Hey folks, it's been a while. School and work and life and most importantly the birth of my first child have kept me from you. Corona came and we can't wait for it to go away. I hope this finds you all well. A fourth album is in progress however it may be a little longer than expected considering the current state of this global pandemic. Speaking of which, I really would like to share with you this recent piece I wrote... Hope you enjoy.

Corona Virus

Downcast
Faces down
Mask
Social distancing
Task
Keep everyone
Six feet away

"They" say
We're in this together
But the same "they"
Made the storms we weather
And they have never
Been with us before

So why would now
Be any different
Why would we now
Trust the government
Stores are closed
No money's being made
Best believe
Somebody's getting paid

What is this war they wage
On a people wearing masks?
Time to look up
With more than our eyes
Time to stay woke
Time to realize
The answer may fall
Like a bomb
From the skies
Using the phrases
As we "drop like flies"

Wise words spoken
Never listened to
As prophets lost placement
'Though they spoke the truth
"Conspiracy Theories"
Never spoke to you
Now sound like Revolution
What is this war They're waging?

People wearing masks
Six feet away and waiting
Got an entire globe
Not just one single nation
Restless for breath
We grow impatient
While we stay inside
Straight pacing

Time to face the hour at hand
A thief in the night
Babylon's command
WE married our time
To the money we made
One percent hold the interest
On this war we wage

Common sense
Tells our spirits to rise
But we remain still
Our bodies are tired
Wired to behave
Or they'll lock us in jail
A people fall silent
Six feet apart
Six feet deep
Babies fuss and
Mothers weep
What does this all entail?

Riots grow restless
But they need to creep
Because they've
Cleared us from the streets
Time to listen
Time to rise
Time to realize
Words from the prophets
Never sounded so wise
Hit our eardrums
Like those bombs from the skies

What is this war they wage?

Things shift and fall away
Must chaos come
Before our brand new day?
Revelation rises
Will our souls be saved?
Who will lead the way?

Peace be still
As the waters rise
As a restless people
Face demise
Words of the prophets 
Never sounded so wise
Now is the hour
Now is the time

To face this war they waged

STAY WOKE!

Momentum

           Many traditions have led us to the awareness that speaks these are indeed the times of Armageddon. The word Armageddon is only mentioned once in the Greek New Testament and yet it carries a very heavy weight. The words Armageddon and Apocalypse are often interchanged. While they do share an overlapping space, they are not the same word. Armageddon is mentioned once in Revelation 16:16 and is the Hebrew word for where the last battle between good and evil will be fought. Christ says he will come as a thief in the night and tells us that those who watch for his return shall be blessed (Revelation 16:15).

            When looking up the meaning of Apocalypse many definitions show up ranging from insight, hallucinations, cataclysmic event, doom of mankind, complete and final destruction of the world, and an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale. However when looking deeper into the etymology of the word, the Greek root literally means “an uncovering”. It is a disclosure of knowledge and yes, revelation! All around us we see the signs of the times, and yes, it is easy to believe that a catastrophic event or a cataclysmic change is just over the horizon.

            Rolling Stone put out an article on Global Warming making it very clear who the real enemy is. Bill McKibben talks about the damage that the 0.8 degrees Celsius that our Earth’s temperature has already been raised has done. The Copenhagen Accord met and one hundred sixty-seven countries signed as being on board with the two degree goal! Two degrees is the most we are allowed to raise our temperature. Wait! If 0.8 degrees Celsius has already caused one-third of the Arctic’s summer sea ice to melt and has also caused the oceans to become thirty percent more acidic, how much damage will 2 degrees do exactly? (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-188550/?print=true)

            Most of the world is waking up to the fact that we need to wake up. Now what? How must our global communities respond? Howard Thurman speaks of our need to find our common ground. I would love to believe that we will find it before the cataclysmic event arrives. It is more likely unfortunately that the cataclysmic event is what will bring us together. So how do we prepare? What are some ways that this might be done? First, we must prepare to the best of our ability for the most likely gamut of possible cataclysmic events. We as leaders must teach our communities how to survive “off the grid”. We must teach one another how to defend ourselves in case of the advent of a military state police take-over. We must store foods and water, and learn how to plant and grow and cultivate and prepare our own foods. We must stay abreast of current knowledge and remain connected not only to our own city or town community but also our global community.

            Chronos has us so busy chasing our tails. We as the American culture are racing around toward our next destination, stopping to stare at the next digitized screen. What does it all mean? What are we purposefully being distracted from? What cataclysmic event awaits our dissociated race? Why does the pace continue to become faster and faster. Where is acceleration leading us? Now, stop. Breathe! Reflect. Apocalypse means revelation. Apocalypse means an unveiling. Is Apocalypse then the bridge that leads us to Heaven on Earth? The world was born in the timing of the Divine. We breathed life in the perfect moment. Kairos.

            Kairos is the perfect moment waiting in the darkness for the world to be formed. Kairos is the OM that became the first sound. Kairos is Jesus appearing to his disciples after being raised from the dead. Kairos is Peter realizing he didn’t have to drown. Kairos is arriving in the right place at the right time. Kairos is meditating so we can breathe deep and hear the whispers of our mind. Kairos is all that shows us the way to the Divine. Kairos. Kairos. Kairos. What if we had the power to walk from one Kairos moment to the next like stepping stones in a sacred garden filled with life and poetry? What if we had the power to call Kairos to us in the moment of our greatest need? What if Kairos is silently waiting for us all to be free? Kairos. Kairos. Kairos.

            Women like Angela Davis have learned to pay due respect to Kairos. She followed her spirit through the dark and stormy waters of being a black, female activist in a time when nothing she was had ever been popular. She has the courage to write books, travel the world with her wise words and spare nothing for the justice she so firmly believes in. Kairos. Is there not a little Angela Davis in us all? Doesn’t every creation story have a Fall? Does it not take almost drowning to realize we never had to at all? Should we then be afraid for Armageddon to call? Kairos.

            John Pavlovitz said it so perfectly when he stated, “I’m so tired of Christian prayers. I imagine God is too. I’m quite certain the people we so readily say that we’re praying for are tired of them…Stop praying already Christian. Stop tossing off hollow words to the ether when you’re standing on the bloody ground of a hurting world…This is not about passing the buck to God. This is about incarnating the love of God…Pray less. Move more.” We have the power to be the change we seek in the world (Gandhi). Prayer is beautiful if it is the mantra by which we articulate our plan of action. Prayer is not beautiful if we do nothing but sit and expect God to save us all.

            So here we are, in the last hour. The clock is ticking faster and faster and Chronos has us dancing like marionettes on strings we don’t even believe in. The wind-up toy this society has become is racing faster and faster instead of slower and slower but burn-out is the only outcome of this current arrangement. Bill McKibben made it abundantly clear that we are the monsters responsible for current ecological situation and even if we stopped carbon emissions right now, it is already too late. Our “environmental efforts to tackle global warming have failed (p. 5)”. So should we as humanity just assume the definition for Apocalypse that stands for our final doom? What is left to do?

            I stated earlier that we must be as prepared as we possibly can for cataclysmic catastrophes. I believe that the second phase to becoming prepared should be our global connection with the rest of humanity. Should something of an apocalyptic, seismic, catastrophic nature occur we will definitely do better to stand together. Furthermore, is it not about time to put down our differences and find that common ground of which Howard Thurman so passionately spoke? We have all these digital methods of social interfacing now available and society has become more segregated and more dissociative than ever. It is time we come together! The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of the Divine will arrive in the nick of time. Mark 1:15 reminds us to be ready. It reminds us to repent. Kairos. Kairos. Kairos.

            For every soul that sees. For every heart that knows the battle cry. For every leader that knows part of their calling is to lead the people to the Promised Land, we must surely act now. We must use the social medias as our sacred tools. We must gather those that hear together. We must speak from the mountain tops the poetry that knows no age, no language, no gender. We must play the sacred harp that calls all cultures, all religions, all people to come nigh. We must act as if the lives of all the world depend on it. We must have faith that all we do is not in vain. We must have faith that our suffering is almost over. We must have courage to keep marching until Zion is no longer a mythical land in the distance. We must lead the people home.

            Every soul who knows the way must take their level of responsibility, their level of duty, their level of action to the next height. We all get caught up in habits and rhythms that we know are incorrect. We must be true to our own soul and we must emanate a light for the world to see. We must show the world in what we must believe. We must show the world how we can be free. Freedom comes to the soul that harbors no weight of guilt. This does not ask of us to be perfect. What spiritual freedom requires is the honesty to own up to our wrongdoings and to constantly work at becoming better versions of ourselves. We have all that it will take to set the human race free.

            For every injustice we must rise. For every act of oppression we must cry out. For every lie told we must shed light on truth beyond a shadow of doubt. It is our duty to level the playing fields and to stand for the unification of the human race. Power and greed have so many weeping on their knees. Yet it rains on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. We are our own worst enemies. We all have a deep darkness within us. The most powerful move one soul could make, would be to honor their soul and to evolve daily. Should we all follow this model of human living, the population would ascend to a higher vibration which would raise also the vibration of this planet. Life will surely breathe on. May we become like Peter and rise from the waters of our self-doubt. May we rise like the Phoenix from the ash and know that we are all a part of the living solution.

I perpetuate forward motion

Propagate revolution

Healing contusions to my mental

Elemental to my peace

I release this beast from within me

I am the moon in all her fullness

Reciprocity by definition

I have this confession

It is our time to rise!

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

~~*~~

Discerning the Signs of the Times (my latest paper for my Kairos class)

“As I heal, may I be a source of healing for others.”

My Pocket Mantras by Tanaaz Chubb

            Since the dawn of man, there have been countless times when man believed firmly that he was living in the last days. Today, we are surrounded by unnecessary war in a drama-ridden Western society that seems to live only for shock value. We are surrounded by money hungry ways that have shaped a culture to become greedy and never truly happy, always searching for the next amazing technology to come our way. Big Pharma makes money off proscribing pills that patients neither need nor benefit from. Global wars are waged for the money they make and sex has been devalued and turned into something that has no real worth save an orgasm or two.

            Global warming is swept underneath the rug and we run on little sleep for days on end chasing “the American Dream”. Humanity is segregated in endless categories, Christian versus Muslim, Gay versus Straight, Rich versus Poor, Educated versus Uneducated, Black versus White and the list goes on. The Bible says that angels walk among us. We are blessed with prophets and prophetesses, poets and teachers, healers and social workers, ministers and Good Samaritans committed to shining light and leading the way.

            The big question remains: are these the last times that Christians, Egyptians, Mayans, and many other cultures have predicted? How do we discern the signs of the times? For many Christians, the book of Revelation is a major go-to for Armageddon-related predictions. Revelation 1:3 states, “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it; for the time is near (NRSV)”. These words however were written thousands of years ago. How near is the time now? The Bibles says that we should “…be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (KJV, 2 Peter 3:8)”. How then shall we know the day or the hour? I Thessalonians 5:2 says “For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night (ESV)”.

            “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication (Revelations 14:8, NRSV).” How many times has America been likened to Babylon? What nation better portrays the whore of Babylon than the flailing hegemon of yesteryear? What merciless violence has she swept like a black plague over the globe? What lasciviousness has she made commonplace to the general population of Western thought? How great is her sin? Where is her repentance? The time must be nigh for America has no more space to take against the eye of the Divine.

            It was rumored the Mayans predicted the end of mankind in 2012. However the Mayan calendar was misinterpreted. Archaeologists have discovered predictions Mayans made far into the future of now. The Mayans had many calendars and calculated many of their predictions via the Long Count. The Long Count were cycles that lasted 5,000 years. What the Mayans did predict for years surrounding 2012 was a rebirth. They predicted the beginning of a new cycle. The human imagination is vivid and wild and many seem to always be looking for doomsday endings (National Geographic, December 14^th, 2012).

            The human mind certainly is entertaining the end of time on a constant basis. Societal thought is reflected in our movies. We have seen many movies about asteroids hitting Earth, aliens invading Earth, natural disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes destroying Earth. We talk about magnetic polar shifts on our planet, the possibility of the tectonic plates shifting again, global warming, and even the reversal of the North and South pole. The polar ice caps are melting and global warming is real. So again, the question arises, how do we discern the signs of the times?

            Perhaps, the human heart is heavy with guilt. Perhaps, humankind knows the sins they have committed against the Earth will have to be faced with retribution. Perhaps, as Chronos ticks faster and Kairos beats against the human heart like Edgar Allen Poe, we just know time is almost up! Mark 1:15 states, “the time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God is at hand (NRSV)”. In the Western world one must seek everything all the time. There is never fulfillment. The “American Dream” is a rat race that will never be satisfied with cheese at the completion of the maze.

            Pamela stated it oh so well in class, “One can become paralyzed by the nagging question and instead of living in the moment, allowing the revelation of Kairos to lead you, one can instead sit as though paralyzed by fear”. Palestine suffers every day the wrath of a conflict thousands of years ongoing and we the people sit and do next to nothing. We have become paralyzed by time, paralyzed by money, paralyzed by a system we disapprove of whole-heartedly but have no earthly idea how to repair.

            Exo-colonization has its target locked and its weapon loaded ready to rape and ruin any people in its way to claiming natural resources that it has no natural right to. The Witch Craze had the need to make sure populations were controlled and domesticated at the Dawn of Imperialization. The Militarization of this Capitalism driven system has cried “War On!” for far too long. Speed and power have come together as Dromo-Colonization has taken control of a people too mesmerized by the latest digital craze to realize they are being distracted from some very serious matters.

            John Collins, in Global Palestine, speaks against the presumed narrative of progress. The Western world has this all too obvious dichotomous worldview. Unfortunately, most people are too busy staring at tiny digital screens walking around these city streets oblivious to what is actually taking place. Securitization sees the strategic oppression using social systems and militarization to secure the domestic colony (endo-colonization). We are caught in multiple perpetual cycles. We work to spend our entire paychecks on so many things we don’t even need, as well as state mandated services and expenses that keep us working day in and day out. We are caught in a perpetual cycle of wars and further militarization.

            The perpetual acceleration for technological advancement is used as yet another form of societal control. Global Palestine (p. 85) speaks on the psychological disorientation and the hyper-accelerated violence that the drone of technology chasing can bring. The middle class has all but ceased to exist. More and more of the working class is suffering the removal of their agency. More and more the working class and the truly poor are becoming closer to one another in income and exposure to benefits that all human beings should know. The removal of agency is both dehumanizing and intentional.

            In the 1960’s, Hannah Arendt wrote about the confliction between truth and politics. Politicians and lying have always seemed to be synonymous. The most dangerous part of this is that politicians are supposed to be our leaders. Who do the people trust if they cannot trust those in charge of governing their daily existence? Organized lying has been the rewriting of the tale that became “history”. The victor gets to tell the story. What then in this world is truth? However, most people are aware that they are being lied to. Unfortunately, the fabricated lie created on the whim of power if often more attractive than the actual truth.

            In Greek mythology, Thanatos was death personified. Thanatos is our death instinct. Hannah Arendt focused intensively on the dispossession of the stateless. More and more refugees wander without state due to climate change. The deeper we dig into the devastation in this world, the harder it is to believe that Armageddon is not completely inevitable. The more we are faced with end of time scenarios that put all we have allowed to take place on this Earth into perspective.

            Chris Hedges writes in The Coming Collapse, : “It is impossible for any doomed population to grasp how fragile the decayed financial, social and political system is on the eve of implosion”. Without corporate money, the power elite would no longer hold political power. “They would rather implode the entire system than give up their positions of privilege (Chris Hedges, The Coming Collapse)”. Our system is swiftly disintegrating and Chris Hedges is in no way the only one who sees this coming.

            James Baldwin clearly stated his belief that whiteness is not about color but about mindset. White is the way that led us to corporate America. White is the system of oppression that led to the one percent. White is the way that led to the rise of the carceral state, to the New Jim Crow and to privatized prisons. More and more good men and women keep disappearing off the city streets. Darkness has all but consumed us. We are swimming through seas of lies and oppression, lust and legions of demons that call themselves the leaders of the New World Order.

What if this darkness we faced was necessary before we could collectively rise to the occasion of the light? What if what we are racing toward is cataclysmic change?

            Hannah Arendt believed in Natality or the chance to be the spark that begins something new. She believed we as human beings have the ability to begin again. Tracy Chapman sings that Heaven is here on Earth. The Bible speaks of the new Heaven and Earth. Anthony Marx in Faith in Nation closes his brilliant work saying that he believed we must learn from our scars and work hard in order to repair the damages done. We look around at all the wars we wage, the oppression we live with every day, the imbalance of a system that was created to enslave and we again ask the question: how does one discern the signs of the times?

            We are standing on the precipice of a catalyst. The system capitalism has driven for centuries to force oppression and subjugation is about to collapse. We time lapse as we sit still at stoplights waiting for the light to change green. Big Pharma is taking over making people more sick with more symptoms than ever before. Text conversations and staring at flashing digital screens has spring-loaded the dumbing down of a nation, the dumbing down of a globe. We wove our terrible tale and the end is drawing quickly near.

            We are living in a dark precarious moment. Will we honor Chronos or Kairos? Will we stand or will we fall? It will take the unification of us all to rise above the darker elements that have almost completely engulfed most human hearts. We start but will we finish? Will we be able to diminuendo down the sound of our own drowning laughter? This is the disaster every prophet, every religion, every end of times movie has predicted. This is our decision to make. I stand with Anthony Marx and Hannah Arendt and every other forward thinking soul. We have the power, we have the ability, we have the creative strength to heal our scars and create for us all a better tomorrow. May the Mayans be right. May this be our new beginning.

           

           

Kairos

Much like the four words for love in the Greek language, there are two words for time. Chronos which is time as we understand it. The clock ticks and we move to its beat. Kairos on the other hand is sacred time, that perfect moment. We all know what the feels like, the right moment, the right time. Supernatural rhythm that brings about something heavenly in our lives. Kairos also has a shadow self but we will not delve into that now.

My favorite class this semester is led by my favorite Professor at Colgate. Kairos! What a thought to have. In English there is only one word for love. Americans use the same word to describe their feelings about pizza, football, their car as they would their family, their friends, their intimate partner. If you LOVE pizza then do you LOVE your significant other? I mean, it kind of trivializes the idea of love in American thought, don't you think?

Chronos is that pulse, that tick, that beating of the clock that drives us throughout our daily lives. Can we use the same word for "it was the right time", "it was the perfect timing"? (or any other time-clock representation of time to mean anything other than Chronos)?

Kairos is our sacred moment. It is the catalyst that builds us up to the precipice that we jump off and learn that we can actually fly!

Never forget that we can actually fly!

What it means to me to be a Christian...

            Jesus the Christ was a Jew. He was a reformist. He was not a Christian. Christian to me is an ugly, blood-ridden word. It comes with a history of slaughter and theft. It stole from other cultures rituals and sacraments that were considered sacred. However, the love of Christ supersedes all boundaries. Christ’s love is matchless. It is pure. It is not bound by ethnic background, sexual preference, social status, education, or religious beliefs. Christ is the Divinity within us all. Our exponential potential breathes life because of Christ. Christ is the Son, the Sun, and the light that emanates from the eyes of those who see.  

            So, I could never say that I am a Christian. I must be honest in this delivery. I can say however that I am proud to be a follower of the Christ. The grace that flows like a river from the love of the Divine can set everyone free. Salvation is, to me, a tributary that leads us (when followed) to our exponential potential. As Howard Thurman says in The Search for Common Ground we all have that innate potential. We all have the choice to honor or deny it. To me being a follower of Christ means a commitment to honoring Spirit. It means a commitment to the search for truth. It means possessing the integrity to serve righteousness regardless of the consequences.

            The weight of being a follower of the Christ requires us often to walk alone. It requires us to emanate light in a dark world. It asks of us to practice our faith even if the whole world is dead set against us. More than anything else, it asks of us to be ready to offer up our lives for the justice of the cause. It inspires us to love all. Christ did not segregate his love. Christ loved the sinner when no one else would. Mary Magdalene washed his feet with her hair. Christ did not tell those who were in same sex relationships that they were not worthy to receive the gift of the sacrifice he made. He did not tell African Americans that they were not worthy of his grace. He did not tell the poor that they were too poor to understand spiritual freedom. Christ loved all.

            Christ led by example. He led by parable. He loved all and forgave all but he also raged. He also wept in the garden. Christ’s love has no earthly definition. To me, being a follower of the Christ means I am a work in progress involved in a mystery so great, so profound,  and so pure that I cannot possibly understand it yet. The brilliance to me is the unveiling, the slow unwrapping of the Great Mystery. The beauty of the journey is not in the arriving, it is in every slow step (whether painful or beautiful) in the process toward our exponential potential.

Surround Sound

We certainly have the power to choose who we allow to surround us in life. I have a tight inner circle and I am grateful for every single soul! We often choose to allow someone in our life however that takes more than gives, is not really on our wavelength, has different goals or visions to the point where it detracts from ours, etc. Unfortunately in so many of those moments instead of recognizing how our choice affected the outcome, we turn to blaming that person. No one can cause us to backslide. We choose to or we choose not to. It's like that proverbial parental line, "if so and so jumped off a bridge would you follow them?" We all answer a resounding "of course not!" but in our lives we often do choose to jump off that proverbial bridge. It does not matter what happens in life, whether we are beaten, raped, homeless, abused, cheated on, lied to, or misunderstood. No one makes our choices for us except US! So next time we go to blame another soul for our own terrible behavior, we should probably remember that there are those three proverbial fingers pointed back at us! May we all get stronger every day. May we lift one another to the light. May we surround ourselves with what is best for us and take responsibility every day for the good or bad ways that we choose to behave. May we all continue forward toward our exponential potential! It is our time to rise.