“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.

“Let my people go that they may serve me.”

Having been weaned on Bible stories the Spirit calls to mind this ancient cry as I watch the Egyptian people’s struggle for freedom. The irony of the unfolding drama is conspicuous.

The situation in the Hebrew Scriptures finds the Jewish people in a 430-year bondage to the Egyptian empire. God tells the unwilling Prophet Moses to challenge the Pharaoh for his people’s liberation from slavery. Our modern day story sees the Egyptian people ensnared in bondage to their Pharaoh Hosni Mubarak. He has ruled Egypt as a brutal dictator for 30 years, barring basic rights like freedom of speech and assembly and regularly employing torture and death to suppress political opposition.

For weeks millions of Egyptians of all ages and classes have gathered in a non violent celebratory spirit with their families in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. They have endured the attacks of the police and mercenary thugs. Over 300 have given their lives for freedom.

The pro-democracy citizens have earned with their courage, determination and blood a giant first step.

Mabarak has resigned!

My heart, and deep soulful prayers are being continually extended to my Egyptian brothers and sisters. They want to serve the God, the Spirit of Freedom. They want to chart their own course with an open, fair democratic process, no matter how fledgling it is at its inception.

I hear the Everlasting assurance from the Timeless Universal Spirit.

“I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them.”

We found out on the eve of our nations birthday a few weeks back that Thomas Jefferson first referred to our forbearers as “subjects” in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence.

Upon reflection Jefferson made a monumental edit that deeded us with a revolutionary identity. It seems he sought quite methodically to expunge the word, to wipe it out of existence and write over it. Many words were crossed out and replaced in the draft, but only one was obliterated. Over the smudge, Jefferson then wrote the word “citizens.”

I am loathe to say it, but we have reverted back to being Subjects.

The American corporate media culture challenges our freedom in a much more sophisticated and seductive fashion. We are saturated with images and rhetoric by which we willingly morph our identity.

Here is a brief history of the evolution and devolution of your public self. First you were a Subject ruled by a King. Then, by virtue of hard earned modern democracy you became a Citizen, one with mutual responsibility. Next, the fossil record indicates you were a Customer, signifying a relationship between a business and a buyer of goods and services.

Somewhere along the way a mutation was engineered. You are now a Consumer. You have deformed into a buying machine. A Consumer is a Subject. In the days of Kings the Subjects had no choice. They were ruled by a superior social order or military force. In our day we actively accept being Subjects.

Even in the darling progressive media outlets you are uniformly labeled a Consumer. In America it is manifestly clear that we have confounded democracy and capitalism. The Catholic monk and hermit Thomas Merton offered this spiritual diagnosis over 40 years ago.

“When we call ourselves the ‘free world’ we mean first of all the world in which business is free. If you have nothing to buy or sell freedom is, in your case, irrelevant. Profit first, people afterward.”

Capitalism can be conducted with a social conscience. The unexamined, unquestioned monoculture of consuming is leading to the collapse of all of our ecosystems.

A Consumer is a Subject, a pawn to be manipulated.

A Citizen is a Verb with dignity and purpose.

The spiritually awakened person and culture will be keen to preserve their fundamental identity.
In his wondrous sermon “Spiritual Freedom” Rev. William Ellery Channing spoke with relevance eternal.

“I call that mind free which is not passively framed by outward circumstance, which is not the creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and acts from and inward spring, from immutable principles which it has deliberately espoused.”

Seduction surrounds you. Will you be a Consumer or a Citizen?

“Can a president put somebody above the law by authorizing illegal conduct?” Leahy inquired.

“The president doesn’t stand above the law. But the law emphatically includes the Constitution. It starts with the Constitution,” he replied.

These are a few key answers Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey offered last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The buzz is Mukasey is sure to be confirmed. Brace yourself anew. Our next United States Attorney General will occupy that noble office continuing the policies of torture, illegal warrantless wiretapping, and the President being above our laws and constitution.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy whimpered, “He’s at least answered the questions, which is better than his predecessor.”

We now have a bar so low for the highest law enforcement office in the land that an ant could jump it. Answering the questions. The content of the answers don’t matter. Is there a person reading this that could get a job with this pitiful standard?

I grew up a literal Bible believin’, Bible quotin’, Bible thumpin’, Bible memorizin’ guy.

Some of those teachings still have potent relevance. Jesus exhorted in the Sermon on the Mount, “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”

Mukasey’s tack is as old as humanity; using weasels words to bypass honesty.

How long will “we the people” allow this administration to blaspheme our sacred covenants and human dignity for imaginary security?
Mukasey, “at least answered the questions.”

Yesterday President Bush lectured Cuba, “You can bring about a future where your leaders answer to you.”

Friends and Fellow citizens, what will your answer be?