The New Golden Rule of American "Christians"

Faisal Shahzad and the American Dream

Pardon me for harping on this subject one more time. Aside from the American dream not working for Faisal Shahzad, his need to measure success on perhaps a fallback to native culture and native pride takes me nowhere.

In the secular culture that America has become, one assumes that the golden rule or some sort of love thy neighbor filters through that secular veneer of day to day living.

Faisal from what I have read is not religious. He is secular. His apparent hatred toward strangers in Times Square is an act by a sociopath, one who does harm to others and in general has no basic regard for others.

That America rolled out its welcome mat to Faisal Shahzad and he turned on us, would kill us - is an insult to our long standing good nature and good will as a nation.

That illegal Mexican immigrants are not plotting to blow up our institutions or our people and many on the far right would reject them and accept a son of privilege from Pakistan as a preferred person in terms of visas, education etc. over illegals. This is a strange norm these days but conforms with class structures in societies everywhere. Money talks.

I include a video from Al Jezeera that the other world out there, a muslim religious or a muslim secular world will see. No doubt the thought runs through the minds of many there as it does here – America is where the world wants to get to – why did you not make more effort to succeed in the business of life? Why did you have to turn to death?

America is a hope to the world still. But maybe just maybe, secularism on the planet has not yet reached a satisfactory norm of moral balance.

America has always stood for fairness even if things were not fair for some or for many. The foundation of American confidence lay in the abstract of hope laid out in our founding documents of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

I will not say that the American Dream is dead because Faisal Shahzad on a micro level just shrugged and walked away and worse than that tried to kill us in the process.

I don’t know what Islam is about but the core of Jesus’ message is to love your neighbor in Connecticut, New York City or Pakistan.

Without that core human belief in dignity and respect for your neighbors on planet earth, the fabric of our global civilization is doomed!




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National Prayer Observed - Everyday

Of course everyday is a good day to pray.

Yesterday the White House endorsed a National Day of Prayer with less fanfare and less political pomp as in recent years.

No one group can own nor can any one philosophical approach to the concept of God be monopolized especially in this diverse nation.


Prayer Day receives ecumenical treatment

…Obama opted yesterday for a private observance and a decidedly ecumenical proclamation. The proclamation cites the "one law that binds all great religions together: the Golden Rule and its call to love one another, to understand one another, and to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth."

Praising the armed forces, he says "it is because of them that we continue to live in a nation where people of all faiths can worship or not worship according to the dictates of their conscience."

Shirley Dobson, chairwoman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, said it was "disappointed in the lack of participation by the Obama administration" in the 58th annual observance. "At this time in our country's history, we would hope our president would recognize more fully the importance of prayer," she said in a statement.

But other religious groups praised Obama for dialing back the observance and accused the task force of trying to exclude non-Christians. Dobson is the wife of James Dobson of Focus on the Family, a politically active Christian conservative group…

Charter for Compassion - an Interfaith Road?

This past week we observed the fiftieth anniversary of the flight of the Dalai Lama, the head on a Buddhist sect, and his followers out of their native Tibet and into the neighboring country of northern India.

Tibet of course got annexed by China. I will pass on the judgment of the godless giant and talk about interfaith beliefs.

I put a Tibetan chant on above in honor of a faith in exile. I hope that China one day opens its hearts and minds to the Compassion preached by this man.

I believe that there are interfaith approaches which in some ways talk about talking over the back fence like neighbors. I am also reminded of the line from the poetry of Robert Frost, the American poet, about how “good fences make good neighbors”.

In an increasingly religion-less secular world I am listening to this chant, listening to words I do not understand, in Sanskrit, and hoping to gain a little calm in my life to seek the enlightenment spoken so often about in Buddhism. I am not worshipping the Buddha. Few in Buddhism consider their prophet, their main saint, to be a god.

Surfing the tube last night I landed on the PBS show “Bill Moyers Journal” and happened to hear Dr. Karen Armstrong talking about her attempts to form a global “Charter for Compassion” with others who would forge this document that recognizes the “Golden Rule” as the basis of all world religions and put it back into daily use and cognizance globally both in a religious and secular sense.

Armstrong, who taught for a time at London's Leo Baeck rabbinic college, says she has been particularly inspired by the Jewish tradition's emphasis in matters of faith versus practice: "I say that religion isn’t about believing things. It's about what you do. It’s ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.” She points out that religious fundamentalism is not just a response to but, paradoxically, a product of contemporary culture. "We need to create a new narrative, get out of the rat-run of hatred, chauvinism and defensiveness; and make the authentic voice of religion a power in the world that is conducive to peace." (Wikipedia)

Perhaps the road to interfaith cooperation and beliefs lay in recognition of common grounds.

Instead of talking over the back fence so to speak, perhaps we should be going into each other’s gardens and seeing and feeling and talking about what the next guy with the other religion or beliefs sees and feels as they share in the same visit.

Her use of the word “Compassion” is what triggered my combining these not so differing points of view (?) of the Dalai Lama and Dr. Armstrong.