HUMAN CAPACITY
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From: Shobarani R.
Date: Wednesday, March 7, 2007, 7:05 PM
Subject: Human capacity
Reply to: 258666
ID: 256292

Dear Mr. Bruce - Dear all

Vanakkam.

I met a person yesterday here in Malaysia. She was a Malay woman. She told me she could speak fluent Tamil. Seeing me surprised she said she was brought by a Tamil baby sitter when her parents went to work in the estate and so the baby sitter became her adopted parent and now she would celebrate both Hindu festivals as her adopted parents did and Muslim festival as her own parents did and follows both Indian and Malay customs. She told me those days in Malaysia it wasn't like now. Now when sending kids to a baby sitter people think if Malay we should send to Malay and if Chinese we should send to Chinese and if Indian we should send our kid to Indian. Those days it was not like that. We all lived together in better harmony. That sounded so wonderful. She said she now teaches her kid too celebrate the Muslim festival as well as Hindu festival. Just as her I’m sure there will be someone somewhere in every corner of the world spreading the hopes in daily life that it is truly possible to live in perfect harmony with love amidst different race and religion.

Dr. Kings call, 'This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men', seems to me still the call of the hour.

More than an opportunity I think it is a responsibility of interfaith -- to conceive a new world, defined and harmonized by the ideals expressed in Dr. King's vision.

------ On 2/28/07, Bruce Schuman wrote ------

Dear Mrs Shobarani Ragunatha Naicker - Dear All --

Good morning from Santa Barbara.

Mrs. Naicker, let me say that I share your admiration for Swami Vivekananda. He has been one of my heroes all of my life. As many here will know, Swami Vivekananda made a dramatic appearance on the world stage at the 1893 Parliament of World Religions -- the precursor to this contemporary organization -- stunning the world with his brilliance and authenticity.

Along this exact same line -- the power of love to transform the world through the grace of God, call it what you will -- I recently discovered the text of the Nobel Prize Lecture, delivered by Rev. Martin Luther King, on Dec. 11, 1964.

He, too, alludes to the transforming and universal power of love. This statement from Dr. King is a kind of 'summa' of interfaith philosophy -- a direct and simple expression of its essence.

These words are taken from the conclusion of his lecture.

'A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together.'

This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited a big house, a great 'world house' in which we have to live together - black and white, Easterners and Westerners, Gentiles and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Moslem and Hindu, a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interests who, because we can never again live without each other, must learn, somehow, in this one big world, to live with each other.

This means that more and more our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. We must now give an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in our individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response which is little more than emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish- Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the First Epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. As Arnold Toynbee says: 'Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.' We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. Love is the key to the solution of the problems of the world.

This powerful and direct statement points the way forward, for a world in transition, struggling to find its identity. This is one of the great opportunities for interfaith -- to conceive a new world, defined and harmonized by the ideals expressed in Dr. King's vision.

http://interspirit.net/democracy