Pacifying
Love
“Perhaps,
in return for conquest, arrogance and spoliation, India will teach us the tolerance
and gentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content of the unaquisitive soul,
the calm of the understanding spirit, and a unifying, pacifying love for all
living things.”
Will
Durant
American
historian Will Durant and his wife, Ariel, wrote 11 volumes on The Story of
Civilization between the years 1935 and 1975. They are the ones who said, “A
great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself
from within.”
I had a
very hard time being celebratory yesterday as America marked its 244th Independence
Day. The fireworks explosions went on in my neighborhood until well past 2 a.m.
so forgive me if I’m a little slow this morning. I’m sleep deprived.
On
Friday night, our president hosted a fireworks display using Mt. Rushmore as a
backdrop and packing 7,500 people into the stands in the middle of an
escalating pandemic. His message was one of division and punishment, while the
native Lakota Sioux, whose land was stolen for the carving of the Rushmore
monument, were forced from the roadway for his caravan to pass through. There
was no moment of silence or honoring of the 129,000 lives lost to Covid-19 in
the last six months in this country. There was no gratitude expressed for the
droves of health care workers and first responders who are now being
overwhelmed for a second time by this pandemic. There was no “pacifying love”
to be found. This is what Will Durant meant in the quote above when he spoke of
“conquest, arrogance, and spoliation.” Thoughtless white people have been doing
this for centuries, and yet again we protest facing the consequences of our
deeds.
There
are cycles of life that come and go with regularity. I want to believe the
words of Martin Luther King, Jr. that the “arc of the moral universe is
long, but it bends toward justice.” I haven’t seen that yet. I want to live
in a world where justice and mercy are more important than money and power, and
I’m in a hurry to see that happen. Will Durant also said, “No [one] who is
in a hurry is quite civilized.” Guess I still have some wildness in me, and
I hope you do too.
I hope
that we humans resolve our differences, so that we can live in peace and equanimity.
It will take looking to other traditions for leadership—we have a lot to learn
about “the tolerance and gentleness of the mature mind.” At best,
America is in its rebellious adolescence; let’s hope we don’t total mom and dad’s
car before we reach adulthood.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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