I JUST WANT A REVOLUTION, DAMMIT!

Maybe you think I'm not serious, spelling "dammit" like they might in the comics. But I am totally serious, and not yet sure what to do about it. I'm not talking about a political revolution. Politics is just money and power and illusion. I'm talking about a spiritual revolution - a love revolution. Through our evolutionary journey from microbes to humans, we have adopted certain strategies for the survival of our species. One of the more recent strategies we have come up with is love, which is still in a state of evolving into something better.

Every species wants to pass on its DNA, its life force. No species voluntarily becomes extinct. We humans have figured out that if we take care of each other, it is more likely that we, as individuals, will also survive and thrive to continue the species. So we take care of our sick and injured, our old and frail, our mentally challenged. In other species, these individuals would probably be eaten by predators. It is a fairly recent and radical theory that has us loving our neighbors as ourselves. It has taken us millions of years to understand that we should treat others the way we want to be treated. It is a kind of pact that we all subconsciously understand. And yet, it is not practiced by all.

There are so many who are born unwanted and raised without knowing what real love is. They grow up and, because of our innate desire to procreate, have more unwanted children who also don't get examples of how to love. Love should be a course taught in all the schools. It should be the most important subject of all. But we don't teach it. Sure there are churches and religions which are said to be all about love, but they tend to be more about ritual and superstition.

A thought occurred to me the other day, that it is ironic to call a Catholic priest, "father," when that is the last thing he will ever be. Wouldn't the church do better if these men who devote their lives to God and love could have families of their own - big families who would be brought up as loving children in a loving household and who would go into the world as ambassadors of love? Many of their children would probably be priests too. And women should definitely be allowed to be priests (no need to call them priestesses). A mother's love is thought, in our culture, to be supreme. Why would the church not want mothers to lead the congregation by example? Jesus did not die to take away original sin, because original sin is a myth. We are all born morally perfect - it is the weight of the world which forms our personality along with our genetic predispositions. If we had men and women priests who dedicated themselves to what Jesus was really talking about - love - then they would spread throughout the world.

When Jesus was asked, "What is the greatest commandment?" He didn't pick one right off the list of ten that the Jews had always followed. And he didn't pick any of the laws of Moses that God supposedly dictated to him. Instead, he said, "You should love God with your whole heart and your whole soul and your whole mind and your whole strength," (or something like that) and then he said, " The second is like unto this - that you love your neighbor as yourself."

Love. It's all about love. If you call yourself a Christian (which incidentally I don't, even though I agree with Jesus' teachings about love) then your whole life should be about love. And how do you love God? Well, I think that there is no separate being called God that humans will ever have access to. I think that God is consciousness. The whole world is God. Everything that happens in it is God. So to love God is to love everything.

This is challenging to us because it means total acceptance of everything that is - not just the good things, but all the "bad" as well. If you love the world, you love the whole world - famine, murder, war, rape - I'm not endorsing those things - far from it, but they are all part of God. That's why we invented the devil. Because we think that God would not start wars and kill children. But we think that God thinks like us - reasons like us - has emotions like us. I don't believe in the Old Testament God. The God that asked Abraham to kill his child sounds a lot like schizophrenia to me. The burning bush that Moses saw sounds like a hallucenation. And Moses had a speech impediment and had to have his brother, Aaron, talk to the Israelites. Why the hell didn't God just talk to Aaron? What was he thinking? So, if you try to make sense of God in human terms, you just can't. All of our Judeo-Christian writings about God contradict each other over and over.

But if God is the sum total of everything, then loving our neighbor as ourselves is loving God. Jesus was a genius who realized that our species would be sure to thrive if we loved each other. He understood the strategy that evolution had devised, though he didn't know anything about evolution.

Why is it so hard to talk about love? This is the revolution that I'm getting at. The presidents and monarchies should all be giving speeches about love. It's not religion. Why did we confuse love with religion? Love is how we survive, how we continue, how we thrive. The criminals of the world, the so-called evil-doers, the miscreants, the scalliwags, the hooligans, the misanthropes, they are not teaching love and were never taught love. If from our children's first moments we were to teach them that the world works because we love, and if every lesson reinforced loving behavior, then the world would grow more and more harmoniuos.

What would a world be like without love? We would all be afraid of each other because we would just be trying to get things for our own survival and comfort. This is all too close to the way the world really is. If I didn't love, I wouldn't think twice about murdering someone to get what he has. I would be afraid of being murdered myself and would isolate myself from society. I would live like an un-social animal.

But all social animals, and there are many, cooperate with their own species for the greater good. Humans have taken this trait the farthest so far. But we are all in competition with each other because we are still evolving into loving beings. We are not finished with Evolution. We are not at the pinnacle, just at a step along a graet way. Suppose the human race were to last another 150 million years. We are just at the beginning. But we have become conscious of the abstract notion of love. It is up to us now to teach it everywhere. We can own big comapanies and still practive love. There are more and more companies who are developing a social conscience. There are companies who are giving back to humanity - there are not enough of them, but it is heartening to know that there are some. Why can't a company's business plan include love?

"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, but render unto God what is God's." Jesus again. And what is God's? Love! Love your neighbor. Love God. Teach your children. Teach your neighbor. Teach by example. Don't be so damned timid about it! "Not hating's not the same as loving" one of my songs says. It's fine not to hate. But we are all so neutral. Neutral gets us nowhere. We need to be love activists.

This is where I make my own confession. I am neutral much of the time. When an action presents itself, I try to respond in a loving manner. But I need to do more than that. I need to be a love acivist. I want to teach love. I do my art and my music and my writing so that people will turn their heads my way. But once that is accomplished, I want to speak about love. It's all that matters to me. And I know I am not alone. I need you to do this with me. I don't know how to accomplish this on my own. I am just a voice crying out in the wilderness, like John, but instead of heralding the coming of Jesus, I am heralding the coming of a new era of enlightenment. It may come many generations after me, but we all have the opportunity to be a part of the gradual change right now.

One thing I know is that you don't love people by throwing money at them. We often think that giving to the poor is a loving act. But loving your neighbor is so much more important. Victor Frankl was able to feel love even in a concentration camp. The Buddha felt it among the suffering of his people. It can be felt anywhere at any time. It exists as an abstract notion, but is evidenced in our actions. Every action should be about love. I hope you can feel love as you read this. It is not my love. It is the love that humanity has developed, and is still developing. If it helps you to think that it is the love of God, then that's a good thing. The important thing is that we do something about it.

I just want a revolution, dammit!