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McKee was a remarkable friend of mine from long ago who still lives in my heart and head.

McKee had been a music producer who tired of the grind and went on a spiritual pilgrimage that eventually led him to a Hopi shaman. I believe the medicine man’s name was “Running Bear” but I may be wrong. McKee received many profound insights from Running Bear, one of which I want to share with you today.

The elderly shaman told McKee that when his people went to war they put on war paint for a very important reason. War is not the natural state of a human being and requires a kind of induced insanity. War paint was a reminder to the warriors that they were in a temporary state of madness. Before they went to battle, warriors would ritually apply the war paint. Just as importantly, after the battle was over, warriors (who were all male) would ritually remove the war paint and return to their natural state as fathers, brothers and sons.

Running Bear told McKee that when the U.S. returned from WW2 they did not remove their war paint, but instead applied the same aggressive energies to business. Decades ago, Running Bear prophesied that not taking off the warpaint would lead the U.S. to madness and destruction.

I believe the violence hidden in our political and economic structures did not begin with WW2. I believe they have been here all along hidden in our political structures, disguised in our property based economic systems, and, most shamefully, masked in our imperial forms of sectarian Christianity.

The office of President, as the word implies, was intended to fairly “preside” over the democratic process. The role of “Commander in Chief” was reserved for a time of war. To apply the kind of leadership needed in a time of war to times of peace will almost surely destroy the relationships that hold our republic together.

In my religious tradition we use the literature of Jewish apocalyptic tradition to remember previous times where nations and cultures collapsed and people had to let go of all that was familiar and to prepare themselves for a new way of living.

We are living through the implosion of many systems we falsely hoped would save us: unregulated capitalism, narcissistic nationalism and sectarian superstitions are tearing our world apart. The death throes of these systems may seem invincible in our day, but their seeds are completely barren. These systems are dying.

Apocalyptic literature is simply a warning to let go of the structures that are dying and to find our hope in the tender blossoms of newer and more noble virtues being born. Apocalyptic prophets were not preachers of doom, nor were they fortune tellers. They were just warning the people that they could not save themselves by clinging on to the structures of oppression and hoarding. These prophets were merely stating the obvious truths people did not want to hear.

In the words of Running Bear, the future belongs to those who know how to put on the war paint in times of struggle, and how to remove the war paint when it is time to build a peaceable home for our entire human family.

Let those who have ears hear.

I do not want the kind of peace that has to pretend the storms of life are not happening. I do not want the kind of peace that must ignore the cries of the oppressed in order to sleep at night. I want my life to be a struggle for justice for my entire human family.

Neither do I want the kind of activism that loses its own heart and mind in the sound and fury of life’s battles. I want to ride this storm without losing what makes me human and becoming the mirror image of the inhumanity I abhor.

I want courageous activism to be like an exhalation and peaceful compassion to be like an inhalation. I want to feel anger at injustice without becoming anger. I want to grieve the world’s wounds without becoming grief.

I do not want the kind of hope that has to pretend everything will work out within my lifespan for my life to have been worthwhile. I want the kind of hope that is satisfied with doing what I can, for whom I can, without needing guarantees of success. I want to know my life matters even if I move from defeat to defeat in my own lifetime.

I want to remember that I do not need to arrive at the goal in my own lifetime to make my contribution. I want to remember that, In an evolving universe, there is no finish line, no “happy ever after.” Instead, finding and walking the path of kindness, courage and nobility is the only victory we can know in this crazy life.

I want to remember that true leadership is not found in getting people to follow me, but in remembering and reminding others that, deep within us all, there is a peace, a joy, a courage and a wisdom available simply because we are human.

I refuse to lose my humanity just because someone else has lost theirs. I see the madness and danger swirling all around us which is exactly why I want to ride this hurricane courageously with my loving heart unmolested in its peaceful eye.

I believe debating whether Donald Trump is personally a fascist is not as helpful as determining whether his MAGA movement is itself fascistic. Calling people “fascist” brings very little light to our situation. In fact, dehumanizing those who have participated in historical fascistic movements and seeing them as abhorrent monsters can hamper understanding what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil” in our own time. Monstrous evil can be done without actual monsters.

To de-personalize the conversation we might ask what specifically was wrong in what Hitler and Mussolini did and then ask whether the MAGA movement acts out of the same assumptions and principles. Let us list what fascistic movements of the past have had in common and then ask whether the MAGA movement bears those same characteristics.

I seems to me fascist moments of the past had these traits in common: They centered their movements around one person. They replaced democratic co-operation with the maximization of individual wealth and power for an unaccountable elite. Fascistic movements have placed a hollow sense of narcissistic nationalism over civil engagement for the masses. Fascist movements have historically seen themselves as exceptions for any existing ethical standards. Fascist movements have replaced expertise with a kind of group think. Fascistic movements have historically used appeals to fear of an enemy within and without to destroy any sense of a social contract for the whole nation.

IS THE MAGA MOVEMENT CENTERED AROUND ONE PERSON?

Looking back in history, both Nazi Germany and fascistic Italy were devastated by centering their entire political structure around the whims of one individual leader. When Donald Trump, or any leader, claims to be the only one who can fix a nation they are assaulting the very idea of sharing power democratically through a system of checks and balances..

When ANYONE seeks to minimize government in a democratic republic they are not just seeking to end waste and bureaucracy, they are ultimately attacking the very idea of democratic governance. When a leader says, as Trump did recently, “He Who Saves His Country Does Not Violate Any Law” he is describing a fascistic state under one powerful leader, not a democratic republic as defined in the Constitution.

DOES THE MAGA MOVEMENT SEEK TO REPLACE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE WITH A BUSINESS MODEL?

Mussolini was quoted as saying, “Fascism should more appropriately be called “Corporatism” because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

I do not know if that is an accurate translation, but I do know FDR warned, “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”

FDR’s vice president, Henry Wallace said it this way, “A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make (them) ruthless in (their) use of deceit or violence to attain (their) ends.”

Placing an individual like Elon Musk in charge of the economic system (or ANY unelected individual) is a rejection of the democratic republic and an embracing of economic fascism.

DOES THE MAGA MOVEMENT PLACE NATIONALISM OVER CIVIC PRINCIPLES?

It seems to me the MAGA movement is not about serving one’s country through civic activism. Its sense of unity is not so much a love of the people or the land. The unity of the MAGA movement is seems more focused on protecting our boundary lines than a love of the population and land WITHIN those boundaries.

MAGA threats to absorb Canada, Greenland and Panama have less to do with loving our constitutional republic and more to do with the kind of self aggrandizing imperialism that Hitler used to disguise his absorbing surrounding nations as an attempt to make Germany safe. Again, the “patriotism” of any fascistic movement is not about empowering the people over their own lives, but instead distracting them so they buy patriotic trinkets and follow its flag waving leader.

DOES THE MAGA MOVEMENT SEEK TO DISCREDIT ANY SCALE BY WHICH ITS CLAIMS MIGHT BE MEASURED?

When Trump claims that everything he does is bigger and better than anyone who came before him, he is consciously or unconsciously conditioning people to not learn the lessons of history. Fascistic leader see their every act as unprecedented and therefore exempt from historical analysis.

Fascistic leaders reject ANYONE with scientific or journalistic expertise and replace them with a notion of common sense. “Common sense” refers to the sense of certainty found among what Plato called “unexamined lives.” They believe Trump’s claims must be true because his followers all believe them.

Medical experts are replaced by uncredentialed ideologues. Journalist integrity is seen as “fake news” unless it parrots what the leader wants us to believe. To disagree with the leader is by definition to be a liar, a deviant and a traitor.

DOES THE MAGA MOVEMENT REJECT THE NOTION OF OBJECTIVE TRUTH IN FAVOR OF DEFERENCE TO THE OPINIONS OF ITS LEADER?�

Henry Wallace claimed, “The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism.”

Historian Frederico Finchelstein writes, “Goebbels defined propaganda as “the art, not of lying or distorting, but of listening to ‘the soul of the people’ and ‘speaking to a person a language that this person understands.’

And, as historian Richard Evans observes, “The Nazis acted on the premise that they, and they alone, through Hitler, had an inner knowledge and understanding of the German soul.The idea of a truth that emanated from the soul was the result of an act of faith in an absolute certainty that could not be corroborated.”

DOES THE MAGA MOVEMENT USE FEAR AS A CORE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE?

According to Gerry Spence, “A new fascism promises security from the terror of crime. All that is required is that we take away the criminals’ rights – which, of course, are our own. Out of our desperation and fear we begin to feel a sense of security from the new totalitarian state.”

NPR recently did an investigation finding more than 100 instances where Trump has called for the investigation and/or arrest of his political enemies. Fear of immigrants and of “an enemy within” is a staple of fascistic propaganda.

CONCLUSION

While we can and should love the human beings in question, we cannot ethically make peace with any fascistic movement until it ends its assault on human rights. We must somehow love the people involved in a movement without ignoring the fact that the price of not destroying American fascism is the democratic republic itself.

Whatever conclusions we draw about the MAGA movement we must realize that fascism is a list of political traits, not an emotional insult we hurl at people. We must choose between living in a democratic republic and embracing the political traits that would destroy it. We cannot both grasp the hand of nationalistic patriotism AND take the hands of the people that movement would harm.

One cannot be in an ethical relationship with the persecuting Nazis AND the persecuted Jew because the price of being friends with fascism is the very life of the other.

My own lifelong study of world religions has actually been a fascination with the depths of human consciousness.

I was working as a student chaplain and realized that some of my dying patients were trapped in emotional nightmares. They were trying to get closure with old memories, but I could not help them because I did not understand the coded vocabulary they were using to express their irrational animal depths. I was stuck at the surface of their storm and could not enter their emotional depths to be with them.

Beneath our vital but thin veneer of reason, pulses a silent hurricane of animal glands and secretions. As animals, we live in coded maps of our emotional world that are sometimes inaccessible without symbols and rituals to bring our darkest regions into consciousness and to find bridges between the fragmented aspects of our lives.

When I learned to listen to people without judging their mythic worldviews I was able to draw close and be with them wherever they found themselves. In my experience, when most people’s deep irrational storms have subsided, they will choose to be reasonable and compassionate with or without my help.

I have long ago lost interest in religious creeds or rituals for their own sake. For me, religion is now a call to love. Knowing religious rituals and metaphors from around the world can be enormously helpful in understanding the coded language of people’s emotional world.

Whether it is Jesus, or Buddha, Homer or Aesop, if we can get past the superstitions, magical rituals and cruel moralisms of religion we may discover a priceless gift- ancient maps to the human heart.

I do not believe in a physical hell. Torturing people eternally would be a crime worse than anything Hitler did. At least those torments had an end.

When I look at ancient symbols like “hell,” I am searching to find the insights for living that were somehow helpful in an earlier time. I then try to repackage those insights in a way that will help people today. The insight for living is the kernel. The actual image used to symbolize the insight is but a husk.

The symbol “hell” may have developed to express human fears of time itself. Time itself can seem like a cosmic furnace devouring us all. Perhaps the original question was how to pass through the fires of time with our souls intact.

There is a quote attributed to Christian mystic Meister Eckhardt. I love the quote but it may not be authentic. (It may be just be placed in the mouth of Eckhardt in the movie “Jacob’s Ladder.”) Either way, I find the quote very helpful:

“The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won’t let go of your life: your memories, your attachments. They burn ’em all away. But they’re not punishing you,’ he said. ‘They’re freeing your soul. If you’re frightened of dying, and your holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. If you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.”

There is a sense in which time consumes everything we would hold onto. When we try to possess and control life, it can feel like we are being tortured. Life can feel like hell as every beloved person and object is torn from our clutching fingers one after another.

The Buddha warn against pretending that we live outside of time in his famous “Fire Sermon” (The Adittapariyaya Sutta):

“The mind is burning, ideas are burning, mind-consciousness is burning, mind-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with mind-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs.”

The symbols of religion must teach our hearts that life is a mixture of beauty and pain. They must also affirm that the beauty is worth the pain. We are not being punished by life’s changes. Entering into the fire of time was the pre-condition of our very birth.

Salvation is not escape from the fire. Salvation is realizing that life IS change. Salvation is realizing we ARE the fire, not what is being burned. The creative principle that brings us into being is not an object we can possess, it is more like an eternal cosmic heart we must live out of fearlessly and completely. We must learn to love the fire in all of its ephemeral shapes and know there is one love burning within it all.

Religions are a bit like milk. Their founder’s insights can be refreshing and healthy but religions soon go sour if they are not continually purified by truth and justice.

Fundamentalism is the spoiled milk of religion. Here are 4 indicators that Christianity has gone bad:

THE BIBLE REPLACES THE BRAIN:

The original call of Christianity was to love with all of our heart, mind and strength. Toxic Christianity turns over all responsibility to a loveless reading of the bible. Instead of asking whether an idea is true or helpful toxic Christianity merely asks whether the idea is biblical. Toxic Christianity does not learn how the Bible was put together. It does not learn the biblical languages and cultural settings. Instead, toxic Christianity takes the Bible literally in its own language. Without realizing it, people who take the Bible literally in their own language may be lifting up the cultural assumptions of that culture and giving them a God-like status.

TOXIC CHRISTIANITY BELIEVES IT MUST CONTROL OTHER PEOPLE FOR THEIR OWN GOOD:

Toxic Christianity is narcissistic. It sees itself as chosen to bring people to Christ -sometimes by any means necessary. Pete Hegseth is our new Secretary of Defense. He has a tattoo of the Jerusalem or Crusader’s Cross, and the words “God wills it,” and an AK-15 on his body.

In his book, “American Crusade,” Hegseth writes, “Our present moment is much like the 11th century … We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians a thousand years ago, we must. We need an American crusade.”

Hegseth criticized the New York Times inclusion of the LGBTQ community by saying, “At what point does the paper deem a ‘relationship’ unfit for publication? What if we ‘loved’ our sister and wanted to marry her? Or maybe two women at the same time? A 13-year-old? The family dog?” Apparently, Hegseth has never noticed that the Bible forbids tattoos. (Leviticus 19:28)

TOXIC CHRISTIANITY SEES ANY REBUTTAL OF ITS NARCISSISM AND SUPERSTITION AS RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION:

A major theme in toxic Christianity is “anti-Christian bias” in the U.S. But, the halls of power are filled with Christians. What Christians narcissists see as their “persecutors” are scientists that will not get their facts from preachers and politicians, ethicists who reject the idea that Christians have a right to determine other peoples’ moral and medical decisions. Toxic Christians are not being persecuted by those who refuse to repeat their lies and live under their self righteous thumb.

IN TOXIC CHRISTIANITY THE ACTUAL TEACHINGS OF JESUS COUNT FOR ALMOST NOTHING:

This weekend Donald Trump rejoiced at the booing of Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl. He said, “MAGA doesn’t forgive.” But what is more basic to Christianity than forgiveness and loving one’s enemies? What is more central to Christianity than Jesus statement that you cannot serve God AND money?

Perhaps, Anne Lamott said it best:

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

You are the light of the world. Do not allow yourself to be defined by current circumstances. Do not let what is happening externally eclipse the sun in your own heart.

When confronted with ignorance and immaturity, do not ridicule. Instead, provide a dignified example of what it means to be human. You can expose lies without sinking to the level of petty squabbles. Remember that, in a contest of throwing dung, the biggest monkey will always win.

If current conditions seem barren and without hope, resolve to plant new seeds for the future. Refuse to be defined by the present moment. When feeling helpless, focus on whatever small matters you can control. Those small acts will provide points of leverage for bigger things.

When surrounded by cruelty, find a community within which you can be gentle and kind.

Never co-operate with systems of domination. Step out of every hateful mob. When confronted with failure, focus on the infinite worth of every human being. Discard the false scales of capitalism, national narcissism and religious indoctrination. Being radically and universally human is your invincible source of resistance against all that is inhuman.

Resolve to resist cruelty every day of the rest of your life and even with your dying breath. Do not be overly proud of victory nor overly ashamed of defeat. Be ever grateful that you have found a path that will give your gift to your human family and to the web of life. Your one instruction in this time of darkness is to shine.

I am often stunned into silence by the yawning gap between what Jesus taught and what power hungry Christians teach ABOUT Jesus.

In a recent Fox News episode on immigration, J.D. Vance invoked the medieval notion of “ordo amoris” to justify anti-immigrant policies. “Ordo amoris” isn’t something Jesus taught. It is Saint Augustine’s notion that there is certain order to love. For Augustine, love moves in orderly concentric circles from smaller allegiances to greater. Vance summarized the notion as follows:

“You love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus [on] and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.”

It certainly seems logical to place one’s religion within the concentric circles of family, then community, then the world, The problem with that approach is that universal love suffocates when placed in those smaller containers.

If I look at my enemy from behind my patriotic defenses I may never reach past my smaller loves. If I love my neighbors within the capitalist system I may never see their true worth. If I love truth within sectarian Christianity I may never reach the radical love to which Jesus called his followers.

If Jesus wanted universal love to fit within the concentric circles of lesser loves, then why did he teach his followers to seek first the kingdom of heaven? Why did he say, “If any come to me and do not hate their own fathers and mothers and spouses and children and siblings, yes, and even their own lives, they cannot be my disciples.” (Luke 14:26-30). Clearly Jesus is exaggerating here, but he is just as clearly calling us beyond our lesser loves to one that is greater.

In fact, Jesus said his true family was those who do the will of heaven:

“Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:48-50)

Jesus obviously wasn’t speaking literally when he said to “hate” our family.” It seems to me was trying to awaken our inner vision so that we could see past our lesser loves to the tie that binds us all together. What sense does it make to call God “our parent” if we cannot recognize the immigrant as our human family? There are no boundary lines on universal love.

In fact, the best “Anti-Christ” I can think of is the jewel bedecked American loving white Jesus sitting on a throne of power in stained glass windows of churches across this nation.

When we pray for God to bless our nation instead of asking our nation to serve the common good we have rejected the call to the universal love that might actually heal our world. Jesus turned the “order of love” on its head. We must love our friends and family WITHIN a greater love that seeks justice for us all.

The biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah was not about homosexuality. Originally, the tale was a warning about cruel leaders whose lack of compassion led those towns to their chaotic destruction.

Both Ezekiel and Isaiah explain the lesson of Sodom and Gomorrah. Neither prophet even mention homosexuality. Ezekiel says:

“This is what your sister Sodom has done wrong. She and her daughters were proud that they had plenty of food and had peace and security. They didn’t help the poor and the needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49)

Isaiah condemns the showboat religiosity of his nation even while they mistreat the vulnerable:

“And when you spread forth your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:15-17)

Amazing isn’t it that so many have taken a story condemning mistreatment of the vulnerable, and used it to persecute the vulnerable?

If we understand the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as a warning for our own day, we must realize the “sodomites” of our own day are not the drag queens, but the moralizing clergy who have used religion to take over our political processes;

-Not the wandering immigrants, but the entrenched patriots whose ethics begin and end at their own border;

-Not the poor, but the billionaires who hoard wealth that should be shared fairly with all; -Not those who believe in diversity, equity and inclusion, but those who see themselves as the model for all humankind and assume the right to dominate others, supposedly for their own good.

Buddha instructed his disciples to “be a lamp unto yourself,” and to “work out your own liberation with diligence. Likewise, Jesus taught that the truth he was teaching would make us free. But how do we get our souls free in a time such as this? It seems to me freedom must be born at different levels:

First, we must get free of what other people think of us.In other words, we must learn the difference between our character, and our reputation. It is a very helpless feeling when someone calls us names or attacks our reputation.

It is empowering to identify ourselves with what we can control (our character) and detach from the mirages other people project upon us. Ironically, to be to be the servant of all requires enormous independence. To serve our highest value we must disregard the barking of disingenuous critics.

Then, we must separate the idea of what happens to us from who we are. This next step can be hard because it seems logical to be happy when good things happen and to be sad when bad things happen. Identifying what is happening to us is understandable, but is a foundation of sand. Not identifying with circumstances like success or failure brings tremendous stability into our lives.

Perhaps the most challenging level of liberation is getting free from the tyranny of our hopes and fears. Life teaches us that our hopes do not necessarily lead to happiness, nor does getting what we fear necessarily lead unhappiness. Like a loving parent listens to the hopes and fears of a frightened child so must we learn to listen to our own emotions with transformative compassion.

It is love that transforms our fear into courage, our selfishness into justice, our desire into discipline and our confusion into wisdom.

Life teach us that what we want does not necessarily make us happy and what we fear does not necessarily make us unhappy. We live on a kind of roulette wheel of fate so it does not make sense to stake our peace of mind on any one spin of the wheel.

Is there is a freedom that the world does not give and cannot take away? To find such freedom we must stop identifying with our reputation, with our fate and with what we imagine would make us happy or sad. Freedom means being who we really are.