Posted by
Zentrist on Saturday, January 24, 2009 12:57:15 AM
Mrs Kathleen Parker's recent article says it all--right in the title, DO UNTO OTHERS. She remarks with sublime insight that Barack's First Inaugural (God willing, there will be a Second Inaugural), both the speech and the event itself, point up a principle of the Perennial Philosophy: to put it into my own words, OUR DECISIONS IN LIFE COME BACK TO HIT US RIGHT IN THE FACE. In President Bush's case, he escaped his "karma." The shoe aimed right at his face missed him--the first shoe just barely--an inch. To follow up the logic here of karmic justice, Bush did not deserve this. HIS WAR WAS JUST. Had the war not been a just one, the shoe would indeed have hit the target and put out one of the President's eyes. THAT, according to one argument, would have been "karmic justice." These little "chance" events DO have meaning. If you don't believe it, read Kathleen Parker's article of today, January 23, 2009. I, too, had noticed the "justice" or "providential humor" of the Vice President's situation. A more "rational" take would be that he had merely had an unfortunate accident, one, by the way, that I can personally relate to--as can a couple million American He-Men.
I want to be brief here. After hitting bottom and going soberly to over a thousand AA and Al-Anon meetings, starting in May, 1986, I can testify that every word of Parker's article is true because every word of the Bible it is based upon is true. Moreover, the Hindu Scriptures and the teachings of Vedanta (cf. Ramakrishna and his great disciple Swami Vivekenanda) underline these truths of the Perennial Wisdom. (Not that the Bible and Perennial Philosophy/Neoplatonism are the same; they are not!) However, the Bible does draw upon, if you will, the great wisdom of older traditions and not just the Hebrew Scriptures. The Vedas are over six thousand years old, we are told. In any event, the bottom line is that we do indeed reap what we sow. And we more often than not do this in this very lifetime, nevermind the life to come. Ask any recovering alcoholic or food aholic or sex aholic or gamblers anonymous success story. He or she will tell you that there is something to this teaching of "good karma" and "bad karma." Most journalists find this sort of thing their meat and potatoes. Note the classic news article about the guy who gets shot on his way out of the husband's back door. Note the delightful shame (from the media's point of view, not to mention Jay Leno's) pervading Bill Clinton's "story." (Is he really still "in recovery" or is he fooling around with Caroline Kennedy or God knows who? )
Enough of this sort of nonsense. What does make sense is what the Master teaches in the New Testament. I think it was He. We do indeed, sooner or later, reap what we so. JFK comes to mind. Elvis. Nixon. Hitler. Stunningly, everybody.
President Obama appears to have the Midas Touch. After watching his campaign, the TV documentary of his life in politics, the great win, the Inauguration, the National Prayer Service...beautiful things, works, people, places and things just gravitate to this man. Poetry and Music fill the air with their transcendental magic. What is being played out before our eyes is all of great literature, "the biggest fairy tale." Clinton saw this coming. So did Hannity. They were utterly powerless to stop it, for all their Herculean and Machiavellian efforts. The world has just witnessed another Milestone in Salvation History. And if you don't believe in Salvation, then believe in man's dignity in the face of fate or destiny or the kind of divine providence that Lincoln came to in the end. I believe Obama believes. I sense that he has a reliable instinct about the gravity of his decisions vis-a-vis his own destiny in the history books. I doubt he really believes in some "pie in the sky" heaven or some "fire and brimstone" hell where there will be "wailing and gnashing of teeth." But Karma? Karmic Justice in the sense Kathleen Parker describes it (and she knows what she is talking about, as usual)? Barack Obama sees this as clearly as does his former pastor, Reverend Wright, who, by the way, understood all about Karmic Justice. The man knew what he was talking about when he said in the vernacular, "the chickens have come home to roost." The truth hurts, and the dogmatic, rigid, overly-ideological and oftentimes narrow-minded conservatives foamed at the mouth. Like Julius Caesar, they had fits. And Caesar, too, reaped what he had sown. MLK. We all do--or will--one way or another. (The unfaithfulness, ironically, did Martin Luther King in.)
But, what about Lincoln and this theory of Karmic Justice? For the unreconstructed Southerners alive and well to this day--"he got what he deserved." Indeed he did. Like Julius Caesar, among other blessings, perhaps, Lincoln got not a nice retirement and a paragraph in the history books but rather a thousand libraries worth of books immortalizing his name in unsurpassed fame--for as long as America, no, the entire world, exists. Nor has his reputation suffered that much lately, with the encomiums far outnumbering the Mel Bradfords and Thomas DiLorenzos of this world. And such folks, ironically, only add more jewels to the Crown.
An immutable law of spiritual truth: The Beatles summarized it well and I never noticed this till thirty years after the album came out: "and in the end, the love you take/ is equal to/ the love you make." Let me add one final, remarkable fact. The Vatican recently (the 40th anniversary of the White Album) gave us all a statement exonerating the Beatles for their youthful "disrespect," John's rather. I did not see the statement, but apparently, in typical saintly style, the wording made excuses for the wayward youth.
John and George are (we hope) in "heaven." They would say, "back to the Godhead." Back Home.
Come to think of it, Vedanta and some Hindu Wisdom claims that each and everyone is headed back Home, back to the Source or the Final Resting Place. It's just that, some of us, are "taking our time."
The way to speed up the process, indeed the way to take a wonderful shortcut, is to follow the lead of the likes of G.K. Chesterton and Tony Blair. Join the Human Race in the Catholic Church. Investigate the sacraments. What have you got to lose? Not much, not much at all is lost, by following this Way. In fact, unspeakable Joy is the name of the game. But as Obama said and as Charles Krauthammer reiterates in his magnificent article of today, Obama's "prose" in the Inaugural invites us all to work, sacrifice, service and virtue. These "old" verities and actions and principles will take us, more directly, to our reunion with God and the saints. Leisure, too, if properly understood (it is work), contrary to what Obama said, can take us Home to Heaven--even to a taste of it here on earth.
I thank Kathleen Parker and Charles Krauthammer and Michael Gerson and Pat Buchanan for giving this writer a foretaste of heaven in the taste of their delicious essays on Obama. But these great writers stand on the shoulders of other "greats," people like Burke, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Twain, Dickens, Lincoln, Robert Louis Stevenson, Elliot, Hemingway, Vonnegut and Heller. (I'd love to see their libraries.) The writers of the American Renaissance are also without equal--except for the Russians--in World Lit.
Thank you, Barack, for "holding up the mirror (of ourselves) up to nature." That is, for pointing up our "collective failures." As Benjamin Franklin wisely said, "Honesty is the best policy." As the great Kathleen Parker wisely says, do unto others so that what you reap in the end and even along the Way will be happy, joyous and free. (That was the theme of the Annual AA State Convention in June of 1986: HAPPY, JOYOUS AND FREE, in San Antonio, by the way.) A special thanks to President Bush, who also sobered up in 1986. He is now on a new plateau in Texas, a new kind of high, a natural high: HAPPY, JOYOUS AND FREE.