Leading Toward, Not Fleeing From
I’ve been traveling with my wife in celebration of our 35th wedding anniversary. We went to Israel and to Jordan to visit what we, as Christians, and like many others term “The Holy Land”. We sought, in part, a respite from our times and our world. Hence, we generally avoided news from back home in the USA, news so often noxious these days and vexing to the spirit. Yet, word did reach us, including of the fresh evincing of anti-Semitism.
As readers of this newsletter know, I’ve written about and worked on what we now call DEI for decades. I’ve had the good fortune to work with dedicated and evolving colleagues as well as with firmly and broadly value-based organizational leaders. I’ve developed and delivered workshops as well as worked with a wide demography of managerial and executive clients. I’ve too often shaken my head at well-intentioned and yet so superficial, painfully ineffective, and pablum ladened attempts to improve our working connections across identity group lines.
I’d suggest that we should focus not on not being something but rather on being something, on moving toward far more than on fleeing from. Most fundamentally, do we believe in human rights and, if so, then just what do we mean by that and how strongly and how actively do we believe? How might we make common cause with others holding such aspiration?
In that spirit and in full view of recently expressed antisemitism: Here’s an excerpt from one (11/8/22) of Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations from the Center for Action and Contemplation. The excerpt comes from Barbara Brown Taylor’s working with Raimon Panikkar’s teachings. Yes, Rohr forwarding Taylor drawing on Panikkar--we need one another to do the hard work of this aspiring.
In 1918, Panikkar was born in Spain of a Catholic mother and a Hindu father. The Taylor article presents a key teaching of his as “Eventually all people of faith must decide how they will think about and respond to people of other (and no) faiths. Otherwise, they will be left at the mercy of their worst impulses when push comes to shove and their fear deadens them to the best teachings of their religions.”
Taylor continues, drawing on an experience of her own.
“Once, at the end of a field trip to the Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam, the imam ended his meeting with students by saying, ‘Our deepest desire is not that you become Muslim, but that you become the best Christian, the best Jew, the best person you can be. In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Thank you for coming.’ Then he was gone… I could do that, I thought. I could speak from the heart of my faith, wishing others well at the heart of theirs—including those who had no name for what got them through the night. It might mean taking down some fences, but turf was no longer the reigning metaphor.”
She can. We all can.
May we get to it and stay at it…together and for everyone’s sake.
Paddle on.
Greg