The Way of the Heart 1

Adversarial politics widens the Us-Them chasm. It keeps people entrenched and petrified in their individual beliefs and positions, it continues cycles of psychological and/or physical violence from one generation to the next. While conventional forms of political action might succeed in changing regimes, they usually do poorly at moving hearts on either side of the political divide; they fail, altogether, to have any impact on the hearts of the brutalizer and the brutalized. The vanquished bide their time until they can dominate their oppressors.

Brutality brutalizes both the 'brutalizee' (by causing him/her to suffer brutality) AND the brutalizer (by causing him/her to forget his/her own humanity.) The secret to ending brutality is located in the heart. In moving the heart. The enormous task that awaits humanity, then, is to find a radical way to remind people of their own humanity: how the harm I do my neighbor destroys me as a human being; how the perception that my neighbor is somehow less of a human being shrinks my own heart, making it less compassionate, more monstrous than it needs to be. My neighbor's survival is in his humanity, my redemption is in mine.

The way of the heart is to find a way to reach the hearts of those whose hearts have not completely calcified. The way of the heart is through gaps and openings that still exist in each one of us.

How can I even conceive of entering your heart if mine is still closed to me?

Into your heart through mine.

To find the quiet path that disappears inside my heart only to meander out of yours ... is to unravel everything.

Only then.
Only then.
Might the world change.
Might the hatred cease.
And love spring.

Aubrey Menen on 'patriotism' (italics mine)

There are no national virtues. We are alone, each one of us. If we are good, we are good ourselves. If we are bad, the virtues of others will not make us better. We cannot borrow morals. They are ours or they do not exist for us …. A nation cannot make our souls for us.

Neither can any group. In this cold age we have a great faith in groups. But this faith may betray us …. We here in Europe have learned that very bitterly. We have said, “We are doing fine.” “We are jolly good fellows.” “We are getting things done.” Then came the knock on the door in the small hours, the covered truck, and the rubber truncheon.

We cannot take refuge in a political idea. The man who becomes a communist [or a champion of ‘freedom fries’ for that matter] does not add a cubit to his stature, although he thinks he does. To live in a free land does not lessen our responsibility to ourselves. A narrow, bad man is not made any less narrow, or any less bad, by the freedom of his institutions. Every mouse was perfectly free to express his opinion as to who should bell the cat. One was elected by universal secret suffrage. When the election was over, they were still mice.

Or you may have accepted, as I have, the moral discipline of a great church. That does not make either you or me any less responsible for our own souls. Nobody can help us, in the end. We cannot say: “I did so-and-so because my neighbour, who agrees with my religious views, did the same.” You are asked to love your neighbour as yourself: you are not called upon to share his opinions ....

Nor can you take refuge in your caste or your class …. But … all sensible men are agreed that to love one’s country is a noble thing. Is this proved wrong because we must make our own souls? Not in the least. It is a noble love when it is honest, because when it is honest it is a discipline. First, it teaches us to obey the laws. This we must do because all men are created equal in at least one thing: not one of them is to be trusted to rule the rest unless he is restrained by law. And if he is not restrained by it, our discipline teaches us to disobey him and reestablish the rule of law according to the traditions of our native land. Secondly, it disciplines us in our dealings with other countries, provided it is a true patriotism and not a false one.

A false patriotism is that which makes us love not our country but the ideas that have been put into our minds about it, and thus about ourselves. A true patriotism is a simpler thing. It is to love the land of one’s birth: its hills and mountains, cities and skies: its sea; its air; its language and the people who nurtured you. It reminds us constantly not of our greatness, but of our true size. We were not born across a continent or bred at a straddle between boundaries. We were born in a place, a house, a town, a village. We did not have a hundred million fathers and mothers. We had one father and one mother….

The man who has lost this love has lost himself. He has no measuring rod. It is he who joins the Party. The man who keeps this love can face the world with great confidence. He knows that however vast the decision he is called upon to make, when he decides between a matter of right and wrong, he must be no bigger than his breeches.

[Dead Man in the Silver Market, 1953: Aubrey Menen]

Belonging To The World

unable
to belong
to the world
unable
to escape
it

tired
of every
shove and jostle
that has brought
me to this moment
called now

weary
of always striving
to become
something
someone
shinier
sharper
more improved
than who I am
right now

groping
for my connection
to the world
still looking
for my purpose

screw
the whisperings
the projections
the fantasies
the idea
of an unjust god
the notion
of ungodly justice

desiring
no mind

as half the world
dreams
the other half
toils

as dawn spills into day
and the geese fly south

I Believe

I believe I do not know much about anything.
I believe I know now a lot that I did not know before.
I believe people can kill in the name of their beliefs.
I believe people can get killed for their beliefs.
I believe I inhabit a physical body that will perish one day, as is the “dharma” – the innate nature – of all things physical.
I believe I do not know for certain what happens to me after this physical body disappears.
I believe I have been told many things about the meaning and purpose of life (and the afterlife) by well-meaning parents, teachers, clergy, perfect strangers, books, films, paintings and diverse sources too numerous to list here.
I believe I do not believe all of them any more.
I believe I am a seeker of truth.
I believe as a seeker of truth I cannot afford to either believe or disbelieve in the absence of direct evidence.
I believe what commonly circulates as truth are sets of cultural axioms that are half-understood, poorly-digested, infinitely interpreted, endlessly argued, and very, very tired.
I believe humans have a genuine desire for truth.
I also believe most of us don’t have the energy or stomach to embark on an authentic search for truth.
I believe we settle for half-truths, dogma, and rituals when we don’t have enough energy or courage to ask those questions that challenge what we are told is sacred.
I believe there is an awareness that is greater than all our culturally-relative versions of truth put together.
I believe truth is not dogma, ritual, or the ideas of the culture I was born into.
I believe all cultures suffer from racism, bigotry, injustice, prejudice and intolerance.
I believe the unquestioning acceptance of 'truth' keeps us imprisoned – in prisons of hate, fear, grief, and cycles of suffering.
I believe Truth is Love.
I also believe we don’t fully get what love means.

I believe in sunrises.
I believe in sunsets.
I believe in dewdrops.
I believe in tears that wash into rivers that merge with oceans that flow into dark rain clouds once again.
I believe that these too shall pass one day.
I believe in holding you close to me as your body is wracked with grief.
I believe in splitting my sides as we laugh together.
I believe in the glimmerings of humanity I see in a few, including myself.
I believe in much more than I can conceive of or write about.
I believe everything I believe could be wrong.
I believe some of what I believe just might be right.
I believe in this moment that we share … this moment in which I believe in you.
This moment in eternity in which I believe in me.