"WITH A FIRM RELIANCE ON THE PROTECTION OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE"

Perhaps a good idea right about now

Photo: Wenbin

Yesterday morning I co-hosted RISING. I’ll be doing that on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the next few weeks. Political.

Then yesterday afternoon I taught a class on miracle-mindedness. Spiritual.

For those who are into astrology, with my Gemini ascendant that makes sense. They’re twin perspectives. I’m psychologically bi-lingual:).

In all seriousness, such duality means something if we’re to fully understand what’s happening these days. Just as the mindset of the 20th Century was different than that of the 19th, the mindset of the 21st is different than the 20th. The 20th Century mindset was rationalistic and mechanistic. If you had a problem with anything in the world, all you had to do theoretically was tweak the pieces of the machine.

The 21st Century worldview is more holistic and whole person, recognizing that everything happening in the material world happens first within someone’s mind. Root cause analysis means an understanding not just of what is, but of why it is. Only when addressing the causal factors of a problem can we adequately solve it.

Spirituality is an understanding of the mind, and most specifically the relationship between mind and heart. It means the art and science of loving one another, recognizing how deeply interconnected and interdependent we are, and systematizing our care for each other. It means understanding what drives people, and if anything is clear from the political events of the last two years it’s that our political and media elite had no clue what was driving anyone. Through their 20th Century lens they saw 21st Century holism as a threat, needing to deride what they didn’t understand. Yet what they deemed woo woo was precisely the information they needed. It was one thing to hear certain things in their own presumed therapy sessions, but they were loathe to factor in such wisdom in analyzing our political dynamics. That conversation taking them out of their wheelhouse, they felt themselves required - and entitled - to defend the 20th Century battlements of a dry and bygone political era.

By so viciously protecting their power, they doomed themselves to lose it.

That’s a bit about how we got here, but the question is what to do now.

This moment is perilous, yes, but only if we fail to take hold of it. The first thing to understand is that the mindset which lost to Trump in 2016, failed to stop his momentum in the years between his administrations, and failed to defeat him in 2024 is a mindset that has no clue what to do about him now.

Donald Trump has taken a hammer to what we felt we knew, pieces of a world we thought solidly in place now broken up and thrown into the air. His intentions are not beneficent, and the guy beside him represents an even greater danger. Together, they have demolished a world to which we will not be going back.

So back to astrology (I’m not an astrologer, only a hobbyist), it’s worth noting that the financial titan J.P. Morgan, who dominated Wall Street during the Gilded Age and Progressive eras, had this to say: "Millionaires don't use astrology, billionaires do." And I’ll tell you who else did: the Founders of the United States.

To them, metaphysics was a gentleman’s art. Our Founders knew exactly what they were doing when they formed a Grand Trine between the nation’s birthday in Cancer, election day in Scorpio, and the Presidential inauguration day (originally March 4th) in Pisces. Clearly FDR was not into astrology, because he changed the inauguration day to January 20th on the basis that November to March was too long a delay.

You might also want to look at the Great Seal of the United States, resting powerfully and soulfully on our money. The Great Pyramid of Giza, with its original capstone returned and emblazoned with the Eye of Horus, sits atop the wording of our national mission: Novus Order Seclorum, or New Order of the Ages. Their minds not having been poisoned by the later prejudices of Western materialism, they weren’t afraid to couple spiritual understanding with their extraordinary intellectual prowess. The Declaration of Independence specifically refers to Nature's God, the Creator, the Supreme Judge of the World, and divine Providence.

A schism between the spiritual and political was created later, primarily by industrialization and scientific materialism towards the end of the 19th century. The schism was repaired by both Gandhi and MLK Jr. in the 20th. When I was a young woman, the Democratic Party seemed the natural heir to the philosophy of non-violence, both King and Bobby Kennedy Sr. unapologetically exhorting the nation to remember the needs of the soul. JFK had said, “We cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”

It was only towards the end of the 20th Century that the Left became subtly contemptuous of overtly spiritual conversation among supposedly “smart” people. And that really worked out, huh? People (particularly Americans) are hardwired for connection to a Higher Power, and when the Left stopped providing space for it, there were those on the Right more than glad to rush in with an ersatz version.

And here we are.

One of the benefits of a spiritual worldview is that it recognizes, and understands, forces that lie beyond what the physical eye can see: both forces of good that protect us, and forces of evil that do us harm. According to the Declaration of Independence, our nation didn’t emanate from the idea that all men are equal, but from the idea that all men are created equal. It doesn’t say that the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were simply good ideas, so we may as well throw them in. No. They said that men were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. They said government’s job is to secure those rights. In other words, the document recognizes and acknowledges a cosmic order, seeking to create a government as close as possible to its reflection.

That’s one of the reasons the First Amendment protects religious (as well as non-religious) freedom. The Founders recognized that overlaying religious dogma or doctrine into government is dangerous, not helpful. The architecture of our country was what we might today call “spiritual but not religious.”

All phenomena emanates from a source that is either connected to spirit, or a denial of it. Everything leads to either love or fear. Over the last hundred and fifty years, Western civilization has embraced the peculiar delusion that thought can be neutral. But it cannot. That which is not love, becomes love’s enemy. An amoral political and economic order was bound to create immoral consequences. We were founded on a deeply spiritual vision, which as a nation we have forgotten. And where there is no vison, a nation perishes. It can become vulnerable to evil. Need I say more?

I hear the Democrats are meeting for a retreat this weekend, and I imagine what an angel would say if one were invited to speak. The advice I think an angel would give is, “Guys, you might want to wipe that smirk off your face.”

While I’m hardly an angel, I did make a comment at a 2020 Democratic Presidential debate (back when we had them) that I think has proved prescient: “If you think all that wonkiness is going to be enough to deal with the dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that man has released in this country, then I think the Democrats are going to see some very dark days.” The elite laughed of course, but now the laugh is sadly on them.

Authoritarianism - and to be clear, it’s no longer lurking; it’s now here - is a spiritual attack on our God-given freedom. The history of American social justice movements is rife with a spiritually informed yearning for justice - from Abolitionist meetings in the early evangelical churches of New Hampshire, to the Women’s Suffrage movement founded by Quaker women, to the Baptist preaching of Martin Luther King, Jr. Now, what we forgot we can remember. Divine Providence has no ego with which to be offended by our lack of interest, but it is ever ready to pour its Light upon us as we remember the power of its protection.

Our freedom has been checkmated by powers of this world. It will be resurrected and revitalized by the power of our Creator whence it came.