Abandoned Promise

In the Sunday mailbox…

Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. – Mary Oliver

Today in 1947 at Harvard's graduation ceremony, Secretary of State George C. Marshall laid out a plan that would shape the modern world. The Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe in the wake of the devastation of World War II. While the plan was largely focused on economic recovery, it also helped to create a liberal international order, based on the rule of law, establishing a fundamental tenet of democracy itself. — Heather Cox Richardson.

The long term effect of the plan – implemented over the past 75 years – was, among many things, to isolate the then communist state of the Soviet Union and reduce it to the even more isolated Russia of today. Liberal democracy has not been without its faults. The freedom it offers and protects has been abused by rampant capitalism and its insistence on competition and a “winner take all” ideology aimed at maximizing white male supremacy interests. In this regard, American democracy particularly has evolved to ignore the spirit of the Marshall Plan and within her borders become less of a true democratic ideal.

At some point awakening begins. It can be in meditation. In a hymn. It can be a leaf falling. It can be lying under the stars. The awakening happens with trauma or it happens when somebody you love dies. In sexuality you transcend separateness. It can be amid psychedelics. It can be trying to solve a problem where your mind gets so one-pointed it goes through the veil. Whatever it is, you open up into other planes of consciousness that have been there in all the splendor all the time. – after Ram Dass