GOAL OF PRIME DIRECTIVES

              The Goal of Prime Directives is to define The Problem facing man, a problem as old as the Scriptures, The Solution to this problem developing A Call to Action presenting the Agenda of Prime Directives.

                                                                          The Problem

               On April 16, 2007, a massacre happened in Blacksburg, Virginia. A mother in Vietnam wrote to the Virginia Tech community sharing the sorrow and tears of that campus for she knew the loss of a child, her son, lost to a bullet made in America. A mother she was who knew the joy of birth and the agony of death.

               This has been the way of man since the day he crawled out of his cave. Instruments of death and life advance. Hatred and discord flourish, right there with love and charity. The cycle of birth and death in multiple forms goes on. Mothers, fathers, family and friends shed tears of sadness among tears of joy and happiness.

                Among the days of happiness, antagonisms thrive between races, between ethnic groups, between people of differing sexual persuasions, between nationalities, between people of differing beliefs, thinking and ideas. The rich remain not only rich, but richer and fewer while the poor remain not only poor, but poorer and more numerous.

                Conflict, in all its forms, and the grief therefrom, continues using means more deadly with technology helping to conceal this grief and misery. Unhappiness competes with happiness with despair and loneliness setting in like a deadly virus.

                  Always there is a man out there somewhere saying that the man over there intends on killing you and your way of living. So go kill him.

                  And in the end, we are right back where it all started, thousands of years ago, repeated endlessly with no progress being made. 

                  This is The Problem of Man reflected in history. A history it is of the crowning achievements of man wrapped up in pretty packages being endlessly torn apart. A constant struggle this Problem is. That is a struggle between good and evil. 

                                                                             The Solution

                    Man imagined the automobile and made it real. Man imagined going to the moon and made it happen. Man can imagine a life of peace and make it happen. Man can imagine a way where this struggle between good and evil is directed in a way working towards happiness of all men and women.

                    Each of us wake up in the morning, take care of nature’s call, brush our teeth, dress, brew coffee, feed the kids, get them to school, for many take them on the Sabbath, a day not the same for all, to worship a God, not having the same name for all. All the world is the same with the same dreams and fears, the same hopes and despairs.

                     We live in an eternity. Whom we are today, we owe to the people who came before us continuing to make history with our problems being no different than the problems faced by those who came before us. Concerns of faith, shelter, food, health care, employment, security, and happiness remain the same for all in all places and times. 

                      Prime Directives intends to go down a road as old as the mountains but ignored and glossed over in arrogant ignorance. It is a road, mocked, but it is the mockers who lose because they continue failing ways.

                      Common to the world is a focus on an agenda of lies and deception, not an agenda of truth, embracing the same answers, tired and worn out, wrapped up in fresh paper with a pretty, new bow.

                      The old tire words remain the same. This man is good. This man is bad. We must go to war to be secure. Wars, division, poverty, and oppression continue with the same old words.

                       It is time for a different thinking than focused on the temporal, the impermanent, not the spiritual, not the permanent, giving us selfishness, greed making tomorrow the same as today with today the same as yesterday. Each day spoils the next.

                       The solution is to imagine people, our neighbors, taking them as they are, not as desired, coming together sharing stories, concerns and aspirations. No longer is man’s focus to be on everything but the spiritual. Thinking focused on the spiritual seeing the intellect as a tool of worship discovers the rules creating and sustaining happiness. In these rules, care of our neighbors is found and embraced.

                       We are physical and spiritual beings. Living as if these two beings are unrelated leads to calamity. The spiritual is part of life, just food is part of life. The material and the spiritual are one even if we do not see it. Not seeing this makes for a life of emptiness.

                       Prayers, for a child to survive starvation, disease, the bullet, are empty without taking these prayers, making them real, making them part of daily life, demanding daily concrete action. 

                       It must be stated such a belief makes no sense without an agenda mandating involvement in the community. One can preach love, but preaching love is not love. Rescuing your neighbor from the calamities of life is love. This rescuing defines A Call to Action. The solution here is not radical but living the solution is radical.

                                                                      A Call to Action

                        Available to you and me is a door to be opened through which we can enter not as Americans, not as Christians, not as Jews, not as Muslins, but all seeing each matter, each has value, each is to be respected, and seeing forgiveness of our enemies serves us well and best. 

                        We have a choice. We possess free will. Violence and despair do not need to be our lives, do not need to be the world of our children, do not need to be the world of our grandchildren. The world in which we live, where blood seemingly rains down more than the waters of the rain, does not need to be our future. 

                         Prime Directives proclaims A Call to Action breaking from the ways controlling our lives, tired and failing ways, coming together to share our stories, our thoughts, our plans, our views proceeding into a world where each is heard and respected, placing into action the means to give the potency of our lives an actuality.

                         A Call to Action has as its agenda bringing people together, organizing into a force, not ignored by the elite/rich and their politicians. Praying for a child to live and not die from starvation, from the bullet, makes no sense without taking that prayer and making it part of daily life, making a faith-based agenda a thing of habit of everyday living.

                          Pope Francis wrote of this A Call to Action writing, 

                        “Rivers do not drink their own water, trees do not eat their own fruit, the Sun does not shine on itself, flowers do not spread their fragrance for themselves. LIVING FOR OTHERS IS A RULE OF NATURE. We are all born to help each other, no matter how difficult it is…Life is good when you are happy but much better when others are happy because of you.”

                           Living consistent with this Rule of Nature is to be a habit “where the focus is the performance of noble deeds, inspiring the wicked with noble thought, rooting out the tendencies of the wicked, the unsympathetic, the disturbers of peace, and the uncharitable exploiters of humanity.” 

                            A Call to Action, this is.