***

We are powerless.

Upon the admission, some possibilities
develop, we get some momentum,
actually get some things done—a process
of emptying out to fill, erasing the chalkboard
to learn, preparing the flower bed, like
God’s great empty canvas in the beginning.

We ask for power or strength.

Samuel rises to the peak, asks God directly
for a king “to be like other nations,”
and although a Jewish story, I think it
applies to where we are politically all over
the world.  Our kings have let us down, just
as the LORD said they would!!

Peace and those who speak, preach and
take action to secure it—is a dangerous
endeavor.  Those who love to war, and send
their kids to the cliché that is college by waging
it: don’t appreciate the simple views espoused
by JFK in ’63, MLK in ’68, RFK in ’68 as well, then
look at John Lennon in the ‘70’s about to ramp
up against Ronald Reagan in 1980.

All murdered at the peak of their Peaceful
message to the world.

Don’t forget Gandhi.  He was an enlightened
man, trying to unify his country, tried to speak
the militant Hindu off the cliff of hate, and was
killed for it.

Those names, all of them: the greatest voice
for peace in the world on the day they were
murdered.

For that reason I wrote and performed
a comedy CD once, called “The Second
Most Peaceful Man in the World”—a dark
joke about staying away from the number one
seat, a sure bet to be assassinated brutally.

We are powerless.

Even those men of peace had no real
power beyond their exceptional education
and principles.  Somehow they got very large,
and at their largest they were destroyed…

Ideas live forever, if good ones, and so not
all is lost when triggers are pulled and
horrible acts steal our human heroes.

Ideas for peace—call them “states” that
must unite against a climate and pulse always
driving and sometimes so violent!

To know when to step back, breathe and
again admit total powerlessness allows a Power
greater than us to be in the lead, to accept
the cycle of life with grace and turn the other
cheek, to walk away from those who hate
you, dust off your feet like the Prince
of Peace would teach—

is good.

Walk away from the self, take and accept less
stuff, less food, less drink—enough being every
bit as good as a feast, Mary Poppins treats.

Peace is like the great hold-back, the space
between the thought and the act, the realization
that to do nothing is superior to doing something
bad—it all takes training, discipline, and the
ultimate awareness that no matter what we do
or do not do can range in import between
“no change” to Moving a Mountain from there
to here,

if we fast, pray and believe—your water
tasting like wine without the horrible
consequence of altering brain chemistry and
the relationship you try to have with a
jealous God not fond of sharing spotlights
with bottles of flammable liquid sold in stores
and on my TV as “drink.”

There’s nothing like a bit of throw-up in
the morning to help you kick bad habits, a
hangover in a jail cell, push-ups and sit-ups
by the side of the bed having overdosed on
what your father and mother did.

You honor them as best you can, because
you want to live a good, long life—keep the
sabbath day holy if Jewish, and if anyone else:

reserve some days, moments, years to honor
and remember Life and all we didn’t do to
make it happen.

“GOD” could just be Good Orderly Direction
for some, a hoax for others, but he or she
exists because it’s in my dictionary as at
the very least: Concept.

Other ideas for peace came from great
wars.  We had the Kellogg-Briand Pact
after World War I that no one followed,
leading to a second war, leading finally
to mass nuclear murder of Jews, Japanese
and so many other of God’s children no
matter what side residing in her seas.

Leading finally to the United Nations and
its proud World Peace charter of 1945,
signed by all “peace-loving nations” in
San Francisco, California—eventually setting
up in New York, USA—the supposed
Victors of World War II setting too many
rules, including:

The indoctrination of covert CIA two years
after the UN was formed, thus thwarting
World Peace covertly.

So often, and go ahead and blame Samuel:
The “United States” of America is not a peace-
loving nation, and should not be permitted
membership in the United Nations.

That we are allowed to host the group is
laughable, the curse God promised Samuel
about kings stealing and being corrupt coming
true in the red, white and blue flag draped over
President John F. Kennedy, murdered by his
own CIA.

Oh, I’m sorry that’s not admitted yet, the CIA
locked up the facts around that, the idea
of “classified” and Top Secret killing “democracy,”
that Greek concept in America too, a joke.

Earl Warren called himself a chief justice, while
he helped Allen Dulles cover murder, “national
security” a euphemism for “job security” amongst
the criminal covert underworld of U.S. war
perpetrators, AKA “the confused.”

I love you.

Don’t get me wrong, and that’s so much “politics”
that I’m apt to lose fans if I keep going there.

We’ve already done religion, so off we go to
see what other buttons are there to push.

Doesn’t sound like a peaceful operation, but
to tell the truth, I was the guy in the basketball
game “taking charges,” finding a weakness in
defenses, exposing them and pointing them out
to win.

And as you do, you make the other guy stronger
the next time.

That is what the drill sergeant does, I think, is
tear down to build back up the military way.

The beef I have with a military that is sometimes
a great example of team, humility and discipline
is that, quite frankly:

They are killers.

I like the sixth commandment, still, that Thou
shalt not kill.

Not ever.

Killing is the most egregious form of judging
your fellow human being.  I abstain from
judging to avoid judgment, loving others the
path to heaven so narrowly walked until the
right words find a page, your ears or national
consciousness that widen the road.

“You cannot change the world,” Lao Tzu
keeps buzzing in my ear, but then Wyatt
Earp springs up, a soul committed to action, to
keeping a clean, safe street on which children
and women could walk with their feet.

Helicopters and fireworks do not please the
LORD, I’m convinced, they are loud and causing
the deer and coyote where I live to retreat
so deep into a depleted forest complete that
I can only fight my peaceful fight,

the devil defeat.

*******

God bless the warrior, whose definition of
war is the flower sprouting from the seed.

God bless he or she who stand up to injustice,
who lock arms against the racist taunts,
the sexist remarks, the hatred in the air rising
up to create a moment’s high.

Read the UN Charter with me, raise it high
like lowly Bolivia—the last will be chosen
first, humility is good, America. Following
through on our treaties to native Americans
is good, America.  Paying African Americans
a stipend as amends for sin is good, America.

Good is good, the Commandments good.  Wisdom
of the ages is good, from Solomon’s Wife of
his Youth to Lao Tzu’s waiting until the mud
settled in the pool to see to the bottom,

make a proper decision.

Love is the golden rule, find it in your
heart, and forgiveness too.

But we are powerless.  We are nothing
without inspiration, and that pause that
allows space for prayer and lifting our
thoughts to a higher plain to assure we act
not just from the selfish Freudian id, but for
the highest, greater good

as Adam Smith tried, and John Nash did.

The atheist prays to no one, stands tall in
the flood, blames the levy and that’s okay.

Inherent truths rain down on the ignorant
and enlightened in equal spray, the first
being that words are fictions, never doing

justice to the essence of leaf on pool, the
dance of Spring following a harsh un-ending
swirl around the curls and furls of Winter’s
harsh breath, you’re sure of yourself until
a strange dream takes you somewhere else,

we bellow and yell at each other to change,
nothing and no one changing until close
to the grave we honor a fallen friend by
giving up the thing that we think killed them,

only… no one is dead that strove to spread
even the most benign cell of You, the beginning
of Truth trying to end not war but the disillusion
and ignorance that started it.

The falsehood of men being men by killing and
fighting other men is the same as calling the
boy queer for kissing Dad on the cheek, he
thought he was neat, we must listen to the
real prophets whose words mean something,
survived the ages to tell us something…

Moses, David, Solomon, Jesus, the Tao Te Ching.

Oh, you can close your ears and fight upstream!

You can invent the United Nations of peace while
you steal their wallets, plot to kill and feed the
festering fear of losing all your things!

I love you, even when you can’t do what
you seem to seem, God bless you even in the
godless hate that is a seed to the flame of change—
We will overcome our worst members when
we bow to hear their complaint, take a blow

on the cheek, cry a bit and kiss them back from
the grave of chance, the last dance of the
prophets of peace who were murdered while
their ideas inspired the next dreamer to
advance.

I love Bill Maher without the slicked back
hair, hungover or sick, calling out, we’d change
his diapers, get him water and wash his feet.

He rails at the Christian hearts that beat, and
we understand, because most of us too used
to engage in hate.

We want you in our army, Bill, and any other
soldier in heat, those convinced God is a made-up
game for adults to console themselves about
not being able to compete.

We laugh until the pot runs out, and there’s
a real lull and time to think.

We can live until we are abandoned at the
home, getting changed by strangers, or…

study the way of the 800-year old Jewish
man being “gathered to his people,” a glorious
send-off of “Thanks, Dad!” “Thanks, Grandpa!!”

Thank you for all that you did and do, you
will always be here in us and in our hearts,
we let you go, and you must trust us to
keep your dream alive.

And the old man dies, not a sad good-bye, but
more like a winning sacrament completed,
a perfect game thrown before the field is
for the storm upcoming sheeted, we call
it all kinds of disease and names, but so many
just living as zombies past their call to go,

hospitals getting rich instead of counseling
family members to whether alone or with
a minister bring out the red carpet toward
heaven and watch their greyed loved one
walk upon it, away from us to God.

Dying is living, the best part of us lives
forever, if that Mrs. Chickian effort we made,
if that John Woodenian peace of mind we
achieve, knowing we did our very best…

Whether with words, deeds or actions or
all three, the road to the United States of
Peace goes through your own little heart.

The focus there, the heart that cares, we have
a chance to spread your own version of
God both here and there.

God bless…..