Stephen Dinan's recently published book, Sacred America, Sacred World - fulfilling our mission in service to all, promises to be a welcome respite for anyone buffeted by the 2016 presidential campaign, a singularly bizarre experience whatever your political stripe may be.
I've just made it through the foreword, written by the incomparable Marianne Williamson, which has me eager for the rest of the book, which will include "questioning the limitations as well as the highest principles of both the right and the left."
All the rest of Marianne's foreword leaves me filled with anticipation for what will come. All but that thought about sacred citizenship. If there is one thing that seems emblematic of today's right ~ not the alt-, but the semi-traditional !~ is its deeply rooted sense of American exceptionalism, which seems contrary to any sense of "oneness," certainly across nationalities. Consider that statement within the alt-right (white nationalists) & just forget it altogether.
How does "oneness" agree with Americans who long for the return to gays staying discreetly closeted, who want transgender children to use the bathrooms that match up with their original sexual designation, who see all African-Americans as poor drug-addled violent? Who want to benefit from the labor of illegal immigrants at the same time they want to send them packing back south of the border?
How does "respect" come into play with people who seek to stay firmly within their own racial or religious "kind," criticizing shunning condemning those who are different from their own beliefs traditions culture?
And "love" - it feels like so many people have even forgotten the meaning of the word. Across all ethnic, cultural & even religious groups, hate seems more readily expressed than love understanding compassion.
Like Stephen Dinan & Marianne Williamson, I will pray & work actively toward a new thought & political system that will be hallmarked with "sacred citizenship" based on & embodying oneness, respect, love. Five days ago, I would have scoffed at those words, at that hope. But I've learned that a miracle embraced believed lived can turn into reality.
Maybe it's not that the hope is impossible in today's political environment, but that it is the very thing needed to turn the current insanity back to balance health wholeness - and holiness.
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