Thursday, January 25, 2024

What Should I Do With My Life?

What should I do with my life? That is a tremendous question than many of us never answer. We just move, or are pushed, from event to event. We feel more like a helpless person who has fallen out of their kayak into a Class 5 river than someone in control of their destiny.

Why is that? Most of us have been unwilling to pay our dues. That is, most of us have been unwilling to spend the time in prayer to ask God to show himself to us. We are unwilling to ask him what we should do with our lives. Those are the two key elements to having direction and purpose in our lives. First, experiencing God. And, second, finding in dialogue with God what we are supposed to do in our lives.

I think the reason we shun paying the price to experience God is that we know, even without thinking it, that experiencing God means giving up our lives. We want to be in control, to live our lives the way we want. If we experience God we fear that will change. We fear that we will lose our lives if we experience God. Yet the words of Jesus hit the mark dead center: Whoever tries to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it. (Luke 17:33)

We are all seeking happiness. And there is no happiness without experiencing God vibrantly. So we stumble through life, shunning the experience that will bring us happiness out of the fear that we will be unhappy if we follow God's will for us! How ironic and pathetic.

As a counselor, I have found that people who are seeking happiness without making the effort to know God are never satisfied. I almost feel it is futile to try to help them because they are refusing the very experience that will complete them; the experience of God. And let me be clear about this. It is not the belief in God but the experience of God that brings happiness. The belief in God is often the source of unhappiness because it is merely a self-constructed idea, not a vibrant experience. The vibrant experience of God is what brings happiness.

Yet that is not enough. God has a purpose for the world, a purpose of each of our lives. If we stop with just experiencing God, enjoying the love and joy that comes in waves over us, we have only come half way. God is creating the Kingdom of God on the earth. Each of us has a part to play in that magnificent project. What is that part?

Finding that answer is the next task. While in the vibrant experience of God, we need to dialogue. That's right. Dialogue. We can dialog with God. Ask questions. Listen for answers. Through that dialogue we will find the path God has prepared for us.

What questions should we ask God? To ask the correct questions, which is the only way we can get the correct answers, we must know the time we live in. Each of us is born with gifts. The time we live in determines the gifts we need to develop. Which gifts will be most helpful during this time to bring the Kingdom of God on the earth?

Each age is defined by challenges. We need to know the challenges of our time to know which gifts we should develop and which goals we should establish. We have several serious challenges in our time.
  1. Defeat radical militant religious fundamentalism.
  2. Defeat atheism's and materialism's grip on culture.
  3. Bring people of all faiths into one community of God. There is only one God, after all. That includes creating Peace Cities throughout the world.
  4. Create a viable world government on the model of the United States, with a federal government and state nations.
  5. Use science to create a way of life in harmony with nature.
  6. Develop a global economy that brings everyone into mutual prosperity. In the wake of that prosperity will come proper nutrition, universal education, and universal health care.
  7. What have I forgotten? Oh, yes! Create new ways to have fun together and enjoy this marvelous Garden of Eden!

Now is a marvelous time to be alive. Especially for babies. They have a life time of exciting challenges and opportunities. As parents, the best thing we can do to prepare them for the challenges of this century is to create an environment in which they will want to know God. Rather than dictate to them what God believes, raise them to dialogue with God. Then they will know what to do with their lives.
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Tuesday, January 9, 2024

IX. A Quest for Peace: The Second Coming



France. My mother land. The first time I had set foot on French soil. April 22, 1973, Easter Sunday. I had always felt a reluctance to travel to France. I found it curious that my next phase began with setting foot  there. The last time I had traveled through Europe on my way to Israel in 1971 I had been a Hindu-Buddhist seeking my roots. Now, traveling from Israel back through Europe in 1973 I had become an inflamed Christian.


I met with my brother, Marc, in Nice. He studied French at a university working toward his B.A. degree. I had learned little French. Languages have never been my forte. I came off the airplane in Nice convinced that Christianity alone offered salvation, that all other religions constituted a side track, at the least, and an idolatry, at worst. Fortunately, Marc tolerated my zeal and replied gently: There are many paths to God. Curiously, his words had a special impact on me, like a light turning on. If someone else had said that to me, I would have ignored it. But Marc’s words rang true.

Thanks to my brother, Marc, I reconnected with my earlier quests for truth and peace, integrating them into my worldview rather than blocking them out. Fundamentalism has the pernicious downside of cutting us off from the broader truths within ourselves. I am quite grateful to my brother, Marc, for reopening me to that broader self within me. When I continued my journey across France by train to catch a flight to New York City, I left Nice a more open minded and integrated person than I had arrived a few weeks earlier.

Curiously, I traveled across France from Nice to Paris at night. That is curious because although France is the land of my mother, and I am ½ French, I have never seen Paris in the light of day. I suppose that I am destined to visit Paris in the light of day at another time. I think that my French lineage is important. During my journey to Israel looking for my roots, I felt a strong connection with the people of Israel and especially Jesus. Recent speculation, especially through Dan Brown’s writings, have suggested that Jesus had a child with Mary, and that Mary journeyed to France with her child. I have had an unprovable intuition that my French lineage includes Jesus, Mary, and her child. As I will share later, that would mean that my children share a lineage with the Messiah in the first coming through my mother and with the Messiah in his second coming through my wife.


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I caught a one way flight to New York City on May 25th. Upon arriving, I spent time in prayer asking God for guidance on where I should go, when I should go, and how I should go there. I had only $40 in my pocket. At that time I practiced speaking in tongues when praying. Suddenly, I received internal guidance to go. I rode the Airport shuttle to Grand Central Station. I felt guided to walk toward the New York Public Library, a small park surrounding it. Sabbath approached. I thought I would spend Sabbath Friday night to Saturday night in the park. I brought with me from Israel the tradition of practicing the Saturday sabbath.

Suddenly a beautiful young lady approached me. She spoke rapidly with a Dutch accent about the coming of the Kingdom of God, inviting me to attend a lecture. That caught my attention. I asked: “Are you Christian?,” “Yes,” she replied. I felt called within to go with her. A van waited nearby with other missionaries and interested people on board. I felt impressed by the international nature of the group and their bright spirits. Upon arriving at our destination, a beautiful building on 72nd Street E, I thought, “Well, they do this right!” At that moment I said to myself: “If they are right and true, I will join them. If they are wrong, I will save them.”

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Monday, January 8, 2024

VIII. A Quest for Peace: Kingdom in Israel

(Continued)
A Quest for Peace: Kingdom in Israel


Evangelicals in Israel believed that Jesus would return in his second coming to Israel. Many believed that he would rapture his chosen into heaven, leaving all others to perish and live in hell for eternity. The community of believers I stayed with after Bethlehem held those beliefs.

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Although I found that difficult to swallow, I have much for which to thank my friends. They introduced me to a serious study of the Bible. They took me to the Jordan Valley, below the Qumran caves, and baptized me in the Jordan River. The Qumran caves had yield a treasure trove of scriptures named the Dead Sea Scrolls that had been written by community of scholars similar to the Essenes. I had been baptized twice before; once as a Catholic, then as a Methodist. This baptism, full body immersion, proved a special experience. I experienced going under as a dead man and springing out as a man of new life. 

From Christmas eve 1972 until Easter 1973 I spent in Eliat, Israel, with my friends who had introduced me to Christianity and witnessing. I worked just enough to buy food and spent the rest of my week witnessing. I lived in a community of international travelers who created shacks from scrap wood on the southern outskirts of Eliat in a desert wadis. I found that time important for my growth and development as a Christian. I read the Bible intensely during those months every morning for hours, then used the rest of the day to witness. 

I have spiritual experiences that profoundly impacted me as well. On one occasion, while praying in the desert, Jesus appeared to me. I had become confident that I knew who Jesus is, that I had a special personal relationship with him. I told me: "You have no idea who I am." That shocked me profoundly, setting me back on my heels spiritually. I began to rethink everything about Jesus and God.

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While living in the wadis community of international travelers and seekers, I drew double attention from the Israeli authorities. First, my evangelical activities earned their notice and, second, they disliked our makeshift community of travelers. We woke one morning to an unceremonious announcement that our community would be leveled. We had little time to remove our few belongings before bulldozers leveled our shacks. 

I received a visit from an Israeli policeman who told me to report to the immigration office, which I did. The immigration office took my passport, gave it back to me saying: "You have one week to leave the country." I suspect that my witnessing activities had finally become too much for their to tolerate. I protested: "Why?" He replied: "If you ask one more time, then you have to leave tomorrow." I knew that God would not permit that unless he had something else that he wanted me to do. So, I began to make preparations to depart Israel.

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Before I set off for Jerusalem, and after that Tel Aviv, I had an disturbing spiritual experience. While in the desert for my morning prayer, I had a vision of my home city, Seattle, engulfed in flames. I envisioned that I set off for my death. Be that what it may, I felt compelled to go the way my vision pointed me.

I booked my flight out of Tel Aviv for Nice, France, for the Easter, April 22nd. I arrived in Jerusalem on Wednesday, April 18th and caught the candle light procession from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem by thousands of faithful Thursday before dawn. Saturday I traveled to Tel Aviv and caught my flight to Nice on Easter Sunday. I left Israel the same way I arrived, by jet. The Israel chapter of my quest for peace concluded.

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Sunday, January 7, 2024

VII. A Quest for Peace: Christian

(Continued)
A Quest for Peace:Christian


During the filming of Jesus Christ Superstar, I had a revelatory experience. Jesus appeared to me in a dream. He said: “I am the divine son of God.” Immediately after, his face turned into a demon-like appearance. While that happened, I had the intuition that an evil force (Satan) had just tried to erase the experience of Jesus appearing to me from my mind. I refused to let that happen.

When Jesus appeared to me, I was not a Christian and tended to doubt the notion that Jesus could be the son of God. At the time, I was a Hindu in the Vedanta type and comfortable with Buddhism. While working as a park attendant in the Olympic National Park one summer during my study at the University of Washington, I had had an experience of Nirvana. We had a wonderful Vedanta temple nearby the university which I attended regularly. Vedanta teaches that all religions have value and commemorates the major holidays of every religion.

While living on Kibbutz Sasa, I had become comfortable with Judaism, feeling that I have Jewish ancestry.  But Christianity did not sit well with me. Maybe that came from my upbringing by my mother who had been an atheist of French Catholic upbringing and my father who had been a Deist of Methodist upbringing.

In any case, in addition to my Hindu and Buddhist leanings, I was an Existentialist, meaning I take my experiences seriously. I had an undeniable experience with Jesus in a dream and had to take seriously the possibility that maybe he is the divine son of God. I decided to explore that possibility whole-heartedly.

After finishing Jesus Christ Superstar, I returned to the city, Eliat on the Gulf of Akaba. I determined to try to make money by spear fishing. I met some kind people who invited me to stay in their apartment with them. My adventure with spear fishing when poorly; I cut the bottoms of both my feet on coral and could barely walk. In the midst of that ordeal, I ran into a little Jewish woman who would change my life. She lived in the same apartment complex and had been noticing me, especially my suffering demeanor.

She asked me: “Do you know what brings salvation?”  
 I answered: “No!”
She asked: “Is it money?”
“No,” I replied.
 “Power?”
“No.”
She asked: “Knowledge?”
I thought; “Hmmm . . . Maybe! But, no.”
She said: “Jesus is the key to salvation.”

Maybe it was the oddity of having a little Jewish woman in Israel come up to me out of the blue and witness to Jesus that took me by surprise. Or maybe it was my depths of despair that gave cause for pause. Whatever the case, I found myself struck by her words. Curiously, I felt a slight opening of my heart, a “bing”, and a warm feeling of love appear. After I said good bye to her, that feeling of love in my heart steadily grew. Over the next couple days it became a powerful feeling of joy and love. My Jewish friend had witnessed to me a few days before Christmas. Early Christmas eve morning, I decided to travel to Jerusalem and Bethlehem for Christmas eve and Christmas day.

Thus began an amazing experience. I made my way to Jerusalem and there met with two friends by chance. We went to an Arab Falafel restaurant. I shared with them the amazing experiences I had been having the past few days, beginning with my Jewish friend witnessing to me. As I explained my “rebirth” experience, the Holy Spirit fell upon all three of us! We all became aglow with the Holy Spirit, feeling the ecstasy and joy of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. The restaurant owner looked at us aghast.  He ordered us to leave. Taking us by surprise, we took it in stride and left. Outside we parted ways, all rejoicing and promising to spread the joy to everyone we met.

I began walking the road to Bethlehem, a 6.5 kilometer hike, while the sun still shone. I felt the love of God growing more powerfully in my heart and embracing me. Along the road I noticed a house with the sign “Jesus Saves” and felt compelled to knock on the door. A kindly elderly American missionary greeted me and invited me in. He asked me where I was going.
“To Bethlehem for Christmas eve and Christmas day,” I replied.
“Well, on your way back you must stop and stay with us.”

Saying good bye, I had a sense that this man would be important in my new life with Jesus. I carried on, walking a few more kilometers to the gates of Bethlehem. Throngs of people streamed through the main gate. I felt completely taken up by the Holy Spirit, full of love and joy for everyone. I thought: “This is why Jesus came into the world! To bring love and joy to the earth and everything living thing in it!” 

I went through the town with thousands of other pilgrims, visiting the church deemed to have been the spot where many thought Jesus had been born. In the night, the lights of the town created a kind of holy glow. I made my way at night back down the road to Jerusalem, stopping once again at the good missionaries home. Although late, he and his family of brothers and sisters still celebrated Christmas eve in prayer and song. They invited me to spend the night with them, which I gladly accepted.

Continued
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Saturday, January 6, 2024

VI. A Quest for Peace: Jesus Christ Superstar

(Continued)


A Quest for Peace: Jesus Christ Superstar


 
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)
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Friday, January 5, 2024

V. A Quest for Peace: Kibbutz Sasa

(Continued)



A Quest for Peace: Kibbutz Sasa

 
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)
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Thursday, January 4, 2024

IV. A Quest for Peace: Community

(Continued)

A Quest for Peace: Community


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
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Wednesday, January 3, 2024

III. A Quest for Peace: America

Continued

A Quest for Peace: America

 

Jewish doctrine teaches the Messiah will enter Jerusalem through the Golden Gate to rule the world as King of Kings, Lord of Lords. The Messiah is the one who will save us from suffering, the one who will end the world's suffering. God created Jerusalem and Israel as the place for the Messiah to establish his rule, to serve as the light to the world.

Jesus had been the light of the world, intended to enter Jerusalem through the Golden Gate and rule the world as Messiah. Tragically, he met with disbelief, scorn, hostility, and finally execution nearly 2000 years before. We would live in an extremely different world today if he had succeeded.

In his day, Rome, China, and India had been the great civilizations. Europe, Russia, the British Isles, America, and Africa had been wilderness inhabited by barbarians. Jesus and his disciples would have traveled from Jerusalem through the Roman empire, Persia, India, and China. They would have had a nation, their own nation of Israel, to transform into a City on a Hill.

Jesus and his disciples would have found many meeting points between their teachings and Greco-Roman civilization, Persian civilization, India and China. Legend has that Jesus traveled to India as a youth, before his mission as Messiah began. His spirituality and teaching, based upon Hebrew scriptures, have much in common with Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism. Most likely his disciples could have created the Kingdom of God within 400 years if he had lived.

Jesus promised to return. That returned Messiah is the one I experienced foretold in the figure of light that day on the Mt. of Olives.

The city of Peace, Jerusalem, can only become the City of Peace through the Messiah. The Messiah will be the light in the Temple, greater than Solomon, greater than David. The Jews celebrate the Feast of the Tabernacles to remember the presence of God in the Temple. The Messiah returned will not be the Messiah merely for the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The Messiah returned will be the Messiah for Buddhists, Confucians, Hindus, Shamans, and, indeed, every person in the world.

So how does that all connect with the United States of America? In a powerful way. Actually the return of the Messiah is what makes America great.

The United States is a unique nation in history. At the time of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, at the time of Moses, the time of David and Solomon, America had been a wilderness. Geologists theorized that the entire land mass, all continents of the world, had been one massive continent many millions of years ago. They drifted into the current positions. America became isolated from the great Euro-Asian land mass, created for the day, the Last Days, when the Messiah would return in his second coming.


What makes the United States great is that the Spirit of God created this mighty nation for the Last Days, as a place that could take the teaching of the Messiah in his second coming and live it. First and foremost, the USA is a place where everyone can worship as they wish. We enjoy freedom of religion, a freedom protected by the Constitutions and Bill of Rights. For that reason, America has been a magnet for religious people from all over the world. People of every religion live and worship here.

Second, people of all races and ethnic groups live in the USA. The path to integration has been rocky and tragic. The native Americans suffered near extermination by disease and war. The African, seized and shipped by way of the Middle Passage, toiled as chattel. The idea of equality required a murderous war between the states to survive and still the battle continues for equality among the races.

What makes America great is that here, on this mighty continent, we can live as God intends us to live, as brothers and sisters. We can build the New Jerusalem, the New Israel here. In the 1700s, the creators of the American Republic hoped for that. Benjamin Franklin envisioned the American Revolution as the quest of the Israelites into Israel. The City on a Hill, a light set up on a stand for all to see and emulate. God inspired Americans to create that kind of nation.


A Peace City, Jerusalem. A Peace Country, Israel. A Peace World, the Kingdom of God on the Earth. That is our God given mission. We have been created as a nation to help the world end poverty, disease, ignorance, malnutrition, destruction of nature, war, intolerance, abuse of children, inequality between men and women, racism, and broken families. That's the negative way of saying what our mission is. The positive way to say that is: our mission is to bring abundance, wealth, health, knowledge, equality, life in harmony with nature, racial harmony, and healthy families. If the USA can achieve that, then we will be the City on a Hill, the New Jerusalem, the New Israel envisioned by God.

Continued
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Tuesday, January 2, 2024

II. A Quest for Peace: Spiritual Quest

(Continued)


A Quest for Peace: Spiritual Quest



How can we create Peace Cities? How can we create a community in which everyone lives peacefully? How can we create a nation and a world in which everyone lives peacefully?

With just six credits left to graduate from the University of Washington in 1971, I decided to try to find an answer to that question. I sold everything I owned, including my cherished 1970 baby blue Volkswagen bug, and bought a one way ticket to London. That began a six month journey around England, Scotland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and finally Israel.


Every day when I woke, I asked God to lead me. I lived day by day and slept in the Blue Sky motel. I lived on $1.50 a day, cooking my own food on the butane burner that I packed with me. I had a pack that weighted eighty pounds when I began, about sixty pounds books that I wanted to read in college but never had the time to read.

As I traveled Europe and the Mediterranean, my pack got lighter and lighter. After I finished a book, I gave it to a fellow traveler. I belonged to a loose fellowship of international travelers, the global Woodstock generation. We shared what we had, including our time and stories, love and peace, trials and tribulations. We felt a bond that transcended our nationalities, races, and languages. We felt the stirrings of the global community.

In December 1971, I flew from Istanbul into Israel. I looked at Israel through my airplane window, feeling myself swept over by a wave of joy, happiness, and peace. I felt that I had finally come home. I spent the next fifteen months searching for peace in the home of the world's three great monotheistic religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The search for peace first begins with myself. Although I had been baptized Catholic and Methodist, I had never embraced the Christian faith. Instead, I had embraced Vedanta Hinduism and Zen Buddhism while at the University of Washington. I had studied Christianity but it had just not rung my bell.

I spent my first days in Jerusalem, the city of peace. That's what Jerusalem means in Hebrew. That was extremely fitting for my quest to find a place where people could live together in peace. The Israelis even greeted me with the salutation "peace" (shalom). Lovely.


I traveled around Jerusalem a number of days, walking around the city, visiting the holy sites. I will share one especially memorable experience with you. I walked to the Mt. of Olives from Old Jerusalem. I went to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed, while his disciples slept, that God would let the cup he had been given to drink pass from him. The place where Judas betrayed Jesus to the Jewish soldiers sent by Caiaphas, the High Priest. Olive trees nearly two thousand years old still stood.

I walked to the nearby Mount of Olives Cemetery with a view of Old Jerusalem. The care taker kindly greeted me. He shared with me about the cemetery, about his experience during the Israeli War of 1948. He had been caretaker at that time, twenty three years earlier. His story of bombs dropped, tank battles, machine guns and rifle fire made me realize that Jerusalem, far from being a city of peace, has been a city of war.

The experience of the Garden of Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives Cemetery war story fresh on my mind, I walked to the top of the Mount of Olives. I looked over Old Jerusalem, onto the Dome on the Rock and the Golden Gate. The words of Jesus came to mind as he wept over the city of Jerusalem: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." (Matthew 23:37)

I began to think of all the suffering in the world; the poverty, war, disease, starvation, racism, religious wars, genocide, abuse of children and women, broken families, broken nations. I began to sob uncontrollably, saying: "Heavenly Father, please send your son to save the world!" At that moment, I had one of the most profound spiritual experiences of my life.

I felt a presence come out from me in the shape of my body and saw it move down the mountain toward the Golden Gate. It appeared aglow in holy light. As that figure in the shape of a man moved down the Mount of Olives and toward the Golden Gate, it grew and grew until it became a giant. It approached the Golden Gate as a giant figure of light and passed through the Golden Gate into the temple area. I felt ecstasy and joy. The message had been clear: God would send his son to save the world!

Continued
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Monday, January 1, 2024

I. Quest for Peace: Peace Cities


Quest for Peace: Peace Cities


Finding a way for us to live together peacefully is a big subject for me. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I faced that issue while attending the University of Washington in Seattle. The world looked bleak then, at least to me.

The USA fought a bloody and unpopular war in Vietnam, democracy in a life and death battle with communism. Two of my brothers fought in Vietnam, with the 1st Air Calvary and the 3rd Marines. I belonged to the National Guard manning Nike Hercules missiles in the suburbs of Seattle. Our missiles had been tipped with atomic warheads in a desperate attempt to bring down Soviet ICBM's on their way to targets throughout the USA.

That opened the possibility of another, potentially catastrophic event. Doom's Day. The Nuclear Winter. The end of life on our planet through an exchange of nuclear weapons. I had the job of arming the atomic warheads, which gave me pause as veterans in the missile pits talked about the inevitability of our blowing up the world.

In addition to the struggle between communism and democracy/capitalism and the very real probability of our destroying the earth with nuclear weapons, environmentalists prophetically predicted an end of the world from over population and the destruction of our environment.


That was in 1971. Much has changed and much remains the same nearly forty years later. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Communist nations fell like dominoes. The Soviet Union fragmented, Eastern Europe regained it's freedom, China adopted "rich is beautiful" as their guiding star slogan. Only isolated North Korea and Cuba carry the banner for communism today. North Korea is building nuclear weapons and delivery systems hoping to scare the world into life-giving concessions for their dying totalitarian state.

Many nuclear weapons have been dismantled by Russia, USA, Europe, and China. Yet the nuclear club has been growing. Along with North Korea, Iran is building the ultimate weapon. We are still not out of the woods with nuclear weapons. We still have the prospect of nuclear exchanges, and nuclear terrorism, that could devastate much of or all of the world.

We are still in a dangerous place with the environment. The need to replace fossil fuel with fuels harmonious with the environment is obvious. Over population in Africa, India, China, South America is increasing exponentially. Forty years later, we are struggling to save irreplaceable rain forests, protect natural habitat for species threatened with extinction, while attempting to create jobs for people whose livelihood destroys those treasures.

The collapse of communism beginning in 1989 has given way to another, even more dangerous struggle. Islam has stepped into the void left by Communism's demise. Islam, like Christianity, seeks to convert the world. The clash between Islam and Christianity is as old as both those religions. What makes the clash new is nuclear weapons.

Radical Islamic fundamentalists have determined to spread their faith by terrorism, including atomic, biological, and nuclear terrorism if possible. Unstable Pakistan houses nuclear weapons highly coveted by the Taliban. The Taliban has a cozy partnership with Osama bin Ladin and al Qaeda. Iran would make it's weapons available to anyone attacking the democratic world, including Chavez and Kim Jung Il.

So, in this troubling situation, on the eve of 2012, let's consider a new way of life. Enter Peace cities.

Peace cities. A grand ideal. Cities like Walt Disney envisioned when he conceived and created EPCOT (Experimental Prototype of the City of Tomorrow). Walt created EPCOT in Orlando, Florida during the race strife in the inner cities of America. He wanted to employ technology to create a safe, clean, healthy, efficient way of living together in the city of tomorrow. The section of EPCOT that hosts nations in a semi-circle around a lake displayed Walt's hope for a world of harmony among the nations and races and cultures of the world. "It's a small world isn't it" captures the dream vividly, as well.

Can we create peace cities from technological advances and cultural appreciation alone? No. Respect and appreciation are important, even necessary. But that in itself is not enough. We need to join in genuine community with others whose hearts are right with God. We will only find genuine peace with each other when we have God in our hearts. As John Wesley said: "If your heart is right with God, as my heart is right with God, then give me your hand." Peace only comes when we each know God.

Continued
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