This I Believe
Agnostic to the core,
The first child of atheist Unitarian Universalists,
I don’t know what to believe about other or future realms.
I don’t swear allegiance to a flag or genuflect.
I believe nationalists and religionists have it easier,
But to me, life’s not black and white, clear and easy.
It’s confusing, colorful, complex, even sometimes catastrophic.
I believe we’re evolving,
But I also believe we act a lot like ravenous dinosaurs.
I believe that, “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism… [can not be] conquered,” as Martin Luther King, Jr. warned, prophetically.
People are more important here.
I believe the vast majority of people everywhere have the capacity for love,
And that can’t be said for dinosaurs.
I believe progress consists of more love.
Ergo, evolution is progressive.
I believe in love.
It’s not surprising that my daughter, Raleigh, teaches me love (Hallmark spoon-fed me that one).
What has surprised me is that, no less than yoga, meditation and other definitively spiritual pursuits, Building Bridges showed me the power and the necessity of intentionality and inner transformation.
I believe in intentionality; I believe it works for me.
I believe surrender is important, too,
And inner transformation.
I am immensely intrigued by Buddha walking through the battlefield smiling,
I emulate him sometimes, and mean to more often.
But I am mired in emotion.
I believe emotion needs expression (or it can get dangerous).
Yet all I really want to evince is love, not anger, or angst.
My inner evolution mirrors the world, moving slowly, muddling, misstepping.
I don’t know what to believe.
I believe in love.
I believe love leads, ineluctably, to justice and peace.
I believe in the work of justice and peace.
I’ve always believed it’s my job to do something to seek justice in the world, to do something to abolish hate, cruelty, torture, rape, racism, sexism, discrimination, bigotry, the execution of people and animals, the degradation of this precious environment.
I believe it’s my job to do something to promote peace.
I believe war is obsolete, as Buckminster Fuller observed,
I believe, “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake,” as Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress, put it.
I believe in a world government to keep rogues like the Bush regime in line.
While I can celebrate Dr. King’s legacy,
I still grieve his assassination (I was eleven).
I grieve for how far afield Dr. King’s vision of the beloved community seems yet to lie.
I’d like to tell you my idealism is intact, my energy inexhaustible, that I still believe everybody is redeemable.
But I believe some people lack empathy and conscience and thus the capacity for love.
Still, some 97 per cent of us are capable of love, I believe, and thus of peace and justice,
Capable of living Dr. King’s vision of the beloved community, where poverty, hunger, homelessness, discrimination, bigotry, greed, violence, and militarism are replaced by love, peace, and justice.
I believe we have the collective ability to overthrow the giant triplets of militarism, materialism and racism.
I believe we have the ability to level the playing field for the kindergarteners who enter Isaac Dickson Elementary School neglected, mistreated, un-read-to, under-loved.
I believe I can make a difference, most days;
Some days, though, I believe I’m tilting at windmills, or worse,
Betraying my own principles.
Evolution suggests that love is on the rise,
So I believe in love.
I can only hope for love’s further manifestation on earth, in other worlds, into eternity,
Since I can’t sustain a belief in some future or other idyll.
I fall back on hope, and further back, on simply doing the work,
In myself and in the world.
I believe in the work.
Thank you.