A follow up to Jesus Weeps. We must grieve the suffering our nation has caused, but we must hold to hope for healing and change. And most importantly we must act to bring change. The basis for hope and an outline for change here. A third part on detailed action suggestions to follow.

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Yesterday, I posted "Jesus Weeps", a rather stark and bleak grieving lament on our current situation and the sobering observation that it is us as the true owners and sovereigns of this polity, not just the wicked among us, who are creating this world. I promised today a message of hope and love. I want to use again the image of Jesus and other teachers and bringers of peace such as Reverend King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Thich Nat Hahn (the amazing Vietnamese Buddhist monk and nonviolent peace activist whom King nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1965).

Bur first, this: the very fact that our collective decisions got us here is the firmest ground for our hope to change and heal our world. If we are the ones who caused it, we are the ones who can change it.

Beyond that, the basic message of hope comes from two places: (1) the inevitability of the triumph of good as long as we perform the (2) dedicated, persistent work and action toward achieving the good. Some of the comments to Jesus Weeps noted that grieving is not enough and the must act. I agree. But I also believe that facing the horrors we created and acknowledging our role in the creation and then REALLY feeling the pain of those horrors is essential to igniting the deep fire of determination needed to work as hard as it takes to change, correct, and heal our society.

What would Jesus have done when faced with our world? My humble belief is that he would have wept and marched forth to change it, to bring healing and peace to all of us. Notice, I did not say he would have wept, then gone to work. He would have worked right through the tears and grief (which is exactly what he and King and Gandhi and so many others have done) and that is what we have to do. Call this the left-wing version of WWJD (WWKD, WWGD, etc.).

Good will prevail.

I am about to get all spiritual on you, but first, think of some real world examples. (Thank you Marianne Williamson) Hitler lost the war. He prevailed for a time because good people did not act in time, but before children born in 1940 got their first gray hairs, Germany was one of the most peaceful, prosperous and equitable nations on earth. Same for fascist Italy and imperial Japan. The Soviet Union collapsed and popular sovereignty returned to many of its former satellites. The bubonic plague and the great Spanish flu epidemic ended, even though we lacked a medicinal cure. Every storm has always passed.

Several states have recently overcome a determined and temporarily successful homophobic movement to pass laws granting civil unions to same sex couples. Populist democrats were elected in several very conservative states in 2006. The occupation of Iraq went from wildly popular to wildly unpopular simply by people seeing some of what it is doing to people and costing us (though lack of action has kept us there). Just this year a black man, who at birth in 1961 would have been assigned a separate seat, restroom, and entrance 'round back, won the Democratic presidential primary in every single Deep South state and leads nationally.

Yes, people worked their tails off and many died to make all of this happen, but that's exactly the point. With sufficient effort for good, evil cannot continue to exist.

Spiritually, it is said the cure for darkness is the shining of the light. The dark simply cannot exist when light is shined on it. This has been shown repeatedly all over the world.

But I also believe that our hope also lies in a deeper spiritual insight. I promised yesterday to give it to you straight from my mind and heart and I will continue to do so today. Peace Brother posted an article Friday on OpEd News in the Life, Arts section called From "A Course in Miracles": Defenselessness is Strength. That opened the door for me, thank you, Peace Brother. A Course In Miracles begins with what is to me the most powerful insight for spirit-based hope:

"Nothing real can be threatened.

"Nothing unreal exists.

"Herein lies the peace of God".

A Course goes on for 700 wonderful and deep pages on what is real and unreal, but to oversimplify greatly, it comes down to this: Love is real; all else is illusion and will ultimately yield to love. You are in reality spirit that has chosen to occupy a body for the benefit of the experience spirit can only have through flesh and earth. Spirit is invulnerable.

Now, it is important to understand how religion is different from spirituality. (I don't much like that word either, but I don't know what else to use here.) Christianity and Islam have it exactly the opposite: we are bodies with spirits that are forced to live in this awful fleshy place to determine whether we will spend eternity in heaven or hell. Spirit blesses flesh and the earth as a sacred vessel in which to experience holy grace. Religion (at least Christianity and Islam) view the flesh and the earth a necessary evil to be transcended or burned in. These religions long for the end of the earth and its evil, not its preservation as eternal holy ground.

Sorry for the digression. It is very important to understand that love in this spiritual sense includes all the synonyms we tend to use in its place: peace, joy, hope, charity, generosity, empathy. And love sometimes means quite firmly and forcefully saying "No, you will not treat me or anyone else this way, and I will stand in your path and shine the light on your harmful behavior until you change and return to love yourself."

This is what Jesus meant when he described in the Beatitudes who is blessed by God. He did not describe the strong, rich and powerful. He blessed the poor in spirit, the meek, the peacemakers. He instructed us to love our enemies and do good to those who harm us. But do not think for a minute that Jesus was calling on us to be weak. No one who openly defied the Romans and the Jewish power structure and silently took a horrendous flogging and allowed himself to be crucified to demonstrate the fear and cruelty of both can be described as weak. Jesus was teaching us the true nature of strength that would overcome the dark forces arrayed against the ordinary people of his time. Yes, people have abused his teachings, but those who have truly followed them and similar ones have been hugely successful in changing their worlds.

This is also what Gandhi and then King and their followers and colleagues knew. If good people actively and firmly, but peaceably and lovingly, resist domination, discrimination and violence, the light they shine on the evil they oppose will change enough hearts and minds that the evildoers will be forced to change their ways, and many (remember George Wallace?) will undergo dramatic transformations to the side of the good. When you think of it, this is also what ultimately brought the Viet Nam war to an end: when the light was shone on the war and good Americans saw and heard about the true horrors being committed in their names (and also against them in the name of Vietnamese) their hearts and minds changed from supporting the war to opposing it to taking continuous and courageous action to stop it. Even a cynical manipulator like Richard Nixon could not trick us into continuing.

But, you might say correctly that the forces of darkness have become more sophisticated and pervasive, now composed of coordinated extra-national coalitions of the extremely wealthy, huge corporations, certain supportive politicians, religious fundamentalists, and, most importantly, an almost wholly co-opted mass media. They are working hard and cleverly to hide their actions from the light, or to fabricate false beams to create the impression of light, or even to convince us that they are actually light workers acting only in our best interests.

But a sophisticated evil is not irresistible. A sophisticated and determined darkness cannot withstand a sophisticated and determined light. And so we must work for the light.

Well, I've gone on so long about hope and spirit that this would become a tome if I described action too. I will write more on action very soon. But let me give you a quick outline of what I think hopeful action must encompass. We may need non-violent civil resistance soon, but maybe working with the system to change it will get us there.

(1) Create and nurture peace and love in our own hearts and lives (AT THE SAME TIME AS WE ALSO)

(2) Take constructive action in our local communities to help the less fortunate or the environment or another meaningful cause.

(3) Talk to people about your hopes and desires and how you really feel about what is going on and why you feel it is so wrong and damaging.

(4) Get involved in political or social change movements or start one of your own. Go to www.ROP.org for a great example of a rural, statewide movement in Oregon that has been incredibly successful in knitting together far-flung, seemingly isolated groups into a highly effective social and political change movement.

(5) Write your elected representatives regularly on issues important to you, by hand if possible. They really do pay attention, especially the closer they get to you locally.

(6) In this upcoming election, we have an unusual opportunity to shape the candidates' positions. See a great article by Naomi Klein and Jeffrey Scahill on this point on Common Dreams at www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/26/7887/. We should absolutely overwhelm the Clinton and Obama campaigns, especially the local offices in the states with primaries to come, insisting that they take positions to end the occupation of Iraq; change our political/economic relationship to put ordinary people first and sustain and heal the environment first with profits for huge corporations and the wealthy second; make health care a protected right and provide at least a health care safety net at first, then move toward universal care as soon as possible.

(7) Volunteer for a political campaign that captures your heart and imagination.

Never forget that you are love and that love can never be destroyed.

Peace and blessings, Bruce.

Authors Bio:
Bruce is 46 year-old father of one, stepfather of three and grandfather of two, who left a lucrative law practice at a large national law firm to work, advocate and write for social justice and equality and find a way to incorporate a spiritual life into the material world. He now struggles along to make a decent living while holding true to his deepest principles in Portland Oregon.