All You Need Is Love

North Korea tested a nuclear bomb and a few missiles. They revoked the truce in place since 1953. Nuclear war on the Korean peninsula is looming. Pakistan has counter attacked the Taliban, holding them off for the time being from conquering Islamabad and capturing its nuclear arsenal. Iran marches steadily and rapidly toward creating its own nuclear missiles. Israel has pledged to strike before that happens. Sure sounds like Armageddon to me.

The nuclear drama is taking place with the backdrop of a world wide global depression. The world's governments have been acting quickly to avert a complete meltdown of the financial institutions. Whether we will or not remains to be seen.

The Swine Flu has sent fear through the world's communities. WHO rang the alarm bell. It had the appearance of a false alarm, bringing criticism upon its leaders who assure us a pandemic will happen.

What in the world is happening? Are we witnessing the end of the world? No. Just the approach of the end of history. Many have designated 2012 as the year history ends.

What does that mean, the end of history? It sure sounds a lot like the end of the world. The end of history denotes a monumental turning point in our communal life on the earth. Some have called it dooms day and others the beginning of the Kingdom of God.

In either case, the end of history is a turning point. We face several enormous challenges before 2012. How we deal with them will determine whether we experience an apocalypse or a step over the threshold into the kingdom of God.

The central challenge is whether or not we can love one another. I know, that sounds a lot like the hippie slogan of the 1960s. Yet it really does come down to that. Can we love, forgive, and embrace one another? Can we live in peace in mutual prosperity, community, and mutual love?

We are at a turning point, a decisive moment of history. We have in our hands the power to turn the earth into a cinder or into a Garden of Eden. We have the ability to herald the angels of peace or the angels of destruction. Everything is in our hands. Love. "All you need is love" as the Beatles sang.

Who are the children of peace? The children of peace are the children of God. Who are the children of God? The children of God are the followers of Krishna, Buddha, Confucius, Lao-tzu, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, the Baihai Báb, Joseph Smith, Sun Myung Moon, and on and on. All true religious leaders teach love of God and love of each other. We have teachings enough to live in peace if each of us takes the religious teachings we hold dear and live them.

North Korea poses an especially difficult challenge. A communist atheistic totalitarian dictatorship on the verge of possessing a quiver full of nuclear arrows, love may not be enough to disarm them. The united world community may have to devastate North Korea before it harms its neighbors.

One way or another, when we celebrate the new year 2012, we will have crossed the threshold of a new history, the era of cooperation among the nations and religions of the world. That will not come automatically. We will have decades of struggle to see a coming together of the children of God of all stripes. God and the angelic world will help. They have decided that there is no turning back. We will see the Kingdom of God on the earth, even if we have to experience nuclear war, plague, and famine along the way.

VI. A Quest for Peace: Jesus Christ Superstar

(Continued)

A Quest for Peace: Jesus Christ Superstar

I. Peace City

II. Spiritual Quest

III. America

IV. Community

V. Kibbutz Sasa
VI. Jesus Christ Superstar
VII. Christian
VIII. Kingdom in Israel
  IX. The Second Coming

 
I departed Kibbutz Sasa for the set of Jesus Christ Superstar filming on location in Israel. I traveled to the hotel where the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar stayed, there signing up as an extra. Taking part in the filming of the movie proved a monumental transformational experience for me and many others who took part in the movie.

The movie had been filmed out of sequence. When I arrived, the casting crew assigned me to be a stand in for Caiaphas. I had a memorable time during and in between shoots talking with Bob Bingham (Caiaphas) and Kurt Vaghjiian (Annas). I found everyone in the cast approachable. Even with larger crowd scenes, we really never numbered more than 200 or so. Usually more like 50. So I had lots of opportunities to talk and share time with many people.

During that first scene taken in the desert, far from any towns, Caiaphas and Annas, along with other priests, stood on a scaffolding in a remarkably creative set. They looked like vultures; so did I when wearing the stand in black robe of Caiaphas. During that day, and a few following, we shot This Jesus Must Die: Entry to Jerusalem. I played a follower of Jesus as he came into Jerusalem, too. As I recall, during that time we shot the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, Hossana.

I next watched the filming of Jesus brought to Herod in the dance scene at the Dead Sea: Herod at Dead Sea. I got the call to take part in the dance scene Simon Zealotes Jesus Christ Superstar (HD). We took part in the filming of that scene on a desert floor in well over 100 degree heat. Yet none of us seemed to mind.

I had a number of memorable experiences while waiting on the set. On one occasion I happened to be sitting next to Yvonne Elliman who played Mary Magdalene.  We talked about why each of us played in the movie. She said that she planned to use the money she earned to buy a farm for her retirement, many years in the future. I told her that I took part as a way to find the truth, as a part of my quest to find a way people can live together peacefully. She was a lovely and dear person.

Another time I stood near a canyon drop off admiring the awesome scenery.  Ted Neeley, who played Jesus Christ, approached me. We had a lively discussion about his playing Jesus and the experience of doing that. I recall his intense sincerity and good heartedness. Ted had become Jesus. I felt amazed by his humility. I merely acted as an extra, a nobody in most eyes, and he treated me as the most important person on the set. I felt quite close to him during the filming after that experience in scenes including Trial before Pilate, Temple Money Changers and Valley of the Lepers, Crucifixion scene, Retreat from the Hill and On the Bus.

Each of those scenes had a powerful impact on me. Most of all, the Crucifixion scene. I had been asked to stand by in case needed. One of the lead actors came down ill that morning and I got the nod to stand in with a beautiful black actress whose name I forgot. I felt anxious. She saw that and said: "This is simple. Just image that the person that you love most in the world is on the cross." The first take, I imagined my dad on the cross. The second take I imaged my brother, Marc. By the second take I had heart felt tears.

For the third take I thought: Who is that really on the cross? It is everyone who has tried to do good. They are killed. I thought of the Kennedy's and Martin Luther King. I then had the realization that the person on the cross is me! With that realization, I experienced a flood of tears. In a very real way, we are all Christ on the cross.

Following Jesus' death, a remarkable natural phenomena happened. Although we filmed in mid-day, dark clouds blocked the sun. The scene director called for us all to slowly turn from the cross and walk off the hill. As we walked, all of us, without cue, turned back toward the cross. A profound sense of loss and despair pervaded the cast. As we walked off the set, we turned back two more times without cue. The hours following the filming hardly a word passed among any of the cast. At the hotel that night, I happened to meet Norman Jewison in the bar; all we could do for a greeting was shake our heads and exchange something like "that's heavy."

The experience of taking part in the filming of Jesus Christ Superstar stands as a turning point experience in my life. Almost none of us had been Christians at the beginning of the filming. Many of us became born again Christians during or just after the movie filming. I became a Christian shortly after the filming finished.

Jesus Christ Superstar lyrics

(Continued)

V. A Quest for Peace: Kibbutz Sasa

(Continued)

A Quest for Peace: Kibbutz Sasa

I. Peace City

II. Spiritual Quest

III. America

IV. Community

V. Kibbutz Sasa
VI. Jesus Christ Superstar
VII. Christian
VIII. Kingdom in Israel
  IX. The Second Coming

 

After spending the night in a cold, early April rain without cover outside the walls of a Israeli settlement near the Lebanese border, I spent the second day walking for the entire day. Toward evening, I came over a hill and looked down upon a glorious scene. A kibbutz stretched out nestled in the hills of the Galilee. I felt I had found my City of Peace, Kibbutz Sasa.

 

Safed

Kibbutz Sasa became my home for the next few months. Perched in the beautiful Galilee, overlooking Safed, the birthplace of the Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) movement, I found the perfect place to experience first hand people attempting to live peaceable together. I recall looking over Safed at night, the stars populating the sky by the billions, while Safed glittered with night lights. I recall thinking that never has a more beautiful, more spiritual place ever existed.

The spring time in the Galilee is most glorious. Whenever I had free time I walked the throughout the hills around Sasa. Every month during the Spring the flowers changed, bringing a new chorus of delightful colors. I recall that the honey taken from the Galilee changed color every month along with the flowers. I often imagined what Jesus must have felt growing up as a boy in the Galilee, walking the same kinds of meadows I walked, through the hills I enjoyed.

I recall walking one day in the early summer heat through a wadis that wound from the Galilee to the Sea of Galilee. My route went through a desolate area. Beautiful grooves of trees thrived along a stream flowing through the valley. I went past Mt. Meron, to the southwest of Safed, past the small villages of Amirim, Kahal, Hukok, and finally to the Sea of Galilee just south of Capernaum. I believe that Jesus must have walked that very route from the Galilee to the Sea of Galilee, as it is desolate yet direct. Jesus' home village, Nazareth lay about fifteen miles southwest of Capernaum. He walked the region often during his too short thirty-three years on earth.

While living at Kibbutz Sasa, I dove into a study of the history of the commune and the kibbutz movement. I learned that at the end of the 19th century, Jews throughout the world began to feel a draw back to Israel. A movement sprang up, the Zionist movement, that promoted the return to Israel and the creation of a Jewish state. By the time of the outbreak of World War II, many Jews lived in Israel along side the Palestinians. When of  war of Independence broke out in 1948, 100,000 Jews had immigrated illegally into the British mandate of Palestine.

During beginning of the kibbutz movement in the early 1900s, the membership immigrating from Europe, the Ashkenazi, brought the ideas of Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. They believed that the problems people suffer came from having parents, especially from the attachment with the mother, and ownership of property. At first, the community separated the baby from the mother and raised them at a community nursery without ever letting them know their mothers. In addition, the community did not sanction marriage. Every one was married to everyone. They rejected the idea of owning property or owning anything, including the "ownership" of the husband of the wife and vice versa.They upheld total equality between man and woman, making no distinction. The idea of keeping property in common had come from Karl Marx.

Over time, those radical ideas proved unworkable. Mothers wanted to know their children and the parents wanted to be husband and wife. The communal nursery continued but the children would stay at night with the parents. Parents married and lived together. The idea of communal work continued. Women shifted out of total equality of employment with the reality of pregnancy and child birth dawning. A crisis emerged with children growing up and leaving the kibbutz for life in the cities. The religious kibbutzim, which constituted a small percentage of the kibbutzim, had a much higher percentage of children remain on the kibbutz and proved more successful.

After a few months at Kibbutz Sasa, I realized that the kibbutz, although a noble effort and laudable attempt to create peace communities, fell short of the way for people to live together throughout the world. At about that time, during the summer of 1972, I learned of the filming of Jesus Christ Super Star in Israel and that they needed extras. That began the next stage of my quest for the City of Peace.

(Continued)

IV. A Quest for Peace: Community

(Continued)

A Quest for Peace: Community

I. Peace City

II. Spiritual Quest

III. America

IV. Community

V. Kibbutz Sasa
VI. Jesus Christ Superstar
VII. Christian
VIII. Kingdom in Israel
  IX. The Second Coming

I decided to travel south to Eilat, on the Gulf of Aqaba. I had heard that I could get work there and they enjoyed a milder winter. I worked on several construction sites, often with Bedouins. We did hard manual labor together, carrying heavy cement blocks in chain gang style. I earned enough money to continue my journey, continuing to seek for a way and place that people lived together peacefully. I suppose that I hoped to find a place like Thomas More's Utopia.

While in Eilat, I had a life changing experience. Talking with a friend about Goethe's Faust, I said that Faust sold his soul to Mephistopheles, the devil, in exchange for knowledge. At that moment, a most startling and amazing phenomena happened. I experienced a little black demon, that looked like a baby, project out of my self in a cylinder and hover in front of me. The demon, standing in the transparent cylinder in full view, realized he had been completely exposed. He looked frantically around him, saw that he had no where to hide, and shot straight up out of the cylinder.

At that moment, I felt a total and complete release, like a geyser. I felt as if I had been liberated from a demon who had been living within me for many, many years. I had sold my soul for knowledge, too. I learned later that St. Anthony, one of the foremost desert fathers who had lived in Egypt, had had a similar experience.

I felt completely disillusioned. I had been following God, I thought, through inner leadings. Now I learned that I had been possessed by a demon, that my love of knowledge had been his hiding place. I needed a few days to pray and reflect in solitude about what happened and where to go from there.

That need for a place of solitude took me to a beach on the Gulf of Aqaba south of Eilat. This turned out to be another life changing time for me. During three days alone, I faced the possibility that I had been guided by a demon on my path to that time. That, like Faust, I had sold my soul to the devil for knowledge. I had to find what is true within me, to try to find God. I started from ground zero, empty and asking.


During those three days of solitude on that beautiful beach I confronted myself. I swam in the magnificent coral reefs, reefs that in 1972 had been unspoiled. Coral reefs that stood hundreds of feet high, magnificent colors, tropical fish of every color of the rainbow abundantly swimming in an among them. Dangers lurked, too. The Clown Fish, Lion Fish, Moray Eel, and shark inhabited the coral.

In addition to marveling at the astounding beauties of the coral reef, I confronted death and my craving for power. Curiously, Faust also sold his soul for youth and magical power. I seemed to have confronted the three most formidable obstacles to knowing God and peace, the three greatest temptations that can sidetrack us from God and God's peace: the fear of death, the desire for power, and the desire for knowledge.

I left the beach chastened, humbled, and determined to continue my quest for the city of peace. I had heard of the kibbutz movement and decided to make my way to the northern coast of Israel and join kibbutz Rosh HaNikra, founded in 1949 by Holocaust survivors. After staying a month, I decided to leave on Easter day, April 2, 1972.

I felt that God wanted me to move on but I had no idea where and God gave me no direction. I felt totally frustrated and abandoned. I recall setting up camp in an apple orchard close by the kibbutz to pray for direction. While in my prayer vigil, I read a book that had a profound impact on me; Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ. Kazantzakis painted a profoundly human Christ, one capable of nearly being tempted away from the path of the cross by the devil through the desire to live a happy family life.


I prayed and fasted for three days without any direction from God. I decided to force God's hand. He would either show me the way to go or I would die! I decided to hike along the Israel-Lebanon border, a dangerous place that usually only Israeli military traveled. I set out in the morning, making my way through the beautiful hills looking on to Lebanon. I had read that during the time of Israel's kingdom, forest of cedar spread across the hills of Lebanon. None of that now.

I came upon an Israel outpost with much activity going on. Talking with one of the soldiers I learned that they had killed two members of the Fatah who had sought to infiltrate and attack settlements across the border. I felt a sadness to be on the site where two men had died just hours earlier.


As I walked along the road, an Israeli army jeep pulled up and stopped next to me. A Israel lieutenant asked me what I was doing walking along such a dangerous road. I said that I am looking for God. He said, with a laugh: "You will find him in heaven when you die soon! You had better get to a settlement for the night." I walked the rest of the day until before sundown. Dusk fell as I approached the guard towers of a settlement. Concerned that they might mistake me for a Fatah, I decided to take cover in the underbrush well outside the town walls and guard towers. As fate would have it, a cold rain fell that early April night. Afraid that any movement in the brush would get me shot, I had to remain still. Finally, with the morning light, I could get up and move on.

Continued