Time for a new era of responsibility?

In his Nobel Lecture, on December 11^th 1964, Peace Prize Laureate Martin Luther King reminded us:

 “Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.’ Deeply etched in the fiber of our religious tradition is the conviction that men are made in the image of God and that they are souls of infinite metaphysical value, the heirs of a legacy of dignity and worth. If we feel this as a profound moral fact, we cannot be content to see men hungry, to see men victimized with starvation and ill health when we have the means to help them. The wealthy nations must go all out to bridge the gulf between the rich minority and the poor majority...

In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny. All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent. 

The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich. We are inevitably our brothers’ keeper because of the interrelated structure of reality”.

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Three centuries earlier the Renaissance author and Anglican priest John Donne famously wrote in 1624:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. 

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee”. (1) 

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The Apostle Paul, writing in his first epistle to the Corinthians, on human worth, likened the worldwide body of Christians with the human body. All parts of the body are essential for the complete welfare of the whole. In the same way we all need each other and the loss of any part weakens us all: there should be no discord between us. He taught his followers that the members of the church should ‘have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.’ (2) The ‘body’ in this biblical context is translated from the Greek Soma, related to Sozo meaning ‘to heal, preserve, be made whole.’ We are not whole: we are wounded or spiritually impoverished if we are not a part of the greater body of faith in our community. 

We all need to feel that connectedness, that relationship. We need to find unity within the wide diversity of all our individual gifts. We all need each other and we all are special in the eyes of God.

Followers of the Baha’i faith see Earth as one country of which we are all citizens. (3) One of their guiding principles is that ‘the oneness of humanity is the fundamental spiritual and social truth shaping our age.’

Whatever our faith, or none, we can all be guided by these truths.  

In this fraught age, isn’t this our personal responsibility? 

Adapted from "Healing This Wounded Earth: with Compassion.Spirit and the Power of Hope".

References:

1. John Donne seventeenth century English poet died 1631. Famous words of prose taken from the final lines of his 1624 Meditation 17, from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions.

2. Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, 1 Corinthians 12. 25, 26.

3. From Baha’u’llah’s Revelation, as he enjoins his followers to develop a sense of world citizenship and a commitment to stewardship of the earth. From Palmer, Martin with Victoria Finlay, Faith in Conservation: New Approaches to Religions and the Environment, The World Bank Washington DC 2003 p. 72.

Leaving no Change Behind

We worry at the moment about the world's fiscal problems
...of course we do. But…"to fix our broken world we need more than profits. We need prophets - faithful, fearless people, willing to invest in social change through prophetic proclamation in word and deed." This is the message of Brad R. Braxton, founding senior pastor of The Open Church, a cross cultural, radically inclusive congregation in Baltimore, in an important article he has written "Leave no Change Behind" in the August 2012 edition of Sojourners: a Christian magazine dedicated to Faith in Action for Social Change. Braxton's article is really directed at the preacher, but there are lessons for us all in this message.

Responsibility for the changes needed in this world must start from the bottom up, from ourselves. And for this to happen, Braxton urges us to be concerned about the "balances in our moral accounts, lest insufficient funds lead to bankruptcy of our souls and foreclosure on the common good."

Warrior 3

Everyone else was rushing by, head down, and quite clearly intent on getting to where they were going as fast as possible. And no one noticed him. But I did. He was on his usual patch on the pavement. Holding his Warrior 3 pose, on one leg, the other outstretched behind him, arms stretched out in a straight line to front and back at shoulder level (Virabhadrasana 3). He was so still one could be forgiven for thinking he was a statue – or mime artist. But his purpose was altogether more serious. In his hand outstretched before him he held the Big Issue. How could anyone pass him by?

Because the fact is, this little weekly magazine not only helps homeless people get back on their feet (metaphorically this time!!), it is also a jolly good read and excellent value at £2. I always buy one when I can.

Just for example, in this last issue, there is an excellent review of the evangelical atheist Richard Dawkin’s new book, In the Beginning was the Word…(Now why should I want to give that any more publicity – !?), an interesting interview with the philosopher John Gray (author of Gray’s Anatomy: Selected Writings out now – who says that evangelical atheists are copying religion at its worst…!), an exclusive interview with Ewan McGregor, “How Fate Changed My Life,” an article on the shocking reality of middle-class homelessness” and much, much more.

So go on – next time you have the opportunity to spend no more than the cost of a latte or other caffeine shot on something that has the power to change a fellow human’s life for the better, then use it. It will be so much better for you both. 
(See my previous blog back in January for much more on the ethos behind the Big Issue.)