Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Obama the Lightworker

Mark Morford at the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, back on June 6:
Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.
...
Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.
Sorry, but this is crazy talk--and crazy talk of the sort that the religious right will grab a hold of, translate "Lightworker" into "Light bearer" into "Lucifer," and decide that Obama's the Antichrist.

Morford writes that he doesn't literally believe this, and warns up front that:
Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former '60s radical with no hope left, or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak, click away right now, because you ain't gonna like this one little bit.
But even on a non-literal level, I don't like it. The job of the president is to lead the executive branch of the government, not to be national daddy, mommy, or Messiah. Obama clearly has a lot of charisma and speaks very well, which is something that can be used positively or negatively--and more often than not it's the latter.

4 comments:

mikeb said...

I'm not sure if you ever the chance to listen to "The Glenn Beck Program" on KTAR mid-day, but I did get to hear the entertaining conversation of Obama being the devil one day on my way to run some errands. I found myself drawn to listen in some horrible Howard Stern train wreck kind of way. It was a caller who brought it up, but Beck made sure to say "mmhmmm" in agreement repeatedly so as to not have a sound bite of him really agreeing.

Ahhhh, politics and religion. What fun.

Lippard said...

I've read some of what Glenn Beck has written and seen some film clips, which is enough to let me know that listening to him on the radio would raise my blood pressure.

Hume's Ghost said...

Heck, watching him on the tv is just as bad.

Yep, Glenn Beck asked John Hagee - on air - if Obama is the Anti-Christ. Hagee answered no ...

I find that New Age mumbo jumbo unbearable. When I was in therapy last year after suffering a nervous breakdown I was somewhat mortified when the therapist recommend I read Eckhart Tolle. How someone trained in the way the mind functions could buy into that jazz is beyond me ... I stopped going not long after that.

Lippard said...

I'm under the impression, after reading Robyn Dawes' book, House of Cards, that most therapists have no idea how the mind functions.

Sorry to hear that you had suffered a nervous breakdown.