I heard Colin Powell’s eloquent comments about Senator Obama’s candidacy and his own rather stunning endorsement. General Powell’s eloquence didn’t stop there. As a direct descendant of the Buffalo Soldiers, Colin Powell knows the sting of racism and bigotry that is rampant not only in America but elsewhere too. Usually it is the those who bear the wounds that have a message for us all and yesterday General Powell’s endorsement was really overshadowed by the story he told about a brave young American soldier who happened to be a Muslim. Until yesterday I’d never heard of Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. Somehow his name didn’t make the evening news and yet his sacrifice was more than worthy of it. Like the Buffalo Soldiers, the Tuskegee Airmen, the 442nd Regimental combat team, and the Navajo code talkers, Kareem served a country that is still struggling to accept him. He died for a country that is struggling to overcome racial and religious bigotry. Like those who served before him, Kareem was bold and brave, perhaps his sacrifice and his story can bring healing to our troubled land.
Idiots rule
The headline caught my attention and I read the entire article and I have to agree with much if not all that it’s author is writing about. If you like this quote then you might enjoy the whole article.
Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality. We still believe in “the experts.” They still believe in themselves. They are clustered like flies swarming around John McCain and Barack Obama. It is only when these elites are exposed as incompetent parasites and dethroned that we will have any hope of restoring social, economic and political order.
Contemplation is life itself
Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source. It knows the Source, obscurely, inexplicably, but with a certitude that goes beyond reason and beyond simple faith… It is a more profound depth of faith, a knowledge too deep to be grasped in images, in words, or even in clear concepts.
Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from Him Who has no voice, and yet Who speaks in everything that is, and Who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being; for we ourselves are words of His. But we are words that are meant to respond to Him, to answer to Him, to echo Him, and even in some way to contain Him and signify Him. Contemplation is this echo. It is a deep resonance in the inmost center of our spirit in which our very life loses its separate voice and re-sounds with the majesty and the mercy of the Hidden and Living One…
Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions Press, 1962: 1-3.
Namaste
Today at Mass Fr. Bob’s homily was about how we are all brothers and sisters of the same father. That fundamental concept of the Incarnation is frightening to much of contemporary society. Subtle demonization of our brothers and sisters is a path to the point where their lives are viewed as worth less than our own. They are viewed not as the beloved of God, but as something less.
“I honor the place in you where Spirit lives
I honor the place in you which is
of Love, of Truth, of Light, of Peace,
when you are in that place in you,
and I am in that place in me,
then we are One.”
In each of us there is the spirit of God. Namaste is a greeting that invites us to consider the spark of the divine in those who we greet. It is a moment of mindfulness.
Powell Endorses Obama
I’m delighted to see that Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama for President. His interview with Tom Brokaw is eloquent. General Powell has the respect of most Americans and his endorsement is important. There can be no doubt of the integrity of a man who served his country both on the battlefield and in highest levels of government even as Secretary of State in the first term of George W. Bush.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efv3Vr8T9MA]
A name
What is in a name? What is the language of racism? George Washington Carver was born a slave. His mother named him after the first American president when she and he were still slaves. A woman who thought more of her country than it thought of her and her son. George Washington Carver was a brilliant scientist. He worked with Booker T. Washington another brilliant scientist born into slavery and bearing the last name of our first president.
Barack Hussein Obama should be our next president and perhaps he will be, but the hoop he has to jump through caused by racism has been cast upon him by generations of flag waving, bible toting Americans who are as unfamiliar with what is really in the Bible as they are with what is in the Constitution of the United States of America. The real issue with Mr. Obama is not whether he’s qualified. The real issue is his race. He’s more than qualified. He’s brilliant and charismatic too. He’s assembled a brilliant team of advisers and he will make a great president, but his biggest problem is that he lives in the United States of America where a black man is still just a nigger. They won’t use those words on the news or political advertising. They are just below the radar. They tip-toe around hot button words like that, but the implication is there. Mr. Obama dignity as a man and a brother in our human race is further denigrated because his middle name is Hussein. Barack Hussein Obama is named well as the name Hussein translates to “handsome,” and he is one handsome man.
Barack Hussein Obama is my brother and we are all brothers and sisters of the same father and mother. We are not Arabs, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Irish, Polish. Those are terms that divide us. They may have been appropriate at some time in our past but they are not germane now. We all have hearts, brains, eyes, ears and mouths. We all need to eat. We all have blood and we all need air. Some of us are women and others men. Some of us are obese, some are slim, but we share the basics. We are all children of the same creator. We may have different names for the creator but that doesn’t change the central fact that we’ve all sprung from the same source.
Epithets like nigger, wop, polock, spic, gook, mick, rag head, haji fill our language. Epithets are the verbal expressions of fear and prejudice. They divide us. In any other country that may be acceptable, but here we are the United States of America and it must end now.
Found him not
All this talk about Islam and Muslims has awakened a hunger within me to know more. One of my favorites is a Sufi mystic, Rumi. Rumi lived in the 13th century and though they were thousand of miles apart he was a contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi.
I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not. I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there. I entered the mountain cave of Hira and then went as far as Qandhar but God I found not. With set purpose I fared to the summit of Mount Caucasus and found there only anqa’s habitation.
Then I directed my search to the Kaaba, the resort of old and young; God was not there even. Turning to philosophy I inquired about him from ibn Sina but found Him not within his range. I fared then to the scene of the Prophet’s experience of a great divine manifestation only a “two bow-lengths’ distance from him” but God was not there even in that exalted court.
Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.–Rumi
Peace Train
I got an email today from a guy who wants me to believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim and because of that he’s not fit to lead the United States of America. I don’t care if he’s a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, or an atheist. America is not a theocracy. I love this song by Yusuf Islam. Yusuf is a convert to his faith. He’s not an American, but he’s clearly my brother in the quest for peace.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7wEctHyuc0]
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
–U.S. Constitution.
What if..
The following brief article came in today’s mail from a friend.
What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review? What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class? What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said “I do” to? What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?
What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization? What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard? What if Obama were a member of the “Keating 5”? What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are? This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference. — Kelvin LaFond, Fort Worth
The debate
I’ve been watching the presidential debate a bit tonight. It’s the first one that I’ve really viewed on my big TV. I watched the conventions on my laptop with UStream.tv and an NBC live feed. I find the debates tiresome. I did get to see Senator Obama refute his association with Bill Ayers and ACORN. I don’t know how John McCain can talk about voter fraud after the elections of 2000 and 2004. The Republicans seem to have written the book on fraud. Wall Street dropped another 700 points today and all John McCain can zero in on is guy that used to be part of the Weathermen forty years ago. I used be a John McCain admirer and in other years, particularly in 2000 I was pulling for him against Governor Bush. Tonight he doesn’t even look senatorial let alone presidential. He looks instead like an angry little boy. I want to know who is Joe Plumber? McCain is enthralled by this guy. McCain hates publicly financed health care, but he himself has been on the dole all his life. What’s up with that? Does John McCain honestly believe that a $5000 tax credit would allow average Americans to afford health care. How much does $5000 buy? The average health care policy in this country costs $12,000. What planet is Senator McCain on? Oh well, the election is only a few weeks away and then we can prepare for campaign 2010.