Time To Flood The Swamp
The Great Day of His Wrath by John Martin, 1851-3. Courtesy of Tate.
Reflection given to Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (ICUJP), December 9th, 2016.
I have never felt more struck, in a time of Reflection, to look forward. Never was it a better, more urgent and compelling time to act. There is a tide rising around the world, but let us not leave the tide for others to ride. It is a tide for all of us.
Change is upon us. It is not a Republican tide of Republican change, nor an extremist tide of bigotry, misogyny, and rampant racism. It is a tide of change, coming at us like a tsunami – not calling out or selecting any one particular group above another. It comes for all of us.
Most certainly, let us not stand aghast in shock and horror that others have mounted this wave before us and that we shall be swept aside. Let us ride it and embrace it as if it has, indeed, been the moment we ourselves have been waiting for.
Did we really think that things could, or would, go on as they have before? It was a status quo already so horribly abused, unjust, and broken; epitomized if you like by this week’s revelation that the Pentagon, which is supposed to protect us, concealed $125 billion of our own money for itself. Be you Republican, Democrat, anarchist, nihilist, or humanist, this was a system destined to fall. And it’s falling, tottering most uneasily beside a chaotic collapse.
Let us ride this wave. Let us flow with it; let us be swept up in this tide of global, mass disorder. Do not resist it; you can’t resist it. It is not to be resisted.
In short, we are witnessing the end of an age and a civilization. What a glorious, momentous time to be alive. The fall of Rome!
What matters, surely, at such a time as this is the readiness of our own heart and spirit. At such a time, never was it more truly spoken that there is no ‘other’.
Hispanic, illegal, immigrant, Muslim, black, and gay become meaningless terms. Such illusions are shattered. We are all merely human. A new normalcy is upon us.
Let us make of it what we can. Judgment Day cannot be far behind. What is in our hearts; what do we truly believe; who are we really?
Now is the time that tries men’s souls.
Strength is simple truth and loving kindness. Possession is not what it was; the imaging of poets is the breaking dawn.
I am not afraid of Donald Trump, or Brexit, or a collapsing Europe. In part, I welcome it. Do we think it OK to stand apart – from Syria, from Yemen, from the ancient rites and civil rights of tribal Americans?
We are living in End Times. Get used to it. Adjust; adapt; find yourself as raw, naked and exposed as the day you came into this world. How can we ever make sense of the madness we have created without it utterly falling apart: a callous world; a false world; a world of poverty and hate; of politics and war; of division, and a Greed that reaches all the way to hell?
We need a reckoning; there are some who say it is overdue. But let us not be shocked – or saddened – by this American election result. Let us hail it as the time when political lies and correctness gives way to the voice of conscience and moral truth; when the horrors and the ugliness of man – too, too long ignored – are called out; and a glimmer of real Hope and Justice, so long eclipsed, can be firmly glanced upon a shining new horizon.
So let us not be shy and tremor, but be bold. Let us allow ourselves to speak freely what is uppermost in our minds and upon our hearts. Let us strike out to build a New World – without borders or boundaries of man’s own making, but as one common humanity co-inhabiting land and sea; spinning and evolving together through Space, dependent upon this green Mother Earth we all call home – with a renewed awareness and gratitude for all that She provides. Let us call for it now, for tomorrow may already be too late.