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by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Dark clouds are gathering, powerful forces constellating in the
outer and inner worlds. We are witnessing preparations for war
and the actions of terrorists, our media saturated with acts of
violence and the war drums of politicians. Many people are finding
their dreams haunted by images of bombs falling and a sense of
what is sacred being desecrated. We seem to be embarking on another
cycle of violence, with the theme of mass destruction as a call
to arms.
What is our responsibility at this time of global crisis? How
can we constellate peace amidst the forces of war? How can we
bring our spiritual ideals onto the world stage, bring the light
of our hearts into the growing darkness? It is easy to feel isolated
or ineffectual, to think that the destiny of the world is in the
hands of politicians blinded by power, or terrorists caught in
images of martyrdom. But there is a part that we can play, a way
that we can bring light into the darkness and work to awaken the
world.
In our own journey we know that any time of crisis is also a
time of opportunity. When powerful forces constellate, they carry
the potential for transformation as well as destruction. What
is true of our individual journey is also true for the world.
The tremendous clash of opposites, of light and dark, that is
threatening such destruction and seemingly polarizing the world
belongs to the birth pains of a global transformation. But in
order for this transformation to be successful it needs our attention.
It needs the participation of those committed to service, whose
consciousness can be aligned to something greater than their personal
well-being.
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Any time of crisis is also a time of opportunity
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At any time of real crisis our work is to look beyond the plane
of action and reaction to where real help and grace are given.
Through our prayers and devotion, we align ourself with the love
and power of the divine without whose presence we are left alone
with our own self-destructive conflicts. Sadly, we have tended
to place prayer and devotion solely within the sphere of our personal
relationship with the divine, not recognizing its larger dimension
which concerns the well-being of the whole. Yet we have seen the
power of prayer in the context of the larger world: after the
tragedy of September 11th we had the tangible experience of people
all around the world praying, working to hold a space of love
and remembrance so that the energy of the divine could help to
repair the fabric of life brutally torn apart by the acts of violence.
This moment of global remembrance through prayer did not last,
but it points to what is possible when we direct our attention
to the larger whole.
Only the divine that can heal and transform the world—the
forces of antagonism in the world are too powerfully constellated
for us to resolve on our own. But the divine needs our participation:
we are the guardians of the planet. Working together with the
power and love of the divine, we can help turn this moment of
crisis into a time of global awakening. And what is the nature
of this work? In our masculine culture we identify work with “doing”
and activity. But to hold a space for the divine requires the
feminine quality of “being.” Through the simplicity
of living our inner connection to the divine, we link the worlds
together.
Central to this transformation and awaking is the uniting of
the outer and inner worlds. Much of our present predicament comes
from isolating ourself in the outer physical world, to such a
degree that we have almost forgotten the presence of the inner
worlds. And yet it is always from within that divine grace and
healing come. Those who have committed themselves to spiritual
work have turned inward, and through meditation, prayer, dreamwork,
and other practices, have begun to reclaim the inner world.
Looking inward now, one might glimpse something quite wonderful:
a web of light and love that has been woven around the world.
This web has been woven together over the past two decades by
the masters of love and their helpers, those who look after the
spiritual well-being of the world. It is the container for our
global transformation, for the awakening of the world, and now
it needs to be brought into consciousness. This web is a network
of the spiritual light of those who have given themselves in service
to the divine. It’s structure has similarities to the internet,
but it is made of light and exists on an inner plane. We are inwardly
linked together through this web, and through our prayers and
devotions we can bring the light of the divine to where it is
needed in the outer as well as the inner world. This global network
of light and love is very powerful; it can counter the destructive
ego-driven worldly forces. It can take us beyond the clash of
opposites into the oneness that is at the source of life.
But to work with this web we need to realize that we are the
link of love that unites the inner and outer worlds. We carry
the potential for global transformation in our own hearts, in
our lived connection to the divine. We need to step out of the
enclosed world of our individual aspiration to recognize this
larger dimension to our spiritual practice. Wherever we are we
can consciously connect to this network of light. Then the energy
of the divine will flow freely from the inner to the outer and
our present time of crisis can unfold into a new era of global
awareness.
© 2002 The Golden Sufi Center
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Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee is a Sufi teacher
and author of a number of books, including Working with Oneness.
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Gila Svirsky
I was not present in Rafah that terrible day, but
I have frequently replayed in my mind the events leading up to
the moment when a bulldozer rolled over Rachel Corrie. I think
to myself: What compelled this young woman, neither Jewish nor
Palestinian, to travel 10,000 miles from home, to throw in her
lot with a family not her own, a people not her own, and ultimately
meet a death that came suddenly, swiftly, in an instant of shocked
comprehension.
In the biblical book of Ruth, we read of Naomi whose two sons
have died, leaving two young widows. Naomi chooses to depart from
the land of Moab and return to her home in Judah. She encourages
her daughters-in-law to remain in Moab, their own land. One daughter-in-law
kisses Naomi and bids her farewell. The other, Ruth, chooses to
accompany Naomi to the distant climes of Judah. Why does Ruth
go? ‘Entreat me not to leave thee,’ says Ruth, ‘for
whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will
lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God.’
And she continues, ‘Where thou diest, will I die, and there
will I be buried: if the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought
but death part thee and me’.
The biblical figure of Ruth journeys to her new people, expecting
never to return, but to be buried in foreign soil.
The modern figure of Rachel journeyed to her new people, expecting
to return for the start of the school year, and never to be buried,
or to be buried at some vastly distant unimaginable future, but
never to find her death in the soil of her chosen destination.
She journeyed to her new people expecting to find another culture,
another language, another way of interacting, but never to find
another attitude toward the taking of life. She journeyed expecting
to see death, but never to experience it directly, never to encounter
herself as the object of deliberate death.
In his treatise Fear and Trembling, the philosopher Kierkegaard
recounts the story of Abraham as he takes his son Isaac to be
sacrificed on Mount Moriah. The story is so unfathomable –
how could Abraham take his son, his only son, and be willing to
slaughter him for no apparent reason other than God’s inscrutable
request? Kierkegaard constructs several scenarios with thoughts
and emotions that may have been coursing through Abraham’s
heart as he walked his son to the place where he would kill him.
Writes Kierkegaard in one such scenario: ‘It was early in
the morning, Abraham rose betimes, he embraced Sarah, the bride
of his old age, and Sarah kissed Isaac, who had taken away her
reproach, who was her pride, her hope for all time. So they rode
on in silence along the way, and Abraham’s glance was fixed
upon the ground until the fourth day when he lifted up his eyes
and saw afar off Mount Moriah, but his glance turned again to
the ground. Silently he laid the wood in order, he bound Isaac,
in silence he drew the knife – then he saw the ram which
God had prepared. Then he offered that and returned home. From
that time on Abraham became old, he could not forget that God
had required this of him. Isaac throve as before, but Abraham’s
eyes were darkened, and he knew joy no more.’
In my mind’s eye when I see Rachel standing on that mound
of earth and facing the bulldozer, I envision a young woman looking
at the small window fast approaching her in the brow of the bulldozer,
trying to peer into that dark space, to find the eyes of the soldier
who was driving, perhaps someone her own age, someone who also
loved to dance and joke with a younger brother, someone who was
thinking about how long it would take until he could finish this
job and get back to the base where he didn’t have to face
the anger of people who don’t understand what he’s doing,
thinking about his weekend pass and his own future, maybe he would
go back to school and finish that course, or about his own loneliness,
and how it is to be out here alone at the gears every day, and
then there’s this girl out there, and why doesn’t she
get out of the way. What was the next thought of this young man?
‘Shall I kill her?’ or ‘Shall I scare her –
she’ll move at the last minute?’ or ‘I’ll
show them once and for all’ or ‘Still time to brake’.
Or some other brief words that race through his mind as he hurtles
ahead.
In this land where blood pours down like lemon drops and covers
all the senses, to paraphrase Joni Mitchell, we cannot know what
thought compelled this young man to carry out the deed. Blood
pours down like lemon drops and covers all the senses, and the
senses ascribe new meanings to things. Later that day, he may
have wept and found comfort among his friends. He may have shrugged
it off – another killing in the line of duty, a sad but necessary
evil, a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it, another notch
in his belt of military exploits. But we do know one thing: He
will live with the death of Rachel for the rest of his life. He
may not read every article about her, he may agree only with those
that justify his deed, but we know that he reads some of what
is written, and we know that he thinks about what happened that
day, and if things could have, somehow, ended differently. How
do we know this? We know because we agree with Rachel, who risked
her life in the belief that whoever was driving that vehicle would
stop before he harmed her. We know because we believe, like Rachel,
in the fundamental decency of every human being, and that even
those who kill, harbor pain inside their hearts for that death.
We do not have to forgive this man or this system that led him
to kill in order to understand that the trauma of Rachel’s
death, which affected hundreds of thousands, millions of people
throughout the world, also affected the man who took her life.
On that blindingly sunny day in Rafah, when optimism glints irrationally
from every tank, every M16, every dogtag on the necks of 18-year-olds
in uniform, photos of loved ones in their pockets, Rachel stood
her ground with ease, waiting for his eyes to meet hers, waiting
for decency to slow the grinding treads, waiting for the moment
of sanity to kick in, to interrupt the flow of tension swelling
toward collision, waiting for the inevitable to happen –
that reason would prevail.
Today we are one year from that moment, 12 months of time to
think about it, and still no more capable of fathoming what transpired
that day: that until the moment of impact, Rachel never lost her
faith in the decency of this bulldozer driver; that until the
moment of impact, the driver never understood that he was capable
of this terrible crime.
Writes Kierkegaard, ‘It was a quiet evening when Abraham
rode out alone, and he rode to Mount Moriah; he threw himself
upon his face, he prayed God to forgive him his sin, that he had
been willing to offer Isaac, that the father had forgotten his
duty toward the son.’
In my own efforts to understand these terrible deeds, the one
on Mount Moriah and the one in Rafah, I ask myself: At Moriah,
what was the more terrible – that Abraham had been willing
to sacrifice his son? Or that God had demanded this of him?
And in Rafah, who is the real sinner – the soldier who ended
the life of a girl on a mound of earth in a land not his and not
hers – a land where Rachel, like Ruth, was invited and welcomed,
but he was an interloper and resented? Or, in Rafah, too, is the
real sinner the God who had demanded this of him – God the
army officers, God the brutal policies, God the society of those
willing to inflict pain on others to still their own fears and
traumas?
And whose gaze turned from one of trust to astonishing alarm?
The driver, who trusted that Rachel would leap away before it
was too late? Or Rachel, who trusted that the driver would halt
the vehicle one tread sooner?
I end with an excerpt translated from ‘Season of the Camomile’
by the Palestinian Samir Rantisi. This poem was written 16 years
ago after the killing of an Israeli and a Palestinian near the
village of Beita:
How many more ordinary mornings
will fill us with horror
and transform our day to another sky
who chose us
to be the victim and the symbol
to be the beginning of the beginnings
the moment of historical trial
we, the two dreamers
the routine, the ordinary
who chose us
to be the heart of the conflict
and the crossroads of time
--
why didn't you find someone besides me to be a symbol?
why didn't they find someone besides you to be a victim?
why could they only find Beita in the spring.
Our hearts in grief, we ask: Why didn’t they find someone
besides you to be a victim? Why didn’t they find someone
besides you to be a symbol? Ah, Rachel, ah, unknown soldier, why
could you only find Rafah in the spring?
Delivered at an evening in memory of Rachel Corrie sponsored
by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
Gila Svirsky, Jerusalem
Coalition of Women for Peace
www.coalitionofwomen4peace.org
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A message from Bali on
25th October 2002
Delivered in English by Asana
Viebeke L
The following is a message delivered on Friday 25th October –
immediately after the terrorist bombing in Bali – from Parum
Samigita which is the 'Think Tank' for the Banjars (Village Councils)
of the Kuta, Legian and Seminyak areas of Bali. It comes from
the heart of the Balinese people at ground zero in Kuta. It is
a message of love and brotherhood to the world. We Balinese have
an essential concept of balance. It's the Tri Hita Karana, a concept
of harmonious balance: the balance between God and humanity; humanity
with itself, and humanity with the environment. This places us
all in a universe of common understanding.
It is not only nuclear bombs which have fallout. It is our job
to minimize this fallout for our people and our guests from around
the world. Who did this? It’s not such an important question
for us to discuss. Why this happened – maybe this is more
worthy of thought. What can we do to create beauty from this tragedy
and come to an understanding where nobody feels the need to make
such a statement again? This is important. This is the basis from
which we can embrace everyone as a brother, everyone as a sister.
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Help us to create beauty out of this tragedy
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It is a period of uncertainty. It is a period of change. It is
also an opportunity for us to move together into a better future.
A future where we embrace all of humanity in the knowledge that
we all look and smell the same when we are burnt. Victims of this
tragedy are from all over the world.
The past is not significant. It is the future which is important.
This is the time to bring our values, our empathy, to society
and the world at large. To care. To love.
The modern world brings to many of us the ability to rise above
the core need for survival. Most people in the developed world
no longer need to struggle to simply stay alive. It is our duty
to strive to improve our quality of life. We want to return to
our lives. Please help us realize this wish.
Why seek retribution from people who are acting as they see fit?
These people are misguided from our point of view. Obviously,
from theirs, they feel justified and angry enough to make such
a brutal statement.
We would like to send a message to the world: embrace this misunderstanding
between our brothers and let us seek a peaceful answer to the
problems which bring us to such tragedy.
We embrace all the beliefs, hopes and dreams of all the people
in the world with Love. Do not bring malice to our world. What
has happened has happened. Stop talking about the theories of
who did this and why. It does not serve the spirit of our people.
Words of hate will not rebuild our shops and houses. They will
not heal damaged skin. They will not bring back our dead.
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If we can love all of our brothers and sisters,
we have already won 'The War Against Terrorism'
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Help us to create beauty out of this tragedy. Our community is
bruised and hurting. Our spirit can never be broken. Everybody
in the world is of one principle brotherhood. Tat Wam Asi –
'You are me and I am you'.
We have a concept in Bali, Ruwa Bhineda, a balance between good
and bad. Without bad there can be no good. The bad is the 'sibling'
of the good. Embrace this concept and we can move forward into
a better world. There is Sekala/Nisikala – the underworld
forever in darkness merging with our world in the light.
You love your husband and wife but sometimes you fight. Fear
arises and shows its opposition to love. This is normal. This
is a natural, essential part of life. These are the concepts by
which we, as Balinese, live our lives.
Please, we beg you, talk only of the good which can come of this.
Talk of how we can reconcile our 'apparent' differences. Talk
of how we can bring empathy and love into everybody's lives.
The overwhelming scenes of love and compassion at Sanglah Hospital
show us the way forward into the future. If we hate our brothers
and sisters we are lost in Kali Yuga. If we can love all of our
brothers and sisters, we have already begun to move into Kertha
Yuga. We have already won 'The War Against Terrorism'.
Thank you for all your compassion and love.
Asana Viebeke L Kuta Desa Adat Parum Samigita
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by Rabbi Michael Lerner
Tikkun is a recently founded international community drawn together
in the vision of 'Emancipatory Spirituality'. Initiated by progressive
Jews, it welcomes people of all faiths and none. In this extract
from his founding address,1
Rabbi Michael Lerner explores how a new form of society is emerging
in the world – and urges a 'third way' for Israelis and Palestinians
to create peace in their land.
We are at the beginning of an important new venture – to
build a community of all those people who understand that the
world needs healing and transformation (tikkun), and that the
tikkun the world needs is be'malchut Shadie (in the sphere of
Spirit). We look to particularly those aspects of the spiritual
tradition that have been associated with women’s experience
of the Spirit as nurturing, and to the Jewish vision of yhvh as
the Spirit of transformation that makes possible the movement
from that which is to that which ought to be. Our task is Le’taken
olam be’malchut Shadie—to heal the world through the
reassertion of the feminine aspect of reality, and to transform
it in accord with our highest vision, both male and female, of
love, generosity, open-heartedness, economic justice, ecological
sanity, and joyous celebration of all that is...
A New Bottom Line
So this is how the struggle appears today: corporate globalization
versus reactionary spirituality. As Bush puts it, if you are not
on the side of globalized capital, you are on the side of the
terrorists. Well, we say 'no' to this false choice. Instead, in
my book Spirit Matters and in Tikkun magazine, and now also in
the creation of The Tikkun Community, we advance a third path,
a new alternative, what we call an Emancipatory Spirituality.
It is a spirituality which affirms rational thinking and science,
affirms the need for individual rights and for a private realm
protected from invasion by the state or by society. It affirms
the need for democracy, equality, and individual liberty. But
it also calls for a New Bottom Line in American society to transcend
the ethos of materialism and selfishness and create a world based
on caring and compassion, generosity, and open-heartedness.
That New Bottom Line can best be understood by a central demand
of The Tikkun Community: the demand for a new definition of productivity,
efficiency, and rationality, so that institutions, social practices,
legislation, and ways of life are judged rational, productive,
and efficient not only to the extent that they maximize money
and power, but also to the extent that they maximize love and
caring; increase our ecological, spiritual, and ethical sensibilities;
help us see others as valuable because they are embodiments of
the sacred; and encourage us to respond to the universe with awe,
wonder, and radical amazement. Use that criterion, and you will
see that most of the institutions of our society are irrational,
unproductive, and inefficient—from our schools to our corporations
to our media.
The good news is this: we are not the only group going in this
direction. Here is the news of the State of the Spirit: Spirit
is moving in this direction. The spiritual crisis that I described
is a worldwide crisis, and increasingly more and more people are
finding that when the system 'delivers the material goods,' it
doesn’t satisfy. The old system of materialism and selfishness
has not yet crumbled, and it may have another fifty or even a
hundred years of power left. But developing within the existing
system is a new ethos, a new spirituality, a mystical society,
a set of human beings who wish to return to the mystery of Being,
human beings who are increasingly aware of the impermanence of
material accomplishments, human beings who no longer believe that
they can escape the transitoriness of life and the certainty of
death by building skyscrapers or putting plaques on hospitals
and university classroom buildings,
or by getting momentary fame by writing a well-known book or movie.
Human beings are developing who see through the falseness and
the hypocrisy of the materialist culture of contemporary capitalism,
who no longer believe that a huge income and a house in the suburbs
will provide their lives with meaning. So they are turning to
Spirit. They are turning in all kinds of ways. Some of those ways
are flakey, some are reactionary, and some are destructive. But
there are other and deeper forms of spiritual life emerging, and
with this movement, the prefiguring of a new kind of society…
Awakening of planetary consciousness
The Tikkun Community seeks to be a midwife in this process of
spiritual awakening. We are seeking to create a national network
of spiritually-oriented progressive people who support the New
Bottom Line and who want to build a world of love and open-heartedness.
A central goal of The Tikkun Community is to foster a new sense
of planetary consciousness. In religious terms, that means we
are part of the Unity of All Being. In ecological terms, that
means affirming there can be no survival for the human race without
saving the whole planet. Those who think they can turn their backs
on the fate of the Third World or dump the waste materials of
advanced industrial societies some place else have no understanding
of the fundamental truth of ecological science: we are all in
one unified world system. And that goes for social justice and
economic justice as well. One lesson we should learn from September
11: there is no possibility of security at any level for us in
the advanced industrial world while the rest of the world wallows
in pain. We may think it is not our concern when people work in
sweatshops, when young children have to sell their bodies into
prostitution, when plants close down and people have no work,
when people live as refugees, or when people starve to death.
But there are literally millions of young children (I mean millions
not thousands) who die of diseases related to starvation each
year, and in this kind of a world, terrorism will increase. There
is no safety or security for us unless there is worldwide social
justice and ecological sanity.
This lesson has to be learned by the Jewish people, my people.
There is no longer a way to think of a private solution that will
provide Jewish security in a world that is rupturing in pain.
The pain of others will inevitably impact our lives. No new security
system will protect us—we cannot secure our homes from burglaries,
our airports from terrorists, or even the Jewish homeland from
assault. The only security is a world based on a whole new principle
of love, generosity, social and economic justice, peace, and mutual
respect.
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The only security is a world based on a whole
new principle of love, generosity, social and
economic justice, peace, and mutual respect
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This means that Judaism, like every other religious and spiritual
tradition, needs to reject those aspects of the tradition that
have made us think that we could protect ourselves from the demeaning
of others by demeaning them back. We have to reject goyim bashing
– the tendency to look down on non-Jews or to think we are
smarter, more moral, more anything. If we have historical strengths
that we’ve developed, they need to be channeled toward the
same goal that everyone else needs to put their energies –
toward universal liberation. This does not mean we should reject
the specificity of our traditions, our religious texts, holidays,
observances or prayers. The challenge of the twenty-first century
is to have a planetary consciousness that is truly multicultural
– that doesn’t demand homogeneity or the abandonment
of cultural or religious particularity, but only requires that
those parts of the tradition that demean others, or that assume
the possibility of a private redemption, or that display indifference
to the suffering of others now be transcended…
Making peace in the Middle East
Once we recognize a planetary consciousness, we will recognize
that every human being is equally precious. That, in turn, requires
a whole new way of thinking about the situation in the Middle
East. I am personally a strong supporter of Israel and want Israel
to be secure. But I know that Israel’s policies are self-destructive,
irrational, and make Israel less secure. I know that the story
has two sides—that when Jews were refugees crawling from
the crematoria of Europe, it was Palestinians who refused to share
the land with us. But the whole message of Jewish Renewal and
of the Judaism of the Prophets is that we need to transcend the
pain of the past—we must not act out in this generation what
was done to us in past generations. To believe in yhvh, the Force
of Healing and Transformation, is to be witness to the possibility
of possibility. For the Jewish people, that means we must change
the politics of the State of Israel. As a first step we must immediately
end the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, bring the 200,000
settlers back to the pre-1967 borders of Israel, and lead a worldwide
campaign to provide reparations for Palestinian refugees. We must
provide reparation not only because a Palestinian state based
on extremes of poverty and helplessness would be just as dangerous
as the current Occupation, but also because we, as the Jewish
people, have to acknowledge our role in driving out people from
their homes in 1948 just as we are doing—to the shock and
amazement of the world—every day in Gaza, in the West Bank,
and in Jerusalem of 2002. We must acknowledge our responsibility—partial,
not total, but real—in creating the mess we are now facing.
At the same time, we call upon the Palestinian people to reject
the tactics of terror. Terrorism is never right. Terrorism breeds
fear and a sense that one must respond with violence, which then
breeds more violence. The Palestinian people have made a tragic
mistake in not stopping that violence. Palestinians will argue
that the violence of the Israeli Occupation is far greater, and
that the daily combination of torture, house demolitions, humiliating
searches, targeted assassinations, and the siege of towns and
villages is far worse than anything experienced by the Israeli
population. They may be right. But this whole situation will only
be solved if both sides can feel that the other side recognizes
them as human with the same human needs as they – and that
can never happen if the violence continues. One reason I chose
to hold our founding conference on the weekend of Martin Luther
King Jr.’s annual celebration was to underscore our appeal
to the Palestinian people to follow the nonviolent path of Martin
Luther King Jr.
Some may ask, 'why should the oppressed work to initiate nonviolence?'
This was the question asked of Martin Luther King Jr – why
should we be nonviolent in the most violently racist society in
human history? We are the ones who are facing segregation, lynchings,
police dogs, beatings. Why should we be the ones when the other
side is not nonviolent toward us? But Martin Luther King Jr realized
something fundamental, a spiritual truth: in order to break through,
we need to appeal to the humanity of the oppressor; to signal
to them that even though they are wrong we can still see their
humanity. The genius of Martin Luther King Jr. was that he made
it possible for white America to remember its own highest spiritual
aspirations, and to act on them, and from that place they could
no longer justify segregation.
Ethos of generosity
Ultimately, making peace in the Middle East requires a whole
new approach on the spiritual level – a new ethos of generosity
and open-heartedness. Each side needs to learn how to tell the
other side’s story with compassion and generosity of spirit.
We need to be able to hear each other, and to recognize the humanity
in each other. As a Jew, I want that process to start with us.
It’s time for the Jewish people to give up its story as an
eternally threatened people – to recognize that we are in
fact powerful at this moment, and that the greatest threat to
us comes from acting in ways that seem immoral and contemptuous
of the needs of others. We need to begin to trust the possibility
that the world has other things on its mind besides destroying
us – and we can elicit that change of attention if we took
the leap of faith, and started to act in a trusting, generous
way toward the Palestinian people. I don’t mean that we should
unilaterally disarm the Israeli Army, but I do mean that we should
act in ways that are unmistakably generous, not looking for an
immediate return.
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Making peace in the Middle East requires
a whole new approach on the spiritual level
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We should understand that we have generations of repentance ahead
of us to rectify the wrongs we have done to the Palestinian people
– and that we cannot hide behind the perfectly correct but
morally irrelevant position that they too have lots of repenting
to do. We should take the first steps, perhaps even the first
few hundred steps, not only because we are the greater power and
we are the occupying force, but also because the only way Israel
can become a Jewish state is to be an embodiment of the highest
ideals of Judaism. These ideals start with the categorical imperative
in Torah: Thou shalt love the stranger, Thou shalt love the Other.
If the Jewish people could renew its commitment to this part of
Torah, it would truly begin the process of becoming a Light unto
the Nations. Unrealistic? Well, that’s the central point
of Torah: realism is idolatry. It is using the criterion of what
is as the basis of what you think can be. But to believe in God
or Spirit is to believe that there is a Force that makes it possible
to transcend that which is toward that which ought to be –
toward a world of love and justice and peace. It’s that part
of Judaism we identify with in calling this organization the Tikkun
Community—because Tikkun is the Hebrew word for healing and
transformation.
Believe in our highest ideals
That is our task and our strategy – to notice that everywhere
people have a part of them that wants to work toward their highest
spiritual ideals, but another part that thinks it is too dangerous.
Most of us are afraid of being put down and made fun of by the
dominant culture. And that is what will happen at first. Not because
of others, however, but because of our own inner ambivalence,
and our own experience of humiliation at earlier points in our
lives when we went for a world of love, and then found ourselves
betrayed, manipulated, abandoned, or hurt. Within ourselves, we’ve
given up on that possibility and become realists. It is not the
ruling class that keeps things the way they are—it is each
of us who enforce reality on each other, who tell each other that
nothing fundamental can be changed.
That’s why we need a Tikkun Community – we need to
build communities of support for people who want to go for a New
Bottom Line…
Our only hope of saving this planet from ecological destruction
is to put our intelligence, energy, time, and money behind our
highest ideals, rather than to continue to scale that down to
what others tell us is 'realistic.' Being realistic is idolatry
– to be part of The Tikkun Community is to affirm a spiritual
vision, to connect to the Force of Healing and Transformation
of the Universe, to affirm that there is an aspect of reality
that makes possible the transcendence of 'that which is' (reality)
toward that which ought to be. We want to make it safe for others
to go for their own most loving ideals. We already saw that possibility
in the miracle of transformation that occurred with the women’s
movement. Thirty-five years ago people ridiculed the idea that
women could overcome ten thousand years of patriarchy—today,
it is those 'realists' who look foolish. We are here to affirm
that a world can be built based on love and caring. Let’s
make that happen – together.
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Reference
1. This is an extract from the text of Michael Lerner’s 'State
of the Spirit' address given at the founding conference of The
Tikkun Community, January 2002 in New York.
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Rabbi Michael Lerner will visit London
for a conference of the Tikkun Community in October 2002. He invites
anyone who would like to be involved in building the Tikkun Community
in the UK to contact him by email: rabbilerner@tikkun.org
For more information about Tikkun, including extensive articles
from Tikkun Magazine, please see the website www.tikkun.org
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