Creating Your Constructive Program

Mahatma Gandhi launched a comprehensive, detailed program of social, political, economic and spiritual uplift for India and called it a constructive program. It was a program that called all to embrace practical steps to improve not only themselves but also their community, country and world.

Joanne Sheehan, in Gandhi's Three Elements of Nonviolent Social Transformation, shares, "We are quick to identify and protest the things we don't like in our society, but we are often asked 'so what are you for?' As revolutionaries we need to start building a new society in the shell of the old. Gandhi said we should not wait for one to crumble before starting the other. Constructive program brings people together to do the kind of community work that is empowering, bringing them to a point of self reliance and being ready to develop a new society. To outline a nonviolent campaign involving all these elements, we need to begin to identify where the change is needed. Gandhi identified 18 elements of constructive program in India that included removal of untouchability, developing village industries, sanitation, basic education, national language, spinning cloth as a symbol of economic freedom, labor unions, involving students, and caring for lepers. These are not a specific model for us, but ones that we can begin to get help from as we look at the changes needed in our society to begin to build a new one."

In this spirit, I invite my students in our Social Justice and Peacemaking course at NYU to create their own constructive program. I challenge them to consider the practical steps they need to take with respect to their lifestyle and personal choices and disciplines in order to connect to their deepest desires and truth, and to create the community and culture they want for themselves, their family and for future generations. I ask them to think about practices that can build and discipline their body and biology, i.e. diet, nutrition and exercise. I ask them to think about what will help them develop their intellectual, psychological and mental health and well-being, i.e. reading, writing, counseling and study. I ask them to consider actions that will better their social, relational being, i.e. joining community organizations and doing service work. I ask them to think about spiritual practices that will help them move toward deeper truth, compassion and deep peace, i.e. prayer, meditation and creative expression.  The purpose of this exercise is not merely to encourage personal growth, but also to challenge students to consider, as Sheehan says, "changes needed in our society to build a new one."

So, my invitation to you is to take the time to create your own constructive program, to join in the liberating labor of love that is our sacred duty, to develop and use the gifts we each have been given to build Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "beloved community." May you know yourself to be a beloved child of our Creator.  May you live your constructive program in the world.  In the process, you will not only become the person you want and were created to be but also you will help others, and all of us become who we were meant to be as well.  Peace and blessings to you.

Their Secret, Prayer

I have asked many great spiritual leaders, like Mairead Maguire, Kathy Kelly, Arun Gandhi and yes even Mother Teresa, with whom I had the privilege of working in Calcutta, India, "What is your secret? How do you remain faithful and continue to do what you do, love in the face of such pain, suffering and violence?  All replied with the same one-word answer, "Prayer."  Their secret it seems, from their perspective, was as simple and as profound as the word, the act of, prayer.

What is prayer? Indeed, there is something mysterious or secretive about it.  Prayer occurs in the sacred and secretive depths of one's being, in the silence of the soul.  Prayer can be a conversation. Prayer can be total silence.  Prayer can occur when one is still or when when one sings or walks or works meditatively.  Prayer requires presence, full awareness and listening. Prayer pays attention. Prayer requires truth and honesty.  Prayer is about relationship.  Prayer is done all alone. Prayer is about blessing and being blessed.  Prayer searches.  Prayer accepts. Prayer can be playful.  Prayer can be pained.  Prayer is melody.  Prayer seeks harmony.  Prayer is question. Prayer is answer. Prayer heals. Prayer reconciles.  Prayer restores right relationship. Prayer liberates. Prayer cries out. And if we believe spiritual mentors and leaders from all traditions, cultures, geographies, across the millennia, prayer is the secret to living life to its fullest, to living a liberated life that sees most deeply the truth that we are mysteriously connected, that we are all sisters and brothers, beloved community.

Yesterday the Catholic Cardinals selected a Pope.  What many, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, seemed to be moved, if not captivated, by was Pope Francis' first relational act with the people, he bowed humbly and asked the people to pray for him.  Clearly, by this simple, sacred act, he was rooting himself in prayer, not merely his own prayer, but the power of prayer, and his own need not only to pray but also to be prayed for.  The secret of prayer is that it simultaneously gives and receives, simultaneously sets the self aside and allows one to touch the depths of one's truest self.  

Call it what you will, we are being invited by these spiritual leaders to take time to pray, to meditate, to enter into silence, to be fully present to both our sacred gifts and our sacred neediness. Let us continue to hold one another in prayer, to bow to the divine present in each of us, to enter into the mystery and secret power that prayer possess, that we possess in prayer.

Empathy and Hope

What does it mean to empathize? To have empathy? I suggest that it requires first that we see in the 'other' our sister, our brother.  That we strive to put ourselves in the place of the other, that we contemplate what it is that she or he is experiencing. That we attempt, as best we can, to walk in the shoes or sandals of the other.  Empathy, by definition, "is the capacity to recognize emotions that are being experienced by another sentient or fictional being."  It is the precursor to compassion. For,  "one may need to have a certain amount of empathy before being able to experience compassion."

Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us that it is not enough to say that we 'are.' We must come to know and see, with all of our senses and our entire being, that we 'inter-are.' We exist in relationship.  We are connected. Our well-being is dependent upon the well-being of others. Our very being, our life, is woven into the fabric of our inter-being, the life of our sisters and brothers, our human community, our ecological and environmental interdependence.  The very air we breathe, the life we live, depends upon the trees, the plants, the sky, the earth, the oceans, the parents, sisters, brothers, with whom we share this extraordinary time and place.

What if we saw the gang member as our brother? What if we saw the terrorist as our sister? What if we saw, empathized with, recognized and experienced the emotions of the downtrodden, the outsider, the homeless, the mentally ill, the neglected, the orphan, the widow, as our own?  What might be different? What might our life and family and community look like?

Can we see with the eyes of love, that we are all brothers and sisters of love? Can we experience profoundly what it means truly to stand in someone elses shoes? Can we absorb the delight of kinship?

If we can, how can we not then bow before the mystery and grace of life and smile, and maybe even sing an Ode to Joy?

Empathy invites us to see differently and deeply, to love tenderly, to live justice, and to walk humbly with our sisters and brothers, our ancestors, our fathers and mothers, our Creator.  Empathy compels compassion and compassion "is regarded as a fundamental part of human love, and a cornerstone of greater social interconnection and humanism." Empathy calls us to compassion. Compassion invites love, connection and community.  Love, connection and community allow us to care for our children and hear a child sing of amazing grace.

As we listen to her song, how can we not then discover our own, native, indigenous grace and the song we are meant to sing with empathy, compassion, love, joy and hope in the world?

 

This is my hope for me, for you, for all of us - that in empathy you know compassion and love, and that this knowing leads you to joy, and song and hope. May you be full of hope. May you be hope-full.