Humility or Humiliation

Humility or Humiliation

I listened to James Robinson on TV this morning reading from his booklet talking about the choice before us now, humility before god or humiliation by catastrophe. He seemed seriously concerned that the metroplex would come to chaos of failing water and power systems, because we had turned away from God’s laws. His offer of hope involved getting right with God. I couldn’t agree with him more. The devil is in the details however. How do we get right with God?
James Robinson didn’t go into a plan to heal the land or society, but implied that if we confessed Jesus, everything would be all right. What is God’s will if not to live righteously? That means more than keeping chaste; it involves living a balanced life. What is your water source? Are there safeguards to keep it clean? Where does your food come from? Is there any thing more spiritual than bread? Desecrating the flag or allowing gays civil rights is not the source of our problems. The crises we face are natural consequences of our shortsightedness, not the punishment from some less than all-merciful deity who feels neglected and throws a temper tantrum.
I sensed the collapse of industrial cities decades ago. It doesn’t take a prophet to apply ecological science. When you have an overpopulation that poisons wells and paves over pastures, you set the stage for failure. I wrote a paper in high school circa 1970 about pollution and the planet’s imminent demise. The first Earth Day was that year, and a lot of people paid attention to our situation. Alternative technologies emerged, but were dismissed by the profiteers in power. Small-scale innovations continued to improve and be used. Organic farming regained popularity and sustainability and permaculture became adopted as lifestyles. The ‘back to the land’ pioneers were considered quaint or hippie, but they have led the way on living a ‘righteous’ lifestyle. There is Zen saying, ‘Enough is a feast.’ Will Christians be able to learn humility? The first settlers learned how to plant fish with the corn and thereby replenish the soil. Today we pump petroleum back into the ground in the form of fertilizers to coax corn from the mismanaged heartland, and the accumulated fertility of five hundred years washes away in a day. God’s will, one would think, would involve living in harmony with nature. I don’t think it upsets God that there is sex down on the farm, but maybe She is concerned about genetic modification. Common sense says not to ‘spoil you own nest’. The Genesis deity says to replenish the earth, not to rape and plunder.
The churches have let us down, by failing to preach an environmental ethic. The clergy can hardly be blamed though, for they are victims too of a foolish theology that divorces man from nature. Maybe the knowledge we need today went up in smoke with the ‘witches’. There is no escaping the seasons or the limits of our habitat. Where can we learn to live a lifestyle that ‘replenishes’? Possibly from panentheists like Native Americans or biodynamic farmers. Bless our food O Lord, may it be free of poisons. Is our sustenance kosher in the sense that it is free of exploitation? Civilizations don’t crumble when some deity withdraws favor or someone blows a horn, they disintegrate from greed and avarice like overgrazing and government fraud. Getting right with god means composting! Build humus and make the world a better place.

Christ for the Ages

Christ for all Ages
And all People

“Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason then that of blindfolded fear.”

Thomas Jefferson in a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

After the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls and the Naj’ Hammadi texts, Alvin Kuhn, a biblical scholar and Egyptologist pieces together, literally and figuratively, from the fragments of ancient papyri, the suppressed story of first and second century Christianity. For the first time in 1600 years, the voices and thoughts of early Christians known as Gnostics were revealed. What we have to learn from these devout followers of Christ will help us make decisions about the kind of future we want. For that is the lesson of the Gnostics, we are God’s incarnation on earth, the embodiment of the Spirit, each and every one of us. We, in the Image of God, have the creativity to manifest Heaven or Hell.
This understanding of Christ espoused by the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas spoke to my heart. We read, “Divine Light is in all people”, and also about Jesus refusing worship, instead directing seekers to the Light within. ‘Gnosis’ or ‘Knowledge’ is coming to the ‘understanding, belief, and faith’ that we each have direct connection to God, and that all humanity is linked together in the Spirit. Enlightenment is our salvation; we are separated from God only by our pride or ignorance. To try and save a ‘self’, is contra-indicated to our wholeness or salvation, because we are never ‘lost’, and our true ‘self’ is a part of God and Nature and Spirit. Trying to isolate or ‘save’ your ‘ego’ or ‘self’ from the rest of creation of which it is an integral part is futile. Jesus said ‘whoever would save his soul must lose it.’ We must die to self, that is a personal ego, and identify with all of creation as an extension of our self. To acknowledge a separation from the ‘ground of being’ that is the all in all, and the ‘I am that I Am’, one in effect experiences disconnectedness (sin), because they set up a paradoxical reality living in opposition to the heavenly matrix that fills the universe and in which we live and move and have our being.
My first mystical experience was when I was a young child of 3 or 4 one summer at my grandma’s house. This was in fact my first memory. I feel like my soul was born that day. I woke that morning to comforting smells and friendly sounds, but it was the sight in the window that inspired the epiphany. A nest of Cardinals became the Beatific Vision, I saw God in the mother feeding her brood. A blue green dreamscape combined with the sweet feelings of a summer morning in the country at a family reunion precipitated the Spirit to sweep over me and fill me with the indisputable certainty that we were all One, and that all was well in the world. I saw with God’s eyes, and it was good.
That experience defined my religion and it seemed to work pretty well in the Presbyterian Church we regularly attended. Not until I heard about the ‘second coming’ and ‘being born again’ did I question the reality I experienced in my own heart. I asked to be saved, not just a few times, got baptized twice and started worrying that all my friends and some of my family were going to hell. Worry about my own salvation continued to haunt me; was I really sincere in my heart of hearts? It was hard for me to believe that the Lamb of God was really a wolf in sheep’s clothing, coming to slay and torture the “wicked’. None of this seemed real to me. I was depressed and confused, I thought my faith was weak, because I couldn’t believe in Jesus as an avenging judge. I had a hard time believing Jonah being swallowed by a whale. Some say faith is trying to believe what you know to be impossible.
I had known God by the omnipresence of the Spirit that filled my heart, and the infinite peace that filled that eternal space. I couldn’t relate, no matter how hard I tried, to a schizophrenic god, who is both loving and vengeful, therefore sending his children to a lake of fire for the sin of being born. Was the Bible wrong, or was it simply misinterpreted? Is god really the vindictive Olympian who slaughters out of jealousy, the bloodthirsty Quetzalcoatl who demands sacrifice and rationalizes violent conquest and revenge?
Maybe Jesus came to redefine and clarify. Maybe God wasn’t really like that. Maybe the Old Testament writers didn’t speak accurately of the attributes of God. I believed in a God of Love and Compassion, therefore I couldn’t believe the Bible. Maybe the Gnostic texts have a perspective of who Jesus was and what he taught that matches my ideal. Maybe we can look at the bible with a new ‘Old’ understanding and recover the essence of Christianity and experience a revival of the eternal Christ with the assurance and trust that comes with a rational belief system.
A problem that perplexes us as a society is the predominance of a pre-Einstein worldview. The atomic bomb exploded the myth of dualism. E=mc2 proves all things are connected, energy equals mass. This is a universe not a duo-verse of spirit and matter. All things are interconnected and interdependent. We all share electrons! Deepest in the heart of matter we discover only vibration. Waves are no less than the Word of God in concert with the music of the angels mingled with our thoughts and prayers. We need a spirituality that matches our science.
Matthew Fox building on the prophecies of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin gives us that cosmology. Unity thought is often considered ‘New Age’ by fundamentalists but is in truth the ‘Perennial Philosophy, embraced by mystics and saints of all ages and religions. Fox gave voice to my soul with his book ‘Original Blessing’. Belonging is our birthright, the earth is not cursed, and neither are we. Does it speak to your heart as it did to mine that at our core we are good. We are not distanced from God by our humanity, but we are spiritual beings, lost only in our loneliness we know when the light in our heart is faint and when we feel worthless and disconnected. I could never be happy, not even in heaven, if other people were suffering. If God were a loving Father, none of this made sense. I decided to trust my conscience instead of the Bible.
If Grace were true, we are not saved by what we believe or if we are right or wrong. God’s love is unremitting, which makes sense in a seamless world. I knew peace for the first time since before I was ‘saved’. I trusted God was bigger and better than any notion I might have. I preferred a God of Mystery to a tribal god responsible for vicious atrocities.
A cursory reading of the Old Testament presents even the casual observer with panoply of vengeance, murder, and rape perpetrated in the name of Jehovah. This proves to be a dilemma for believers in scripture’s inerrancy, but is exactly what is to expected, if ‘anthropomorphisms’ is what we really have, that is ‘god created in man’s image.’
A critical study of the Bible is an exciting adventure into the ancient world. Like a detective story, secrets are uncovered when we reread familiar passages with an open mind. One of the most obvious characteristics in the Pentateuch is the use of ‘doublets’. The same stories are told twice, each story contradicts the other in some way; be it names, chronology, or geography. Examples can be found in the creation, the garden, and the flood stories. A closer look reveals that two different names for god are used in ‘doublets’. It is most likely that passages using different vocabulary and having different perspectives were written by different authors. This is the conclusion accepted by most modern scholars.
Was the Bible not written by Moses then, but compiled later from writings by competitors? This hypothesis seems to fit the history of the period that traces the rivalry of factions within early Judaism. Much like today, where churches contend for the ‘true’ form of worship, priests back then challenged one another for authority. Their holy writings were polemics justifying their cause. After all, if sacrifice was only allowed in your temple, then your priesthood prospered and was assured of at least something to eat, namely sacrifices. The tribes of Judah and Israel gave us the conflicting ‘doublets’ in the Bible in an attempt to prove that ‘God was on their side.’
Jesus taught that God did not take sides, but that God was on the inside of everyone, ‘the kingdom of heaven is within.’ God has no favorites, and Jesus broke down the barriers of race, gender, nation, and religion. This message of non-discrimination was not what the Jews wanted to hear, or what they expected from a messiah. They wanted a hero like Moses or Elijah to exalt their nation. So, he was rejected and crucified.
Stories begin to circulate about his resurrection. A god who dies and rises again is a theme not uncommon to the world of antiquity. Religions based on similar myths of risen saviors had held sway for hundreds, if not thousands, of years before the time of Jesus. Horus, Dionysus, and Mithra all fulfilled the role of resurrected gods in passion plays, which became to be known as the ‘Mysteries’. A virgin birth was not unique to Jesus. Even some of the miracles (walking on water, feeding the multitudes, healing the sick, raising the dead) attributed to Jesus find precedent in older myths. There is a common thread that runs through these myths, and that is the hope of life after death. People pinned their hopes on these representatives of the human spirit. They even went so far as to eat the flesh and drink the blood of their gods. The ‘mystery’ for the initiates was that the “Christ’ or ‘anointing’ was the Spirit in them. God raises us all from the dead in the Spirit. There was, in fact, Christianism before Jesus. The term ‘Christ’ was applied to Jesus as the legend grew. Was Jesus being mythologized as the next Christ in a long list of saviors?

“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fables of the generations of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”
Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

Speculation about Jesus resulted in a multitude of gospels claiming insight and inspiration. How and why did the texts we know as the New Testament become canonized? Investigation once again leads us to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Naj’ Hammadi texts. They were buried for fear of being burned by the sect claiming orthodoxy. What was the 3rd century church afraid for us read? One such gospel is the Essene Gospel of Peace. This book is especially important, because it is likely Jesus spent his unrecorded years among the Essenes, an ascetic community that criticized temple worship they considered corrupted. The Essenes believed in the divine nature of man, the holy spark in all humanity. This was heretical to those who wished to exercise control. How could the clergy claim to be the sole arbitrators of grace, if every believer communed with God through the Spirit? They couldn’t, so they begin to define what it meant to be a Christian to fit their agenda. When Gnostics and orthodox Christians discussed the nature of God, they were debating spiritual authority. Soon only the Roman Catholic Church could dispense the sacraments. Constantine assured orthodoxy’s triumph after a ‘vision’ of the cross with the words “In this sign Conquer.” He invested in the ecclesiastical infrastructure while at the same time destroying rival temples.
The Romans not only defeated the pagans and Gnostics but also gained dominance over the church of Jerusalem founded by Jesus’ own brother James. Paul, a man who never knew Jesus, became the main apologist and theologian, and his only authority was a ‘vision’! The historical Jesus remains shrouded in obscurity, because there are few records outside of the gospels about him, and the gospels must be read as propaganda, because that is exactly how Luke describes their objective, “this is written that you may believe.” Mark is acknowledged as the first of the canonical gospels, written sometime after 70 C.E. Its contents were not whispered in someone’s ear by God, but passed down from personal associates of Jesus to become oral traditions, later to be written down and finally copied by the author of Mark. That is 4 levels of remove from the historical Jesus. The authors of Matthew and Luke who copied Mark and added their own stories were 5 levels removed.
Mark portrays a very human Jesus. He even leaves his readers guessing about the empty tomb at the end of his story. Matthew and Luke both use Mark as a reference plus another common source known as Q(German for source). Then amplifications are added to accentuate their point of view. A parallel reading of the synoptic gospels reveals discrepancies in each telling of the same stories. Literalists who claim the Bible is inerrant are once again hard pressed to explain the differing versions. Compare the quotes of Jesus about the meanings of parables found in Mark 3:14 and Matthew 11:2-3. In Mark, Jesus is said to use parables to obfuscate. In Matthew, Jesus uses parables to illuminate. Matthew similarly touches up Mark’s story about Jesus and John the Baptist. Matthew is evidently embarrassed by the lowly status Mark infers on Jesus and changes the story to exalt Jesus above the Baptist. Matthew consistently edits Mark to suit his own purpose, which is establishing the divinity of Jesus. Matthew uses familiar miracle stories from the Old Testament and pagan sources and attributes them to Jesus to substantiate his assertions. The Gospels are clearly not historically accurate. The writers of the gospels were not concerned about those details. They were writing theology not history.
However, their influence would chart the course of history. The western world was plunged into the Dark Ages as the Church clamped down on reason and freethinking. Extensive documentation records the diabolical horrors of the Crusades, the inquisitions, and the witch burnings. Finally, the Renaissance and Enlightenment freed humanity from the slavery to the Pope. People were free to have their own thoughts without fear of reprisal from the Church. The fear of God had been inculcated into the psyche and collective unconscious for a millennium, however, and fear is not easy to overcome. The Reformation generated many new sects interpreting the scriptures according to their inclinations, but the teachings of the ancient Mysteries and Gnostic gospels had been systematically erased from common knowledge. Some of these secret teachings were preserved as ‘esoteric’, despite libraries being razed in the name of the ‘Lord’.

“I have recently been examining all known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies.”
• Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Dr. Woods

The Bible is the word of god in the sense that it comes from and speaks to the deepest instincts and aspirations of man, the abode of the Spirit. We can profit from the Bible by reading it as mythology. There are universal lessons to be learned from the “Illiad”. Though we do not take the stories literally, they are still true to human nature. Miracles were assigned to epic heroes to signify status and produce awe. God did not part the Red Sea, but that legend elevated Moses’ reputation and conjunctively codified the Law. The finger of God did not write the Ten Commandments, but they were expressions of humanity’s highest ethics. By claiming revelation, societies were able to impose order. Suggesting that the Bible is full of promises is putting a heavy burden on believers. We should not expect miracles. Rising from the dead in the Spirit requires no miracle; resurrection is inherent in the natural order.
The unearthing of the Dead Sea scrolls and Naj’ Hammadi texts can be seen as a resurrection. We are offered another chance to revive our theology according to teachings ascribed to Jesus that affirm our deepest held beliefs that we are all God’s children. We are not asked to sacrifice our reason and accept miracles. Our salvation does not depend on believing the impossible; that Jesus was born of a ‘virgin’, or that he walked on water, or even that he was raised from the dead. Our salvation is assured by our birthright, the anointing of the Spirit that is our essence. Christ is that spirit. Jesus assumed that title by living in the fullness of the Spirit and recognizing our Oneness with God.
Incarnation is perhaps the oldest religion. The Spirit in us testifies to the conclusion that God became Man. We feel that connection in our soul. We long for Heaven because that is where we are from and where we are going. Our hope for eternal life is justified precisely because the Sun is born again each spring. Easter was attached to this phenomenon, for that is the nature of the cosmos. Apollo is a type of Christ, as is Jesus, as is the Easter bunny. Would you sacrifice a rabbit to appease an angry god? Is God really angry? Does God demand a bloody sacrifice?
The history of the church could be written in blood, by martyrs yes, but mostly by innocent people who couldn’t believe in a sadistic deity with a nationalistic fervor and genocidal program that Hitler could only envy; compare Auschwitz to Hell. Burned at the stake for their unbelief, are these infidels the true saints? Have we the courage to deny the dubious authority of misconstrued myths and trust in our own hearts and minds?
Are you able to imagine the sweet ‘Lamb of God’ transforming into a ‘Lion’ bringing judgment and destruction? To me Jesus will always represent the God of Love who is ever Merciful. If we can but look on our fellow man through the eyes of the Christ, we too would be sympathetic and wars would cease. Who would Jesus bomb? We are all brothers and sisters. Treating anyone as less than a child of God is to sin against the Holy Spirit. The laws and the prophets are summed up in this one saying, ‘Love the lord thy God with all thy heart, with all the soul, and with all thy strength, and love thy neighbor as thy self.” Love thy self, because we bear God’s image, and love thy neighbor, because our neighbor is our self.
Armageddon doesn’t have to be. It will not be, if we listen to the Spirit of Love in our hearts and not to the prophets of hate and fear. Blind support for Israel as they commit crimes against humanity is not alignment with God’s people, for God’s people are the ‘anointed’ of any religion that practice mercy and loving-kindness, “Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” Which side are we on? Warfare and genocide seem to be the way of Moses and Mohammed. Non-violence and self-sacrifice is the way of Jesus the ‘Christ’.
The yearning in our heart for God, the desire for truth, the longing for redemption, the hunger for justice, the thirst for righteousness, the yen for love; these cravings are signs of the Spirit in our soul. These urges are evidence of the Cosmic Christ that pervades time and space and resides in every heart. Our conscience is our assurance of salvation. Our nostalgic ache for ‘Eden’ is a wish for unity. The kingdom of heaven will come and is now here for those who know this peace.

Reflections on 9-11

Reflections on 9-11

I was in a cabin on the edge of the Three Sisters Wilderness when I heard the news. We did not have electricity, except for what we generated from running water and falling light. The cell phones did not reach here, and there was no landline. I had turned on the radio to listen to a classical music station broadcast from the University of Oregon in Eugene. At first, I couldn’t make sense of the strange words coming with the familiar voice. The WTC had been attacked. The radio host usually spoke with a sophisticated accent that personalized calm and demeanor. She became an unsuspecting character in an unfolding drama and had no chance to rehearse, having been put on the spot to narrate the horrible events we all were witnessing. I had a 6-inch battery TV and was spared those same scenes on a big screen. It was almost more than the imagination could take. I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. Stunned, dazed, confused, I was so far away from the action; there was nothing I could do.
I suppose every one sensed the ‘outhouse’ would soon be
hitting the fan. I knew we would be going to war. I also felt
sadness or regret that we had not created a more peaceful world.
I felt, also that in a spiritual sense the attack was somehow my fault.
I had certainly not been as good a person as I could have been.
Maybe if I had not cut my hair (I had worn dreadlocks as a sign
of the peaceful diet, taken a Nazarite vow and broken it) or not betrayed my heart at times, maybe if I had been little more passionate or a lot more compassionate, I would have altered the course of events, not so much by converting the heathen or enlightening the self righteous, or by appeasing an angry god, but by balancing karma and magnifying
the light, in other words by always being truthful. Call me crazy or obsessed with a Christ complex, but I feel the cosmic connection between what I do and what happens on the global scale. We are the world, and I have pride and prejudice in my heart. If I harbor violence or hatred, how much hope is there? I know my well meaning friends will say Jesus is the answer. Jesus had the answer, ‘love your neighbor as yourself’, but Jesus is not coming again like Dr. Strangelove on the wings of a bomb.
I felt helpless and useless. I didn’t go to work. It was only a planning day anyway. I decided to climb a mountain called Indian Chief peak that towered over the elk friendly valley along Horse Creek. It was a rock outcropping that featured a prominent profile. I had wanted to climb this Mt., and this seemed the perfect opportunity to deal with my angst. After bushwhacking through brush and vines ands briars to get to the steep cliffs, I was sweaty and cut and ready to climb. A few trees clung here and there to the sheer terrain. Soil gave way to gravity. I initiated a few small landslides and received a dose of falling debris in my eye. This was the type of climbing where I could pull myself up by roots and rocks without a rope, being ever cautious that the root or rock I grab could give way. After a few hours of struggle, mixed with alertness and concern, I reached the outcropping. The last few yards to the top involved a perilous shimmy along a precipitous rocky ridge. I crawled, clinging like a snake, inching my way to the summit. Mountains and blue sky stretched as far as the eye could see. No planes were flying that afternoon.
I left an offering at the top, token recompense for my complicity in terrorism as beneficiary of the military industrial complex. My very clothes reeked with injustice, the sweat of wage slaves in another land, a stench to any god of justice. Being born American gave meaning to original sin. We had become like Rome, a military empire. Not to besmirch the salt of the earth, most people are honest and hard working, but corporations are not people. Collectively and at a distance, we do what we would never do on a personal basis. Corporations pollute and exploit for the profit of a few. For the most part, Americans are as out of touch with where their taxes go or what their investments do, as they are about where their clothes come from. There is a need to question whether our foreign policy has set the stage for terrorism? We are resolute that our presidents profess an irrational faith. Even though this requirement is unspoken, it should be unthinkable to insist our leader feigns allegiance to some ‘higher power’. Only fear demands that we want a ‘man of god’ in the oval office. We are fighting theocracies overseas, while our own ‘mullah’ has come home to roost in the White House. We have an occupant in office, of questionable legitimacy, and whose sense of reality is informed by fundamentalism firmly rooted in fantasyland. Fine! It’s okay if these pious people want too go wait on the mountaintop for the ‘rapture’, but lets take away their nuclear toys. Armeggedon doesn’t have to be, and the sincere seekers will eventually come down from the mountaintops and join the evolution of consciousness. My guilt, our guilt has been failing to love one another as ourselves. We have the Truth, god is love, and we have the Spirit, love is god.
Coming down Indian Chief proved more difficult than going up. I had decided to come down on the opposite side than what I had come up, and it proved even more plumb. There was an abrupt ravine that started as a rock staircase and eventually caught water and became a waterfall. The walls of the canyon were like a funnel running toward the creek, and so did I. The trees were giants in this untamed forest, growing hundreds of feet high, and almost parallel to the intense slopes. The rugged trees were my anchors as I cascaded down this plummeting hillside. What had I got myself into? Was there a safe way out? Scrambling, sliding, pert’ near flying, I made my way to the bottom. I made good use of the adrenaline that been flowing since the news that morning. I had faced danger and survived. A scratch on my eye made my eyes water for about a week.
Looking back from 5 years later, I reflect on the evidence of conspiracy and am convinced the Bush administration is culpable. But W’s war is only indicative of the war that is fought in every breast. The ‘war on terrorism’ is ultimately fought by every soul wrestling with opposing proclivities in its own nature. Our leftover survival instincts play out as battles of the rich against the poor, or more aptly the greedy against the needy. It’s not east vs. west, or blue vs. grey, or brown vs. white, or this god against that god, it all boils down to love vs. fear. Love is the spirit of peace, and perfect love casts out fear. Are we afraid of dying? Would we murder to defend our faith? We are so afraid of being wrong, yet we insist on beliefs that can’t be proven. How many people have been blown up by a desire to please god? Gut knowledge tells us that most religious tenets are ridiculous, if not impossible, even with god, if god is reasonable and loving. It is honorable to lay down your life for others, but to kill for religion breaks the golden rule. Justice means equality not revenge. I have a theory that is analogous to Einstein’s E=mc2. Suppose that m(mass)= people and c(speed of light)=love. As the number of people filled with love reach critical mass, a spiritual explosion will take place and E(energy) = evolution. We take a quantum leap into peace and prosperity. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth!
As I write this I am recuperating from a broken leg I suffered while rock climbing recently. Had I fallen in 2001, because of where I was and because I was alone, I probably would have died from exposure, but I continued to live, and continued to live on the edge. Now, after this latest mishap, I feel like I have been given a second chance to ground myself, figuratively and literally. I realize I’m lucky to be alive, but luck does not guarantee safety. Hopefully I have learned to be more careful, and I pray I have learned to be more compassionate. I wonder if we, the world, will be given another chance. Will we be more careful and compassionate? Will we be courageous enough to reach beyond our intolerant tribal religions? Will we be fortunate enough to survive our reckless technologies? Is it not in our best interests to learn how to ‘love our enemies’?