Traveling to a New America - Collected Works of James Hilgendorf, Ten Complete Books

Traveling to a New America -

Collected Works of James Hilgendorf,

Ten Complete Books 

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BOOK ONE:  TRAVELING TO A NEW AMERICA

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A Note About This Book

This book is a compilation of selected pieces from my prior ten books, as well as blogs that I have written over the last few years; of poems; articles about great, though sometimes not so well known, heroes and heroines of our American past; and comments and reflections about America from a few of the many ordinary men and women I met and interviewed randomly on the streets in different towns and cities while Traveling to a New America.

Amid all the division, chaos and anger we see around us in America and the world today, I feel we are living in a time of immense new beginnings, of a deep seismic shift in the way we view our own individual identity and potential, and the potential of these fifty States.

These selected pieces from my own writings, along with the personal stories of others, past and present, are meant to give voice and presence to the dream that is struggling to be born here in America.

America as it is, and could be, and is becoming.

*****

America is the Promise of the Self

America is the promise of the self.

It is the unfolding, finally, of everything that was imagined or dreamed.

It is finding the very core of the universe, and all the gods and demons and stars and suns and galaxies, within one's very own heart. 

Look into the mirror.  Who is there?

Ultra powerful reflector telescopes gather upon smooth polished mirrors ever and ever deeper glimpses into the life of a universe beyond comprehension, gazing back billions of light years into the past.  We look into those mirrors, but fail to see ourselves.  These images are our own life. 

Everything swings on this moment, all time and all space.

America is here and now.  There are no fantasy lands here.

Rocks and country roads, skyscrapers, rivers, flowers and fields, they are all right here.  We live on this Earth, nowhere else. 

All those who have died, from the beginning of time, crowd in upon this land, this America, hovering among the shadows in anticipation, for a word of what is coming, of what is to be revealed.

America is something never before imagined.

*****

The Animals Are Waiting

The animals have been waiting.

The birds, the leopards, dogs, bees and seagulls, the elephants dancing in elephantine circles, hooting with their trunks – at long last!

America!

*****

Hubert Harrison

Chances are you have never heard of someone named Hubert Harrison.  Until this past few months, I know I never had.

I'd like to introduce you to a truly remarkable person in our own American history.

I came across him in a strange way.  Somehow I clicked onto a page on Google that was about a black man named Hubert Harrison, who was giving lectures and selling books on the street corners in Harlem during the First World War – lectures on science, women's suffrage, evolution, religious superstitions, politics, class and race consciousness, and other topics which would draw crowds of hundreds of people.

I thought to myself: Who is this man?

Another thing that peaked my interest was a quote from Henry Miller, the great American author of Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn and other books, and an early literary idol of mine, who as a young man recalled Harrison as one of his own idols.  Miller wrote:

There was no one in those days who could hold a candle to Hubert Harrison.  With a few well-directed words he had the ability to demolish any opponent.  I described the wonderful way he smiled, his easy assurance, the great sculptured head which he carried on his shoulders like a lion.  I wondered aloud if he had not come from royal blood, if he had not been the descendant of some great African monarch.  Yes, he was a man who electrified one by his mere presence.  Besides him, the other speakers, the white ones, looked like pygmies, not only physically but culturally, spiritually.  Some of them, like the ones who were paid to foment trouble, carried on like epileptics, always wrapped in the Stars and Stripes, to be sure.  Hubert Harrison, on the other hand, no matter what the provocation, always retained his self-possession, his dignity.

I discovered a superb biography, Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918, by Jeffrey B. Perry; absorbed it in a few days, and was quite astounded by this heretofore unknown person Hubert Harrison that I had run across.

Harrison was born on St. Croix, Danish West Indies in 1883.  His mother was a working-class woman, and his biological father was a slave.  Growing up in poverty on the island, Harrison learned first-hand the struggles of his race.

In 1900, as a 17-year-old orphan, with nothing but the clothes on his back, he arrived in New York City, and immediately was confronted with the atmosphere of intense racial oppression of African Americans existing in the United States.  Harrison was especially horrified and shocked by the lynchings and virulent white supremacy that was then reaching a peak in these years in the South.

Working low-paying service jobs, he attended high school at night, and read and educated himself.  Over the ensuing decades, he rose to become one of the most influential people in America.  Writer, orator, educator, critic, editor of Negro World, political activist in the Socialist Party, founder of the New Negro Movement, his work had an immense influence not only upon his own time, but upon the times and people that followed.

Author, journalist and historian Joel A. Rogers wrote:

Harrison was not only the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time, but one of America's greatest minds.  No one worked more seriously and indefatigably to enlighten his fellow men.

At the core of Harrison's life was an unrelenting devotion to justice.  Racism and white supremacy were his targets.

Harrison once wrote:

Politically, the Negro is the touchstone of the modern democratic idea.  The presence of the Negro puts our democracy to the proof and reveals the falsity of it...True democracy and equality implies a revolution...startling even to think of.

Through his writing and lectures and social involvement, he labored unrelentingly to educate the masses, and to give voice and dignity to African-American men and women everywhere.

He wrote:

America is a great experiment in democracy...unique in the history of the world...And the great American experiment is to determine for the future whether we can make out of the welter of races and nations one people, one culture, one democracy.  It is confessedly a hard task, but it can be done, and the grounds of that faith rest on the known facts of the present and the past.

Of course, he was attacked on many fronts; but his labors became the seedbed of future movements and many great future leaders. 

*****

The Miracle Is You

At the heart of the most pressing problem lies the key to turning everything around.

When the problem will not go away, when it stares you unrelentingly in the face, when you think you cannot go on living even unless it changes, this is the turning point. 

But the problem will never change if you think something is going to magically happen, if you think the solution will arrive knocking at your door to give you relief, if you are waiting for the miracle to happen.

The miracle is you.

The miracle is summoning up totally new energies from within.  It is forging new determinations, and then acting and moving ahead with all your might.  It is do or die.

The miracle is finally believing in yourself.  It is depending on no one and no thing.  It is making up your mind.

It is calling forth infinite resources where you saw no resources.

The universe is waiting for you.  The universe has given you this problem as a gift.  The universe will bend to your every whim, but only when you yourself move with implacable will and determination.

It all depends on you.

You are the turning point of a miracle.

*****

Arnaldo

Fremont, California

This is not the old white America of trim lawns and white-washed picket fences.  White America numbers only about a third of the population here.  Half of the population of this city of around 230,000, just north of San Jose, is Asian by roots – Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, Pakistani, Japanese, Burmese, with the largest population of Afghan Americans also in the United States.

While here, I met Arnaldo and his two children.

Arnaldo is originally from Arequipa, Peru, the second largest city in Peru.  He came to the United States seven years ago, and is a United States citizen.

We talked about life in America.

Arnaldo, what's your take on America at this time?

"I think everything is money, I think everything is just money.  Democrats and Republicans are looking for money.  They just want to make more money, and the bad side of this is the people, like me, work for them.  We expend our lives for them.  We make a little money to live, they make a ton of money to make more money.  We're thinking of moving to another State or somewhere else, because specifically here is, to me, turning crazy.  The price of the real estate is on the skies, the relation between how much money you make between the cost of living is big. 

Everybody says the American Dream is buy a house, have a good breakfast, lunch and dinner, and spend as much time with your kids as possible.  That, to me, is a great idea of the American Dream, but how are you going to spend time with your kids if you start at 6 a.m. every day, and come back around eight or nine p.m.  The kids are in daycare, so you are not with your kids, somebody else is taking care of them, and you have to pay for them, and you do not know what's going on over there.  So the American Dream is a little distorted.  We are too many people in the world, there are few resources, there is too many things going on.  If I can compare this country with other countries, I think we are fine, because in relation it's better than Peru, for example.  But the American Dream is far from the reality.

What can change things for the better?

I think everything starts with the kids.  If you spend more time with them, if you teach them to do the good things, if you tell them money is not everything, and you teach them more values, they can  probably do something.  This is a dream, but it's far from the reality.  It starts with you, and how you can teach them.  It starts with you.  The people don't have the time though, because they are working, they are trying to put some food on the table, they don't have time to teach the kids.

Do you think the leaders in our government are thinking about the people?

They have to think about the people, because if they don't do that eventually – I don't know if it's going to be that extreme, like a civil war – but something is going to happen.

*****

Nothing Can Touch You

There is a hole and

Funnel inside the tornado,

An area within the storm

That is as quiet as a mouse.

The eye of the hurricane

Is the knowingness that

Life is safe there in the

Flying flagpoles and

Destructive debris, and

That nothing can touch you

If you keep quiet at the

Center, and do not budge

An inch, sideways, up or

Down, around and around,

Just let the storm brew

And rage and blow itself

Into a fury, it has nothing to

Do with your staunchest

Self.  You are you, you are

Forever.  Hold on, keep

Quiet, stay on course,

Keep the dream alive at the

Center of your mind.

Everything will pass.

Joy is riding out the storm with

Utter intent.

*****

The Treasure Tower

They assembled on the mountain, summoned from all parts of the universe, of universes beyond universes, billions and trillions in their retinues, the kings and queens of life, even animals, serpents, devils and demons, and all of them magnificent, come to hear the Buddha expound the Law, the essence of all his teachings, the Lotus Sutra.

A great Treasure Tower, a third as large as the earth itself, brilliant with jewels, rose into the air from out of the earth, carrying with it all these innumerable beings, and the Buddha began to expound the Law.

He revealed that, contrary to what everyone believed – that he had first attained enlightenment in his present lifetime while meditating under a bodhi tree – he had, in fact, attained enlightenment in the unimaginably remote past, and had ever since then been in the world preaching the Law.  The life of the Buddha is eternal.  The universe itself is eternal.  Our lives are eternal.

The resplendent Treasure Tower and the assembled beings of all the worlds is the Buddha's life itself, a metaphor, a myth of eternity and a state of life residing not only in the Buddha's heart and mind, but in the life of each and every human being on the face of the planet.

It is a state of life overflowing with life force, wisdom, compassion, joy and eternity.  We are all Buddhas, unawakened to this fact. 

The purpose of the Buddha's advent was to uncover and awaken all people to the Thus Come One residing within their own hearts. 

At the conclusion of this ceremony, all these innumerable beings promise to appear in the world after the Buddha's death and to spread this great Truth and Law far into the future.

In 1844, in the January issue of the Dial magazine, the publication of the New England Transcendentalist Club, Henry David Thoreau, one of the great bards of the American Renaissance, introduced a translation of the Parable of the Medicinal Herbs chapter of the Lotus Sutra, the core and heart of all the Buddhist teachings, to the American public. 

The article went mostly unnoticed, but the way had been opened for those legions of lovers of this world to appear, messengers forged upon the anvil of eternal life, donning the garb now of unknown, unheard-of people, the cabinet maker, the farmer, the steel worker, the secretary, bartender, caretaker, seamstress, machinist, railroad worker, pharmacist, lifeguard, a million identities, superb actors and actresses from time immemorial now appearing upon this grand stage of America, you would never imagine they carried forth the secret, the joy, the message, the hope, the future unimaginable, the power, expressing in their very lives invincible proof, singing tunes, swelling a grand chorus of jubilation.

Thoreau opened the door, and now they appear.  They are here to construct a new myth of America.

Who are these people?

They are you and I.

*****

Gangs of the Kosmos

There will soon be no more priests.  Their work is done.  They may wait awhile, perhaps a generation or two, dropping off by degrees.  A superior breed shall take their place, the gangs of kosmos and prophets en masse shall take their place.  A new order shall arise and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest.  The churches built under their umbrage shall be the churches of men and women.  Through the divinity of themselves shall the kosmos and the new breed of poets be interpreters of men and women and of all events and things.  They shall find their inspiration in real objects today, symptoms of the past and future.  They shall not deign to defend immortality or God or the perfection of things or liberty or the exquisite beauty and reality of the soul.  They shall arise in America and be responded to from the remainder of the earth.

—-Walt Whitman.  Preface to Leave of Grass.

*****

Thomas Paine & The Age of Reason

Many people are aware of Thomas Paine's contributions, especially his authorship of the inspiring pamphlets, Common Sense and American Crisis, which led to his being called the Father of the American Revolution.

Not so many people are aware, though, of another series of pamphlets he wrote later in life, called The Age of Reason, which resulted in his being ostracized in the very country he loved.

Published in 1776, near the beginning of the Revolutionary War, his first pamphlet, Common Sense, had an extraordinary impact.  In the first three months alone, 100,000 copies circulated among the two million residents of the 13 colonies, crystallizing a growing sentiment among the people for independence from Great Britain.

Subsequently, Paine began a series of other pamphlets, called The American Crisis.  The first of these pamphlets, also published in 1776, began with the famous words: 

These are the times that try men's souls.  The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.  Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.  What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.  Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated. 

George Washington had these words read to his troops, to inspire them.

President John Adams once said:

Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain. 

Paine went on to also become an ardent and celebrated supporter of the French Revolution with his publication of The Rights of Man.

Later, Paine published The Age of Reason, which also had a powerful impact, but which caused him to be viciously attacked, so that even a hundred years later, President Theodore Roosevelt would label him a filthy little atheist.

Paine was no atheist.  He was a deist, or person believing that reason and observation of the natural world pointed to the existence of a single creator or absolute principle of the universe.

In The Age of Reason, Paine wrote:

"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

"I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

"But lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of.  My own mind is my own church.

"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 rejected miracles, revelation, and the authority of the Bible.  Just as he had attacked the authoritarianism and tyranny of the British government and crown, so he now turned his attacks upon what he considered the tyranny of Christianity itself.

He wrote:

"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing call Christianity.  Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics.  As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter.

Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious wars, that since that time had laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man?  The lies of the Bible have been the cause of the one, and the lies of the Testament of the other.

For views expressed in The Age of Reason, Paine was attacked and vilified by the powers that be.  At his death, he was almost a forgotten man.

The great American orator and writer Robert G. Ingersoll later wrote:

Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life.  One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him.  Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred – his virtues denounced as vices – his services forgotten – his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul.  He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken.  He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death.  Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend – the friend of the whole world – with all their hearts.  On the 8th of June 1809, death came – Death, almost his only friend.  At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic process, no military display.  In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead – on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head – and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude – constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine.

But his influence continued to spread, influencing countless lives struggling for a better world.

Of The Age of Reason, the great American writer Mark Twain once wrote:

I read it first when I was a cub pilot, read it with fear and hesitation, but marveling at its fearlessness and wonderful power.

The great American inventor Thomas Edison wrote:

I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans.  Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic.  It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine's works in my boyhood...it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker's views on political and theological subjects.  Paine educated me, then, about many matters of which I had never before thought.  I remember, very vividly, the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine's writings, and I recall thinking, at that time, 'What a pity these works are not today the school books for all children!'  My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works.  I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.

Here in the United States, we are witness to a corrupt, authoritarian government, motivated above all by money and power, wrapped in the flag of patriotism and supported by power-hungry fanatics of the cross. 

Paine saw a deep connection between politics and religion.  He came to believe that a revolution in religion was a necessary prerequisite for a fully successful, democratic, political revolution.

In other words, religion – or the way we see ourselves, our relation to each other and to this vast universe – is the key to unlocking a new world. 

The power is not outside us, in the Church, the government, in differing stories of an external, omnipotent, tyrannical power, but in ourselves. 

We are the creators.  We are the universe itself, waiting to come to fruition and bloom.  Our potential is infinitely great, but we don't imagine it, let alone believe it.

This is the role of religion now, to bring the power home – to the common human being, to our common human heritage – and thus to transform everything, economics, politics, education – all transformed out of the inner transformation of one person after another, a chain reaction of light.

The Buddha is coming to America.

*****

Youth – Dream Big!

Power invests in the self.

As long as you navigate the circumference, who you are and who you dream to be remain unexpressed.

The center of the circle is at the center.

Unleashing this self requires courage and boldness.  It requires faith.  We are here to unleash the genius and power of our universe.

It requires not one cent.

You need no one to help you.

Everything is within your life, waiting to be summoned and expressed.

Who are you?

You are the impassioned dream within your heart.

No one can chart the course for you.

You are the only one who knows the way.

You are as big as the universe.  The universe is your ally.

Recognize who you are.

Dream big.  Let the dream come forth.

*****

Upon the Battlements

There is a power in us that something does not want us to know. 

At every turn, illusion masks the way.  Dark stirrings in our mind, doubts, and signs everywhere warning of danger and loss and impossibility.

In olden times, it was dragons, breathing fire and hate, that barred the way.  Or monstrous serpents and quick-sand dragging us down to hellish bottoms.  Or snarling dogs and huge spiders and pits of burning oil. 

Today it is more mundane dragons – loss of home, fear of finances, a shattering of relationships – but at the core, it is the same illusion, the same betrayal of the dream that bleeds our heart and courage, the same diminishing of our own faith in our own power.

So it has always been.  The myths of old tell the same old story.

We are myth makers in our own right, this very day, this very hour, poised upon the battlements, sword in hand, slaying illusions one after the other, never giving in.  Though desperate and facing overwhelming odds and weary in arm, still holding forever the dream aloft in reverence.

There comes a point when everything will turn.

Hold on.

*****

Mr. Akhiro Takahashi – Hiroshima Survivor

"One of our most powerful talents as human beings, they say, is our ability to forget.  But I have never forgotten for a moment the horror of that day.  And when my thoughts turn to this subject, I am forced to realize that August sixth marked the real starting point of my life.

"I have survived, but my right elbow and all the fingers except the thumb on my right hand are bent out of shape.  I have keloid burns on both arms and legs, and a black nail continues to grow on my right index finger.  I am afflicted also with chronic hepatitis.  I have been hospitalized twelve times and am still undergoing treatment.  I suffer from many other ailments as well.

"I fear for my life everyday and, at times, my frail health has brought me close to despair.  I have often wondered, 'Why should I go on suffering like this?'  But each time I remember that I survived.  In this way I have lived until today.

"Hiroshima is not merely an historical fact.  It is a continuous warning and lesson for the future.  War is caused by human beings, and it leads not only to one's own death but to the deaths of loved ones, parents, brothers and sisters, teachers, and friends.  A nuclear war, in particular, has neither winners nor losers.  It holds in store nothing less than the extinction of the planet itself.  If human beings don't eliminate nuclear weapons, then the weapons will surely eliminate us.

"Nuclear war, I believe, is truly a challenge to human reason and ideals.  Human beings should abolish nuclear weapons and thus create world peace.  We should transcend all pain, sadness and hatred from the past, join hands with each other regardless of differences of race or national boundaries, and change the flow of history from distrust to trust, from hostility to reconciliation, and from division to harmony.

"One person's strength is limited, of course, but no one is completely powerless.  Unless someone starts something, we will have nothing.  I firmly believe that peace can come about only through the cumulative efforts of individual citizens everywhere.

"Peace will not simply be handed to us as a gift; it will not come walking up to greet us; and, finally, it will not arrive if we simply sit and wait.  Peace is something we must create, something we must actively talk about, act on, build on, and then strive to make happen.

"We need to eliminate nuclear weapons from the world.  We need to make the world truly peaceful.  In order to do so, I want young people to inherit and be aware of our experiences and to work for a peaceful world.

"To make the world peaceful, each person needs to make an effort.  Don't think that one person cannot make a difference.  Each person has power.  Each person has to do something.  If a person does nothing, that equals zero.  By one person taking action, things start to move or change.

"Let's have courage.  Let's challenge ourselves and make effort.  Let's not ignore the power we have.  Let's bring forth the power we have and direct it toward peace.

I hope the younger generations will make Hiroshima their starting point and view the world from a more global perspective.  To that end, and to make the 21st century a century of light and hope I intend to continue to devote whatever energy I have left to telling my experience and spreading the spirit of Hiroshima.

*****

Christianity & The Bomb

Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, was living on the campus of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, when she took up her pen and began writing the book that was instrumental in galvanizing public opinion on the slavery issue just prior to the Civil War.

She wrote:

Up to this year, I have always felt that I had no particular call to meddle with this subject.  But I feel now that the time has come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak.

And speak she did.  Uncle Tom's Cabin documented in passionate and heart-rending detail the tragic breakup of black Kentucky families sold down the river to slavery.  Almost overnight, the characters of Uncle Tom, Little Eva, and the villainous Simon Legree became household words.  In its first year, the book sold 300,000 copies and became an international sensation. 

The central theme of the book is that slavery and Christianity cannot co-exist  Mrs. Stowe saw slavery as part of a vast interlocking social system based on profit, with no regard for the human cost.

Although she was only one woman, her courage and passion stirred the moral conscience of an entire nation. 

Every year we pass another anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945.  We pay homage to the memory of this event, and yet these horrific weapons of death still remain on alert in our country's arsenals – thousands of them, each with a capacity now many times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb.  We are now about to spend another trillion dollars on the manufacture and upkeep of these weapons – weapons that are capable of totally obliterating entire cities and populations, indeed, of destroying the Earth itself.

Here in America, we hold these weapons at the ready.  Given the circumstances, there is no doubt we would use them.  Why else would we have them?

What would Mrs. Stowe have said about these weapons?

I think she would have said that they, too, are incompatible with Christianity, or with any other religion that advocates the sanctity of life. 

What all of this says is that we are not a Christian nation.

To incinerate millions, or even hundreds of millions of men, women and children in the blink of an eye – to push those buttons – is something totally incompatible with the words and intent of the founders of all the major religions.

And yet we hold them.

It stares you in the face, something appalling, yet we will not look at ourselves in the mirror. 

If Mrs. Stowe were alive at this time, maybe she would write a book to awaken us all from this nightmare.

*****

The Battle

I must work on myself once again.

Conflicted with darkness and light, now raging, now filled with joy.

To look into the hearts of others and find myself there.  To feel.  To be aware of life's potential.  To be strong.  To depend on no one and nothing.  To give, when I feel like taking.  To summon up joy and courage out of depression and doubt and discouragement.  To battle my self-imposed limits.  To be kinder.  To remember throughout time and space all those who have lent me support.  To cultivate mercy for those who tested me and made me grow.  To be aware of my own and others' greatness.

To never give in.  To realize dreams.

I must work on myself once again.

*****

Stefan – Vacaville, California

Stefan, what's your take on America at this time?

"I think that America has lost its way, has lost its soul.  In a lot of ways, I'm starting to feel like maybe this experiment was a mistake from the beginning.  There wasn't much integrity in the way this country was founded.  It was built on the back of slave labor, it was built with very specific people in mind, and not much room for anything outside of that arena.  It was built by petty, childish white men competing with each other like little boys.  These are our Founding Fathers.  The railroads and industry and shipping and all that, these are all great developments, but at the end of the day it was just rich guys trying to get richer and put each other down. 

If you're not a white, Christian male in this country, it's difficult.  It's always made laws based on biblical dogma rather than what's socially appropriate and what needs to be done for the country, and people aren't being taken into consideration if they don't fit into that class.  Women, people of color, gay people, trans people, have a really difficult time in this new country, and I really think it's time that we start basing our laws on our Constitution and not on a book that certain people believe in.  I'm thirty-two and this doesn't feel like the country that I was raised in, it doesn't feel like the promises that were made to me as a child.  It honestly has nothing to do with Donald Trump or who is in the White House, it's just the division in this country and the legislation based on religious dogma that have, I think, run the nation asunder, and I don't think we'll ever find our way back.

Is there a solution to all this?

There is no solution.  It's deep rooted.  It's systemic, and it's been built into the framework of this country since day one.  This idea of class and race supremacy is never going away, and where this division is even widening more is where all these oppressed people, these people that have been held back or don't feel like this country represents them, we're finally starting to speak up, we're about to enter into another civil rights movement, we're about to enter right back into the race relations we had in the sixties, particularly with some of these people who have been appointed to office, and it's a terrifying time.  I don't think we come back from this.  I think the only way to really save this country's soul is to push the controllers out, and they're never going anywhere.  They've owned this country since day one and they don't want us here and that's just all there is to it.  But we're not going anywhere.  Black people aren't going anywhere, Hispanic people aren't going anywhere, Asian people, gay people, women aren't going anywhere.  I think what's happening in the government right now is the rich, white, powerful men who have run the country for so long are deathly afraid of losing their grip, and so they're implementing new systems and new institutions to reclaim that power that they used to have.  It really feels like the government is try to take us back to the 1930s and take us back to Jim Crow and segregation and it's terrifying.

If you had a vision of a really great America, what would it look like?

I don't know what a really great America would look like.  Every country has its problems, every nation has it ups and downs, every nation has divisions based on race and class and religion.  It's not America, it's the world.  We need to go back a few thousand years and make Christianity never happen.  I'm not just personally against Christianity, but I think religion is what causes division.  This idea of my God's right, and you're wrong, my way of believing things is right so yours must be wrong – this has been inherent to the human mentality for hundreds and hundreds of years, and it just keeps getting passed down from generation to generation. 

What's your dream?

Just to be happy and successful and not have to worry about being persecuted about the color of my skin or who I choose to sleep with.  I want to see people treated equally.  We're all 75% water, we all have people we love, we all have family and dreams and goals and everybody just needs to be on the same level.  We can't have one group of people hoarding all the social and political power in this country and holding back the people who actually make up the framework of this, because when you really do the math, white males 18-35 are in fact the minority, and they hate it.  I don't think I'll live here in the next five years.  I don't know where I would go, but I think somewhere not quite as dominated by white imperialism.

*****

Buckminster Fuller, Visionary

Bring Out Your Own Unique Power and Self

Buckminster Fuller, American architect, author, designer, and inventor, was the popularizer of Spaceship Earth and the geodesic dome.

Interestingly, he was a grand nephew of the American Transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller, one of the most amazing women of the early American Renaissance, and a close friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

As a young man, Fuller worked at a wide variety of jobs, until, at age 32, in 1927, he experienced a pivotal time in his life.  His daughter Alexandra died of polio and spinal meningitis when she was nearly four.  Fuller lost his job, and he and his wife had no savings just as their daughter Allegra was born.  This led to Fuller actually contemplating suicide as a way for his family to benefit from their life insurance policy.

About this time, Fuller experienced an incident that was to profoundly influence his life.  He stated that at one time he felt as though he became suspended several feet above the ground, enclosed in a white sphere of light.  A voice spoke to him, saying:

From now on, you need never await temporal attestation to your thought.  You think the truth.  You do not have the right to eliminate yourself.  You do not belong to you.  You belong to the Universe.  Your  significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.

Fuller decided to search for the principles governing the universe and help advance the evolution of humanity in accordance with them, finding ways of doing more with less to the end that all people everywhere can have more and more.  This led him eventually to popularizing the structure of the geodesic dome.

I made notes in the past of some of Fuller's sayings and the following are some of his comments that struck me:

You never change things by fighting the existing reality.  To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living.  It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological break-through capable of supporting all the rest.  The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living.  We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist.  So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors.  The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

Never forget that you are one of a kind.  Never forget that if there weren't any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn't be here in the first place.  And never forget, no matter how overwhelming life's challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world.  In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about.  So be that one person.

The minute you choose to do what you really want to do, it's a different kind of life.

Sometimes I think we're alone.  Sometimes I think we're not.  In either case, the thought is quite staggering.

If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do... HOW WOULD I BE?  WHAT WOULD I DO?

This is the kind of spirit and vision young people, especially, need to foster in their lives. 

*****

America Reborn

The old dreams of America are dying.

These were white-washed fences, and movies where you never saw anyone with a different looking face.  Flags waving in the wind, sweetness everywhere, good guys and bad guys, America forever, blessed by God on high, and dreams of onward and upward, forever and ever.

Our dreams have died the death of the old America. 

They were only for a moment anyway.  Blotches upon the canvas of a tribal mentality, visions of superiority and dominion.

America is reborn in black ghettoes, on Indian reservations, in Nigerian enclaves, tides of Russian emigres, turbaned Sikhs and Arab tunics, Vietnamese restaurants, Chinese fish shops, and Mexican burritos.

They come from out of the four corners of the universe.  Nowhere has there ever been such a gathering.

We thought they would all meld into a big pot, American as apple pie, learning the old ways, speaking sparkling English, and merging their identity into the identity of the great white way.

But, no, they are their own sort of blooms.  They carry with them strains of melodies and rhythms of words that forge a cacophony of sounds and visions and feelings unheralded by the narrow concepts of our ancestors.

They have come from out of all eternity.

They are here for one reason: to bring to fruition the true dream of America. They appear now, all over America.

And with them, in their midst, the Buddha appears, opening the way.

He appears now on a busy corner, a hawker selling morning newspapers, replete with good news.

Or coiling the hair of beauty shop customers, spreading the word face to face, woman to woman, block by block, gossip traveling just under the speed of light.

The time has come.

Opening each heart, opening the heart of the universe itself, one by one, person to person.  Caring for one person, spreading rings of compassion, opening up time and space. 

Not presidents, not movie stars, not moguls and magnates, but ordinary men and women, you and I, the unknowns, the undiscovered, the unrecognized, now taking the stage and the limelight of history.

What we extend to the hearts of others rebounds in silent ripples to Uranus and Pluto and unknown planets beyond.

The true dream of America is emerging.

*****

Civil War In America

America has always provoked a Civil War. 

It is the nature of the ideal: brotherhood, sisterhood, equality, compassion like a river surging through blood-soaked fields. 

War at each moment, within our very own breasts.  Shall we advance?

Staring defeat in the face, to muster courage and go for what has never yet been given birth and breath.

What else is life about?

Give us the truly aimed eye, the beauty of remembrance, the struggle of tried and true spirits.

Gray and Blue, lying in the dust, lost legs and arms, bullets through the head, nary the blink of an eye, nary a thought of Death, just tried and true and honor bleeding over the forsaken fields.

But it was never honor we fought for, never liberty or money or cotton, but a dream, a dream originating somewhere deep in the human heart, down chasms of darkness and black holes and dark suns, a dream of who we really are, a dream encompassing more time and space than any one could ever have imagined, a dream ricocheting in beams of light off the mirrors of the universe.

It was to find oneself.  This was the reason we fought the bloody Civil War, it is the reason the Civil War still lives.

Past and future, which one will you choose? - one foot in, one foot out, living or dying, spring leaves or dying autumn and crusted winter.

This is life, this has always been.  Time makes it so.

Which side are you on?

*****

During the Dark Hours

Flowers have bloomed

During the night.

A lovely bouquet this

Morning, though the

Night before blooms

Were closed,

Seemingly dead,

Finished growing.

Transformation took place

During the dark hours.

Sometimes we wind our

Way up from the depths,

There is no light.

The hidden sun in our heart

Leading the way,

Pushing up through

Overwhelming darkness,

Dead-ends, doubt and despair,

The dream never dying,

Hope invincible.

To bloom as stunning

Beauties in the light.

*****

Helen Keller

Inspiration for the Ages

Born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Helen Keller was a normal child, until, at age 19 months, she contracted an illness which left her both blind and deaf for the rest of her life.

After several terrible, lonely years, she met her lifelong teacher, Anne Sullivan, who, through immense patience, guided Helen and taught her to communicate with the outside world through language.

Despite enormous handicaps, Helen Keller went on to become one of the most admired women of her century.  She published 12 books, and encouraged audiences around the world.  She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and, in 1999, was listed in Gallup's Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century. 

Here are some of the things she has to say to you:

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.  Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Be of good cheer.  Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow.  You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles  Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness.  It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement.

For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill of Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way.  I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon.  Every struggle is a victory.  One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire.

I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time!

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight and no vision.

Security is mostly a superstition.  It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.  Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.  Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.

What I'm looking for is not out there, it is in me.

*****

Life and Death

Death.

We have been skirting the issue