The Adams Family (You have to be old to know who I mean) were all nice people in their own way, but they were different.
How different can we allow people to be? How different can we allow ourselves to be?
How harmonized—how pasteurized and homogenized—do we have to be in order to be a community?
How different can we be and still be One—and still be a participant in community?
Differences become different-ness in no time.
Different-ness leads to suspicion, hostility, seclusion, exclusion, evasion, avoidance, shunning, ostracizing, bullying, tormenting, derision, humiliation, castigation, witch-hunts, lynch mobs, police forces, standing armies, warfare, and Armageddon.
It’s a slippery slope when we start thinking about Us and Them.
We better start re-thinking the whole thing.
We could start with ourselves,
And the concept of Light and Dark.
Darkness has always been something to avoid. Light has always been something to embrace.
Light is Good. Dark is Evil.
Since Zoroaster, ca. 2,000 BCE, we’ve thought of Light and Dark, Good and Evil, as being locked in a winner-take-all, fight to the finish.
STOP IT NOW!
The dichotomy can no longer be justified, or excused. The war is ended.
All the Light and all the Dark that ever has been or will be is floating around in each one of us.
WE contain the forces of Good and Evil, and it’s well past the time to start making peace and living together with the opposites within and without for the true good of all.
All it takes is a vision and a commitment to serve the vision with heart and soul, mind and body, all our life long.
It’s the next great adventure. Peace making. Within and without.
Jim Dollar's Published Works 