We Are the Ones

A friend recently made this comment on one of my Facebook posts: 

 

“If we are in a shift, as my psychic friends say, what does the next stage look like? We need a leader with a vision to lead us.”

 

With all due respect, my opinion is the opposite. The next stage is the Hopi prophecy: “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” It’s time to let go of the Messiah complex and wait for someone to save us. For many reasons:

 

1)   Jesus had a beautiful vision and went from 12 followers to some 2.5 billion “Christians” in the world. Why do I use quotation marks? Because so many of those billions of followers have changed his message from love to hate, from peace to war, from hunger for spirit to greed for money, from turning the other cheek to revenge, from throwing the money lenders out of the temple to having them run the temple and demand donations, from mercy to domination, from humility to narcissism, from traveling barefoot to flying in private jets, from companionship with God to allegiance to Caesar, from giving the poor a room in the Inn to ICE agents' brutal deportations. If another leader with vision showed up, it’s likely the followers would eventually do the same. Why?

 

2)   When we look to a leader to “save us,” we outsource our responsibility to our own spiritual growth. We are content to offer blind obedience, naïve faith, uncritical acceptance of dogma, dutiful attendance for an hour or two at the church or temple with no attention to the Spirit the other 110 waking hours of the week. We forsake the gift of intelligent questioning and critical thought, self-examination, growing a morality that serves as a compass in our daily actions, listening to and considering other points of view. Following a leader is the lazy path to claiming our sacred birthright, excusing us from doing the hard work of growing into our capacity for kindness, compassion and love.

 

3)   When we transfer all our own deferred hopes and promises and capabilities to another, be it a spiritual teacher, Hollywood celebrity, pop star or politician, we are setting ourselves up to be crushingly disappointed and let down when the news comes out. All the sex scandals from India gurus to Zen masters to John F. Kennedy and Bill Cosby and the long, long list in the Epstein files, the money schemes, the hidden (or not so hidden) racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism from those who otherwise inspired us. It is human nature to admire others and actually an important part of our growth. But best not to expect perfect human beings and to take the whole show with a few grains of salt. 

 

4)   Depending upon a leader to save us likewise excuses us from action and needed vigilance: “He or she will take care of it.” I can personally testify, and I imagine others can relate, that my whole body and spirit relaxed when Barack Obama was elected. I was convinced that this was the precise turning point when the moral arc swung heavily to justice. So while I— and so many others— happily attended to my personal work and play, the Republicans were busy holding Town Halls, forming the Tea Party, crafting the narratives for Fox News to spin out to millions that led directly to the catastrophe of the 2016 election. We let our guard down and while a little more vigilant during the Biden years, clearly not vigilant enough and history repeated itself. And that leads us to:

 

5)   “We are the people we have been waiting for.” The 10 million or so who took to the streets at the last No Kings’ Rally, the same —and I predict more— who will speak out again in a few weeks, are all ordinary folks with no public persona or big name or sweeping leadership vision beyond, “This is not right. We can be better than this.” And that was enough to get them out in the freezing tundra of Minnesota and face the Beast without a single charismatic leader leading the charge.

 

Every day on Facebook, I read extraordinarily eloquent pieces with important information and deep insights from people I have never heard of. A slowly-growing swell of caring, of learning the stories that we need to learn and telling them, of refusing to be naïve or gullible, of standing up for common decency, of determination to protect those are threatened or vulnerable, of standing shoulder-to-shoulder and lately, singing together. If the next Martin Luther King or Rigoberta Menchu showed up, I’d be happy to listen to them speak, but would not count on them to lead us to salvation. And I’d be equally happy to hear the “ordinary” folks —in quotes because none of us are “ordinary” but each have our unique story to tell in our unique way. 

And that’s the whole point. We each of us are capable of extraordinary thoughts and deeds and courageous moments and simple acts of kindness. Once we begin to believe that, once we organize our schools, our communities, our thinking around that, then indeed we become “the people we have been waiting for.”

 

The Messiah complex is finished. No one is coming to save us. There is no future Savior. The future is now and the saviors are us. The Hollywood superheroes are for children, but we need to become adults. Responsible for our own intelligence, our own values, our own vows to live well and help care for others. I say it again: 

 

“We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

 

See you at the next gathering on March 28^th.