Here
is some Buddha wisdom that speaks to me: “Few are they who cross to the further
shore. Most merely run up and down the bank.”
How
restrained, how meager our experience of life often is. We settle in to
comfortable limits and hold on to what we've always thought and believed and
done. We walk the old territory up and down the mundane spaces of our days and
miss so much.
I’m
guilty. Most of us are.
Huge
swaths of our modern society seem locked in some circumscribed routine of
thought and action. Where are the social revolutionaries of the past? Where are
the political and religious trouble makers, the heroes and heroines who stir up
the status quo and arouse change that improves life for all of us? I want to be
one of them.
Robert
Kennedy convinced his president brother that school segregation was
intolerable. He fought union corruption and the mafia influence. “We will not
stand by or be aloof,” he said in a speech to the University of Georgia Law
School, “we will move.” He did move. And so did society under his influence for
the good of many. A politician with a conscience and compassion. Unheard of
today. I admire his solidarity with humanity in spite of his family wealth and
position.
Mother
Teresa, uninterested in money or power or fame, was restless in the safety of
her convent. On a personal retreat away from others she felt moved to do
something for the poor and the sick. She received medical missions training so
she could be helpful. Then one day, dressed for the first time in a white blue
bordered sari, she walked out of the convent into the dirty streets of Calcutta
to, as she later said, find and serve Jesus “in the unwanted, the unloved, the
uncared for.” She was eventually followed by some of her female students. And
in time, with them by her side, she started the Charity of Sisters Order. She
went into the shacks of the poor and washed the sores of children. She lifted
old men out of their filth and fed them and nursed them to health. She held women
dying with tuberculosis and leprosy and defied disease to stop her efforts to
care. “As to my calling,” she said, “I belong to the world. As to my heart, I
belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.” Bold. Unafraid. Selfless. I envy that
spirit. I am embarrassed by my own reluctance to be so giving; to do something
brave and loving without regard to my own ego.
Martin
Luther King, Jr. endured the mocking violent bigoted crowds of the 60s and
fought for Civil Rights. An ordained educated minister he did not sit in some
lavish television studio manipulating the gullible for money to finance summer
homes and luxury cars for himself. He did not court politicians for power and
greed. Instead, he walked the streets of the dangerous South in protest of
black poverty and cheap wages and segregated communities. He was jailed. He was
vilified. He was threatened. And finally he was murdered. But what
extraordinary changes he prompted. He gave dignity to his race and raised a
whole generation of Americans to see the evil and inhumanity of racial hatred
and prejudice. I want his vision, his abundant courage, his love of people, his
hope for social progress.
These
and others not as well known are those who stopped pacing up and down the banks
and forged the deep waters, ignoring the clear dangers, contending with hidden
obstacles, and, following a higher purpose of life than just existence, monotony,
security and triviality, made a difference where they were. Flawed. Human.
Mortal. Still, they were not dissuaded from their cause.
I
want to walk out into those deep places that carry one over to the further
shore. I want to know what it is to live expansively, to see needs and meet
them, whatever the effort or the cost or the trouble.
We
don’t any of us have to have illusions of grandeur to do this. Just a
willingness to cross the river and see what we’re willing to learn and become
in our journey to be a fully loving growing person.
©
2014 Timothy Moody
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