The Empire Strikes Back

The book JFK and the Unspeakable is a must read for any critically thinking Christian.  I wanted to say intelligent Christian, but I realized it may be more accurate to say critically thinking Christian.  What this book has to share is not something that most Christians would either be willing to believe or ever allow themselves to believe...especially those living in the suburban Utopian dream of comfortable anesthetization.  If you take your government at its word, then don't read this.

But, if you - like me - looked at the Zapruder  Film and saw it as a series of shots and not just one, it made you think.  It made you wonder why JFK reaches for his throat and then we see another more lethal/fatal shot to his head.  It makes you wonder if the theories of conspiracy were theories or realities.

James Douglass culls through all of the massive amounts of materials released since 1999 (and all of the usual stuff prior to that) and builds a rather extensive timeline of the changes in JFK's heart...changes that he identifies as that of "A Cold Warrior Turns".  Kennedy moved the world away from the abyss of destruction because he himself had gone through that change within.  He had a series of realizations of how the machine was handling the Cold War.

There is clear evidence of the contact between JFK and Khrushchev in his documentation.  This evidence supports the fact that if it were not for these two men, the machines of our respective governments clearly would have chosen war over the course that prevailed.

I really think you should read the book and make your own decision, but I have got to tell you, reading this book has me weirded out.  It is not that I am weirded out by the idea that elements of the US machine could have been involved in the JFK assassination.  I have always believed that in my heart of hearts - this just gives me the grist for the mill.  What really weirds me out is realizing how horribly close we came to destroying the entire world in the Cold War.  And, how we live as if none of this ever really happened.  We ourselves - at the hands of an out of control political machine hiding behind the US government - were just an instant away from perpetuating an evil that would have made Hitler look like Fred Rogers.

The term "The Unspeakable" comes from monk Thomas Merton.  It is his description of the nuclear predicament we all lived in amid the 1960s.  Merton figures prominently in Douglass's book as he uses him as a moral hitching post to tie all of the truly sane thinking people to in this day and age.  Interesting that Merton, too, ends up dead by the end of the 1960s.  Another death - along with Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King - that I have my feelings about in my heart of hearts.  "Hard to see the Dark Side is", said Master Yoda. He was right.

Do yourself a favor and get this book - TODAY.  It will deepen your outrage at what we allow to occur in our lily white world of order and suburbia.  It may even deepen your commitment to Jesus and His RADICAL call of discipleship:  A calling that would have us turn the world upside down for justice and truth. A calling that requires us to attend to our own deep conversions of heart like JFK.  You will not be the same.


Check out Twenty Conclusions after Nine Visits - and autopsy report: Click Here.

TJM+

Pure Determination

When we look at the lives of saints we often wonder how they can accomplish so much.  Look at Thomas Merton, Mother Theresa, Mother Maria of Ravensbruk, Catherine De Hueck Doherty, Dorothy Day - all of them were consummate achievers for the kingdom.  We ask ourselves how they did it.  They did it one small act at a time.  They did it one small act at a time repeated daily, consistently over time.  If you wrote a page every day for 365 days that is 365 pages.  That is a lot, but it is not a lot on the daily scene.  If you took one box of food to the poor a week, that would be 52 boxes of food in a year.  If you prayed and meditated for 10 - 20 minutes a day that would amass a monumental practice.

The key is to pick one thing and do it repeatedly.  Commit to getting that one thing done and it will grow.  Many of us look at the act of choosing itself and get overwhelmed and so we never choose.  Thus we never practice.  Find your act of mercy, charity or spiritual discipline and make a little bit of time every day.  Small things for God - over time - make huge differences.

Peace,

Tom +