Tonight I will draw from Ray Bradbury, PBS, "Friends" and my own life to make my point. My thoughts are here and there tonight, but will come together if you read through to termination.
I'll just start off by referencing a story called "The Fire Balloons" by Ray Bradbury. It is a short story about a missionary expedition to Mars. The fathers have no luck in coaxing the Martians from their hills to worship their cruicifixes or participate in communion. One astute father decides that since they are on Mars, maybe the Martians cannot relate to a humanoid representation of Christ or do not feel comfortable worshipping in a chapel with walls and pews. He sets out to the hills to set up a place of worship in nature, and constructs a globe of glowing blue fire, for that is what he hears the ancient Martians look like. He takes this placeholder fire balloon and calls it Christ. He encounters the Martians and they teach him much more than he could have taught them. I will refer to this story again at the end.
Next: I just finished watching "Get Up Stand Up" on KUED/PBS about music and politics, and it is making my mind reel. I tuned in after scanning the channels because I saw George Harrison singing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." I didn't know that it was a shot from his benefit concert to aid Bangladesh. That was two hours ago, and I watched the entire program.
Sir Bob Geldof (of Live Aid fame and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize nominee) was a focal point, as was Bono of U2 (2006 Nobel Peace Prize nominee), and the entire rap music genre. So many political and economic opinions were flying all around representing so many different ideas. Some overlapped and were harmonious while others clashed. The clashing points were along the lines of how to resolve the issues of the world. The agreements were on the issues: AIDS, Tibet, African debt, apartheid, racism, war, the caste system alive and well in the USA, and on and on. Geldof said "Bono loves the world, and I hate it. He just wants to give it a big hug, and I want to punch its lights out!" Opposite extremes of the idealist and the pragmatist. But they are very good friends and often found working together to do what they can to give aid to the many many different relief efforts in which they are involved. Reraphrasing Geldof again, he said he called it "Band Aid" because that's all it was: a band aid, a temporary fix and patch-job. It will not solve the problem.
This made me think: a while ago I was in therapy. My psychologist suggested that perhaps my temper and other bad habits were not the problem, but rather symptoms of a deeper problem, a deeper sickness. That sickness was self-loathing. I did not love myself, and therefore acted out in certain ways. I did my best to control my temper, but eventually I would slip up and act out. Why? Because I still did not love myself. As I have been studying myself and the gospel and realizing that I am loveable, loving and wonderful, I must say that those symptoms have waned and waned.
Echoing Geldof's sentiments, raising money to feed the starving African children or to pay off the mortgages of midwest farmers' property does not solve the problem. It will help a minute fragment of those aching for aid, but the real purpose of the concerts was not to raise money--it was to raise awareness. There will always be starving children, AIDS is rampant in Africa as well, black America, despite their humanity (reason, intellect, compassion, etc.), struggle to break out of their economic tier because they are raised to fulfill stereotypes. Sociality precludes or pervades the idealistic humanity and the goodness in us all. We let it trump our souls with false and fleeting joys that should be associated with being alive.
To draw on the insightful moment I had while watching "Friends" (of all shows): Phoebe was dating a psychiatrist who alienated the rest of the group by accurately analyzing their faults and idiosynchracies and drawing their insecurities out in front of everyone. When told that he was disliked by Phoebe's friends, he broke almost into soliloquy about them, saying something like "this doesn't suprise me--their egos are so fragile, they don't know who they are. 'Define me! define me!' As if they need each other to feel special."
"Define me." What am I to whom? I am a son, a brother, an uncle, a friend. I am a child of God. This is what helped me to love myself and change my attitude: that I am special not because I drive what I do or because of some other superficial or temporal device. I fit somewhere in the universe as a needed and special piece. Others need me, and I need them.
This example from my life illustrates how the gospel of Jesus Christ gave me the aid that I need. Going back to Bob and Bono, applying dollars and cents is a rather futile means and yields no end. It is an external wisp of aid (though much good has been done). No, I proclaim that we as children of God need to recognize that within ourselves lies the ability to change the world as we band together. I believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ can save the world.
Agnostics, don't stop reading. This ends up where we began, with the Nazarene as a blue phosphorescent globe. You see, the point isn't that we change one another to worship the olive-skinned Jesus. It isn't the man which drives humanity. Siddhartha Gautama, Zarathustra, Socrates, Roseanne Barr, Frodo Baggins or soylent green aren't the point. The point is what they represent. My fire balloon is Jesus Christ, happiness, joy, morality, faith and all of that. Another's fire balloon may be existential philosophy, while yet another might represent Allah. We take our fire balloons and give them a name (which is fine), but then we impose upon others to take the same stance as we do. No, we should be inviting others to partake of the ideals to which we adhere, and then accept the invitation to peer into their balloon and add to our own wholesomeness. We have only our innate, primal goodness to offer one another, but when we throw up labels and start defining ourselves as Mormons, atheists, lesbians, Japanese, etc., we forget that we are all humans.
So we know who I believe my fire balloon to be. I am obviously Christian, and of the Mormon "division" at that. What is in yours? Who is in yours? What do you believe? Do you believe in love? Do you believe in peace and brotherhood? Do you believe in charity? Me too. So let's take Gandhi's advice and start a revolution. Let US be the change in the world and fill it with communal love. Let's invite others to find the commonalities we learn from our balloons (they are most certainly there) and move forward shoulder-to-shoulder. Let our revolution be peaceful, like through song, expressive and stimulating to others. We all have bruised souls, we do not need to exacerbate the situation by crusading about with a Bible and a gun. Let our label read "humanity" as we care for one and all; e pluribus unum, indeed. I am doing what I can to be the change I wish to see in the world.
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