on a flooded reed bed

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.

All our dignity consists, then, in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavour, then, to think well; this is the principle of morality.

(Blaise Pascal, "PASCAL'S PENSÉES  Published 1958 by E. P. Dutton & Co.,)

Song of the Reed, Rumi

Listen to the story told by the reed,

of being separated.

"Since I was cut from the reedbed,

I have made this crying sound.

Anyone apart from someone he loves

understands what I say.

Anyone pulled from a source

longs to go back.

At any gathering I am there,

mingling in the laughing and grieving,

a friend to each, but few

will hear the secrets hidden

within the notes. No ears for that.

Body flowing out of spirit,

spirit up from body: no concealing

that mixing. But it's not given us

to see the soul. The reed flute

is fire, not wind. Be that empty."

Hear the love fire tangled

in the reed notes, as bewilderment

melts into wine. The reed is a friend

to all who want the fabric torn

and drawn away. The reed is hurt

and salve combining. Intimacy

and longing for intimacy, one

song. A disastrous surrender

and a fine love, together. The one

who secretly hears this is senseless.

A tongue has one customer, the ear.

A sugarcane flute has such effect

because it was able to make sugar

in the reedbed. The sound it makes

is for everyone. Days full of wanting,

let them go by without worrying

that they do. Stay where you are

inside such a pure, hollow note.

Every thirst gets satisfied except

that of these fish, the mystics,

who swim a vast ocean of grace

still somehow longing for it!

No one lives in that without

being nourished every day.

But if someone doesn't want to hear

the song of the reed flute,

it's best to cut conversation

short, say good-bye, and leave.

translated by Coleman Barks

Sir Isaac Newton quotes

Sir Isaac Newton
“Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.”
“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”
“A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.”

in response to a letter to the editor

After reading the letters to the editor in the November 20, 2010 edition of the Herald Journal I feel strongly compelled to share with you some of my feelings and the truths I have learned.

As a a follower of Jesus I have the responsibly to follow the his teachings. I receive additional inspiration when I follow the these teachings. " That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day."" And again, verily I say unto you, and I say it that you may know the truth, that you may chase darkness from among you;""He that is ordained of God and sent forth, the same is appointed to be the greatest, notwithstanding he is the least and the servant of all. " (Doctrine and Covenants 50:24-26)

When I learn a new teaching I hold myself accountable to follow the new teaching. I have no obligation to compel another of my brothers and sisters to follow these additional teachings. We have another brother Lucifer who sought to compel us to follow that what is right, just and true and to remove from us the power of free will.. For this sin Lucifer was banished from Heaven in the pre-earth life. (see Book of Moses; Book of Abraham; Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained; John Milton)

I have friends and family who have chosen other lifestyles then my own. I have desired to be a shepherd and lead them to the teaching of Christ. I have tried in the past to drive them as a sheep herder. These attempts were only partial successful. “ "He that complies against his will
Is of his own opinion still. Which he may adhere to, yet disown, For reasons to himself best known (Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) ,A Vindication of the Rights of Woman )

Shepherding is a long and slow and difficult process. Jesus suffered in Gethsemane and died on a cross at Calvary because he would not compel the Jews and Gentiles of his time to accept him as their King and Redeemer. “All the dangers of Jesus came from the priests, and the learned in the traditional law, whom his parents had not yet begun to fear on his behalf. ….. Because they would not be such, he let them do to him as they would, that he might get at their hearts by some unknown unguarded door in their diviner part. ' I will be God among you ; I will be myself to you.—You will not have me ? Then do to me as you will.' (George Macdonald, Hope of the Gospel p. 58-62)

“A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.” (G.K. Chesteron,Orthodoxy)

Do we love our fellow men are just seek to compel them to be just right and good. Telling someone they are loved even when we do not agree with them is not changing a standard. Setting a policy that I will treat my sisters female companion with the same love and respect that my sister has shown to my female companion is not changing a standard it is being truly Christlike. “But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.” (Leviticus 19:34)

With my deepest love and respect

Steven Bassett
P.O. Box 82
Franklin Idaho 83237
435-764-7493

On tearing down lamp posts

" Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, ' Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If light be in itself good ' At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily.

• Some people have pulled the lamppost down because they wanted the electric light:
• some because they wanted old iron
• some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil.
• Some thought it was not enough of a lamp-post,
• Some too much
• Some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery :
• Some because they wanted to smash something. 

And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark."

 (G.K. Chesteron, Heretics)

Open Your Door, Open Your Heart

Open Your Door, Open Your Heart
by Max Lucado

Long before the church had pulpits and baptisteries, she had kitchens and dinner tables. "The believers met together in the Temple every day. They ate together in their homes, happy to share their food with joyful hearts" (Acts 2:46 NCV). "Every day in the Temple and in people's homes they continued teaching the people and telling the Good News—that Jesus is the Christ" (Acts 5:42 NCV).

Even a casual reading of the New Testament unveils the house as the primary tool of the church. "To Philemon our beloved friend and fellow laborer . . . and to the church in your house" (Philem. vv. 1-2). "Greet Priscilla and Aquila . . . the church that is in their house" (Rom. 16:3, 5). "Greet the brethren who are in Laodicea, and Nymphas and the church that is in his house" (Col. 4:15).

It's no wonder that the elders were to be "given to hospitality" (1 Tim. 3:2 KJV). The primary gathering place of the church was the home. Consider the genius of God's plan. The first generation of Christians was a tinderbox of contrasting cultures and backgrounds. At least fifteen different nationalities heard Peter's sermon on the Day of Pentecost. Jews stood next to Gentiles. Men worshipped with women. Slaves and masters alike sought after Christ. Can people of such varied backgrounds and cultures get along with each other?

We wonder the same thing today. Can Hispanics live in peace with Anglos? Can Democrats find common ground with Republicans? Can a Christian family carry on a civil friendship with the Muslim couple down the street? Can divergent people get along?

The early church did—without the aid of sanctuaries, church buildings, clergy, or seminaries. They did so through the clearest of messages (the Cross) and the simplest of tools (the home).
Not everyone can serve in a foreign land, lead a relief effort, or volunteer at the downtown soup kitchen. But who can't be hospitable? Do you have a front door? A table? Chairs? Bread and meat for sandwiches? Congratulations! You just qualified to serve in the most ancient of ministries: hospitality. You can join the ranks of people such as . . .

Abraham. He fed, not just angels, but the Lord of angels (Gen. 18).
Rahab, the harlot. She received and protected the spies. Thanks to her kindness, her kindred survived, and her name is remembered (Josh. 6:22-23; Matt. 1:5).
Martha and Mary. They opened their home for Jesus. He, in turn, opened the grave of Lazarus for them (John 11:1-45; Luke 10:38-42).
Zacchaeus. He welcomed Jesus to his table. And Jesus left salvation as a thank-you gift (Luke 19:1-10).

And what about the greatest example of all—the "certain man" of Matthew 26:18? On the day before his death, Jesus told his followers, "Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, 'The Teacher says: The chosen time is near. I will have the Passover with my followers at your house'"
(NCV).

How would you have liked to be the one who opened his home for Jesus? You can be. "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me" (Matt. 25:40 NIV). As you welcome strangers to your table, you are welcoming God himself.

Something holy happens around a dinner table that will never happen in a sanctuary. In a church auditorium you see the backs of heads. Around the table you see the expressions on faces. In the auditorium one person speaks; around the table everyone has a voice. Church services are on the clock. Around the table there is time to talk.

Hospitality opens the door to uncommon community. It's no accident that hospitality and hospital come from the same Latin word, for they both lead to the same result: healing. When you open your door to someone, you are sending this message: "You matter to me and to God." You may think you are saying, "Come over for a visit." But what your guest hears is, "I'm worth the effort."
Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay. God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another.
(1 Peter 4:9-10 NLT)

Heavenly Father, you have given me so much—every breath I take is a gift from your hand. Even so, I confess that sometimes my own hand remains tightly closed when I encounter the needs of others. Please open both my hand and my heart that I might learn to delight in taking advantage of the daily opportunities for hospitality that you present to me. Help me remember, Lord, that when I show your love in tangible ways to "the least of these," I am ministering directly to you. As you help me open my heart and hand, O Lord, I ask that you also prompt me to open my door to those who need a taste of your love and bounty. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
From Outlive Your Life: You Were Made to Make a Difference

Copyright (Thomas Nelson, 2010) Max Lucado

Jon Stewart on Journalists

"I think it made me less political and more emotional. The [more] you spend time with the political [world] and media, the less political you become and the more viscerally upset you become at corruption. I don't consider it political, because 'political' I always sort of note as a partisan endeavor. But I have become increasingly unnerved by the depth of corruption that exists at many different levels. I'm less upset with politicians than [with] the media. I feel like politicians — the way I explain it, is when you go to a zoo and a monkey throws feces, it's a monkey. But when the zookeeper is standing right there and he doesn't say, 'Bad monkey' — somebody's gotta be the zookeeper. I feel much more strongly about the abdication of responsibility by the media than by political advocates. They're representing a constituency. Our culture is just a series of checks and balances. The whole idea that we're in a battle between tyranny and freedom — it's a series of pendulum swings. And the swings have become less drastic over time. That's why I feel, not sanguine but at least a little bit less frightful, in that our pendulum swings have become less and less. But what has changed is the media's sense of their ability to be responsible arbiters. I think they feel fearful. I think there's this whole idea now that there's a liberal media conspiracy, and I think they feel if they express any authority or judgment, which is what I imagine is editorial control, they will be vilified."

Terry Gross interviewing Jon Stewart on Fresh Air,  aired 10-04-2010
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130321994

on Derivatives, Mercy and Justice

Gospel  

is to Mercy and Justice   

 as 

Force

is to  Mass and Acceleration .

Personal Heresy and Truth

Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrives by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion. Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy. There is not any burden, that some would gladlier post off to another, than the charge and care of their religion. There be, who knows not that there be of Protestants and professors, who live and die in as errant and implicit faith, as any lay papist of Loretto.

A wealthy man addicted to his pleasure and to his profits, 

• finds religion to be a traffic so entangled,
• and of so many piddling accounts, that of all mysteries
• he cannot skill to keep a stock going upon that trade.

What should he do? 

• Fain he would have the name to be religious,
• fain he would bear up with his neighbors in that. 

What does he, therefore, but resolves to give over toiling, and to find himself out some factor to whose care and credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs;

some Divine of note and estimation that must be.

To him he adheres, 

• resigns the whole warehouse of his religion 
• with all the locks and keys into his custody; 
• and indeed makes the very person of that man his religion; 
• esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and commendatory of his own piety.

So that a man may say his religion is now no more within himself, but is become a dividual  movable, and goes and comes near him, according as that good man frequents the house.

• He entertains him,
• gives him gifts, 
• feasts him, 
• lodges him. 
• His religion comes home at night, prays, 
• is liberally supped, 
• and sumptuously laid to sleep, rises, is saluted, 
• and after the malmsey, or some well spiced brewage, 
• and better breakfasted than he whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, 

his religion walks abroad at eight, 
and leaves his kind entertainer 
in the shop trading all day 

without his religion. 

(John Milton, Areopagitica)

 dividual;

• divisible or divided; 
• separate; distinct.;  
• distributed, shared.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dividual,09-08-2011)

On British Petroleum, Presidential Leadership and personal responsibilities

This is in response to a personal request from a friend who's acquaintance I have renewed after far too many years.

First it needs be remembered that I am a charter member of the Franklin County Republicans for Barrack Obama. Currently it has one member, I am uncertain if we will be holding any membership drives in the near future. I also am a member of catholic Christians for a Better World (note the small “c”, as in the original Latin sense, see google “define:catholic”) I am also a member of the Anti-Utah Mormons, in the best Book of Mormon sense, think Anti-Nephi-Lehi's. None of these groups are currently holding membership drives but if beaten into submission I may permit additional memberships. I warn you it may not be an advisable avenue to pursue as it may encourage a relapse in my Asperger syndrome.

If I were half literate enough I would attempt to plagiarize Gilbert Keith Chesterton but since I am not, I will digress in in similar manner to Jonathan Swift in “Tale of a Tub”. Why wast a good preface when an endless digression will do. There is also the possibility of a good rant like “Age of Reason” but I am not as learned as Thomas Paine. This being said on to the topic.

As American we always object to big brother taking over our lives, think U.S. Federal government, that is until we want a new home mortgage or banking insurance. The F.B.I is am illegal and unconstitutional violation of the tenth ammendment, until one of our children is kidnapped.

We expect Presidents to take charge until they micromanage the play times at the White House tennis courts, think Jimmie Carter. We want a big military buildup, big tax cuts and a balanced budget, think Ronald Reagan.

I may object to British Petroleum dumping oil in the Gulf Coast but I still demand that they drill for more and sale it to me cheap to keep my car running.

I demand that the Army Corp of Engineer keep the Mississippi River channel deep and straight to encourage shipping and then wonder why the Old River Control structure is necessary. Who needs Morgan City LA any way it only a city of roughly 27,000 people and easily replaced. Since I am unwilling to pay for a real river and flood control in New Orleans lets encourage people to live there anyway and give them a false sense of security with a half working flood control project.

Here at the Bassett Family Compound, yes I included this reference for an old friend who will appreciate the digression, we are learning to take responsibilities for our actions and hope to use our gas guzzling 12 passenger van for a well earned family celebration of Memorial Day.

On the departure of a good friend.

On the departure of a good friend.

The first time we departed was on our first meeting.  We were young the world was new.  He was a friend when I needed one. He was a friend when I did not know how to be one.  Jr High can be a scaring place when you have no friends.  We were in orchestra together.  We laughed an joked and had a good time.  

We soon drifted apart.  He gained new interest beyond orchestra.  I took the lessons he offered me and learned to make new friends.  We coasted along the same river of life in high school.  Our currents would converge and we would renew our friendship.  

After high school our rivers departed further , as I attended Weber State.  We drifted even further apart as I served a church mission in Mississippi.  I would occasional meet him in Smith's Food King where he worked as a checker and we renewed our friendship.  I would depart at these meetings  with a renewed sense of kinship and bonding.  I felt that our friendship was important to him.  I knew that my life really mattered to him.

We recently began to spend more time together.  He became my boss at a company, Discovery Research, where I learned to take surveys to earn extra money.  Even when I made mistakes I never disappointed him.  He made me feel good about myself as he taught me additional lessons.

The last time we departed was when I went to pick up my paycheck.  I had not worked much the last two weeks.  I was concerned that I may have done something wrong and that is why I was not being called into work.  He reassured me that this was not the case. He invited me to step into Jill's office and to speak to her.  He was thinking of my welfare and wanted to reassure me that our friendship was still solid. 

When I learned of his death and final departure, I was saddened.  I knew it would be a number years before I would be able to renew our friendship.  I still have many lesson to learn before we meet again.  I have a wife who loves me and I have children to finish raising.  I am confident that when we meet once more we will renew our friendship as in times past. 

I will always carry with me the lessons he has offered me and I will be the man he sees in me.   To Quote Spock in his death speech from "The Wrath of Khan".  

"I have been and always will be your friend."

This blog was prompted by the death of Timothy Bradfield.

The Gospel; the good news of Jesus

The good news of Jesus was just the news of the thoughts and ways of the Father in the midst of his family. He told them that the way men thought for themselves and their children was not the way God thought for himself and his children ; that the kingdom of heaven was founded, and must at length show itself founded on very different principles from those of the kingdoms and families of the world, meaning by the world that part of  the Father's family which will not be ordered by him, will not even try to obey him. The world's man, its great, its successful, its honourable man, is he who may have and do what he pleases, whose strength lies in money and the praise of men ; the greatest in the kingdom of heaven is the man who is humblest and serves his fellows the most. Multitudes of men, in no degree notable as ambitious or proud, hold the ambitious, the proud man in honour, and, for all deliverance, hope after some shadow of his prosperity. How many even of those who look for the world to come, seek to the powers of this world for deliverance from its evils, as if God were the God of the world to come only! The oppressed of the Lord's time looked for a Messiah to set their nation free, and make it rich and strong; the oppressed of our time believe in money, knowledge, and the will of a people which needs but power to be in its turn the oppressor. The first words of the Lord on this occasion were:— 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'

(George Macdonald, Hope of the Gospel p. 82)

Song: In The Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)

We'd get up before sun-up to get the work done up
We'd work in the fields till the sun had gone down
We've stood and we've cried as we have bristly watched
A hailstorm a' beatin' our crops to the ground
We've gone to bed hungry many nights in the past
In the good old days when times were bad

No amount of money could buy from me
The memories that I have of then
No amount of money could pay me
To go back and live through it again

I've seen daddy's hands break open and bleed
And I've seen him work till he's stiff as a board
An' I've seen momma layin' in suffer and sickness
In need of a doctor we couldn't afford
Anything at all was more than we had
In the good old days when times were bad

We've got up before and found ice on the floor
Where the wind would blow snow through the cracks in the wall
And I couldn't enjoy then, havin' a boyfriend
I had nothing decent to wear at all
So I long for a love that I never had
In the good old days when times were bad

No amount of money could buy from me
The memories that I have of then
No amount of money could pay me
To go back and live through it again

In the good old days when times were bad
In the good old days when times were bad

Dolly Parton

Fighting over Fathers things.

George Macdonald "Hope of the Gospel"   page 48

Here we find one main thing wherein the Lord differs from us: we are not
at home in this great universe, our father's house. We ought to be, and
one day we shall be, but we are not yet. This reveals Jesus more than
man, by revealing him more man than we. We are not complete men, we are
not anything near it, and are therefore out of harmony, more or less,
with everything in the house of our birth and habitation. Always
struggling to make our home in the world, we have not yet succeeded. We
are not at home in it, because we are not at home with the lord of the
house, the father of the family, not one with our elder brother who is
his right hand. It is only the son, the daughter, that abideth ever in
the house. When we are true children, if not the world, then the
universe will be our home, felt and known as such, the house we are
satisfied with, and would not change. Hence, until then, the hard
struggle, the constant strife we hold with _Nature_--as we call the
things of our father; a strife invaluable for our development, at the
same time manifesting us not yet men enough to be lords of the house
built for us to live in. We cannot govern or command in it as did the
Lord, because we are not at one with his father, therefore neither in
harmony with his things, nor rulers over them. Our best power in regard
to them is but to find out wonderful facts concerning them and their
relations, and turn these facts to our uses on systems of our own. For
we discover what we seem to discover, by working inward from without,
while he works outward from within; and we shall never understand the
world, until we see it in the direction in which he works making
it--namely from within outward. This of course we cannot do until we are
one with him. In the meantime, so much are both we and his things his,
that we can err concerning them only as he has made it possible for us
to err; we can wander only in the direction of the truth--if but to find
that we can find nothing.

Think for a moment how Jesus was at home among the things of his
father. It seems to me, I repeat, a spiritless explanation of his
words--that the temple was the place where naturally he was at home.
Does he make the least lamentation over the temple? It is Jerusalem he
weeps over--the men of Jerusalem, the killers, the stoners. What was his
place of prayer? Not the temple, but the mountain-top. Where does he
find symbols whereby to speak of what goes on in the mind and before the
face of his father in heaven? Not in the temple; not in its rites; not
on its altars; not in its holy of holies; he finds them in the world and
its lovely-lowly facts; on the roadside, in the field, in the vineyard,
in the garden, in the house; in the family, and the commonest of its
affairs--the lighting of the lamp, the leavening of the meal, the
neighbour's borrowing, the losing of the coin, the straying of the
sheep. Even in the unlovely facts also of the world which he turns to
holy use, such as the unjust judge, the false steward, the faithless
labourers, he ignores the temple. See how he drives the devils from the
souls and bodies of men, as we the wolves from our sheepfolds! how
before him the diseases, scaly and spotted, hurry and flee! The world
has for him no chamber of terror. He walks to the door of the sepulchre,
the sealed cellar of his father's house, and calls forth its four days
dead. He rebukes the mourners, he stays the funeral, and gives back the
departed children to their parents' arms. The roughest of its servants
do not make him wince; none of them are so arrogant as to disobey his
word; he falls asleep in the midst of the storm that threatens to
swallow his boat. Hear how, on that same occasion, he rebukes his
disciples! The children to tremble at a gust of wind in the house! God's
little ones afraid of a storm! Hear him tell the watery floor to be
still, and no longer toss his brothers! see the watery floor obey him
and grow still! See how the wandering creatures under it come at his
call! See him leave his mountain-closet, and go walking over its heaving
surface to the help of his men of little faith! See how the world's
water turns to wine! how its bread grows more bread at his word! See how
he goes from the house for a while, and returning with fresh power,
takes what shape he pleases, walks through its closed doors, and goes up
and down its invisible stairs!

All his life he was among his father's things, either in heaven or in
the world--not then only when they found him in the temple at Jerusalem.
He is still among his father's things, everywhere about in the world,
everywhere throughout the wide universe. Whatever he laid aside to come
to us, to whatever limitations, for our sake, he stooped his regal head,
he dealt with the things about him in such lordly, childlike manner as
made it clear they were not strange to him, but the things of his
father. He claimed none of them as his own, would not have had one of
them his except through his father. Only as his father's could he enjoy
them;--only as coming forth from the Father, and full of the Father's
thought and nature, had they to him any existence. That the things were
his fathers, made them precious things to him. He had no care for
having, as men count having. All his having was in the Father. I wonder
if he ever put anything in his pocket: I doubt if he had one. Did he
ever say, 'This is mine, not yours'? Did he not say, 'All things are
mine, therefore they are yours'? Oh for his liberty among the things of
the Father! Only by knowing them the things of our Father, can we escape
enslaving ourselves to them. Through the false, the infernal idea of
_having_, of _possessing_ them, we make them our tyrants, make the
relation between them and us an evil thing. The world was a blessed
place to Jesus, because everything in it was his father's. What pain
must it not have been to him, to see his brothers so vilely misuse the
Father's house by grasping, each for himself, at the family things! If
the knowledge that a spot in the landscape retains in it some pollution,
suffices to disturb our pleasure in the whole, how must it not have been
with him, how must it not be with him now, in regard to the
disfigurements and defilements caused by the greed of men, by their
haste to be rich, in his father's lovely house!

Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence

Delivered 4 April 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen:

I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, and some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it's always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit.

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.


And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.


Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.


I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans.


Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.


My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.


For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

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

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.


As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 19541; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?


And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.


This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.


And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1954 -- in 1945 rather -- after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China -- for whom the Vietnamese have no great love -- but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.


After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States' influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.


The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.


So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?


We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of -- in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.


Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.


Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call "VC" or "communists"? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.


How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.

Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than eight hundred -- rather, eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:

    Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism (unquote).

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.

I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

Number one: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

Number two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government.

Five: Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.

Part of our ongoing -- Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary. Meanwhile -- Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.


Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word" (unquote).

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message -- of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong
Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

 And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace.

If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

On Meeting Lazarus

The Gospel of John,  chapter 11

    On Sunday March 27, 2010 my Father died, or as close to death as someone can be without being dead.  He has been my Father for 20 years now, since January 5, 1990.  He has been my Father since I knelt with my wife at a sacred alter and made a covenant with our God.  We raised our babies together.  Dad raised  children from two of his daughters, and I adopted two of his grandchildren.  Many people may see our family as odd but with love we raised the children together.  He always treated me as his son and I knew he was my Father.  I never once felt like his daughters husband. 

    It was about 3:30 a.m. on Sunday morning when Mom called.  Mom mentioned to my wife on the phone that Dad was up wandering around their bedroom and he had thrown up on the floor.  Dad has not been in the best physical and mental health the last couple of years.  My wife suspected that he as some form of dementia.  He was sleeping soundly cross ways at the foot his bed.  He appeared to be sleeping off the flu.  He breath was a little labored but not abnormal for someone with emphysema.  I mentioned several times to my wife and Mom that Dad sounded funny but they reassured me that his breathing was normal.  Mom ask me if I would stop by and check on Dad after church.  We go to church from 9:00 am to 12:00 P.M. and Mom goes from 11:00 am to 2:00 P.M.  After church was out I walked to my car in the parking lot.  Dad's teenage son came walking across the park to the church.  I ask him how Dad was feeling.  He reassured me that Dad was still sleeping in his room.  I almost went home at this time.  I decided to do as Mom ask and check on Dad before I went home. 

    When I arrived at their home, I went in the back door through the kitchen as I normally do.  Dad was asleep with  his feet hanging over the bed.  His arms and legs and head were a deep purple.  His breathing was slow and he made a gurgling sound as he exhaled.  I knew something was not right.  I went to the church to get one of our friends who was an E.M.T. to check on Dad.  When I brought him back to the house the E.M.T. knew something was wrong.  He started medical intervention to help Dad with his breathing.  He showed me how he would lift his his jaw to clear his airway, while he called an ambulance.  I called my wife and ask her to go get Mom at the church and bring her home.  Dad was transported to the local hospital where he was life flighted out to a hospital with a better ICU unit.  I was certain at this point that Dad must have suffered permanent brain damage.

    My wife and I followed later in the our family Van.  We met with his doctor and his prognosis did not seam good.  When we finally visited him in ICU his color was restored and he was sleeping with a ventilator.

    The family prepared for the worst.  We were certain that he was not going to return from this and if he did he would not be the Father we remembered.

    I spoke with a friend of ours who was a nurse and he promised to send me an email with several questions to ask the doctor at our next visit.

    A couple of days later, we visited with the second ICU doctor who was on rotation that day, he refused to remove the ventilator as was Dad's wish.  Years ago Dad had filled out a Living Will with a D.N.R. (do not resuscitate).  We obtained a "Idaho Physician Order for Scope of Treatment (POST)" directing that Dad not be placed back on a ventilator and being given normal oxygen and pain treatments. 

    On Friday I felt that I needed to visit with Dad again on Sunday.  This weekend was Fast Sunday so I thought that I would fast to see what I should to help Dad.  I wanted to give him a blessing.  I considered a blessing of comfort or release.  I never considered a blessing for healing.  I was certain that Dad was brain dead.  I felt  no guidance on what my next actions should be.  I ask our friend who was nurse to join my fast with me.

    On Sunday we took the children to visit Dad one last time.  We warned them that he would not be like they had seen him the last time.   We were right and we were wrong.  When we arrived at his hospital room Dad was lying in bed laughing and joking.  We were not certain, if at first if he recognized the children.  Dad was in a better mental state then we had seen him in years.  If any man could be said to have risen from that dead, Dad had.

    I am still uncertain what happened.  I witnessed a man that appeared to be all but dead one week ago.  The E.M.T.. confirmed that seldom have they seen men return from the state Dad was in .  I am grateful but left a little puzzled.

    What the next chapter in life Dad has in store I am left wondering.  God must really have something special planned for Dad.

 I was so rapped up in the world of my reality, 

that I forgot the God of possibilities.  

I forgot to listen to the doctors prognosis 

that Dad was indeed getting better.

For the Story of Lazarus see;                                                

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+11&version=NIV