Reading Books By Roland Merullo and Pondering Peace

Right now I’m hooked on books by Roland Merullo. I’ve read Breakfast with Buddha, Lunch with Buddha, and Dinner with Buddha and am now in the middle of American Savior. Good stuff.

 

Merullo is an enjoyable writer to hang with…thought-provoking, too, which is always good.

 

The Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner books comprise a trilogy that is next to impossible to put down. It’s about a guy, Otto Ringling, who believes he has a “flaky” sister who has a “flaky” sorta-Buddhist/Russian guru as a mentor/husband. But the more Otto hangs with the guy, the more he begins to believe that there just might be something to him–that he might truly be a “Rinpoche” (translation: “precious one”: exalted master, spiritual giant like Jesus, Buddha, and well-known others).

 

As a New York-based (but Dakota-farmland-raised), success-driven editor for a publisher, Otto vacillates like crazy when he’s  shangaied into taking a road trip with his sister’s guru (without his sister). Their adventures on the road between the east coast and North Dakota (where they’re traveling to tie up loose ends after Otto’s parents , who owned a lot of property there, were killed in a car crash) is a true travelogue (the author travels extensively and incorporates the places and people he meets along the way into his books) but also a hoot as Otto vacillates between “this guy is a nut case!” and “this guy is really onto something!”

 

As the trilogy evolves, Otto’s sister and Rinpoche become parents to another “exalted one”– a little girl who seems, to Otto, to be both human and divine. (But then, he reasons, his own children are human and divine, so why is his sister’s and Rinpoche’s daughter deemed somehow different? Rinpoche assures him that his children are equally divine but with different roles to play in the unfolding of the eternal saga.)

 

Along the way, it’s rumored that the Chinese–who have (as we all know)  exiled the Dalai Lama from his ancestral home and killed millions of Buddhists whom they suspect (as Herod did of Jesus) can really upset their apple cart if they’re allowed to remain alive and influence others–are after the little girl, who they believe is destined to combine forces with another exalted one in Italy and change to world for the better.

 

I won’t go into any more detail. But the trilogy is a roller coaster ride and great fun because the author is a humorous guy while also being a deep thinker. I highly recommend his books.

 

Right now I’m now in the middle of Merullo’s American Savior. It’s his take on what would happen if the real Jesus came back to us and ran for President of the United States under the same circumstances that other candidates have been doing.

 

As I expected the far right (today’s Pharisees, IMO) calls him a fake and goes off the deep end trying to disqualify him by asking him for his stance on potent wedge issues: abortion, gun control, military budgets and aims, etc. His measured responses drive them nuts. This Jesus is no absolutist; he’s a compassionate, thinking, love-driven kind of guy.

 

I haven’t gotten far along enough in it to see how the left treats him, but everyone is thrown for a loop because this Jesus isn’t the one any of us have conjured in our minds as to how Jesus “should” behave, think, respond, etc… except that any young child raised in a church would affirm, “Yes, he is (at base)!” This Jesus’s aim is to get people to stop fomenting separation and name-calling and to love one another.

 

A tall order, for sure, given today’s political climate!

 

I look forward to seeing how the book ends, even though I suspect (based on a few things Jesus has said already in the book) that it will end badly for all concerned–just like the first time Jesus appeared on earth.

 

Because people.  We just can’t seem to get it together, even when carefully, personally coached by the universe’s finest role models!    We think we know better.

 

I sometimes wonder, are we hard-wired for willful ignorance and eternal racism, sexism, xenophobia and war? Is discord in our DNA?

 

It would seem so. At least some are hardwired for war, with a lust for ultimate power…and they’re usually the ones who make it their business to succeed, no matter who they have to subjugate and destroy to get what they want…

 

The rest of us look on, wondering why we can’t just all get along.  We go on loving, living and letting live, while the power-hungry go on destroying the planet and any of the people they consider expendable in their quest for personal, national or international glory.

 

The good news is that there are far more peaceable people than there are warriors and despots, by a bunch! So we need to unite as a force for good and fight back (peacefully) for peace, justice, equality and equanimity.

 

We have to demand enough is enough. We have to stand up, sit in, obstruct, protect…we have to do whatever it takes to stop the madness that destroys people and the only planet we know of that can support us.