Hello bloggers.

I’m always asking everyone to talk about peace.  In thinking about peace and meditating on the comments of many people who have written in, I’ve come to the conclusion that we can be very negative about the question “Will we ever find peace, and what is the formula for peace?”

There are so many inherent problems, one of which I’d like to speak about here. In the United States, it seems to me that because of many things that have happened the last few years, we’re wondering “What is truth, what is trust, and what is integrity?”  We have Enron in the business world, people on Wall Street being taken out in handcuffs, in the clergy cover-ups of child abuse, and there isn’t a month goes by that we don’t read about some politician being indicted for one thing or another.  What is a citizen to do when all of their heroes have abandoned them?

There’s a great line in the movie, The Firm, where Jack Nicholson says, “Truth?  You can’t handle the truth!”  I think the world has come to the conclusion that the average bloke can’t handle the truth.  I believe we’re much sturdier than that.  I believe the average bloke—male or female—can handle the truth.  I think they define it in their everyday lives, but when it comes to the public realm, pabulum, bullshit, and so-called half-truths become, in many cases, the opiate of the masses. It that comes down to trust.  As we look at the negotiations between nations, they don’t negotiate in the same manner you would if you could trust the truth of the other.  Everybody seems to withhold their reality.

As I look at this inability to discern truth and trust, there’s always the hidden fear that no matter what we say here, it’s not going to happen.  That’s going to be the real problem with the current millennium:  How do we bring back truth, trust, and integrity, not only to the individual manifestation, but in our dealings with our families and counterparts and with whole countries and continents.  It seems like an overwhelming, impossible job, but as the story goes with the beginning of the world, it started out as a paradise, and then we all got expelled into the world.  So I ask the question, as a Roman Catholic who was taught about Purgatory where we have to redeem ourselves before we can get into Paradise:  Did we take Paradise and turn it into Purgatory, and are we now turning it into Hell?  And how do we get back to the long, narrow, mystical road of childhood again?

Trust, truth, integrity.

Matt