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Back in my post college days watching David Letterman was a religious experience. I still feel delight in my belly every time I recall this exchange. The camera cuts to bandleader Paul Schaffer after the musical opening. Paul casually shouts, “How ya doin’ babe?!” With his trademark playful, satirical style, Letterman thunders, “Don’t call me babe!!”

December is the traditional Christian holy season celebrating the birth of Jesus. We will be saturated with sappy images of the “babe, wrapped in swaddling clothing.” Once again the prevailing storyline will sentimentalize the righteous holiness out of Jesus, reducing him to a cutesy babe whose cheeks we want to pinch.

Most folks will never allow the prophetic zeal of Jesus to permeate their being. The grown up Jesus disturbs us with teachings like this, which foreshadow those who wade in the shallow end. “The road to life is crooked and winding, and those who find it are few.”

I got to know Jesus as a radical prophet by reading the gospels like I had never even heard of this Jesus guy. I tried like heaven to strip away all of the hearsay about him in an effort to uncover the soul of the upstart Rabbi. I was frankly bewildered to hear the “Song of Mary” when John the Baptist’s mom testified about the babe in Mary’s womb. “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior… he has scattered those who are proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.”

Jesus turned out just like his Dad. He emerged from his wilderness temptations to preach his first sermon, fittingly in his hometown. The Nazareth old-timers synagogue society discounted him. “Isn’t this the kid who grew up down the street?” Jesus answered sharply, “Don’t call me babe!”

The sacred work of Jesus has not changed one mouse click. Let us grow up with Jesus, radiating this living testament to corporate and government halls from Washington to New York, from Bentonville to Islamabad, from Moscow to Rangoon.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me…he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to deliver those who are crushed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

“I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

This compact and insightful verse from Robert Frost’s The Road not Taken have etched a place in my soul, having first encountered it some 40 years ago. Ever since Al Gore won a share of the Nobel Peace Prize a few weeks ago my mind keeps wandering back to the 2000 Presidential election.

Before I trek forward let me be clear. I am not an Al Gore groupie. I am a member of no political party. I voted for a third party candidate in 2000. With the Electoral College and living in Texas I had that luxury. I was sickened by Gore’s play it safe campaign, listening to square headed “experts” instead of following his authentic gut. Ralph Nader didn’t cost Gore the election. Al Gore lost the election by not being himself. It should have never been close enough for the Supreme Court to jerry-rig.

I am thinking about the roads these two men of year 2000 infamy have taken. George Bush has unceasingly shown himself to be a man of immeasurable deception, fear mongering, and freedom busting. His self-imposed ostrich hole insulates him from candid perspectives giving birth to a man who is “dead certain.”

Robbed of the most powerful position on the planet and internationally disgraced, Al Gore had every reason and opportunity to become a bitter, disconsolate man. But he chose a different road.

“Winner” Bush is a man overwhelmingly scorned by the everyday global citizen. “Loser” Gore has won an Academy award and a Nobel Peace Prize.

Cosmic truth from the Tao Te Ching shouts from the rooftops.

“Whoever is stiff and inflexible

is a disciple of death.

Whoever is soft and yielding

is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.

The soft and supple will prevail.”

Hear now recent sentiments from each man.

Al Gore’s Nobel lecture December 10, 2007; “Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose.”

President Bush upon the December 3rd public disclosure of The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, stating that Iran stopped nuclear weapons-related testing in 2003. “Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” Asked if he was maintaining his threat to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, Bush replied: “The best diplomacy, effective diplomacy, is one of which all options are on the table.”

“Two roads diverged in a wood…and that has made all the difference.”

I’m not a lawyer. I’m a minister. I’m not a military officer. I’m a minister. I’m not a politician. I’m a minister. I’m not a judge. I’m a minister. I’m not a minister. I’m a human being.

There is only one question. Do you want this done to you or someone you love?

At the point of a soldier’s gun you are taken into custody, bound, blindfolded and whisked away on a jet. You find yourself in a prison, without the faintest idea of what continent you are on. You don’t know what the charges against you are. That’s classified. You have no access to a lawyer. There is no way for you to address your incarceration. You languish in this hellish limbo for six years while a pitiless administration and a spineless Congress do a nauseating dance that keeps you there.

There is only one question. Do you want this done to you or someone you love?

This is the black hole realty for 305 men in our Guantanamo Bay, Cuba prison. For the third time now during the Bush human rights nightmare their plight is being argued before our Supreme Court.

The question facing the court is whether the detainees have the right to go into the U.S. courts to challenge their detentions, using the constitutionally guaranteed procedure called a writ of habeas corpus.

The Founding Fathers put the writ into the Constitution as a check on the government’s power to arbitrarily put someone in prison.

But the Bush administration contends that the detainees have no constitutional rights because they are being held outside the United States, and that even if they do, the Constitution allows suspension of the writ of habeas corpus if an alternative is put into place that is adequate and effective.

The Bushies furthermore argue that Congress approved just such an alternative when it stripped the courts of the right to hear the detainees’ habeas corpus challenges.

The champion of Democracy, Rev. Theodore Parker vigorously maintained that matters like justice and equality are “part of God’s universal revelation, his law writ on the soul of man, established in the nature of things.”

Pompous Presidents, Senators, Constitutions, Courts and their make believe Country borders are out of cosmic synch when they bypass the sacred fabric of reality. They will not stand the test of eternity.

Parker preached of our innate potential and longing; “Often enough have the mights of men been organized but not the rights of man…rights derived from no conventional compact of men with men…but rights derived straightway from the Author of Duty and the Source of Right, which are secured in the great charter of our being.”

“Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly, as the owner of the world.

As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.

They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that’s their democratic model. It’s the false democracy of elites. What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy. What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?”

What true patriot, what defender of our constitution, what champion of human dignity delivered these insightful salvos? Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela last September before the United Nations. If you edit the feel good “devil” hyperbole, a truer word has never been uttered.

In soul sickening fashion the well-worn reliable adage, “it takes one to know one” is being born out. The Austin American Statesperson writes; “On Sunday, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez expects to become president for life through a referendum revising his country’s constitution.

That vote is a breathtaking grab for absolute control by an autocrat who already commands most of the levers of power. If the constitutional changes pass, Chavez will have dictatorial power rivaling that of his hero, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Since being elected president in 1998, Chavez has steadily eroded the checks and balances on his office. He has shut down media outlets, taken control of the courts and the legislature, and now controls the petroleum industry.

But that was just a start. The Dec. 2 referendum includes 69 articles that, if passed, would abolish term limits on the presidency, grant the president control of the central bank and give presidential appointees power over locally elected officials.

The changes also allow Chavez to declare a state of emergency in which he can suspend the right to due process of law and freedom of information. The president also would be able use to the military to maintain order.”

These developments are particularly heart breaking because our world needs high profile leaders and heads of state that have earned the moral authority to confront the American Empire. Our imperialism has existed before Shrub and will continue after he slithers out of office. President Chavez had that potential, but he has sold it out for his own narcissistic tyranny.

Jesus warned us of the George W. Chavez’s of the world, “If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” A capitalist pit is no better than a socialist pit. A white pit is just as perilous as a black pit. A patriarch pit and a feminist will both wreck your hybrid in the bar ditch. A ditch by any other name is just as foul to the sniffer!

The Tao Te Ching offers an alternate way; The Tao is like a bellows: It is empty yet infinitely capable. The more you use it, the more it produces;

Hold on to the center.”