Today is Christmas Eve. When I was twelve years old, I'll never forget it, my family was bickering over some awful thing and I was nauseous from choking down my lovely Christmas Eve dinner as the bickering continued over the roast turkey. I had had enough. I went outside into our backyard and I looked up into the stars and I told Jesus, "I know you will understand. I can't do this anymore. If being a Christian means holy days like this, I can no longer call myself a Christian. Nothing personal."
To this day I am certain that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, understands.
I still celebrate Christmas, of course. As the sage Thich Nhat Hanh advised us, you can never truly renounce your culture of birth. One should never try, as it tears the fabric of your being. I'm comfortable as a practicing non-Christian, I know exactly what that means. Since my tween years I have found countless reasons to reject organized religion altogether. Peace out.
But I am here to give you all a present. Here is a full online text version of Thich Nhat Hanh's book Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames. Thich Nhat Hanh was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Rev. Martin Luther King.
May all of your investments -- of emotional energy, intellect, time, money, love, breath, and being -- support and actualize your real values. That is my politically correct hope for your Merry Christmas.
A few weeks ago I was thinking about "The Secret Speech" delivered by Khruschev, found it online and read it. It was interesting to see him use the term "politically correct" -- I wonder if he coined the term, or was it perhaps Lenin?
An ironic origin of a term that used to be meaningful in activism when it was used duing the movement to divest from Apartheid. Being enrolled at the university at the time, I was in an environment where regular "consciousness raising" meetings and teach-ins and trainings in nonviolent resistance occurred every day of the week. Movement leaders attempted to use the phrase "politically correct" specifically in reference to money. Do your investments support and actualize your real values? Well, as we all know, that phrase was quickly twisted by the neo-con men into the lowest most pathetic despicable hoity-toityness possible. A ridiculous thing.
Ironic though to find Nikita "we will bury your grandchildren without firing a shot" Khruschev using it in that famous cold war speech.
I often wonder if the cold war ever truly went away. As I contemplate now, in America, I see a growing nonviolent movement of protest, on the one hand, and a formidable partly uncloaked wall of secrecy on the other. There are so many secrets, and so many people fighting to keep it that way.
Never mind them. What they cannot cover up is the authenticity of people who bear witness, people who stand up, people who are right and know it and do not need the use of force to prove it. The revolution will not be redacted.
My politically correct Christmas wish for us all is that we join together. Let's join the human race. Let's let the power of peace speak for us all: a silence that crumbles the wall of secrecy.
The monks of the far east wear orange tunics because orange represents "renouncing the world." May we all renounce the old and embrace the new together. May the traditional orange be pulled from the toe of your Chritmas stocking!
How to learn nonviolent resistance as King did
Notes from a Nonviolent Training Session (1963)
Nonviolent Resistance & Political Power
Gandhi And Nonviolence
M.K Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence