I was once a political writer, and even though I have left that world behind, I can’t help thinking about how inhuman our politics has become and how badly so many of us yearn for it to be more human, a place where love can blossom.

I want to be more human, not more angry or powerful.

The political system seems to have run off with itself, erupting like some gushing volcano, abandoning our shared values. Politics gives me few choices, none that I like or respect. None that are me.

In response, I have worked to find my own place, a place of silence and inner discipline, to sharpen my own ideas about how to live peacefully – and more humanely – in the midst of this anger and turmoil.

For me, it is not about my political positions, it is about how I can be more human. That is my politics.

The choice for me has always been the spiritual or the political. One is about hope and promise, the other about rage and despair. I don’t choose to live in rage or despair.

Politics is not what I usually write about or even what I plan to write about in the future, but it is important to me, so I want to write about it right now, today, while my mind – and the minds of so many others – are thinking about what to do and feel.

I don’t tell other people what to do, I hope that doesn’t disappoint. But I have a strong idea about what I am going to do to come through this process with my hope and promise intact, along with my dignity and self-respect.

I believe the basic problem for me is not politics, it’s humanity. One of the most important things for me is to keep cutting through the political barriers and lines and labels that separate and frustrate and polarize us. I believe that politics in our country is largely composed of fabrications, postures, and positions and stances that are not real, or even true.

“I am in despair,” wrote Jeanne on my Facebook Page. “I see no hope and no solution.”

I am not where Jeanne is. I might be a naive fool, I’ve been there before, but for me, it’s a time to decide which dimension I really wish to live in, theirs or mine.

Politics to me have become a form of theater, a kind of marketing, a facade that pretends to be in conflict but is not really at odds. They occupy their own dimension.  I believe most people live in another, most people are good and seek only work and security and opportunity and health.

What I see on the news is the one dimension. What I see in my life and my work is another dimension, I call it the Genuine Reality, it is in complete opposition and completely opposed to the fictions that comprise our politics, the left and the right, two great and fraudulent systems that work together out of greed and self-interest to keep in power by getting us to hate one another.

That means nothing can change, and change is what caring people most want to see.

Their system requires us to see ourselves at odds with the other and to be at odds with the other. They need for us to be angry and afraid, to hate the other and oppose them.

We call them the left or the right, progressives or conservatives, two small and shrinking prisms through which to see the world.

Seeing the world through this other dimension is the necessary first step towards the very difficult task of purifying and humanizing politics itself.

In my dimension- this is my life now, in a sense – there are no fearsome divisions, no intractable conflicts, no rage, viciousness,  hopelessness, and fury. There are no winners or losers.

My dimension is my farm, the Bishop Maginn High School, the Mansion Assisted Care Facility. That is my Genuine Reality.

For me, the Army Of Good is not a title, but a community of faith, the other dimension. We seek out the needy and the vulnerable, we help them as best we can, we move on to the next, and help him or her as best we can. Love triumphs over hate, good over evil.

In this dimension, we cherish one another, watch over one another, comfort one another, and gain knowledge and compassion so that we may all sit down in what many call heaven together one day.

This is the world that has so much meaning for me, especially today.

I cut through the political lines and barriers;  there is another dimension, my dimension,  totally opposed to the artifices and lies and fictions of politics.

In this spiritual dimension, there is great hope. In our work, we seek to purify, humanize and somehow illuminate politics itself. Perhaps I am finally deranged, another disheveled mystic spouting fantasy. Could be.

The other dimension no longer makes sense to me, the political system will either devour itself or evolve into something better. It is the spiritual world that has healed me and gives me hope and peace.

It does not live off lies, but off of truth and compassion.  I don’t care what the news says on any given day,  I am not plunging into that world of hate and conflict but moving deeper into mine.

I’m not going to live in their world, I’m going to live in my world.

Love is not a fiction. Love is my true destiny. I know that I could never find love by myself, I can only find it with another, or with many others. If you want to know me, don’t ask me what I like to eat or who I’m voting for or how my health is.

Ask me what I’m living for. That is my politics.

Thomas Merton wrote that the greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds. That is what I see when I look at the so-called news, a mass of hatred, anger, and emotional rubbish.

In a world of noise, confusion, and conflict, it is essential, wrote Merton, that there be places of silence, inner discipline, and peace. It is only in such places that our love for one another can truly blossom.