The Arab Spring is becoming the European/American Autumn. Over 1000 seats of power and money are being occupied from Athens to Wall St. The old and new intersected as civil rights pioneer Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and tech revolutionary Steve Jobs died on the same day.

Is there energy moving beyond our human conniving?

When John the Baptist’s disciples complained that Jesus was getting more airtime than he was John replied, “No one can receive anything except what is given from heaven. He must increase but I must decrease.”

Curious indeed.

The Tao Te Ching expresses a similar perspective.

“Man follows the earth.
Earth follows the universe.
The universe follows the Tao.
The Tao follows only itself.”

Jesus commissioned his followers to spread the good news to all nations. He then assured them, “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Jesus shocked everyone by teaching that we will do “greater works” than he accomplished.
He promised, that the Spirit of Truth would guide us. In his farewell Jesus comforted his disciples, “In this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

I’m not a Jesus or Bible literalist but I do believe a Spirit greater than us is stirring, and that surely that Spirit is with us. As always, the ageless question echoes – are we moving with the Spirit?

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Whether we went to Sunday school or not we know this timeless spiritual teaching. It is expressed in every religion because it resides deep within the human heart.

Today, I am asking you to say no the Keystone XL Pipeline snaking it’s way from Canada to Houston because it violates the fundamental fairness of the Golden Rule.

I am here as a Unitarian Universalist Minister representing 250 souls from the Live Oak church in Cedar Park and as a voice for Texas Interfaith Power & Light.

I want to ask you some very basic questions. Are you willing for this pipeline to run underneath your home? Do you want your children drinking from the Yellowstone River where a similar pipeline spilled 42,000 gallons of crude oil this summer? Is it worth risking the same fate for the Ogallala aquifer?

Do you believe allowing this pipeline to be built will create a world you want your grandchildren and great-grandchildren to live in?

Will you be able to look them in the eye with pride if you grant permission for this pipeline’s completion?

If you can answer yes to these inquiries then by all means give the Keystone XL a green light and help me buy some stock.

Tar Sands is the second-largest pool of carbon on earth. The foremost climatologist and NASA scientist, Jim Hansen, has stated if we begin tapping into this, it’s “essentially game over for the climate.”

The record – breaking heat wave and wildfires we have suffered here in Texas are not random anomalies. This is our future if we continue 20th century solutions.

Let us take Apollo determination and apply it to a 21st century green economy that will create jobs and fuel the future of our sacred earthly home.

I’m asking you to say no to Tar Sands oil and in so doing speak with clarity and purpose a higher yes.

Moses begged, “Oh, my Lord, send, I pray, some other person.”

About a year ago I received an e-mail from a man who had been attending our church with some frequency. Doug wanted me to consider leading a veterans’ group called “Warrior’s Journey Home,” a ministry that originated in Ohio.

I believe there is a place for war, but I will admit my first thought was cautious. “I have advocated for peace since Vietnam and my convictions have only strengthened since our post- 9/11 wars.” I was also very aware that on the whole my congregation feels the same way.

I have been in the sacred calling game long enough not to dismiss requests like this out of hand. I know that the Spirit’s calling often comes from unforeseen quarters.

When I met with Doug, I was not only moved by his humility and desire to serve, but I was quite impressed with the group’s website. The leader of the ministry writes, “I don’t hear war stories, I hear love stories. The objective of Warrior’s Journey Home is for our veterans to listen, speak, and heal.”

I told Doug that we would take this in a step -by- step discernment process. I called the Congregationalist Pastor, Rev. John Schluep, who directs the ministry in Ohio. I bounced it off of my spiritual director. We took it to our Adult Programming church committee. I read the book, “War and the Soul.” Every movement lined up.

Even though I felt a deep kinship with the entreaty of Moses, I was also sensing a call to lead a veterans’ healing circle. I have served as a medical chaplain and have led hundreds of bereavement groups, yet this is among the last things I ever envisioned myself doing.

Would this mean I was becoming a pro-war minister? I shared my fear in a conversation with Rev. Schluep. His reply unearthed a truth deep within my heart. “We will never have peace in the world until we heal the soul of the warrior.”

In March my congregation, Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church began a Warrior’s Journey Home ministry. Our healing circle is open to veterans, their families and civilians who have been impacted by war. It is non-political, non-sectarian and non-partisan.

The healing power of telling our stories has impressed me afresh. I have been called to examine my own biases and wounds.

My faith is calling me to make a distinction between the political leaders who start wars and the soldiers who carry them out. My faith is calling me to respect fellow citizens who make very different choices from mine. My faith is calling me to honor the service of our veteran’s. My faith is calling me to realize peace is not just about healing the warrior’s soul. Peace depends on healing my soul as well.

“So this is America?!”

Back in February as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a speech at George Washington University condemning governments that arrest protestors and do not allow free expression, 71-year-old Ray McGovern was grabbed from the audience in plain view of her by police and an unidentified official in plain clothes, brutalized and left bleeding in jail. She never paused speaking.

The opening line of this piece was McGovern’s prophetic roar.

His crime? When Secretary Clinton began her speech, Mr. McGovern remained standing in the audience and turned his back in “silent witness.”

Why did Ray McGovern undertake this course of action?

“Hillary is the driving force, together with a few others, behind the wars in Afghanistan. I have to make clear that we Veterans for Peace think that her policies are an abomination to the nation, that they are at cross purposes to the country and not everybody should applaud and give her the idea that she’s doing the right thing.”

Earlier this week Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited China. General Chen Bingde, chief of the General Staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, boldly held up this mirror to America.

“I know [the] U.S. is still recovering from financial crisis, still has some difficulties in its economy. Given such circumstances, you are still spending so much money on the military. Isn’t it placing too much pressure on the taxpayers? If [the] U.S. could reduce a bit military spending to spend more on the improvement of livelihood of American people and also do more good things for world people, wouldn’t it be a better scenario?”

As congregants shout in the African American church, “Make it plain!”

After Jesus returned from his 40-day ultra marathon temptation with the devil he preached his inaugural sermon. People were enthralled with his introduction and initial points. But, when he got to the conclusion they turned on him, like a tea partier at a universal health care summit. The climatic challenge of his homily was that God’s “chosen people” routinely failed to respond to the holy call but heathen foreigners did.

“Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown (miracles) what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”

“’Truly I tell you,’ he continued, ‘no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.’

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff.”

Ray McGovern isn’t alone in being harassed by questioning the war industry. During our current wars for power and profit the FBI has infiltrated numerous peace groups.

Does America truly need to spend as much on military “defense” as the next 18 countries combined?

Do we need another bomb while granny eats dog food?

Has America lost it’s capacity to listen? Peace groups, Ray McGovern, General Chen Bingde are offering liberating words of truth.

Jesus recounted the warning and hope of his prophetic forebearer Isaiah.

“For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and their ears are hard of hearing,
and they have shut their eyes;
so that they might not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and understand with their heart and turn—
and I would heal them.”

“We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honour.”

These words were the stirring zenith to my Independence Day sermon. They give me red, white and blue chill bumps every time I utter them.

I arise at 5:30 a.m. every Sunday that I conduct the church service. As I wash my face and do my wake up rituals I often listen to the BBC. My groggy senses were treated to this story.

Yingluck Shinawatra, the sister of Thailand’s fugitive former prime minister led his loyalists to a landslide election victory Sunday, a stunning rout of the military-backed government that last year crushed protests by his supporters with a bloody crackdown that left 91 people dead and the capital in flames.

As prime minister, Mr Thaksin championed the cause of the rural poor, mainly in the north. He introduced various effective and popular anti-poverty programs, among them subsidized universal health care and microcredit loans for farmers.

The results pave the way for Yingluck Shinawatra to become the nation’s first female prime minister if the coup-prone Thai army accepts the results.

This election was the fourth official victory at the polls for Mr Thaksin’s political parties since 2001 (another election result was annulled, but he won that too). Three times opponents of Mr. Thaksin in the “establishment”, those elite forces around the army and the monarchy, nullified the democratic will of the people by using either the army to force him from office or the courts to dissolve his political party.

I look at myself, my congregation, and my friends. We lead comfortable middle class lives. We feel a bit of socio-political discomfort on rare occasion. We opine passionately about justice. Candor compels me to say that we lead privileged lives.

I wonder if I truly have the fortitude of 1776. Does America have the moral courage of 1776? Am I willing like my forbearers, like the people of Thailand, to lay my life, fortune, and sacred honor on the line for freedom?

I’m loath to say that most of us are too fat and happy, even in the aftermath of the worst financial crash since the 1930′s.

NPR reported this morning.

“The rates of obesity for American adults worsened in 16 states in the last year — and not a single state showed improvement. A dozen states now have obesity rates that exceed 30 percent, according to a report just out from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.”

Let me amend my previous statement. We are fat and bored. Multitudes of Americans numb themselves with sensational “news,”(have you heard about the Casey Anthony verdict?), celebrity gossip (what are Prince William & Kate doing today?), and high fructose corn syrup.

I don’t believe most American’s have the moral courage of 1776. I’m including myself in this depressing diagnosis.

Our souls are starving. There is hope for us if we change our appetite, and do an extreme makeover of our diet.

Sacred chef Jesus grills up a first course in nourishing 1776 valor.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the commonwealth of heaven.”

Contemporary Prophet Tracy Chapman serves sacred fare from the “son of humanity’s” cookbook.

“Don’t be tempted by the shiny apple,
Don’t you eat of a bitter fruit,
Hunger only for a taste of justice,
Hunger only for a world of truth.
‘Cause all that you have is your soul.”

“Yeah, I know. You haven’t played golf in several weeks.”

“Well, uh… Hey, I got this invite to a solemn gathering of prayer and fasting for our country from our Governor Rick Perry.”

“Last time I had anything to do with a Governor things didn’t turn out too well. Excuse the pun but I still have a “hang up” about Governors! Prayer and fasting? Sounds up my holy alley. Tell me more.”

“Governor Perry is nothing like that sell out Pilate. He is a big follower of yours. He mentions your name often, especially when he is running for office!

He is going old school Prophet Joel. You remember him. He called on Israel to gather a sacred assembly for repentance, prayer, fasting, weeping and mourning.

I’m a bit confused though. Joel was Jewish, yet they aren’t inviting any Jews to be on the program. Come to think of it you were a Jewish Rabbi, yet they are advertising that you will be there!”

“For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”

“I think you will be OK if you do the Spirit thing and stay incognito. Perry and his friends think you are a Christian. Just don’t do one of your money changers in the temple acts!”

Governor Perry is making this into a national spectacular. He is inviting Governors from every state to come fast and pray. Shoot it to me straight Jesus. Should I take part?”

“When you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?

Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.”

“Hmm. That kinda sounds like a no. What about the public fasting idea? That seems pretty spiritual. Our nation is in a big crisis you know.”

“Whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

“I was all amped to go but I hear you loud and clear – it’s a double null and void. If I receive future religious invitations from Governor Perry how do I decide whether to accept? I know you have your hands full tending to Steve Job’s health and keeping an eagle eye on that socialist in the White House.”

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.

A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.”

“Wow! Thats pretty strong medicine Jesus. You probably know we have had a lot of wildfires in Texas. I hope you are not trying to tell us something like you did those reprobates in New Orleans a few years back. Well, I’ve used up enough of your time. Thanks for taking my call.”

“By the way, Chuck. Get some golf lessons and maybe you will call my name more often in the fairway of life!”

“Time is running out. Your democracy is eroding, your civilization is crumbling and justice disappeared long ago. So you’re very close now to being totally enslaved.”

After serving 8 years in prison Dr. Jack Kevorkian expanded the scope of his vision articulated with piercing clarity in the quote above.

The Jewish Theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel reflected,

“The Prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his soul.”

The editors of Bloomberg opined,

“Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who died last week at age 83, a was a crank, an obsessive, a deeply eccentric loner, and a publicity hog. He also was a hero. There is a connection. Cranks move the world; polite, modest, unassuming people with measured views usually don’t.”

Their analysis mirrors Heschel’s prophetic profile.

“The words of the prophet are stern, sour, stinging. But behind his austerity is love and compassion for mankind. Indeed every prediction of disaster is in itself an exhortation to repentance.”

I worked for 16 years as a hospital and hospice chaplain. I have witnessed people and their families suffer physical and emotional pain that is intractable. Numerous times terminally ill patients have confided in me their desire to consciously end their ceaseless suffering. Shedding the flesh was their only way out.

My soul ached for them as their essence lingered in a tortured limbo between flesh and spirit. This conviction is seared into my heart – there are things worse than death.

On the whole I see Jack Kevorkian as a prophetic liberator. He pushed the boundaries and I have no doubt that he crossed lines. But that’s what prophets do. They are not a reasonable lot. They are holy extremists. Open up the scriptures of the Hebrew Prophets including Jesus. Close your eyes and point to a passage. The odds are high that you will be hit between the eyes with politically incorrect rants, rambles, and actions.

This Kevorkian denouncement easily fits in the prophetic corpus.

“The American Medical Association says the humane way is to let people starve and thirst to death. If you did that to an animal, you’d be put in jail immediately … In the face of such insanity masquerading as authority, who wouldn’t be strident?”

Abraham Joshua Heschel explicitly depicts the prophetic peculiarity of a Jack Kevorkian.

“The Prophet is a lonely man. He alienates the wicked as well as the pious, the cynics as well as the believers, the priests, and the princes, the judges and the false prophets. But to be a prophet means to challenge and to defy and to cast out fear.”

Khive used to boil water from containers she bought from a truck that came around every week. She doesn’t know where the water came from.

Khive Thol had been paying $1 a day for dirty, dangerous water. Now she pays about $4 a month for a faucet in her own home and so do all of her neighbors. Her access to clean water is largely due to the work of one man and one organization: 61-year-old Ek Sonn Chan and the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority he heads.

Chan says that in 1993, after four years of rule by the Khmer Rouge and 10 years of occupation by the Vietnamese only 25 percent of the city had running water, and most of those who had it didn’t pay for it. The old pipes leaked, or the water was siphoned off and stolen. Now, 92 percent of households in Phnom Penh have clean running water, a phenomenal feat in such a poor country.

Ek Sonn Chan asserts, “I believe 100 percent that solving water problems [for] everyone in this world is 100 percent possible. “It’s not the problem of scarcity of water resources; it’s not the lack of financing, but because of [the] lack of good governance.”

I hear a centuries old echo from a Universalist country Rabbi.

“I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

I don’t know if Ek Sonn Chan is a Christian. It doesn’t matter. He is enlivened by a cosmic spiritual ethic. Jesus is one among legions of Spiritual masters to articulate the meaning of righteous living.

Ek Sonn Chan is not merely providing for the bodily thirst of the people of Phnom Penh and Cambodia. His offering is Holy Water.

Chan has written on a piece of paper above his bed that he will not rest until all of Cambodia has clean running water.

The paper pages fashioned into a book in my nightstand titled “The Holy Bible” bear witness to the breath of the Eternal Spirit.

“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.”

“The problem of mass poverty, mass starvation, the mass deaths of children and infants every year from a simple lack of proper nourishment is not normal, is not ‘life’… It is a condition traceable solely and specifically to patriarchal religion.”

This analysis is from a thick volume I read in the early 90′s which had a profound impact on me titled, “The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth” by Sjoo and Mor. The authors continue.

“The antiabortion movement in America calls itself ‘pro life.’ In fact it is ‘pro fetus’ period. Championing the fetus is easy…What is hard is to change the world, so that millions and millions of children have a chance for some kind of qualitative life after they are born – this is the only genuine pro life work.

When one reads the total gestalt of the antiabortionist movement in America, it is clear to see that the average ‘pro lifer’ is not pro-life at all, certainly not pro-quality life. Rather, they are pro-control.”

This week Indiana Gov Mitch Daniels signed a law that will cut off about $2 million of the $3 million Planned Parenthood of Indiana receives annually in federal funds and make Indiana the first state to prohibit the use of Medicaid at Planned Parenthood. It also gives Indiana some of the strictest abortion rules in the nation. For example, doctors would be required to tell patients that life begins at fertilization and that a fetus can feel pain at or before 20 weeks.

Republican leadership has a multi level marketing strategy from the state to federal arenas to attack Planned Parenthood .

Cecile Richards, national president of Planned Parenthood confirms Sjoo & Mor’s assessment. Appearing on “Democracy Now” Richards said.

“The House leadership in Congress has basically just declared war on women, really from day one… they’re basically trying to end family planning and access to birth control in America. The Republican budget that came out basically gets rid of the nation’s Family Planning Program. There will be an amendment to basically end all federal funds going to Planned Parenthood.

Less than 10 percent of our services are related to abortion. In fact, more than 90 percent of Planned Parenthood’s care is preventive care. We provide birth control to about two-and-a-half million people every year. We do almost a million cancer screenings for breast exams, as well as cervical cancer screenings. We’re now one of the largest providers of STD testing and treatment in the country.”

Sjoo & Mor’s conclusion calls up a foul visual ‘aha’ moment for me. I vividly recall in 2003 when the federal law was signed to make intact dilation and extraction a crime. Every single person gathered around the table was a white male. Congressman Boehner & Gov. Daniels has the same profile.

“The fundamentalist men…are not involved in a religion of Life, but in a religion of male control.”

“Where does life begin?” they inquire.

“Life does not begin. It is always here. Nature is alive from the beginning. Life does not emerge from us, we emerge from it. Pregnancy and childbirth are ritual passages ofeternal life through the bodies of autonomous women.”

“He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.

He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.”

If you have any familiarity with the Bible you know this is the legendary passage from the Hebrew Scriptures that predicts the Messiah. Christians hear this as a prophecy of Jesus.

The heading in my Harper Study Bible understates, “The Age of Messiah.”

It is happening in the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Wisconsin, and Ohio. The refrain we are hearing over and over is that these are “leaderless” uprisings. Update this with a non sexist lens and these ancient passages hold up quite well on substance. Their relevance is enduring.

“The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him,
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord,
and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.”

The text even takes a non-violent turn at its crescendo.

“The wolf will live with the lamb, 
the leopard will lie down with the goat, 
the calf and the lion and the yearling together; 
and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear, 
their young will lie down together, 
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

The infant will play near the cobra’s den, 
the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

They will neither harm nor destroy 
on all my holy mountain, 
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

We are in the throes of a major mindset shift, a new reality, a new birth, a new world. The “Messiah” isn’t exclusively male. There isn’t “A” Messiah. The pervasive means is non violent. With this emerging consciousness and our interconnecting tech capacities–

We have entered the Age of Everyday Messiahs.