Religion, dignity and the malevolent artifice of false divisions

I wrote a poem a number of years ago that was taken up by a local newsletter in my old home county in England. When this poem was requested for publication, it was submitted with a bit of explanatory text:

“This composition I first drafted in rough form during a lifetime (for so it seemed) of grave health concerns. ?It was originally penned under the title “By the cap of God” – an odd phrase which, clichéd as it seems, simply came to being in my mind – together with the original form of the poem (wherein each line began with that titular phrase). ?The subject drew from a sense of a pervasive wrong in this world – a wrong that seemed empowered to bar any path towards future happiness and salvation; a wrong which, by extrapolation, threatened to stifle the very hopes and dreams of which living is so much composed.? In such melancholy, many may succumb to doubt and, thereby, fall. ?Others, rarely considering the costs borne by those that came before, nor the payments that must be made by those that shall come after, merely sit and await a great gift from God; a salvation to lay their path and fulfill their destiny for them. Most often, these very bystanders, anticipating that wave of a “magic wand”; patiently, even theistically expectant that the future they so long for will be beatifically bestowed upon them; are those that profess the greatest faith, but are yet and at once the saddest of all. ?Their perceptions are little more than the false reflections of a twisted mirror devised of their own dangerous complacency – complacency bred of prevarication and denial, complacency built in defense against a cold reality of pain and despair and daily angst. ?Regardless, it is the fundamental glory and beneficence of the life and liberty with which we have been bestowed, that existence is never futile, hope is never truly in vain, and faith is its own reward. ?Our lives are?a gift - whether bestowed by an omnipotent entity or the arguably equal omnipotence of evolution. ?The continued benefits of that gift must, however, be consistently earned and re-earned, for one can all too easily fall backwards in the wait to move forwards.”

A second piece, published in the same issue of that newsletter, was in the form of a collection of questions and thoughts that arose following a reading of the Gnostic Gospel of St Thomas. ?In this, admittedly controversial, text, Jesus is recorded to have said: “Lift up the stone, and you will find me there. Split a piece of wood, and I am there.” Indigenous "Native American" tribes somewhat similarly quite widely believed that within everything?(not just every living?thing), resides the Great Spirit. ?The Hindu monk, Swami Vivekananda, once said: "Is there any God? Is there anyone to be loved, any such one capable of being loved? Loving the stone would not be much good. We only love that which understands love, that which draws our love. So, with worship. Never say [that] there is a man in this world of ours who worshipped a piece of stone [as stone]. He always worshipped [the omnipresent being in the stone]." It has always struck me that in this holistic (perhaps animistic) view, is the true concept of omnipresence. ?So many beliefs, it seems, share far more in common than divides them apart.

I post these meanderings in reflection of the Roman Catholic Pontiff’s September 2024 visit to Asia and, in particular, the interaction between Pope Francis and the Grand Imam Nasaruddin Umar in Indonesia. Extending from my words on belief above, the Grand Imam and the Pope have demonstrated at the highest levels of what are so often betrayed - falsely - as opposing faiths, that the webs that bind us as people are far more powerful than any barriers put up to?divide us.

The benevolence and reciprocal respect demonstrated in their interaction and the warmth and welcome of the people of all faiths across Indonesia were inspiring. ?In these dark days of seemingly enforced division and bitterness and disdain and intolerance around the world, we should - we must - all aspire to emulate the true and benevolent heart of faith shown by these two great men of God.