The Issues Aren’t Always the Issue

Life is made up of two dimensions: things on the outside and things on the inside. As people, we not only think, we also feel: we care not only about what is happening to our bodies but also what is happening to our souls.

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America is not just having problems with what is happening to our economy, our environment, our educational system and so forth. We have a problem with the psychological fabric of our country, as a low level emotional civil war has begun in too many ways to rip us apart.

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In order to deal with that, we must address it on the level of our internal being. We don’t normally associate politics with a deep level of our internal existence, but this is the 21st Century now and all of that needs to change.

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People think politics is ugly -- and it is true that some of it is. But there is something else to politics too, when we allow it to unfold - something noble and good. Our task in the 21st Century is to transform our experience of politics, that we might help transform our country.

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We should participate in politics with the same level of consciousness as that which we bring to all of our most important and meaningful pursuits. We should bring all of ourselves to it. We should bring our hearts and minds and deepest dedication to something bigger than ourselves.

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Politics is very, very serious business in a country as big and powerful as ours. When we get it right, it can be beautiful; but when we get it wrong it can be a terrible thing. We are all responsible for that. With every election, with every campaign, we are deciding something extremely important. We are deciding what is possibly the fate of millions, the fate of the earth, even perhaps the fate of humanity. And if that is not a sacred charge, I cannot imagine what is.

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This is a new time, and we must bring forth something new within ourselves in order to deal with it. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”