A HOLY GRAIL MOMENT

A hallmark of human consciousness is ‘The Quest” which IT exhibits endlessly, in great variety, from the mundane to the collective and mythic.

Now a personal aspiration or ambition can be a type of quest, requiring commitment and purpose, in selling the outrageous act we present in demonstrating to society “ I know what I’m doing”. This is also called “whistling in the dark” or “Scoopy Doo where are you”.

On a deeper collective level quests originate from dreams and ideals. Often they are impossible ideas; and they can take a long time. Consider for example “Flight”. How many people, over how many millennia, dreamed of taking to the air in flight; both literally and metaphorically? It was an illogical, impossible dream that defied common sense and experience (it being manifestly much easier to fall down than to ascend). Yet, we are now the heirs and beneficiaries of “air travel” as a contemporary fact of life. Our children take it for granted in having known “we can fly” all their lives (thank you Peter Pan). The same can be said for our digital technologies that can move images, sounds and ideas about the human world at near the speed of light. These were once impossible notions that are now current realities and even needs.

At an even more fundamental level is the human quest for meaning. The “Vision Quest” instinct to know: who are we and what are we doing here; how will we find our way … This instinct to transcend the known outer reality by exploring the inner landscape of the possible is not only as old as human consciousness but is synonymous with IT. Every great culture hero was “on a quest” and their success is what defines them as mythic cultural heroes: Eve, Innana, Isis, Gilgamesh, Moses, Buddha, Christ, Beowulf, Joan of Arc etc. etc. Each is a visionary living out a dream to solve “the unanswered question” to the satisfaction of their tribe, mob and people.

Among the greatest quests is the one known as the search for the Holy Grail. A mythic, redemptive “object of obscure desire” that is traditionally to be found in the wasted kingdom of a wounded and impotent king. This potent image of a healing and transcendent talisman is a story older than history and deeper than known human time. IT IS a shaman’s quest of power and meaning in service of the people for the highest good of all. We know it from stories of the Knights of the Round Table and Parsifal’s quest into the wasteland presided over by the failed Grail King who does not know the answer to the paradoxical question: “Whom does the Grail serve?”

This week we have witnessed a contemporary Holy Grail moment. Barak Obama accepting the mandate of his people as the first African American president of the United States. The “dream” articulated by Martin Luther King:

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”… I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

That day has come. The impotent Grail King “W” presiding over the wasteland of American ideals is to be succeeded by an innocent everyman who took on the quest by saying: “Yes We Can” (with acknowledgment and thanks to “Bob the Builder”). A wise fool whose reply to the question “Whom does the Grail serve” is a brave and compassionate one:

“... Its the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.”

The “spear of destiny” becomes “the will of the people” in healing the land, the sacred law and the hearts of its people. A better day is possible and “the best is yet to come” because:

“… above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to –
IT belongs to You.”

“The One” who expressed “The Audacity of Hope” in undertaking the quest succeeded through empathy and inclusiveness in an outrageous victory over fear and division, control and domination.

Or, as Frank Zappa once said:

These things don’t happen very often. I had my nerve didn’t I …”

THE MAN FROM HOPE

Hello, welcome to:
Intelligence Test 08’
(aka: the US Federal Election)

There’s Something Happening Here
What IT IS Ain’t Exactly Clear…

Stop Children - What’s that Sound
Everybody look what’s Going Down…

For What It’s Worth
Buffalo Springfield/ S. Stills

Epic is the word that comes to mind in appreciating this ‘date with fate’ that the US Presidential election contest represents. Playing like Ravel’s Bolero it has been a very long, drawn out, crescendo of repetitive phrases that grows in novelty while slowly and steadily grinding to a climax. It issues are monumental: war, health, global crises, human rights, ethics and morality; sustainability and prosperity.

Obama, the anti-Bush political and social phenomena, grows in maturity and esteem in the heat of the process by being the cool, calm and collected everyman for the season of choice America holds every four years. Ignoring the fear wedge and speaking to “the people” Obama, refuses to take IT personally by reminding US of our dreams. I imagine that his boyhood hero was Kane in Kung Fu – a cool, unfazed and deadly agent of the spirit acting in the pursuit of peace with justice; a half-caste initiate on a hero’s journey of discovery and ethical purpose.

I/we resisted him for a while, being unwilling to be sucked into yet another politicians populism screening an impotent power trip (‘ah Bill, we got to know you too well’). Or worst yet, experiencing another visionary being cut down by the right, in another well reported violent act. Regardless, Barak patiently wore down our cynicism, and became “The One” we have been waiting for, by passionately speaking to all of US who have been seeking each other at the edge of possibilities and potentials.

IT has been as long as both the Trojan War, the Odyssey and more, since the last “great communicator” Ronald Reagan seduced America with his “voodoo economics” sales pitch of a “trickle down economy”. Indeed, IT IS a Saturn Return* of 28 years since the Republican landslide of 1980 (here we go again - one more time with feeling people).

Of course the real genesis of our disillusionment was generations old even by then and before being dangerously turbo charged with the murders of JFK, Martin Luther King, Bobby and many others calling for progressive policies, or those suffering the consequences of that optional but aggressive, pre-emptive war in Viet Nam (watch out for the dominos). We also remember Nixon and the dark places he shared with US in his paranoid quest for power – in life, Nixon imitated art; no better Gulum ever existed than in the twisted mind of Tricky Dicky (“ ... my precious, my precious ...”).

Of course we cannot forget George HW Bush I with his promise of a “New World Order” and the pain unleashed by the organized global cartels and mafias it spawned. Indeed, where would we have been all these years without say the “War On Drugs” and its criminalization of culturally important plants and activities, the creation of black markets (abetted by the CIA while in the process of installing dictators like Sadam and war lords like Bin Laden) or the monstrous, record breaking, prison populations, renditions and torture. Who benefited – then and now – in these bogus wars of every description, of the Darwinian attitudes to progress as strictly the survival of the fittest or the re-invention of Casino Capitalism – Google: ‘Tulip Mania’ or ‘South Sea Bubble’ (“its déjà vu all over again”).

With all this in mind, and in our living memory, is it any wonder than many of US liberal and progressive souls are ambivalent, if not skeptical, about the potential for success with Obama. We would be foolish not to be suspicious after the last two elections for the US president being stolen in broad daylight. But also foolish not to be dreaming, once again, “the dream” revived by this latest prophet from the “no coincidences department”. By being almost too good to be true, Obama challenges our individual and collective realizations of our own power and purpose. He rallies the weary, wary citizens of a lost Great Society to grasp the power of the possible – of the ‘what if it is’ … the time for the best and the brightest to be also those who are responsible, caring and devoted to the world, ITS people and the highest good of all.

“Yes We Can. ”

We must. The “End of Days” trajectory that “W” has fronted for the neo-cons, fundamentalists and haters is a darkness too deep to be plumbed by trusting to “the same old same old”; of continued “ right is might, I’m the sheriff of the world” delusions.

So, it is an intelligence test. An opportunity to get IT right by moving left; of healing the wounds created by the misuses of power and the arrogance of might.

Passing this test and electing Obama is “just the first part, just the start”. It will be like having a successful birth, a right of passage resulting in new life; and, like having a new born babe, it will be just the beginning.

*
“Saturn is symbolically/astrologically associated with time, challenge, fear, doubt, confusion, difficulty, seriousness, heaviness, unwanted burdens and hard lessons, among other more positive things such as structure, significance, accomplishment, reflection, power, prestige, maturity, responsibility and order – this is why astrologers believe that the thirtieth birthday is such a major rite of passage and is considered by many astrologers to mark the "true beginning" of adulthood, self-evaluation, independence, responsibility, ambition, and full maturation.”

Wikipedia