Not enough wolves are howling at the moon. I'm listening, are you? Let's howl.

If you're waiting for things to get better....well, you might want to grab a Snickers because it's gonna be awhile. The mortgage meltdown has not finished its Super Nova phase yet, and will continue to smolder for some time to come. But the same rapscallions that perpetuated the mortgage fraud are the same cowboys behind predatory lending of credit cards, and even student loans. Fannie Mae is warning of a pending crisis in student loans that will make the Enron debacle look like a hiccup. And we still have to wait until January of next year before the new Hazmat Team can get into the White House and get a good look at just how toxic the past 8 years have really been. Whew, it's going to be ugly. When does the Oath of Office take place? January what? I expect there will be a Major News Conference by February where the next President will gaze forlornly into the camera, sigh deeply, and utter the most pathetic speech we've heard from the Oval Office since the Great Depression. It'll be the equivalent of that hair removal scene from "The 40 Year Old Virgin" where the Korean attendant yells out, "We're gonna need more wax!!!!"

 

I swear to God. If just one of these war-mongering, lying, canker sores could be brought up on REAL charges...if just ONE head of some "higher-up" were to roll...if somebody, ANYBODY in a position of authority were to be held accountable....then perhaps the exhausted, confused, overworked and grossly underpaid American, trillion-dollar-war-tax-payer might actually be able to raise their heavy heads and heavier hearts to the heavens and remember what it was like to have some HOPE for the future. They might recall those vacated feelings of optimism and enthusiasm that once defined us as people. But as it stands, we are mere shells of our former selves. Our jobs have been shanghaied by corporate pirates called CEOs who, after having expunged every last decent wage-paying job from American mills, farms and factories, collect their multi-million dollar severance packages and retire to one of their Carribean properties to drink Rum Punches on their 3,000 square foot deck overlooking a Robert Trent Jones Golf Course. Ahhh, the good life.    

 

You know what this feels like? It's like a wide-eyed child, innocent and wonder-filled, after spending a day at the circus where sixteen clowns tumbled out of a tiny car, and elephants balanced on one leg, and the bearded lady swallowed flaming swords and all things were magical and true. But later, when the crowds have left and the klieg lights have been dimmed, the child wanders back to the Big Top, sneaks in under the flaps and lo and behold, Wonderland has turned back into the Hell that it is. The clowns are gang raping the Constitution, the elephant is being mercilessly beaten by a midget named W., and the bearded lady is really an ex prison guard from Guantanamo who has a swastika tattooed on her ass and believes waterboarding is too kind.  

 

It's too late to run and hide. We can't pretend we don't know the truth. And the options, the few that we actually have, are rather unpleasant and discomforting. But, and I say this with all the steadfast sincerity that I can muster in these darkly disturbing times, if we don't ACT on what few options we have left to us, then we will have even fewer options tomorrow.

 

In this time, and in this space, we must evolve. If we fail to do so, then we shall succumb. There are ten thousand crises lined along the high ridge of the horizon. If we hesitate, they will soon enough, each of them, have their day in the sun...until the sun itself is extinguished by their fury. Yet, for al the myriad issues that face us, that challenge us to our marrow, there is one solution that will cure all ills. That solution is the spiritual evolution of our species.

 

In the most optimistic sense of it all, these hard times have done us a kind of favor. They have prepared us for what we can, and what we must, accomplish. Knowing the truth of these times, knowing the nature of an enemy so sinister and so deceiptful, we can at last look inward, find the embers of a glowing strength we may have all but forgotten we possessed, and take the matter to task.

 

I will summarize this particular blog with a highly-appropriate quote from Nelson Mandela: "Our deepest fear is not that we are weak, or helpless. Our true fear is that we are powerful beyond imagining..."

 

To know our true power makes us responsible. With such knowledge comes an obligation, a moral and pressing urgency, to rouse ourselves from this collective and apathetic slumber and reclaim what was once nobly referred to as our "humanity".  

 

In this time...in this space...and for the sake of all that is free and wild and lovely...let us hasten.

 

 

I am the Reverend Terry Stingley. I wrote and approve this message.

 

(Future blogs will address the necessity and the techniques for spiritual evolution)