Black churches and pastors have come to the fore recently on the issue of gays and gay marriage.  The basis of their opposition to gay marriage is their religion, Christianity and the Bible.

This should make us all blink a little in disbelief.

Blacks have suffered enormously in the past because of racial discrimination, and they fought fiercely and with great difficulty to achieve some kind of equality in America.

Equality, liberty – these have been forever part of the fabric of the Dream of America.

Just prior to the Civil War, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a great book, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, that stirred the moral conscience of our nation against the evils of slavery.  It was a great force in turning the tide against slavery.  The basic premise of her book, the theme that runs in the background throughout the entire book, is that slavery and Christianity are incompatible.  Mrs. Stowe looked no further than the actions and words of the founder of her religion – Jesus – as the authority for her stance.

Now we see pastors and some of their flock in certain black churches using the Bible to bolster their prejudices against people of different sexual persuasions and beliefs – an astonishing decrepitude of the mind and attitudes that has nothing to do with the intent of the founder of their so-called religion – by people who have themselves suffered horribly from segregation and discrimination, people who above all others ought to be on the front lines of the battle against this kind moral insanity.

This is a stunning example of the backwardness and narrowness of a great deal of present day religion in general.  Our major religions today live in the past. They take their cue from dogma and authority rooted in almost prehistoric times, nothing to do with the dynamic, always evolving present.

Let us put it right out there:  We need a religion that can embrace all people, men, women, and children, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference – that can embrace all people as human beings.  A truly world religion, not one in name only.

It is in many instances religion that is dividing us – religion that should be bringing us together, united all of us under the banner of the world.

This religion is coming.  Walls are breaking down, and the current uproar and division over gays and gay rights and gay marriage is just another barrier that is cracking and falling under the weight of history.

We are one people – humanity – and the real task is to really recognize this, to become aware of this deep in our hearts, and to foster and create a new world of true equality and liberty.

We have to get beyond our old ways.  We have to create a really great American Dream.  We have to create a really great world.

_______________

"A New Myth for America" by James Hilgendorf

James Hilgendorf is the author of five books, the latest being “A New Myth for America.”  His other books include “The Buddha and the Dream of America”; “The New Superpower”; “Life & Death: A Buddhist Perspective”; and “The Great New Emerging Civilization” .  His books are available through bookstores, and online atAmazon.com.

His website is at www.jimhilgendorf.org.

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Dear Friend,

I want to share with you this Commencement speech I gave this week to 5000 attendees from over 100 countries at American University in Dubai (AUD). Previous AUD Commencement speakers include President Clinton and Secretaries of State Powell, Albright and Baker. In the speech I strive to inspire the graduates to embrace the power of NOW and to move forward to build communities of peace — as we all must endeavor to do.

Thank you.

Dennis

His Highness, Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum; Members of the Royal Families of the United Arab Emirates; Dr. Lance de Masi, President of American University in Dubai, Mr. Elias Bou Saab, Executive Vice President, Members of the Board, Members of the Faculty of American University of Dubai, Esteemed Officials, Parents and Sponsors, Students, Alumni and Friends and especially you, our dear Honored Graduates:

Thank you for the great honor of addressing this esteemed gathering upon an occasion of singular importance in the lives of each and every one of you. This day announces you are prepared. The journey which brought you here has conferred upon you a commencement to the future of your dreams.

For when you ascend this stage you are confidently passing through a portal in the time and space of your life, presenting yourself to the world as a person of accomplishment, as an individual prepared to tap the transformative power of this moment which brings to bear every talent and ability you have developed, pouring it into the moment when you present yourself at the door of opportunity, the moment which is called NOW. The NOW which contemplates that the past, the present, and the future exist simultaneously, the power of NOW as it connects with eternity, your timeless self which finds its power in expression of self recreation, self actualization. “Come my friends,” wrote the poet Tennyson, ” ’tis not too later to seek a newer world.”

Behold the new world being born in the moment. The NOW which comes again and again and again in each and every day forward as you watch for it, recognize it, be mindful of the possibility it presents, be grateful for its immanent unfolding potential. The NOW which bids you to think, to speak, to act, to challenge, to create, to change. The NOW which declares that years of preparation have come to meet the seedling of a single moment. The NOW which whispers: “Do not spill a single seed.” The NOW which makes joyous the challenge of venturing forth in faith. The NOW which bids you, “Come, you are ready!” And reminds you there is no time to waste. The NOW which unveils your deepest potential when you summon the courage to knock upon an unfamiliar door. The NOW which has been secretly awaiting your arrival.

“What you seek, is seeking you,” wrote the poet Rumi. The NOW which waits for you to embrace its endless possibilities, its extraordinary beauty of presence. Yours, the restless quest of the human soul for true purpose, for a place in the world, for life, for love, for a spiritual home all awaits your attention, your touch, your gaze. Your place in the scheme of things is unfolding and even resistance can be your friend as you align with the time signature with which the hand of destiny inscribes your name. Be relentless in pursuit of excellence. Though your reach exceeds your grasp every moment, “What’s a heaven for?” asked the poet Browning.

What do I know? From my earliest, I heard my life’s drummer banging out a rapid tempo, a quick march to college, to work, to public life, all at the same time, twenty years old working two jobs, going to school, running for city council. When I put my ear to the ground I could hear the heart of the world beating and I rushed excitedly to embrace it fully, no apprenticeships, only the experience of trying and failing, trying and succeeding, climbing the mountains outside or the mountains within, looking up, walking up, running up one path, then another, then still another, sometimes pausing as the crowd passed me by. Then, a new moment, sensing a new possibility, stepping out into the crowd, coursing with it, stepping briskly to meet it, to embark upon a new destination, a new life, the unfolding of each and every day: I chose a career in public service while I was still in college in Cleveland, Ohio, and was elected America’s youngest Mayor at age 31.

I ran for Congress five times in a period of twenty-five years before I was elected. I know what it is to try and to fail. Do not fear failure. Let failure be your friend. It prepares you for what you desire to achieve and you arrive at your new destination with growing beauty and wisdom, thanking your friend for the visit.

My dear graduates, the world needs you. I know how important you are. The raw, kinetic, intellectual and spiritual power here from one hundred countries can save our planet from destruction.

We are constantly being told that there is nothing we can do about war, nothing we can do about global climate change, nothing we can do about poverty. Those who accept the self-fulfilling prophecies of doom may have a stake in the status quo or, fearing a new order, delay change. Life, however, is not inert. The human heart is not inert. Its rhythms excite to the call of the future. The soul is not inert. Its eyes see the future.

George Bernard Shaw wrote in Back to Methuselah “You see things and say ‘Why’? I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not’?” He spoke to the capacity of vision, of possibility thinking, of the certainty that life is a profoundly creative experience, an expression of the workings of the mind, the heart and the soul — the nonphysical, spiritual world which sanctifies the physical world. Ideas come through our senses, bathing in a world of dreams, imagination, the magical, mysterious province of poets and prophets, inventors and painters, the realm of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam where man receives from the divine the spark of life.

A photograph by the Hubble Telescope has captured a picture of the Eagle Nebula: “Pillars of Creation,” that place in deep space where stars are born. Quantum physicists have identified gluon particles which exist in interstitial space, the space between the spaces, the unseen element of our physical universe which holds together the world with the primal energy of the Big Bang.

We travel back and forth upon the bridge between spirit and matter, at large in a physical universe, we breathe in the eternal spiritual sustenance. Inspired, we fling our dreams back into the physical world and create islands in the sea, buildings which reach to the heavens, new structures in society, and new ways of living. Possibility thinking is a science grounded in old truths. It is the capacity to call forth new outcomes.

Let me share with you a few examples from my own experience. Again and again in my public career I have confronted circumstances where I was told there was nothing I could do about a given condition: a city electric system sold to a giant private utility under indecent conditions. “Nothing you can do,” said my top advisors. I saw something else, organized a civic movement and a three year struggle resulted in regaining for the people of my community a light system which recently observed its 100th anniversary. Two hospitals were to be closed. “Forget it,” I was told. There is nothing you can do. I saw another possibility. Creative legal action ensued, the community rallied, hospitals were saved one still stands. A steel mill which provided thousands of jobs was about to be closed. Again I was told, “there is nothing you can do.” Long story short, we organized the community, intervened in court, stopped the shutdown of the mill long enough for a buyer to emerge and that mill today is the largest integrated steel mill in the world.

There is a practical physics to civic involvement and action. Look deeply into the appearances of things. Deeper within is another possibility. Envision it, call it forward, act upon it, drawing upon that same elemental energy which comes from where the eternal first touched us and where we touched the eternal, where stars are born.

What I have learned from experience is this — when you see a condition you desire to see change, when you seek to make something happen and you are told it is not possible — that may be exactly the place to put your energy, to change the outcome. When you do, people will say a miracle occurred. We live in a world where miracles are waiting to be welcomed.

This brings me to a thought I would like to share with you, my fellow citizens of the world; We have inherited a world where war is dropped on our doorstep and we are asked to adopt it as our own. We are told deadly force must be used to change people’s conduct. Violence to stop the violence, war to prevent war, war to end war. When we believe war is inevitable, we come to accept the self-fulfilling prophecy of war. War happens. We wonder why.

We must call forth from this world which is so fraught with fear and foreboding that which is beautiful and glorious, a new possibility, a new thinking, a new physics, if you will, of peace. We must do it with courage. We must do it in fulfillment of salaam, the peace which comes from the unseen, the peace which comes from the heart, the peace which comes from our collective yearning, the peace which comes from an awareness that the world is one. That all people are interconnected, interdependent, one with the human family, one with the world, one with the spirit, one with the divine.

War is never inevitable. Peace is inevitable if we desire to call it forward, if we approach it as a science. I speak of peace not simply as the absence of war, but as a practice of the science of human relations, as a capacity of human evolution and human development. But if we call peace forward from the unseen we must name it, we must give it structure, we must prepare for it a place to exist – a space to breathe, to be nurtured – to flower, so that it can be appreciated as an expression of that divine spark of creation.

In writing of the unfolding potential of nature, the poet Lowell celebrated the month of June: “Every clod, [or piece of earth], feels a stir of might, an instinct within it that reaches and towers, and groping blindly above it for light, climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.” His poem was about the search for the Holy Grail, a sacred vessel said to contain drops of the blood of Christ. Peace is a Holy Grail and the quest for peace is empowered by thoughts of peace, words of peace and actions for peace and attainment of peace. It is a temporal question. It is also a spiritual journey: “Wherewith Allah guideth all who seek His good pleasure to ways of peace and safety, and leadeth them out of darkness, by His will, unto the light, guideth them to a path that is straight.” — Qur’an 5:16

Think of the possibilities if we could create within every nation a place where the best minds and hearts are brought together within the context of a cabinet level position or ministry wherein resides the power to develop social structures for peace and strategies to avert conflict between groups and between states.

Such a proposal exists; I brought it to the United States Congress two months before 9/11. In its simplest expression, it seeks to develop an organized approach to make the daily work of our nation engage our top social and economic scientists to deal with the root causes of domestic violence, spousal abuse, child abuse, gang violence, gun violence, violence against gays, and racial violence. It would develop skills for non-violent conflict resolution on a domestic level, as well as internationally, where such a ministry would be prepared to assist to ameliorate the causes of violence inherent in poverty, lack of access to food, water, shelter and the instability caused by environmental disasters.

As violence is learned, so is peace. Education has a powerful social purpose. A ministry of peace would create the resources for peace education within every culture and within each government to construct a world where we learn to settle differences by tapping the spiritual principles of salaam, sholom, of peace. We are then within reach of creating cultures of vision, cultures of creativity, cultures of unlimited wealth and cultures of sustainability.

I have been in Congress for 16 years and involved in government for the better part of 45 years. I am told, “Dennis, such an idea is so impractical.” After all, my nation spends more money for weapons and war than all the other nations of the world put together. We spend so much time, so many resources human and financial preparing for war. Why not begin to spend time and resources preparing for peace?

Will this vision be realized for creating new structures for peace? I was reading a speech given in Dubai in 2007 by His Highness, Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, observing the challenges facing his new organization, the Foundation His Highness created. He quoted a friend: “… in this Foundation you are like one ploughing the sea. The challenge is huge; the gap of knowledge in most of the Arab and Islamic countries is bottomless. There is a lot of talk about building communities of knowledge, but little action. The pit is too wide to be seamed, so why should you weary yourself over this matter?”

At a time when the technology of destruction and the capacity of human destructiveness is so great, this is exactly the time to create a common global effort to build communities of peace, to provide structures in every country to help peace issue forth and flourish. I, too, believe that if we will make of human development a new art, we will set our eyes to the distant horizon and plough the seas with wondrous effect. We can then lift up our eyes to the heavens and, with our imagination, with joyous abandon, plough the stars, and a thundering universe will burst forth with new possibilities and we will make heaven on earth. “Come my friends, ’tis not too late to seek a newer world.”

______________

James Hilgendorf

James Hilgendorf is the author of five books, the latest being “A New Myth for America.”  His other books include “The Buddha and the Dream of America”; “The New Superpower”; “Life & Death: A Buddhist Perspective”; and “The Great New Emerging Civilization” .  His books are available through bookstores, and online atAmazon.com.

His website is at www.jimhilgendorf.org.

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Here it is:

English: (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

LET AMERICA BE AMERICA AGAIN

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed–
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek–
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean–
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home–
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay–
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain–
All, all the stretch of these great green states–
And make America again!

~ by Langston Hughes

_______________________

James Hilgendorf

James Hilgendorf is the author of five books, the latest being “A New Myth for America.”  His other books include “The Buddha and the Dream of America”; “The New Superpower”; “Life & Death: A Buddhist Perspective”; and “The Great New Emerging Civilization” .  His books are available through bookstores, and online atAmazon.com.

His website is at www.jimhilgendorf.org.

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What is GDP, or Gross National Product?

Basically, it has to do with the market value of all products and services produced in one year by the residents of a country.

Here is what economist John Kenneth Galbraith had to say about our concept of production in his 1958 book, “The Affluent Society”:

“Some years ago, American statesmen, defending their stewardship under heavy opposition attack, were moved to protest that the current year was the second best in history.  It was not, in all respects, a happy defense.  Many promptly said that second best was not good enough – certainly not for Americans.  But no person in either political party showed the slightest disposition to challenge the standard by which it was decided that one year was better than another.  Nor was it felt that any explanation was required.  No one would be so eccentric as to suppose that second best meant second best in the progress of the arts and the sciences.  No one would assume that it referred to health, education or the battle against juvenile delinquency or even violent crime.  There was no suggestion that a better or poorer year was one in which the chances for survival amidst the radioactive furniture of the world had increased or diminshed.  Despite a marked and somewhat ostensible preoccupation with religious observances at the time, no one was moved to suppose that the year in question was the second best as measured by the number of people who had found enduring spiritual solace. Second best could mean only one thing – that the production of goods was the second highest in history.”

Mahatma Gandhi had his own take on economics and domestic product:

“An economics that inculcates mammon worship and enables the strong to amass wealth at the expense of the weak, is a false and dismal science.  It spells death. True economics, on the other hand, stands for social justice, it promotes the good of all equally, including the weakest.”

A gross national product that is disconnected from social justice and equality and compassion for all is unworthy of any kind of honor or distinction. But this is the world we live in.

This is the world we still have to change.

James Hilgendorf

James Hilgendorf is the author of five books, the latest being “A New Myth for America.”  His other books include “The Buddha and the Dream of America”; “The New Superpower”; “Life & Death: A Buddhist Perspective”; and “The Great New Emerging Civilization” .  His books are available through bookstores, and online atAmazon.com.

His website is at www.jimhilgendorf.org.

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A tragedy because it is ordinary people – the citizens of America – who will be the losers, one way or another.

Yes, we need new and revamped health care legislation, and the new health care law revises and revamps coverage for ordinary people, but at what cost.

The legislation is actually shameful.  It is better than nothing for the 40 million people in this country who have no coverage at all.  But it is the insurance companies who will profit.  We have not edited out the insurance companies and their for-profit stranglehold on health coverage.

Enormous sums are being wasted in our current health care insurance coverage. Insurance company profits are leaching away many of the dollars being spent on health care.

No other industrialized country in the country spends so much on health care, and gets so little in return.  It is a disgrace.  Health care is big business, and insurance companies are in the center of it all.

We really need some sort of single payer health care system, such as Medicare for all.  Costs could be cut down, everyone could be covered for basic health care, and the obscene attachment to the insurance companies and their waste and bonuses and profits would be eliminated.

This is what is needed, but instead we have a new health care law that is coming into being, that is being fought over by the country and the courts.  Obama care is definitely better than nothing, than letting our citizenry languish disgracefully without any health care coverage at all.  But the insurance companies and profit are still front and center in the program.

It is a tragedy for our people, because either way – affirming the new health care law, or throwing it out – leaves ordinary people stranded and shafted by the ruling interests of money and profit.

And that is the way insurance companies and many politicians would like it.

Read up about single payer health care on the site of Physicians for a National Health Program.

________________

"A New Myth of America" by James Hilgendorf

James Hilgendorf is the author of five books, the latest being “A New Myth for America.”  His other books include “The Buddha and the Dream of America”; “The New Superpower”; “Life & Death: A Buddhist Perspective”; and “The Great New Emerging Civilization” .  His books are available through bookstores, and online at Amazon.com.

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America is gridlocked.

The America that should be, the dream of America that has been waiting in the wings for eternity, is gridlocked.

Politicians are arguing day after day, trying to convince the American people that they are the truer representatives of conservatism, of the ways of the past, of the way America used to be.

They are representatives of a vast segment of our population that is stuck in the past.  It is a dream of America that has already died, and is nothing but a shell remaining, a ghost, a dying whisper.

This is the true gridlock.  We are an America, on the one hand, and a vision of America, that has already died and gone to dust.; and, on the other, an America that is even now struggling to be born, and has been struggling to be given expression since the first dawn of time.

It is a struggle between youth and old age, of springtime and winter, of life and death.

Our country has come to this point.  It is an age-old dilemma.

Will we go the way of the past, will we be mired in backwardness and death, or will we have the courage and strength to forge a bright future?

It depends on no one but you and I.  Will we have the courage to bring forth a new level of awareness and being upon this land, or will we succumb to a constricted and horrible death of the American soul?

It all begins with one person.

Make it you and I.

_________________

James Hilgendorf is the author of five books, the latest being “A New Myth for America.”  His other books include “The Buddha and the Dream of America”; “The New Superpower”; “Life & Death: A Buddhist Perspective”; and “The Great New Emerging Civilization” .  His books are available through bookstores, and online atAmazon.com.

His website is at www.jimhilgendorf.org.

"A New Myth of America" by James Hilgendorf

It is the realm of Eternity, existing right here, right now, in the most mundane affairs that go on day to day.

This is the land – America – where we come forth.

Myriads of people have waited breathlessly for aeons and aeons, waiting for their blissful time in Eternity, an end to misery and hunger and change, but the time has never come.  Waiting for that magical opening of the skies, they were all left stranded instead on the shores of death and time.

Because the time of eternity has always been here, right now, right before our very eyes.

This is the message of the Buddha.  This was the message of other great seers.

There is no other land.

Stars and suns shine in our eyes, bedeck our hair.  Galaxies are our playground.

The Dream of America is the dream of the heart.  It comes forth now from the minds and hearts of you and I and innumerable others.

A simple expression: Seeing ourselves in others.

The realm of the heart will take the place of everything.  Not economics, not politics leading the way, but the heart.  This is the path of development for the next several thousand of years, and forever.

Eternity.

It all unfolds right here, right now, in America.

_____________________

James Hilgendorf

James Hilgendorf is the author of five books, the latest being “A New Myth for America.”  His other books include “The Buddha and the Dream of America”; “The New Superpower”; “Life & Death: A Buddhist Perspective”; and “The Great New Emerging Civilization” .  His books are available through bookstores, and online at Amazon.com.

His website is at www.jimhilgendorf.org.

This year’s proposal focuses on the topic of “Human Security and Sustainability: Sharing Reverence for the Dignity of Life.”  All of Mr. Ikeda’s proposals explore the interrelation between core Buddhist concepts and the many challenges the world faces in achieving global peace.

He writes:

“The struggle for peace, like the struggle for human rights and humanity, should be thought of as the work of generating an uninterrupted and unstoppable flow of commitment connecting and passed on from one generation to the next.  This is the conviction that has supported the SGI’s efforts to help build a better future for all, to promote a movement of empowerment that is of, for and by the people, laying the foundations for a global society of peace and harmonious coexistence.”

Daisaku Ikeda

Mr. Ikeda has received over 300 honorary doctorates and degrees from universities around the world, and has held hundreds of dialogues with prominent world leaders in an effort to forge bonds of trust and to lay the groundwork for a peaceful world.

He is a leader of unparalleled accomplishments as a Buddhist leader, peacebuilder, writer, poet, and educator.  His life and work deserve to be known by everyone.

_______________________

James Hilgendorfj

James Hilgendorf is the author of five books, the latest being “A New Myth for America.”  His other books include “The Buddha and the Dream of America”; “The New Superpower”; “Life & Death: A Buddhist Perspective”; and “The Great New Emerging Civilization” .

His website is at www.jimhilgendorf.org.

The contrast is very stark: Authoritarian powers and dupes of leaders are falling like dominoes around the world.  Those hanging onto their power through iron-fisted control tremble in the face of something brewing beyond their control.  Even in our own supposedly democratic government, there is exposed the most glaring self-centeredness, the most disgusting disregard of the people, there is a growing deep distaste and shame about the people who inhabit the bodies of our national legislature.

They serve their purpose.  They serve to enlighten us about the nature of real power.

Real power rests with the people – always has – but people, for the most part, are not aware of it.

Despots have always, with their armies and thrones and scepters, been deposed by one person.

The crumbling of the government in Libya began with the self-immolation of one person in a small out-of-the-way town.  Harry Potter took on the overwhelming combined forces of evil, as did Luke Skywalker in Star Wars.

One person, fully engaged, fully empowered, can defeat millions.

This is our story, too, each one of us.  There is a new future unfolding, unimagined as yet by hardly anyone, and the ground will be broken by individuals all over the globe combining their power in unseen ways to create a new world.

None of the old world will be left standing.

A new undercurrent, a new sub-stratum is being formed.  It is the heart of the universe finally revealing itself and coming to fruition.  It is humanity transformed.

The upheavals take place, chaos seems to reign; but it is only the beginning of new life poking through the ground, new flowers breaking through even the most encrusted earth.

It will take time.  But what is coming is a cause for joy.

"The Buddha and The Dream of America", by James Hilgendorf.

James Hilgendorf is the author of  “The Buddha and the Dream of America”; “The New Superpower”; “Life & Death: A Buddhist Perspective”; and “The Great New Emerging Civilization” .

These famous words of Thomas Paine from his pamphlet “The Crisis”, written during the American Revolutionary War, stirred the spirit of all Americans of that difficult time.

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The words might as well have been uttered today.

Paine lived and wrote amid two great revolutions: The American Revolution, and the French Revolution.  Worlds were crumbling, and new worlds were coming into being, and he was active in facilitating both.

He was unrelenting in his opposition to tyranny, whether in the political realm, the social realm, or the religious realm.  His words were bolts of lightning, shaking up the status quo.

His pamphlet “Common Sense”, advocating independence from the tyranny of England at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, sold an estimated 500,000 copies, an astronomical number at the time; and President John Adams reportedly said that without that book, “The sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.”

He was equally bold in his attack on institutionalized religion.  He wrote:

“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”

He lived up to his definition of faith, when he wrote:

“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”

We need the spirit of Tom Paine in today’s world.  For all of his feistiness, he was a remarkable patriot.

Worlds are again crumbling, and new worlds are again being called forth into being.  A new revolution is needed.

The Dream of America that lay only dimly expressed in the time of Paine, the real, true America that would come to embody the dreams of people everywhere – justice, humanity, equality, compassion – seems almost lost now as America and the world around sinks under the weight and retribution of greed gone amok, and countries and peoples fracture into warring hostile camps.

Yet this is the moment when the tide turns.

Out of all the chaos and despair, a new world is slowly being born, a new civilization, born out of an awakening to our true place in the cosmos.

This is coming to fruition in America. It is inevitable.

It is the compassionate heart of the universe itself coming to fruition and bloom.

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"The Buddha and The Dream of America", by James Hilgendorf.

James Hilgendorf is the author of  “The Buddha and the Dream of America”; “The New Superpower”; “Life & Death: A Buddhist Perspective”; and “The Great New Emerging Civilization” .