Early this week a good friend in
my neighborhood sent me an email with some rather funny political messages, but
he prefaced his email with the following: “I just hope
God isn't too ashamed of us for taking away so many of the incentives that
drove people to make this country great and for us allowing our government to
spend over 16 trillion dollars of our children and grand children's money to
(for the most part) try to help people [who are] too irresponsible to provide
for themselves or their future.”
I responded with:
I cannot disagree with our
enormous amount of debt - but I take issue that most of our debt is because of
our entitlement payments to the poor / disadvantaged who are "mainly
irresponsible".
In terms of real dollars, the
reason for 1/4 ($4T) of our $16T debt
are the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan – both of which were funded on the Government's
credit card during Bush-II's administration, while kept off the books as a
"special expenditure" so the Congressional Budget Office wouldn't
have to analyze its effect. A second reason for the debt was the size of Bush-II's
tax cuts (at the same time as the off-the-books- funding of the wars) -
estimated cost (in terms of lost revenue): $1T. The third reason is the nearly
$1T in Bush-II's TARP bailout of banks and Wall Street. The fourth cause of the
debt is the continuing entitlement programs we allow big corporations
(especially Big Oil) and huge loopholes for financial institutions and corporations - which has been estimated at almost $1T (in
lost tax revenue) over the last decade. All this totals to about $7T. So,
without all those financial fiascos, our enormous debt would be only about $9T.
Still big, but manageable.
I do not remember any GOP
member of Congress complaining about all this debt (and lost revenue) they
racked up under Bush, until Obama was elected. He simply - in the name of
transparency - put the cost of the wars and the cost of TARP formally "on
the books." As soon as he did that, that's all the GOP could talk about -
how Obama was spending us into oblivion. Unfortunately, most of us have bought
their argument.
The cost of entitlements to
the poor amount to very little of our actual budget. The cost of Social
Security is also not part of our budget - it's separately funded. The cost of
Medicare/Medicaid is the biggest budget-eater because of the constant inflation
of the health care sector - which, since ObamaCare, has had the slowest rate of
growth in 2011 since they began keeping records.
Thought you might like another
perspective on this.
At first I felt pretty good
about my response. But soon afterwards – maybe 45 minutes – I began having
these sneaky little twinges that I couldn’t really identify, but they left me
with a hollow feeling in my gut. Then they’d go away. At the most illogical
times, that twinge and the corresponding bad, sinking feeling would make its
reappearance. This pattern continued for about a day and a half.
In short, I had responded from
my anger to someone’s fear. My anger is simply another form of fear. Even
though I had edited my comments to be as straightforward and non-inflammatory
as I could, I was responding to my perception of people whose life-view appeared to be filled with bigotry.
As a teenager in Texas, I took great
affront at the rampant prejudice toward blacks in my small hometown – even to
the point of near fistfights at times. This week I felt the same as I had in
high school: angry, righteous, protecting the underdog, demonstrating my moral
superiority. The fact remained, however, I had responded to someone’s fear with
my anger. As far as the Course in Miracles (ACIM) is concerned, the feelings of
fear and anger are the same thing. I was, in fact, being no different than my
neighbor.
The next day, at our weekly ACIM
meeting, we read the following: “Watch your mind carefully for any beliefs that
hinder its accomplishment, and step away from them. Judge how well you have
done by your feelings, for this is the one right use of judgment.” [Txt; 4, IV,
5-6]
So, after a day and a half of
having feelings aroused by these anonymous “twinges,” being reminded of my 10th
Step training, and after going to my ACIM meeting, I called my neighbor to
apologize. He was very gracious. He told me he hadn’t interpreted my message as
some condescending, holier-than-thou” rant. Rather, he said, it contained
information he hadn’t considered before and it had given him pause to think. He
then went on and chatted about how some of his golfing buddies railed and
ranted on and on about Obama, the debt, the coming socialism, and the greedy
poor, blacks and other minorities. He thanked me for calling and wished more
people would be as thoughtful and considerate. I thanked him.
I felt good that I had called. I
believe my neighbor and I are closer now – more as honest friends, rather than
just neighbors.
I believe these anonymous
twinge-thoughts were the whispers of my Holy Spirit. I believe what I had
experienced was a small Holy Instant: The coming together of two people where
the veils of ego were brushed aside and the two of us saw each other in love
and respect and in the Now.
An accepted definition of a Holy
Instant (from Robert Perry’s Glossary of Terms from A Course in Miracles) is:
“A moment in which we temporarily set aside the past and enter into the
present, in which we momentarily transcend identification with illusions and
recognize what is real…. This allows our minds to be still and shift into
another state of mind.” P. 48
From this month’s Holy Encounter Magazine, Miracle Distribution
Center, January/February 2013, p, 14. “When
we encounter a fearful situation, the Course encourages us: ‘Peace be to my
mind, let all my thoughts be still.’ It says to quiet your mind … because the
answer is always right in front of you. Peace is always a part of you! All we
need to do is embrace any situation in which we find ourselves and let God do
the rest.”
In my case, I just needed to
heed the whispers of my Holy Spirit – my twinge-thoughts. God was dealing with
my neighbor.
By the way, I have had no more
“twinges” since the call.
Although these messages are
mostly for me, thanks for listening. As always – feel free to forward this
message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual
journey.
Don
#2 January, 2013
Copyright, 2013
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