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New York Times Front Page Headline News
7
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New York Times Front Page Headline News

7

One of my long time fantasies is to see a New York Times front page headline that says - ‘No More War’ or possibly ‘Love One another’ or maybe ‘May peace and harmony prevail’. It would be so radically strange and alarmingly different.

Well it sort of happened recently with the publication of Tish Harrison Warren’s essay, ‘How I learned to shut up and be still’. Right there on the front page of the New York Times was a link which opened up to her story about self-reflection and how she learned to slow down to “the mysterious pace of the Holy Spirit”.

Illustration by Matija Medved for the New York Times

The article is very much in the religious tradition (she’s an Anglican priest) and she quotes Christian saints like Mother Teresa - “We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence”, and St. John of the Cross - “What we need most in order to make progress is to be silent before this great God”.

I could add “Be still and know that I am God” from the Psalms, and Jesus himself - “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you”, to this great tradition. I would love to see an article about how the Kingdom of Heaven is within you on the New York Times front page headline news.

I could write it and send it over, I just don’t know if they would print it, don’t have any cred. Although my father was an ordained Baptist minister, I never got ordained for anything.

I do get baptized every day, almost, when I get back from my bike ride and jump in the fish pond. That should count for something.

If there is an inner world of thoughts, which obviously there is, then there must be a backdrop or a slate on which they are written, just like there are stars and planets because there is a universe. The field of existence you might say - no less real, certainly, than the everyday world of physical objects that we are so familiar with.

Self-reflection, meditation, looking within - whatever you want to call it, is the doorway to this inner world. If it is the backdrop of all our thoughts like the universe is the backdrop for all the stars, then it must be vast. Possibly endless. And within us. Therefore, I would conclude in my New York Times best selling headline news article, that it must be an amazing experience to explore it. I mean, wow, within us. Think about that phrase for a moment. ‘Within us’ means . . . within us. Ours. Intimately close. Knowable. Integrated. Fundamental.

They’ll probably never print it but if thoughts have power, which I believe they do, then just placing these thoughts in the collective mind makes a difference. Thank you Tish Harrison Warren for that.

Same with Prem Rawat’s new book, Hear Yourself (which happens to be on the New York Times best seller list). I’m reading this book. Slowly. It’s not a read through book, I’ve discovered, it’s a tarry along the way book, hang out with the simple but profound ideas expressed book, mull it over kind of a book, conveniently broken down into bite sized, thought sized portions.

If we ever get to ‘No More War’ it will be because people have practiced self-reflection and discovered that all human beings are the same: we’re human. It will be because we have discovered that we all share this precious thing called life. Way more precious than all the reasons we go to war for - money, power and revenge. It will become obvious and when it does, war will be no more.

Until then we can continue reading about breaking news: Biden scales back his agenda, not raising the debt ceiling will endanger our economy and a scary energy winter is coming.

All the news is bad, of course, or atleast alarming because that’s what catches people’s eyes. That’s what percolates in people’s brains. That’s what feeds the conflict and the anxiety and the complicated, labyrinthic nature of our societies.

The kingdom of heaven is within, people. In silence we find our great God, people. As is the war within us, so is the peace within us too.

Maybe somebody someday will write it and the New York Times front page headline news will publish it and every other newspaper in the world and we will be informed.

That’s what they’re for after all.

music from Cafe de Anatolia 1:31:39

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