When the Whole Universe Feels Like It’s Slipping Away: It Can Take a Long Time for Truths to Reach Us

The election of DT first scared the hell out of me. His inauguration makes this even worse, more real. I feel the world, including the natural world, my life, personal and collective slipping away from my grasp. Becoming a gigantic unknown. And it’s forcing me to re-evaluate so much of what I want, so much of what I’m used to and who I think I am.

 

Throughout human history, people have faced such feelings, that a gigantic change or feared cataclysm⎼ or hopeful revolution⎼ was coming. Bob Dylan sang in the 1960s that “The Times They Are A-Changing.” Religions of different places and times expressed their hopes and directed their fears.

 

In Christianity, for example, there was talk of the “end times,” through different stages including the time of the Anti-Christ, or Satanic man, and finally the New Creation, when Christ remakes heaven and Earth, and ends death, pain, suffering. In Judaism, there’s the prediction of a time of a coming messiah, a liberator who will bring the end of days, the Kingdom of God or an ideal state. Islam speaks of the day of judgement.

 

Times of natural disasters, droughts and fires, floods and hurricanes, created fear and sorrow, a sense that the greater world was turning against us. Wars, rebellions, and injustices, times when leaders spread hate and violence created a sense of our own humanness turning against us. People felt powerless, that their nation, human society was collapsing. Instead of focusing on the light within, people turned to the dark. Instead of looking clearly at the world, the society, or themselves, they searched for someone or something to blame.

 

We know this happens. We turn ordinary humans like ourselves into devils; instead of self-inquiry and studying history, science, thinking critically, we see Satan.

 

In such times, it is never more important for people to do what many of us are trying to do now: to get creative. To look for understanding and ways to join with others, ways of acting.

 

In 1882, philosopher Frederick Nietzsche wrote: “Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern and ran to the marketplace, and cried incessantly, “I seek God!” “Whither is God.” He cried out. “We have killed him- you and I.” And later, “Whither are we moving now? …Is there an up or down left? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? …. There has never been a greater deed. And whoever will be born after us… will be part of a higher history than all history hitherto.”

 

Social Media, Information Establishments,But then, Nietzsche’s madman fell silent. No one responded to him. “[T]his event is still on its way… The light of the stars requires time, deeds require time…  before they can be seen or heard.” The events and movements of today share characteristics with the insight and emotion behind the madman’s cries. If we can face our fears and gigantic cultural shifts, a higher history can follow.

 

Almost 100 years after Nietzsche wrote this, in 1966 it became an iconic news headline. An article about it in Time Magazine led to angry pulpit speeches and pinpointed the decreasing influence of established religion in the rapidly changing cultural landscape of the US. It asked us: if we eliminate a central focus for belief and for guiding behavior from the past, from understanding ourselves, whatever that focus is, what will take its place?

 

Charles Kupchan, in a recent article in the Atlantic, wrote, “Trump is Right that Pax Romana is Over’.”…

 

 

*To read the whole post, please go to this link to The Good Men Project.

The Boy Who Thought He Was The Messiah

A story I wrote a few years ago:

I was in the third grade when I first thought I might be the Messiah. This was back in the fifties and I was attending one of those elementary schools in Queens, New York that had no name, only a number, PS 46 or 192 or 238. It was the usual type of building, red brick with bars on the windows.

 

The thought came to me soon after an incident in the morning assembly. The principal, like usual, had walked onto the stage at eighty thirty a. m., flanked by two of the oldest teachers in the school, and told us all to bow our heads as he got ready to read us a prayer. This was before the Supreme Court had outlawed this sort of bowing in schools.

 

Seated in the audience, I remembered being told in Hebrew School that Jewish people do not bow their heads, at all, to anyone, except in G-d’s own house and to Him only. Bowing outside of G-d’s house would be to acknowledge a god other than the Almighty.

 

Back then I thought of Him in a very spatial way. He was The Man Upstairs, looking down on us all. And even though I had never met Him, at least not face-to-face, I clearly wanted no trouble with Him. Sure, I was very curious. I mean, He was quite a celebrity and I wanted to know all the details about Him, like what He looked like and if He held a grudge.

 

But none of the answers I was given made any sense. The adults that I talked with obviously knew no more about Him than I did. So, I wouldn’t bow my head. My unbowed head attracted attention. I was taken to the principal’s office and my parents were called.

 

I remember sitting outside his office. The halls were empty, as everyone else was still in the assembly. Despite the isolation, I felt safe, because wasn’t G-d who inhabits the heavens and created the universe larger than a principal who inhabits a dusty eight by ten office? The principal was physical, someone I could touch and see, but who could touch G-d? Who could see eternity? My math teacher couldn’t even define ‘eternity.’ And especially to the limited view of an eight year old, this principal could be defined quite easily.

 

As students and teachers began to crash through the halls to their classrooms, his secretary rushed me into the principal’s office. The move was so abrupt as to be almost violent, and I began to wonder what it was about my action that had brought this on.

 

For a moment I faced doubt. My knees began to shake. I felt I was walking a tightrope of mind, stretched between what I assumed to be Heaven and what I feared to be Hell.

 

Then the principal entered. He tried to look angry and severe but it was too difficult a job for him. Confusion seemed more appropriate. “How could this eight year old boy,” he must have been thinking, “defy my authority, defy my whole idea of what should be happening, defy my whole notion of God?” He didn’t realize that we were talking of two different deities, his and mine. His, I could defy quite easily. But not mine, not the Almighty, Blessed Be He. He was Christian and I was Jewish and I would not let my religion be placed second to any other.

 

I must admit that the whole incident might have arisen from my looking around for something to act up about. You know how life is; it just goes by, day by day, and we read about exciting and courageous deeds that other people do but we don’t see them, not often, not first hand. And to live one? To live a heroic moment, to live as the Hero of G-d—how could I give up the opportunity?….

 

To read the whole story, go to Heart And Humanity magazine.