I have a new slogan for my nonviolent revolution of honesty and compassion:: Don’t Be Mad. Be Good.

It’s time to fight for good one at a time, personally and individually by doing good and fighting for the earth and for loving it and healing it. That’s my revolutionary idea.

It’s neither sappy nor naive. I’ve been doing it for five years now. It is powerful and it works as many men and women much greater than me have proven again and again.

I have no followers but many friends and comrades in this idea, hundreds of people all over the place who share the idea of doing good rather than fighting and hating and lying all the time. We are weary of hate and lies.

We wish to feel good again.

We never tell each other what to do, but we so often want to do the same thing. That is a revolution in itself.

When I think about the kind of person I wish to be in this divided and confused country, I can’t help but go back to the hope the founders of organized religion brought to the world.

People like Jesus and St. Augustine and the rabbis and Imams who wished to heal and inspire their divided, ignorant,  angry, and frightened world.

God was a balm to make us feel better and calm ours fears and understand the mysterious world. But he also taught us how to behave, and he is missed these days. We were afraid to be too bad, there were consequences, and no social media to hide behind.

Our new Gods are neither calming nor wise.

The non-violent and brilliantly successful revolutionaries of the past – Gandhi, King, Mandella – had the same idea. Love is more powerful than guns.

When things get bad, powerful spirits rise up to fight for love and honor. A fever has spread in our country, along with a pandemic. It spreads anger and grievance like a fever.

Perhaps it is a fever, as yet undiagnosed.

Our time is different from other times, each period is unique. A new revolution has to fit new and different periods. It has to be a new kind of quiet but steadfast movement I’m not looking for somebody else’s dogma, I’m looking to live mine.

Every great thinker in the history of the world has cited love and compassion as the most powerful forces on the earth. Let’s see. We have nothing to lose but fear itself.

No less a philosopher than St. Augustine said the measure of love is love without measure. He said the truth is like a lion, you don’t have to defend it, just let it loose, and it will defend itself.

I believe that. We don’t have to fight so hard. We need to love a lot harder.

Still, there is much to learn from those remarkable spirits, those ghosts, and martyrs of decent and truth. There is also much to leave behind.

I want to see the world anew, not just from the prism of the past. Some lessons are eternal. Some have meaning for me, perhaps for us.

“Right is right even if no one is doing it,” wrote St. Augustine, “ and wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.” Hope, he said, has two beautiful daughters, their names are anger and the courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”

On his fabled mount, Jesus called out to his followers to care for the poor and the needy and the vulnerable and promised that they would find reward in heaven. He asked his followers to love the poor, not blame them for their suffering.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, ” said Jesus.

“If you love God, follow me, and God will love you and forgive you your sins,” said Mohammad, “for God is most forgiving, most merciful.”

In our time, in our world, I am learning what I want to be and what I never want to be. I never want to be one of those people shouting at nurses who ask them about vaccines. I never want to be one of those people who threatened stewards on airplanes and spits in their faces and punches them out or rage and then claims to be fighting for freedom. I never wish to be one of those people who is loved for his canny lies and cruelty. If I love those who do evil, then I am evil.

If people love me, I want it to be because I am a good person. That is a lot tougher.

I am no saint, I am a sinner and a broken man.

But I know good from evil and I choose to do good even if no one else on the earth wants to come along. I have learned once and for all who I am and who I am not.

I never wish to rationalize lying and preach hatred for the suffering or those who are different. I never wish to be one of the people who undermine the sacred, if not yet achieved, the idea of equality and justice for all.

I never want to be one of those people who would force a blameless woman to give birth out of rape or incest. First, I have to know what I’m not. Then I can go from there.

I will never submit to those people or rationalize the wrong they do. They will find no safe haven around me.   They keep calling me a hater when I reject them, I think I’m a lover, just like Humphrey Bogart.

They’ll get no pardons from me, no quarter.  They don’t get to see my pictures and share my thoughts, whatever little that might be worth. I don’t have to fight them or argue with them, I don’t need to have anything to do with them. I just need to be me and leave it to the angels.

Right is right even if no one is doing it, and wrong is wrong.

My revolution is one of faith, not bullets, like all the great and successful revolutions in our history.

The past few weeks have once again demonstrated the power of good, and the power of people who wish to do good. I believe they are the most powerful people of all.

So that’s my idea for my own simple revolution. It’s already underway. I’m not going to get angry or be corrupted by those who are. I’m going to do good and be good, and have faith in a God who made us to do just that.

I think it was Jesus who said that anyone who would lose his life for the sake of good, would save it.

By renouncing the cruelty and greed of the world, we rise about the anger and the hurt and embrace a return to the simplicity of a love that finds all things in every God.

So what does love look like? It doesn’t look like a Hollywood movie or a hip new magazine cover. I thought I’d ask someone who might know:

“What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.“

– Saint Augustine Of Hippo