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closeOn faith: Celebrating diversity and community
Dr. Chris Gilbert
gateway columnist
Thank you for this opportunity to wish you, your beloved ones, our community and our world the happiest of holidays. In light of our losses together with the slaying of the five police officers in Lakewood and Seattle these past few weeks, the end of the single-digit years of the 21st century seems to ask us for more love and compassion than ever before.
I’ve had many recent conversations with caring community members who have asked about our responsibility for healing after such senseless acts. As always, I have been moved by the concern and love in seeking together an understanding about how we love all around us. I have also shared in moments of silence in reverence for everyone affected by this and the other tragic events 2009 has witnessed.
It seems like these moments of silence keep growing, doesn’t it?
What do you hear in these silences?
Here’s what I think I’ve heard:
Silence is how history will record a fairly innocuous shift from a Gregorian 2009 to 2010 this January. In fact, the big change celebrated by many as the new millennium in January 2001 stands nearly mute to the real shift of the millennium, which occurred on Sept. 11 that same year.
The blare of any 2001 new year’s parties, like the previous year’s unfounded Y2K fears, was eclipsed by the cacophony of world events that marked the real change in the way we looked at our future after 9/11. That tragic event, and the others which follow us through to today, trumpet one of the major, pivotal changes in human affairs in the 21st century.
I’m not suggesting that the tragedies in Lakewood or Seattle were world changing — although perhaps they should be. I do suggest that, in moments of such horror, we are offered the seeds of profound change — a shift in how we see ourselves, our neighborhoods, our communities, the entire planet. A shift more prophetic and powerful than the flipping of calendar pages.
Whether we in the United States recognize it or not, we stand at a crossroads in this new millennium. While we seem to have one foot still firmly planted in an old world, where diversity is merely tolerated and we are comfortable with old-world divisions, we can also see our other foot well across a new line, where diversity becomes our best strength and unity our best hope for global peace.
When I listen to the silence in moments of reflection, I hear the whispers of those sacrificed telling me that the solution to preventing such mindless acts lies in embracing others around us. Not perpetuating aspects of division and difference but eliminating disparity and creating unity in our diversity.
It was Martin Luthur King who said, “It really boils down to this: all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one, affects all.”
There is true reason for celebration in that understanding.
Baha’u’llah, Prophet-Founder of the Baha’i faith, said, “Unless and until the unity of mankind is firmly established on the earth, there will never be world peace.”
As a Baha’i, my faith makes it abundantly clear that races, ages, ethnicities, cultures, genders make for a rich symphony of the earth. We must not consider these as separate elements of who we are together any more than we consider ingredients of our favorite food as separate. Their “togetherness” makes the meal taste whole.
Separation is what drives some in this world to take such horrific actions — feelings of separation, isolation and division. I don’t think anyone among us is unmoved by the daily stories of hardship and heroism, cowardice and bravery, divisiveness and unity, crisis and victory around the world that unfold before our eyes.
We all have a wonderful gift for healing, free will. What we become after these events is what we choose to become. We have that sacred gift of choice. Each of us has choice.
We can concentrate on the travesties now, or find solace in renewed connections with our family and friends. We can see clearly how much we depend on one another, not just in this season but through all seasons.
We can despair at social and economic upheaval, or rejoice in the generosity of our nation and the newly emerging consciousness of much of the rest of humanity.
We can feel terrorized by those lost in blinding selfishness or feel empowered by a new, worldwide sense of justice, equity and empowerment which slowly drips out of the work we do together to create the unity of ideas, religions and communities that ensure a better world for all.
Truly celebration of all!