The Most Radical Thing

Everyone is buying... everyone is selling... something... anything... anyone...

Everyone is hungry... everyone is running... somewhere... anywhere...

With less and less time and space between shootings, between acts of terrorism, between justifications for war, greed, exploitation of the Earth, and oppression of untold millions of "invisible" peoples; what is a person to do?

What is a person to do when it feels as if both body and soul are at the point of an inevitable shredding? What is a person -- a young person -- to do when political leaders and corporate entities turn a blind eye to your future -- to the very future of this precious blue Planet? What is a person to do: sell out? Buy in? Cut and run? Or just wipe out? Is there any action at all that might salvage the remnants of Earth and Soul in a seemingly mad "end time"?

What if there is?

Would you accept that possibility and carry it as far as you can -- perhaps even, to the rest of your life?

Would you listen to one who gave 30 years of his life to a Soup Kitchen and the Homeless? Would those 30 years amount to a hill of beans in your mind's eye?

On the chance that you are reading this: with an affirmation in your mind, I am prepared to tell you that every breath that you breathe is of infinite value... I am here to let you know that these times -- your time -- is truthfully, sacred time: it will never get anymore sacred than right now in fact... I am here to let you know that you are powerful -- perhaps in spite of appearances: so powerful in fact, that the world trembles at your feet! Your power is the power of "Yes": "Yes! I will choose to believe you! And I will tell my friends and together we will form a Sacred Circle for prayer and meditation, for our own transformation and liberation, and while we are working on that, we will be working to change the world! The abuse of power sucks: we will resist. The worship of money sucks: we will build alternatives. The violence around everyone sucks: we will stand for nonviolence in every way. The selling of children for sex sucks: we will free the children. The selling of the Planet for short-term profit sucks: we will work for the preservation and restoration of this precious blue Planet. The oppression of women sucks: we will work for full equality and an end to domination. The bitter reality of continued racial prejudice, LGBT inequality, immigrant bashing, and concentration of privilege and power into fewer and fewer hands sucks: we will work for a complete social transformation... and while we are at all of this, we will also make love, we will practice beauty, we will write poetry, we will garden together, we will create music and works of art, we will build networks of possibilitarians and we will tell everyone that we can have a world with bread and roses for all... Don't sit back and watch us! Join us!"

The most radical act any human being can make is to consciously choose to love in her / his time and place. Looking squarely into the face of power, greed, injustice, exploitation, and violence, to choose to live by the eternal value of love-without-limits is the most radical act you can make. Sure, you could choose instead to "go along to get along"... but we both know that you would never be happy knowing you sold yourself out: selling out will simply mean that you will be swallowed up in the vast sweep of time: but choosing instead to leap from time into the timeless is where meaning, purpose, and your final happiness lies. Do not be afraid! You will be in good company! Your place is right there in the ranks of the revolutionaries and prophets: with Yeshua the Poet and Mary his Companion, with Rumi the Ecstatic, with Francis, Hildegard, Teresa, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. Cesar and Dolores, Nelson Mandela, Wangari, Dorothy, and Aung San Suu Kyi -- and crowds of others!

Will you help to stir the Soup? 

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