As comedianne Joan Rivers says, “Can we talk?” We are facing an extraordinary and uncertain future, and now is the time for all of us to enter into new discussions about old things looked at in new ways.
That is what last week’s election in the United States was all about, and that is what humanity itself must be “up to” in the days and weeks, months and years ahead, if we are to continue — and to enhance — life as we have known it on our planet.
The events of the past several years make it clear that our species has approached the furthest edge of sustainable possibilities. The fact is, we can’t keep going on as we have been. We can’t. I mean, really. We can’t.
A few months ago I was contemplating all of this and on the day that my mind was filled with these thoughts the Internet, too, was filled. Filled with reports of a huge chunk of once solid Antarctic ice, seven times the size of Manhattan, suddenly collapsing. Filled with reports of sectarian violence continued to rage in Iraq, threatening the stability of the region–and of the world. Filled with reports of a teenager in Sao Paolo was making the news for having confessed to the cold-blooded killing of 12 people. The calmness with which the 16-yeaer-old described the murders and how he would have killed three more if he had not been arrested “was scary,” a police officer said. “He told us he only killed people who deserved to die, like the young man he shot dead because he wanted to date his sister.”
All of these things say something about our society, about our way of living in the world, about the story we have told to ourselves about ourselves…and passed on to our young.
No, we can’t keep on like this. We are at what I call ChoicePoint here. We are moving toward Breakthrough or Breakdown. Our global society is either going to reinvent itself or destroy itself.
I believe that the extraordinary Conversations with God books provide some striking possibilities, should we choose to do the former. It offers some daring options. It presents sweeping and belief-shaking visions that could lead the whole of humanity from its dysfunctional past to a glorious and remarkable future. The CWG books offer humanity a whole New Cosmology. In short, A New God.
And not a moment too soon. Looking into our collective past, I have to ask a question: What has it brought us that we are so desperate to hold onto? What widely accepted ideas–religious, political, social, economic, or philosophical–have been so wonderful to experience that we cannot imagine living with a simple expansion or alteration of them?
My own answer? I can’t think of a one. Every idea we’ve ever had about what it means to be human could use some refitting, it seems to me. Every thought we’ve ever entertained about the best way to resolve our differences could benefit from some reexamination, it seems to me. Every value we’ve ever embraced, however sacred, could be enhanced with some honest appraisal and some courageous updating, it seems to me.
(Example: Do we really, really, really think that the death penalty is an effective deterrent to violence? Example: Do we really, really, really believe that God will not accept us into Heaven if we are wonderful people who just happen to have practiced the “wrong” religion? Example: Do we really, really, really hold it to be true that the killing of innocent civilians–or anyone, for that matter–is justified as a means of advancing a social, religious, or political agenda?)
Is it time for us to grow up? Is it time for us to abandon our Neanderthal approach to conflict resolution? Is it time for us to re-think our ideas about who and what God is, and about what God wants–and why?
Dare we even talk of these things?
The nine books in the Conversations with God series dare to do so.
I said before, in the Forward to Book 2 of that series, and I’ll say again here…The human race will change course, that much I can promise you. The question is not whether that course change will take place, but whether it will come about as a result of coercion or cooperative and open-minded exploration.
It cannot be seriously argued that we do not need to seek alternative ways of being and living together. But where to from here? That is the question. The Conversations with God books – and hence, this blog’s daily entries — offer a basis for opening discussion. If the dialogues in those books and the entries on this blog are startling in some of their conclusions, perhaps that will serve to shake us loose from our malaise. Indeed, it is the intention of this dialogue to do so. It is time we entered into serious discussion of our own future.
So then, let the conversations begin. The conversation here, and the conversation in your heart and in your soul, with your family and with your friends. Yes, let the conversations begin, and spread far and wide, for it is conversations, in the end, that always have and always will change the world.
Especially when they are…Conversations with God.
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