Urgency

            The signs of the times surround us and beg of us to be urgent. America has fallen to the ways of cultural hedonism; we must have everything, all the time. By all descriptions, the late “great” hegemon has transformed into Babylon. Mark 1:15 tells us that the time is right now, the Kingdom of God is at hand. The Mayans, the Egyptians, Nostradamus and many more have all made predictions for this very hour in Chronos time. Acceleration leads us to moving faster and faster until the wind-up doll we have become is ready to explode.

            Dromo-Colonization has everyone chasing the next flashy screen: cell phones, flat screens, tablets, and now you can even check Facebook from your watch! The worst part of it all is it is merely a smoke screen keeping the general population distracted while the globe becomes militarized, while wars continue to be waged for only monetary gain regardless of the lives they claim. The question is born: what do those of us who see do about it? So many of us feel helpless as we remain vexed daily about the global state of this perpetual cycle of war and militarization. The truth is almost impossible to find and many of us feel as if we are losing our minds. Where do we go from here?

            In Global Palestine, we saw the need to wake up and pay attention to the daily lives of the Palestinians. The logic of denial has many chasing their tails. Apocalypse sheds light on the unknown. It reveals that which has remained unseen. The mask falls and shadows cast are lifted revealing the bright light within us all that will never cease to shine. Movie after movie imagines what the end of the world will be like. We have seen visions of asteroids, aliens, tidal waves, earthquakes, and even humanity turning on itself as in the Hunger Games. Is Apocalypse what it is going to take to set us free?

            Spinoza (Global Palestine, p. 234) states “every man’s understanding is his own, and brains are as diverse as palates”. There are so many prophets, preachers, conscious leaders, conspiracy theorists who all have a different answer to the algorithm at hand. While everyone is trying to decide what must be done, more and more of the lower classes are being de-humanized, losing their agency and being forced into intentional poverty. Hannah Arendt speaks of natality, a concept she gleaned from Augustine. “Unto us a child will be born” and we might be inspired as they to believe in the human capacity to begin again. With a system so corrupt, so militarized, so set up to keep the rich well-fed and the poor still struggling, how do the conscious rise to this occasion?

            Capitalism is death to freedom. The rich keep gleaning from the wages of the laborer. The privatization of prisons has led to more and more of our men and women, especially those considered to be “minority”, being removed from our city streets. Meanwhile, mainstream media has most people distracted in the stratified diversion of keeping us separated. Christian versus Muslim, Black versus White, Rich versus Poor, Educated versus Uneducated, and so on. James Baldwin qualified that whiteness is not about race or even color but about a mindset. The refusal to speak against the lie has formed and kept in stasis a fantasy world. The continuance within this fantasy world has arrived at a collective psychosis. What we need is cataclysmic transformation.

            We cannot rise to the occasion of our light without first facing our darkness. This is what I propose. First, all conscious people must unite! We must have a unified goal. We must dispel the ignorance and retell the narrative without the victor always being in control of the storyline. We must use art, poetry, music, and digital media to spread the truth. In a world where two-thirds of terrorism is committed by white men, how are the prisons filled with mostly African American men? Why do so many Caucasians make comments still like, “Why are Black people still mad? Slavery ended a long time ago”. How do we ignore the disparity between the funding and education at suburban schools and the funding and education in the city schools? How do slumlords still have the right to have tenants? What is it going to take for us to do what is necessary?

            Amitav Ghosh refers to it as the Great Derangement. He speaks of climate change and says that nature to most has become an inconvenience, nothing more than a backdrop. How do so many not believe in global warming when the polar ice caps are melting and the weather is warm enough to now support life that was not native to its region? There are ancient viruses being released! We have snakes growing to mammoth sizes due to the climate change in the areas where they live. Areas that never flooded are now flooding. There are so many weather patterns that have changed. How do we prepare if we are not sure what exactly is on its way?

            “Only poets, since they must excavate and recreate history, have ever learned anything from it (James Baldwin, 1972).” Again, I believe all prophets, poets, preachers and creators need to come together with every conscious being and help one another become prepared. Not knowing what is to come is perhaps the most threatening part. Ghosh asks what it means to be human. Most live as though they are superhuman with no limitations. Humans have become geological agents. We have transformed about half of the surface of the Earth. We have altered the composition of the atmosphere mostly because of fossil fuels depletion and deforestation. Anthropocene is a real issue and not one that most believe can be forgiven. The damage cannot be undone.

            At this point, we will also need the counsel of a group of Earth Scientists. We need to see what our best course of action would be at this precarious hour. It would be amazing if the global governments would reprioritize their spending and began installing solar panels and wind turbines, using all the money from constant wars and militarization for things that would steer us in a better ecological direction. However, since some of our largest global governments, like the United States, are not interested in saving the planet, what are we to do?

            Due to the constant waging of wars, the constant militarization, and the strange conspiracy theory style reports of FEMA camps and black boxes for mass burial, I think it imperative that we all become armed. We must know how to fight, how to defend ourselves and how to survive on very little for a very long time. We do not know what shape this cataclysmic event is to take. We should have food and water stored in the best location we can think for multiple types of natural disaster.

            Howard Thurman in The Search for Common Ground speaks about the potential of every human being. We need to drop our pride, stop judging one another and find our common ground. Every human being needs water. Every human being needs food. Every human being needs air to breathe. We all bleed red. We all hurt. We all find joy. Remaining segregated is destroying our chances of survival. Hall (p. 153) says a vision of a different way “has to be made, constructed and struggled over”. Whatever plan we all come up with is not going to be an easy process, in the formation or execution of it. We must begin now! Time is running out.

            What does it mean to be human? Is power/greed the original sin? We have the paradox of the price. There is little personal abstinence can do to save the climate now. What we surmise must be profound. Global Palestine discusses redistribution of wealth on page 142. Organizations such as Uhuru believe this is surely the answer. The playing fields certainly do need to be leveled. All people should have the same access to resources, to education, to medical care. We should all have the same potential due to our natural surroundings providing all of our basis needs. Most people don’t know how to be poor. Most people would not know how to survive the way the oppressed are forced to live each and every day.

            Five-hundred fifty thousand Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem consume six times as much water as the two-million, six-hundred thousand Palestinians. Israel’s control of the Palestinian water supply is both unjust and illegal. The UN reports that approximately 1.4 million Palestinian people live in refugee camps. Their right to return has been systematically denied since 1948. We must do more! People like Micah White sure try but even he will tell you that the Occupy Movement was a failure we must learn from. Dr. King marched for liberation and freedom. In 2018, we find ourselves still lacking “liberty and justice for all”.

            It is easy to get discouraged. Even if all the conscious minds, focused on liberation and equality, justice and freedom were to come together today, what exactly would we do? We do not have the firepower to overthrow even the United States government alone. We do not have the capital it would take to begin a movement so big the whole planet would quake at the mention of its name. Or do we?

            We must recognize that our search for a new creation is also an acceptance of the destruction that comes hand in hand with new life. We must accept that all the signs point to a cataclysmic event that must come and come it will. We must accept that the only answer is for capitalism to fail, for certain governments to be overthrown or crumble, and for all people to return to a respect for nature. We must face our differences, and we must set them down. They were never as relevant as we made them and if we keep clinging to them, they can do nothing for us but serve to destroy us.

            We must become like children, rich in imagination. We must feel the words of Howard Thurman and believe in harmony and potential. We must know, like Hannah Arendt, like Augustine, beyond a shadow of a doubt that starting something new is not only possible, it is necessary. We must honor the common dystopic thread of current movies and we must work together to build a Utopic view that stands on its own and can carry us home. We must believe that the waters can part. We must believe that the Promised Land is real. We must know that our time in the desert is almost over. We must put down our differences and take one another by the hand. We must form a council that represents humanity at large. We must be as prepared as we are able for the “shit to hit the fan”. We must stand against injustice. We must speak against oppression. We must fight against violence with all we are, with all we are yet to become. It is our time to rise.

Beyond Sight

I once saw the Christ in Lucifer’s eyes

I once heard the truth in the devil’s lies

I once felt the anguish in an angel’s sigh

But here we are asking God why

My why is not a fist at the sky

My why is not a wail or a cry

My why is a plea down on bended knee

Begging the Universe to guide me please

It is our time to rise

~~*~~