On the first Tuesday in May a rally for a responsible budget was held outside the capital building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (The rally was organized to prevent cuts in funding for home healthcare workers and teachers.) The steps were jammed; sandwiches and drinks were passed out. And between speakers the crowd chanted, ‘We Are One!’
Over and over it was chanted energetically, ‘We Are One!’ It was a single phrase ripe with meaning:
we are all cells in one body,
we are all united in our wants, needs and desires,
we are not on separate sides.
Spiritual values, humanitarian values, boundary-crossing values all wrapped into three words.
Many will tell you our nation is sick, our world is suffering, and that society and civilization are crashing down around us. Don’t be afraid of this story, it is only partially true. The truth always begins and ends with us. It starts or stops depending on our reaction.
Undoubtedly, if we continue to deny our unity, if we continue to live in isolation, if we continue to fight for space and wealth, then yes, our time as a civilization is most likely at an end. Yet, there is more to the story.
We are alive as long as we learn from our mistakes. Once we stop learning, once we stop adapting, once we stop avoiding obstacles, we become dead. While living things grow big and multiply, dead things shrink and decay. Alive we expand, in dying we contract. Where water cycles from gas to liquid to solid, so too life cycles through birth and death. And it is this cycle that binds us and traps us.
Unless we free ourselves.
We have reached a tipping point. If we tip one way, then we will become a footnote, perhaps a chapter, in the ‘Rise and Fall of Civilizations.’ Tip the other way and we step off the treadmill of history and start down a new path. The momentum lies with us.
I pray we tip towards the unknown path, because it will lead us into a new story. Our ancestors dreamt this story. The prophets predicted this story. It is the story of a life abundant and limitless.
How then do we escape this endless cycle? We must become perfectly human. The perfect human is aware of when they fail and does not hesitate to ask forgiveness. We can only free ourselves if we become perfect in our honesty. When we openly admit our failures and work to correct them will we become perfect. It is only in our humility that we can liberate ourselves. Only by realizing our humanity will we break the chains that now threaten to pull us under.
Others might answer with a choice between revolution, reformation, or religion. But I tell you no method, no theory, no philosophy once established will recuse itself. Its inherent flaws will only be revealed once it is put into practice. These flaws will lead to the creation of a new or updated system. Yet, no one can create a system in which people do not have to be perfect. We will always find a way to break the rules. Throughout the ages this lie of progress has not perfected the way to peace. This mechanical solution is, at its root, the same cycle of history repeating.
Unless people become perfect neither the machine, nor the corporation, nor the religious institution, nor the revolution, nor the university, nor the State, nor the financial institution will admit failure. It will rumble and shake itself to pieces before admitting wrong doing. We have seen this time and time again throughout the ages. This is why none of these things on their own will ever be humane, life-giving or perfect; they will never bring us freedom.
We the people must first change and become perfectly human, before we can hope for a perfect revolution, a perfect institution, or a perfect world.
Do not be afraid. This is not impossible; history has prepared us for this next step. The signs are all around us. The flow of time has brought us to this point just as a river carries a branch downstream. So too we have been brought here.
To sum up, these are the greatest questions facing our generation: Can we become perfectly humble? Can we be forever open to change? Can we treat our neighbor as ourselves? Can we seek to be reconciled with one another regardless of the cost? Can we live fearlessly?
How we answer will lead either to endless suffering and separation or perfect joy and union. How we answer will determine if we are like oil and water, forever apart. Or if there is truth in the chant, ‘We Are One!’
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I think that an essential element of being human is found in the tension between perfection and fallenness. Perfection can only be attained through submission to the divine, not through even the best of human efforts alone. Fallenness can also never be achieved in totality- no one can fall so far as to be out of reach of redemption.
Human institutions, whether religious, political, social, economic, are also in their essence fallen, because they are human constructs. Idols may be the right word to use.
Can we become perfectly humble, forever open, giving, and fearless? Yes and no, I think, and in this paradox lies the essence of humanity.
But we must try, and in this struggle is life. To give up, and in this I concur with you, is to die. Giving up surrenders the essential tension that defines our humanness.
E. Sparrow
Thank you E,
You're the second person to point that out. I haven't been clear enough. Perfection and fallen-ness aren't different things in us but parts of the whole. It is our ability to ask forgiveness when we fall that makes us perfect. Which is what I meant when I said, 'It is only in our humility that we can liberate ourselves.'
Post a Comment