The Two World Split, And The Greatest Moral Issue Of Our Time
The World Isn't Collapsing, It Is Shifting Into A New, If Divided, Spiritual Consciousness.
Photo by Logan Voss on Unsplash
Sunday dawns.
Somewhere in the grayed-out recesses of my memory, I can hear my father, who often made breakfast for me and my siblings on multiple Sundays for many years, urging us to hurry up to get ready for church.
It was a ritual that my father insisted on and my mother was somewhat indifferent to, and as I grew older, due to adolescent rebellion, I grew to resent.
As a child, I would struggle into stiff suits made for children, my sisters into slips and dresses and newly shined shoes, and fold the plastic tabs of a clip-on tie into the itchy, stiff collar, the group of us bundled into the car, and off we would go to attend services.
Those Episcopal services were, like the heavily ritualized Catholic services they mimicked, often an exercise in what seemed like tortuous, pointless ritual: sitting, standing, and kneeling repetitively, the low murmur of ancient prayers recited in droning, pious tones, the discomfort of the wooden pews, all which had the effect of either putting children to sleep, or making them fidget.
I can still see my father’s stern glances, a nonverbal cue to be in the moment.
Later on, moving from conservative Richmond, Va., to more “liberal” Virginia Beach, the church shrank, and the money that supported the parish was tighter.
There were no architectural indications that the new church was even a church at all; it felt like a community recreation center.
The cavernous buttress architecture of the larger conservative church in Richmond, the expensive inlaid “wet” stone and glossy marble that echoed under the feet when the church was empty, was replaced by a much smaller structure with regular scuffed tile, no air conditioning, and worn carpet.
I loved and embraced the informality, which felt like a pressure relief valve after years of conservative strictures.
Even the minister was transformed from a stern, mystical authority figure into a real human being, a minister that chafed under his clerical collar as I did in my childhood suit, a real “man’s man” who would tell parishoners to just call him Joe, would smile broadly, and in a moment, grow irritated and even curse when the time came to start services, as kids my age were still fumbling to get into choir vestments (robes) past the scheduled start time of the services.
The contrast was stark. I had moved from a parish that fully supported the ministers, always addressed as “Reverend,” to one where the priest had to work a “side hustle” to support himself and his family, and just wanted everyone to have to stop paying high electric bills to the monopoly of the time, Virginia Electric And Power Company, a topic he addressed in one of his sermons to the puzzled expressions of his congregants.
Reverend Joe and his family lived in a rambling old plantation house, and he had to oyster fish from the bountiful, beautiful Lynnhaven River that rolled gently along behind the house to make ends meet. I was never completely certain, but in hindsight, he likely hunted and fished to feed the family as much for sport. He did respect nature because he lived in the middle of one of the most beautiful, natural spots on the planet. I can still see the shotguns leaning against the wall and inhabiting the cabinets in his office.
Reverend Joe even hired me and some other boys my age to work the mucky oyster beds he fished from, a formative experience, a process where one navigated an ancient wooden skiff with a sputtering overworked Evinrude engine out into the middle of the river.
You then used heavy, unwieldy tongs to extricate the treasured oysters out of the mud of the Lynnhaven, then you would have to take a rusty plumber’s pipe wrench to “cull” the clusters of oysters attached by the shell edges and separate the individual shells, then, they were heaped into bushel baskets for delivery to a local seafood restaurant.
For Reverend Joe, formalities made him distinctly uncomfortable, and at times, he so completely shattered the stereotype of the pious Episcopal priest to such a huge degree, peppering his speech with the very real elements of an oysterman’s salty language, that it seemed implausible that Episcopalian priest was his primary occupation.
Oyster fishing was brutal, honest work, and at the time, I did not see the great spiritual lessons it taught me.
We are children of the Earth and creation.
When we are in harmony with this planet and with each other, bounty can spring forth for all.
The other lesson?
I am my father’s son, as represented in not only my paternal relationship with my own father, but in every male figure that has been a father figure to me.
It’s all imprinted on my consciousness.
All these memories came flooding back to me last night after watching speeches by Journalist Aaron Mate, his father, Gabor, and journalist Chris Hedges.
Mate’, Gabor, (a Holocaust survivor as an infant), and Chris Hedges recently and profoundly addressed the moral obligation we have to call out the new evil, the 2025 holocaust. With the credibility of their shared life experiences, each of them having lived the horrors of war and genocide personally, I was overwhelmed and completely moved.
When an audience member addressed Hedges in a Q and A session after the presentation, asking what motivated him to speak out for decades, at great risk to his career against the horror, the wars, the governments that perpetuate them, and the institutions of journalism like the New York Times that ultimately fired him, he simply replied, “because I am my father’s son.”
Hedges related that his father, who became an ordained minister, and decidely anti-war after his experience serving in World War Two, taught him a lifelong lesson of compassion and peace because, against the disapproval of those higher up in the church, his father had defied the order not to give the sacrament to members of the gay community, including his Uncle.
Hedges’ father, he related, rounded him up and said to come to the service, because it might be the last time Hedges could see his father preach.
I highly recommend listening to this entire presentation, as it certainly seems like we are at a tipping point in global consciousness.
Like Chris Hedges, I also realized, in the most profound sense, that if my own father’s quest to steer me into a sense of what is ultimately right and wrong means ANYTHING, it was that this precise moment demands that we, in thought, deed, prayer, and protest must unceasinlgly demand an end to the horror and atrocity.
Gaza IS the moral issue of our time.
On a larger scale, pulling back the camera for a wide-angle view, we are at a point of extreme duality in spiritual consciousness.
I see it in the fact that a percentage of humanity has, alarmingly, lost their ability to empathize with other humans, especially children, and remain asleep, while others are waking up.
Those who are asleep celebrate the division and relish the authoritarianism that denigrates our fellow humans physically while wounding them spiritually.
IMHO, we are at a point in time where the collective spiritual consciousness of the world has to make multiple collective choices.
We either refuse and refute immoral leadership based on power, force and militarism, or we succumb to the destruction it will inevitably result in.
We either stop killing innocent people, ESPECIALLY children, and stripping them of their lives and dignity, or we collectively succumb to the beginning of the total destruction of the entire species. This goes beyond concepts of sin (which it is) into karma.
We either wake up and realize that the entire galaxy, the sun, and the Earth itself are interconnected, sentient beings that are transforming themselves and birthing something entirely new, or we watch ourselves succumb to fear, manipulation, and extinction due to floods, violent weather, tornadoes, and earthquakes.
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The only answer I have is, as implausible as it may sound, that we have to split our collective consciousness in order to evolve.
The consciousness that craves power and authority over others can no longer coexist in the same “bandwidth” as consciousness that exists in a peaceful state and demands equality.
This is a world of duality, and we ALWAYS have free will.
There will be portions of the population that willingly surrender their spiritual and moral integrity in exchange for relative comfort and safety, and those that can no longer tolerate the destruction, no matter the consequences.
You might be one of those people if you feel the pain of innocents dying in a visceral sense, and can no longer sleep at night.
We must now choose humanism over transhumanism, peace over war, unity consciousness over division, and humble moral leadership over authoritarianism, or the consequences of embracing their opposites.
We no longer need the edicts or approval of Popes, Bishops or Priests, or the confines of buildings or Sunday Service rituals to be decent human beings that tolerate each other and share resources.
The new spiritual consciousness is borderless, colorless, and only requires us to follow the basic tenets of morality.
Which world do we inhabit?