Great Throughts Treasury

"We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly."

"What does it mean to act in a sacred manner in civic and political matters? What is the difference between treating my neighbor in a sacred and a profane way? A secular community emerges from a social contract by which individuals governed by self-interest agree to limit their exercise of power in order to enjoy the benefits of community. To survive, a community must maintain a minimum level of civility. Without a degree of power sharing, respect for the law and a distribution of goods that allows people to live, political power degenerates into strategic violence in an effort to enforce obedience. Absolute power in the hands of the few destroys the potentialities of the many. Under the rule of the Grand Inquisitor a thousand flowers are prevented from blooming."

"We?re living in a time when we talk about death in ways that we did not before. The question is on our minds. We see documentaries on television about death. There is certainly a death revolution, a death liberation movement in process. It?s tempting to believe that we are beginning to deal with death in a way that is more creative. But, there?s a danger here. Let me suggest an analogy. We?ve had a sexual liberation movement, a women?s liberation movement and now, a man?s liberation movement. But what has been liberated? And, at what cost? I suspect the sexual liberation movement may have increased our bondage in some perverse ways."

"What seems to utterly baffle the press and members of the liberal intelligencia is the discovery (repeated every few years) that a vast number of modern Americans, many in high places in government, still believe in the apocalypse and expect the immanent return of Jesus. A few statistics: In a recent Time/CNN poll, 36% percent of all Americans believe the Bible is God?s word and should be taken literally, 59% percent believe events predicted in the book of Revelation will come to pass. Of those who believe Armageddon will happen, 47% believe the Antichrist is on earth now, 45% believe Jesus will return during their lifetime."

"When I struggle to remain aware of my mortality I am able to detect the ways in which death dogs my days and nights, how it creeps in and evades my defenses. Every night it lurks just behind my thoughts when I resist yielding to sleep?-fearful of giving up my control of awareness, my ability to direct my mind. Or, I wake in the middle of the night and have to pee and I look in the mirror and think, ?Oh my God! When did I get that wrinkled face?? Or, being male, I look in the toilet to see if there?s blood in my piss. I wonder if the mole on my arm is changing shape, if it is pre-cancerous. Driving on the freeway at seventy-five miles per hour death is never very far away. At the very core of my being I have two opposite, ineradicable feelings about death. In the bottomless pit of my stomach I have a sickening feeling that I am simply wiped out at death. Death is the end of Sam Keen, the end of my consciousness, the end of my world. What awaits me is complete annihilation, the Void. Nothingness. I have an equally strong opposite feeling. Something deep and primal raises a voice of outrage, protest and refusal. ?No. God damn it. No! Death is not acceptable! I refuse to simply vanish without a trace. I wasn?t consulted. I didn?t agree to death. I didn?t sign the contract. In some way I cannot imagine, I remain eternally within the Creating Source of all that was, is and will be. Hard as I try, I am unable to exorcise either of these feelings."

"When we remember that being a person, from a sacred perspective, involves power -potentiality-promise, it is clear that power is an inevitable dimension in all human relationships. But, it is self-evident that all persons are not created equal either in the amount or type of power given to them. The gifts of energy, imagination, intelligence, health, wealth, and access to education are unequally distributed. To have a vocation is to accept and develop whatever gifts, talents and privileges we have been given not as possessions to which we are entitled but as a trust to be used for the enrichment of the commonwealth."