prayer, meditation, yoga, and study—are nothing more than steps 5,4,3,2,1. Spirituality is the path of suffering taken in reverse, while realization is returning to the point of departure. We are following our breadcrumbs back to the journey that is brewing at the center of our being.

Joseph Campbell once said, “Myths are public dreams, and dreams are private myths." Similarly, spirituality is a private religion and religion is a public spirituality. Everyone has to start where they are, and some of the conditions that contribute to our sense of alienation are unique to our upbringing. Therefore, each individual's path is endowed with a certain degree of peculiarity. On the other hand, many of the forces that seduce us into our non-human wanderings are cultural trappings. So, we maybe lost but we are not alone. When we look up we see that there quite a few spiritual immigrants wandering around in desert. We relate to them and a fellowship is born out of this shared pilgrimage. Religion is the bread crumbs left behind by society as it wandered off into exile.

Do Not Reject the World. Turn into Your Life.

"Be not conformed to this world" 

is the most common translation of the second verse in the twelfth chapter of the Apostle Paul's epistle to the Romans, which if you read the footnotes, actually reads, "Be not conformed to this era."

This is one of the great problems many young people face today. In a world mediated by cell phones and social media and cable TV it is difficult to separate ourselves from the era—the latest fashion, political fads, intellectual trends, and talking points. It is difficult for us to find ourselves—our true identity as actual people—independent of this constant influence. From this point of view, life is reduced the adolescent aim of "fitting in."

There's no solitude.

For too long we've been inundated with various forms of entertainment. The TV has been our babysitter since early childhood. Now, Facebook babysits us. We do not know how to be alone. We have to be in relationship. This neediness leads us to exploit others. We find emotionally vulnerable people and prey on them. We leach onto them and suck the life out of them, in order to medicate or remedy our own identity crisis.

Initially, we cannot find ourselves in a relationship. We learn to love in solitude. Love grows out of solitude. When we withdraw from the world, not the planet, but this era—the field of entertainment—we return to ourselves. It is in this retreat that we find our Self.

The Self is not a new self. We're not building it, creating it, or even innovating it. We are dying to our old self—the attention seeking, codependent personality that roams the earth to and fro looking for its next prey. But don't let me church it up too much. Darkness precedes the dawn. Self-actualization comes at a cost. There is a painful detoxification process that comes along with our abstinence from entertainment, physical or emotional. This abstinence is the true meaning of solitude. Non-conformity is carried out, not necessarily in geographical isolation, but through inner-solitude. There is no shortcut that enables us to circumvent our loneliness. We are all truly a unique person, which means that deep down we are all alone.

This is what Carl Jung meant when he said, "Neither family nor society, nor position can save him from fate, nor yet the most successful adaptation to his environment." We must all face our fate and our fate is to be our own person, to be fully our self. While Jung is spot on with his words his language does not seem to catch the revolutionary nature of such a journey. In this respect Jesus was much more precise. He said, in Matthew 10, 34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household." To say, I have not come to bring peace is to say that spiritual path is not necessarily easy. It can be a heartbreaking. To say that I have brought a sword is to say that the path I offer is one of revolution, not rebellion or conformity to the status quo. Our families are not our enemies in that we must defeat their external presence; it is their internal presence—our adversary is the nagging voice in the back of our minds that is always looking over our shoulder. We must move beyond their internal influence to discover our own voice. But it does not stop there: we must go beyond the voice of our mentors and teachers, our priests and role models and step into the realm of personal responsibility. Each person must struggle against their familial, cultural, and social conditioning to discover their own indwelling fountain of freedom, spontaneity.

It is the absence of solace—a rawness or un-anesthetized state of vulnerability. This is what it means to truly be sad. This is what it means to see through the era and be touched by the world.

Solitude is not only the crucifixion of this small needy self, but the resurrection of our true Self, which is full or in need of nothing. It is a return to Eden or abundance. We realize the richness with which the human condition is endowed. We begin to experience our self overflowing, pouring out into the world. Our life is transformed into a gift. This is where we find love.

Love comes out of the realization that we are not broken and therefore do not need a fix. Only then do we stop trying to take from the world begin to give ourselves to it. Solitude is the essence of spiritual practice.

Fundamentalism, Religion, and Mythology.

The following is an excerpt from a book I am working on. The book is about western mythology and spiritual practice. The following excerpt is about fundamentalism. 

There are individuals spread out through history who have come to fully embody the sense of mystery that sits at the core of the human condition. Occasionally, their life is eternalized and mythologies begin to be organized around the example they provided. Not only are they no longer burdened by the limitations of time and space they now transcend the envelope of skin, symbolizing a living reality within each and every person regardless of race, nation, ethnicity, or gender. This form of mythology is a religion.

Religion is a powerful means of preserving, refining, and dispersing a mythology. In it’s purest form, religion is perhaps the most powerful vehicle of individuation. However, there are many draw backs to religion. The most unfortunate of these draws backs is commonly referred to as fundamentalism. Not only is fundamentalism responsible for some of the most egregious demonstrations of ignorant willfulness this planet has ever seen—war, genocide, terrorism, ecological devastation and civil rights abuses—it also immunizes man to the experience of transcendence that initially inspired the tradition. In fact, all of these examples of willful ignorance are but symptoms of an underlying problem, lifelessness. Once the individual is infected by the paralysis of lifelessness, he begins to see everything as lifeless and treat it as such.

The fundamentalist is the individual who subscribes to a network of ideas and beliefs that do not belong to them. These ideas and beliefs are unsubstantiated by personal experience, and are installed by the mechanism of fear. They rely solely on the experience of another person, who, interestingly enough relies on the experience of someone else. This line of co-dependency stretches all the way back to the source of the tradition, the owner of the original experience, so to speak.

Fundamentalism is not a dead mythology; it is the absence of mythology. It is a belief system that relies upon the experience of another. Unsubstantiated belief is insanity. It is a grotesque denial of personal responsibility that leads only to idol worship and spiritual laziness. The fundamentalist stands back at a safe distance in envy of this individual for embodying the fullness of their person. They lose themselves in this envy and as a result fail to make the journey for themselves. They mistake the central incarnation of the mystery for the mystery itself and end up drinking the cup instead of the water.

As a result, they are thirsty. The fundamentalist suffers because he is detached from the life giving waters of direct experience. He is dead inside, so he dreams of a utopia in the distant future where he will be able to once again take in the breath of life. It becomes, in the words of Brian McLaren a prominent Christian pastor, “a mass evacuation plan.” He never even considers the possibility that his utopian dream is an archetypal representation of the present moment, inviting him into the fullness of Life proclaimed by the tradition he has misplaced. 

Sanity and Politics: The Lost Gospel.

“I stressed the need for a social gospel to supplement the gospel of individual salvation. I suggested only a ‘dry as dust’ religion prompts a minister to extol the glories of heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an earthly hell.”  ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

We, in the west, have for far too long been subjected to the unbearable consequences of a theology that denies the revelation of direct experience. Inspired by a fundamental sense of broken-ness or incompleteness religion has, for many westerners, reduced to nothing more than an escape route. Not only has religion become an enterprise of redemption, but redemption remains just around the corner in the afterlife. The affirmative side of popular spirituality is the promise of greener pastures and sunnier days, but the implied consequences of such wishful thinking—the negation of our day-to-day life—has led to a belief in our own insufficiency, articulated by the doctrine of original of sin.

Our “earthly hell” is revealed to be the absence of content or meaning, the sense of lifelessness that characterizes the way we are living. There is no vitality. We are just trudging along. Life feels mechanical or numb, as if we are living once removed. We feel disconnected from the life we are living, as if we were a spectator watching as someone else’s life unfolds. This fundamental form of dis-ease constitutes the basis of self-hatred.

“Self-hatred is the basis for hating others or the world at large. For self-hatred, being really unbearable, is easily justified by making the others and the world bad, so they can become the object of hatred instead of the own self. Thus, pessimism maybe called the philosophy of hatred, or, as Nietzsche termed it more subtly, of ressentiment.” ~ Otto Rank

Ressentiment is the French word for resentment. In popular language, resentment has been reduced to nothing more than un-resolved or aging anger. In the above passage, psychologist Otto Rank suggests a deeper meaning. Rank defines resentment as the projection of self-hatred onto objects in the environment as a way of relieving ourselves of the turmoil wrapped up in our festering self-hatred.

Embedded in the life we are living is a feeling of disgust. Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, writes, “We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn't control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn't seem to be of real help to other people…” What could be more important than an accessible down-to-earth resolution to these most basic of human problems? What could be more important than our basic sanity and well-being?

Unfortunately, the attitudes and states of mind that breed these basic human bedevilments are ignored, as we frantically project our sense of disgust onto objects in the environment. We become obsessed with decrying the moral shortcomings of those politicians and their supporters who stand opposite of our convictions. Liberals and conservatives alike, log onto facebook to spew their self-hatred onto the news feed in the form of short opinion pieces that point out the stupidity and treasonous opinions of those on the opposite side of the aisle. We are so lost in this depreciating process that seldom do any of us stop to consider the role this behavior plays in the inflammation of self-hatred.

Resentment is not responsible for self-hatred, but it is obvious that projection is one of the more common ways we deal with the pains of self-hatred. We experience ourselves as removed from the scene—a spectator watching life unfold from a distance—because the life we are living is a scam. We are more like an actor playing the part, and the part is assigned by our environment  The views we are vehemently defending do not belong to us. They are the intellectual inheritance of our family, social class, and education, which we feel compelled to defend, but lack the felt conviction to author for our Self. We lack authority, confidence, and creativity in our convictions. This leads to insecurity, fear, and aggression.It has nothing to do with whether the points of view we are sharing are reasonable or "right" or "wrong," instead the problems seems to be how we are arrived at these conclusions. We were given the answer by our minister, parents, friends, boss, neighbors, or the news media, rather than given the space needed to arrive at our own conclusions. We were taught what to think, instead of how to think. 

Sanity is a point of view substantiated by reality. Reality is revealed in the body. Insanity begins with misplacing the body. We have forgotten how to listen to our hearts. We have replaced the biological or spiritual imperative to live fully and honestly with the tendency to think about life, and the voice in our head is inspired by everyone except our heart—the preacher, the pundit, the teacher, mom, dad, those socially and economically successful role models we strive to imitate—all have taken up space in our head, drowning out the voice of our true Life, and as a result we feel lost and lifeless. We are only pretending to be passionate. In fact, we are angry and disembodied. We are plagued by a spiritual rigamortis.

“Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” ~ St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 6:19

You can almost hear St. Paul’s surprise…. “Wait! You don’t know?! The temple ain’t some building or institution out there. It is not a document, political or religious bureaucracy, or ecclesiastical hierarchy. It is your beating heart. It is the life of the body.” Our relationship with God or Truth is not limited to periods of worship on Sunday mornings, nor is it dependent upon quiet moments of prayer and meditation in our bedrooms. God lives in the body and the variety of affairs that make-up our daily life— political, economic, social, and intimate—constitutes the womb out of which God is born into the world.

The misplacing of the body in western theology is the source of our misplaced spirituality. The body of experience is the ground of being or basic sanity. To talk about life apart from the body is to speculate or hallucinate. We migrate out of the vitality of the body and into the lifeless world of ideas. Unfortunately, hallucinating and faith have become synonymous. But St. Paul is inviting us back into the original meaning of faith, back into direct experience.

The body is the house of God or the temple. Truth is revealed in and through the body, which means that Truth or God’s will is first and foremost an unformed or un-interpreted feeling, spontaneity. Listening to this still voice is commonly referred to as prayer. We come back to the body and we reclaim the quality of wakefulness and vitality that we crave. Until we reconnect with a God that actively reveals itself to us through the silent revelation of our body, we will continue to be plagued by the fundamental sense of disgust and self-hatred that arises out of the unfortunate fact that we are only thinking about life or pretending to live.

So, how do we reconnect with the body? Simple. We let go of the tendency to think about life, and fall into the immediacy of direct experience. Rather than projecting our experience onto objects in the environment, we silently accept the movement of our body. We own our experience with the willingness to embrace whatever arises in the body with simple awareness. We move into the feeling, without words, and feel through the feeling. It does not matter if we are talking about a pleasant or unpleasant experience, we remain present to the feeling. To deny the body is to deny life, which is the source of dis-contentment or the absence of fullness that we have been projecting onto others. This is the work we are called to before we offer our gifts to the world.

“Leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” Matthew 5:24

Our offerings to the world are not to be tainted. They are to be the pure, unadulterated expressivity of God as revealed in the body, as the above passage from 1^st Corinthians indicates. Glory, in the Hebrew bible has a sense of majesty, splendor, or brightness. So, to glorify is to allow the splendor of God’s creativity to shine through our pores. Before making any offering, even a political opinion on facebook, we are directed in Matthew 5:24 to first go and be reconciled with our brother. We must be free of insecurity, fear, and aggression, less our body become an instrument of self-will and destruction. We are warned that to be crossed with our neighbor may lead to more worldly consequences, but to become resentful is to be damned to an “earthly hell.”

The content of our politics is of little importance. The tone is far more important. The tone tells you the source of this opinion. Any argument that tries to dissuade those with differing points of view from responding, through the use of technical, wordy jargon or aggressive, incendiary rhetoric is no offering at all. It is a projection of our own self-hatred, and a demonstration of our own refusal to participate in the unfolding of our life. Rather than embracing the unfolding of our life as the movement of the body, we turn our feelings of discomfort into behaviors that seek to transfer the sense of disgust to another person. This leaves us feeling empty and broken. A passionate, non-aggressive offering shines through our pores and inspires healthy dialog that promotes understanding and growth. Creativity can transform simple conversation, political, religious, or otherwise, into a transformative experience, because it invites the energy of God into the exchange.  

Embodied Spirituality (video).

"Don't you know? The Body is the temple." ~ St. Paul (temple = house of God.)

 
Grounded Spirituality from The Refuge Meditation Group on Vimeo.

True Human Religion.

Rather than searching for some lazy conclusion (heaven, a beach, enlightenment, or a permanent shit eating grin), true religion accepts Life as a constant process of unfolding, every moment as a new beginning, and creation as still be created. But this is no passive acceptance. It is active consent or participation. We are bowing into our life with every breath.

Religious Symbolism & Insane Literalism.

Symbolism and Religion from The Refuge Meditation Group on Vimeo.

Buddhism is Non-Theistic. What Does Non-Theistic Mean?

It is the experience of egolessness…

“Self-Existing energy takes place continuously. Although the source of such energy is difficult to track down, it is universal and all-pervasive. It happens by itself, naturally. It is based on enthusiasm as well as freedom: enthusiasm in the sense that we trust what we are doing, and freedom in the sense that we are completely certain that we are not going to be imprisoned by our own energy, but instead, freed constantly.According to the tantric tradition of non-theism, energy is vital and important. We are not talking about centralizing energy within ourselves. Working with energy in a tantric sense is a decentralized process. We are talking about energy as all and everywhere. In Buddhist tantra, energy is openness and all pervasive. It is constantly expanding. It is decentralized energy, a sense of flood, ocean, outer space, the light of the sun and moon.”  ~ from Ocean of Dharma <!--[if !vml]--> by Chogyam Trungpa, edited by Carolyn Rose Gimian

In 2 Sentences the Dalai Lama Redefines Religion.

Buddhism: Religion or Philosophy?

“Truth is a Pathless Land.” ~Jiddu Krishnamurti

‎"Buddhism appears to be a religion, as a concession to human mentality. But Buddhism is not a religion. Buddhism is the dismantling of all religions. Buddhism is not a philosophy; it’s the dismantling of all philosophies. It’s not a psychology, it’s not a system of ethics, it’s not a way to relax. It’s the dismantling of all human agendas and ambitions and attitudes. And when we dismantle everything, when we remove the husk, then we find something inside that is incredibly living, bursting with life, and burgeoning with love, and blooming with beauty. And that’s us, it’s our life.” ~ by Reggie Ray of the Dharma Ocean Foundation.

Jesus: Fully Human and God Incarnate–One Epic Bodhisattva.

What is a Bodhisattva?

Fearlessness is the underlying principle of the Bodhisattva vow and the Mahayana path. In this sense, fearlessness refers to the organic, in born courage that is characteristic of human nature. This sort of courage may not be visible on the surface, but, as Alexander Hamilton suggested, it does exist as a sort of potential energy just waiting to be liberated: “There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.”

Organic fearlessness involves no pep-talk, nor is it something that we create or obtain through effort. It is discovered when we let go of effort and begin to relate with the rawness of our human condition. When we look beyond the veil of our thoughts—our limited self-image—we discover a limitless presence. This presence, in all its vastness and immediacy, is the totality of our being, and it knows no fear.

The fearlessness of the Bodhisattva is an expression of shunyata or emptiness. Initially, we sit in the practice of meditation and observe the mind. We watch as thoughts arise and pass away. Eventually, we begin to notice that there is something going on beyond the thinking mind. However, we are confronted with a problem: The thinking mind, which at present we strongly identify with, is incapable of accessing that which is beyond it. So, we begin to investigate this tendency to identify with thought. Then, like a “flash of lightening in a dark sky,” a discovery is made: The ego or our limited self-image is revealed to be nothing more than the personification of thought. We realize that the ego is incapable of observing anything without thought, because the ego is nothing more than a collection of thoughts. This is the realization of egolessness—insight into the empty nature of the ego concept.

The Evolution of Progressive Buddhism.

Gurus, Authority, and Free Market Buddhism.

The Marketplace of Ideas.

The Statue of Liberty stands as a proclamation of Western, secular freedom and dignity, welcoming all with the words of Emma Lazarus:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore."

This principal is what underlies the ideals of the American experiment. American culture is an amalgamation of other cultures—the melting pot—fueled by the freedom of experimentation and the primitive mandate or right to express your true self in an open and creative way. America is an open exchange of ideas, information, and experience—a marketplace of ideas.

I am not referring to the “economic” market place. Rather, by free market I am referring to the cultural space that accommodates experimentation and evolution. The free market of ideas is not guided by fame or profit, but by a practical realization of personal truth. Intellectual speculation is transformed into direct experience, whether confused or sane, through an experimental process guided by the intelligence of trial and error.

Progressive Buddhism.

Buddhism as a whole is entering this chaotic, powerful American free market. The Theravadin, Zen, Korean, Tibetan, Vietnamese, and Pure Land traditions are all planting roots here in the West. In addition to the traditional lineages, academia is making a contribution. Intellectuals are evaluating these Eastern traditions from the point of view of medicine, psychology, and sociology, and submitting their opinions. As a result, American Buddhism is emerging as a unique mixture of this wide array of disciplines. It is an American, or progressive Buddhism.

Being Fully Human.

Spirituality as the most basic human experience... Being!

A Global Resolution.

Every New Year we begin to look forward with hopes and aspirations for the coming year...

For several years now I have been totally committed to a work that I hope contributes to world wide spiritual awakening... There is nothing I would rather see than we as a people working together to create an enlightned society.

God Loves Ice-Cream.

It is so easy to get tangled up in ideas, philosophies, and ideologies... And forget to breath!


Some say The Son of God was born a virgin birth and died on the cross for our sins. Others protest that this suspends the laws of causality and reason. There are also those who believe that we are born, grow old, and die... Then repeat process. Then there are those who believe that death is the final curtain call.

Everybody believes something.

Belief which is not preceded by direct experience is nothing but a series of words! Words are lifeless, unless they point at truth.

The truly religious person isn't concerned with words, but faith. That is the direct experience which precedes belief! Simply, the present moment.

In the words of Pamela August Russell:

Nietzsche And The Ice-Cream Truck

God is dead.

But this atomic

berry blast Popsicle

is heavenly.

pg 3- B Is For Bad Poetry

Lets Try This Again... Is God Dead?

So yes this is a repost... But it did not generate the type of discussion I wanted the first time I posted it. So I edited it a little, and back for a second go is the article, "Is God Dead or Are We Looking In The Wrong Place?" This time it is on Elephant Journal. It asks the question, "What place does religion/ spirituality hold in your life? And what place does it have in the 21st century?" In my mind, this question is one of most important questions we can debate as a society. So please go and join in the discussion. No comment is stupid or pointless. If you think it, its worth sharing in this discussion. So, go to the link, and share your opinions. Look froward to reading your comments on Elephant.

Click Here to read the article and join the discussion.