A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together.
This is the plot with which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) opens the last chapter, “The World House”, of his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? A disunited family under one roof; this “is the great new problem of mankind.”
Fifty seven years later, how is the World House? How is our family doing?
Scientifically and technologically, we appear to be progressing. Continued advancements in medicine and technology offer us a unique opportunity to live like never before. Stronger, faster, more reliable tools for communication invite us to live together like never before.
These external tools and instruments for living offer real benefits to our internal lives. Communication sustains connection. Connection encourages empathy. Empathy leads to compassion. Compassion in action produces peace.
And yet, in our internal lives - spiritually - we appear to be flat, flailing, regressing. Patterns persist in our World House that generate extraordinarily difficult obstacles for us to progress towards peace. These are the patterns of war, poverty, and racial injustice. Unprecedented prevalence of diseases of despair. Though these patterns are a tragedy, they are not inevitable. Of course, like most things, they are the consequences of our own actions.
We must use our minds as rigorously to plan for peace as we have used them to plan for war. - MLK
Without moral leaders in our World House angling towards community and connection, we all move away from living together in dignity and decency. Spiritual regression amidst scientific progression. A confusing but clear crisis. MLK said when we stop these non-peaceful patterns, when we solve these problems, we will have squared our moral progress with our scientific progress.
Squaring our moral progress with our scientific progress is my why. And, I invite you to consider how you can contribute to this mission too.
Why?
Because bringing these two measures closer in y-axis values will create more human flourishing. It will elevate the experience of living for us all. It will establish more dignified living for us all. The last half-century of science and globalization has proven what MLK proclaimed in his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” that all living beings “are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
Wouldn’t it be wise to adjust our moral creeds and deeds to reflect this realization? Wouldn’t it be wise to let our scientific progress inform and help fuel our moral progress?
We are in fact a widely separated family. Any family, whether separated for decades or recently married, cannot experience peace until each family member is with peace, not with violence. Moral progress towards peace must be measured by deeds not only creeds. Love is not only a word, love is action.
‘Peace’ is not something one finds by chance; it is the result of equality among people, peace is the result of love among people, the result of an end to exploitation. - Nestor Paz, My Life for My Friends
Moral progress doesn’t just happen because we wish it. It happens because we will it. A well-natured child still needs a nurturing home. Parents, teachers, coaches, caretakers, and more are needed to help us manifest the perfection already within us. We don’t achieve peace or moral progress by chance. We achieve it by making it our heading in the home, in the school, in the legislature, in the field, in the media, in the lab. We must strive towards it as a group just as any one person strives towards perfection.
If you will it, it is no dream. - Theodore Herzl
Moral progress is something we must be willing to work towards. Choosing chaos over community strains our forgiveness muscles. When elected or unelected leaders in our World House continue to choose chaos over community, we are tempted to substitute hope with skepticism and bitterness. We must watch out for this as bitterness blinds us and corrodes the personality of our soul. We must be willing to forgive and hold hope in order to work towards a just peace. We must be willing to continually forgive, no matter how stretched or sore our muscles.
Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude - MLK
We must set an intention to engage with our enemy; to exercise collaborative, constructive, coercive power. We must be willing to recognize that our feelings are caused by our own needs, not other people’s actions. We must be willing to see and share how other people’s actions support or threaten our needs so that we can make life more wonderful for each other.
If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner. - Nelson Mandela
This practice of love and nonviolence has to be a daily practice. No days off!!!
If history teaches anything, it is that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of an almost fanatical resistance. Evil must be attacked by a counteracting persistence, by the day-to-day assault of the battering rams of justice…
We must get rid of the false notion that there is some miraculous quality in the flow of time that inevitably heals all evils. There is only one thing certain about time, and that is that it waits for no one. If it is not used constructively, it passes you by. - MLK
Yes, our parents, partners, siblings, children, cousins, and in-laws, do not always make it easy for us to choose community over chaos. Yes, it is frustrating and difficult to choose community over chaos when the leaders of our family house and of our World House choose chaos over community. No, we cannot solely blame others for our own attitudes, feelings, and behaviors.
The last of human freedoms is the ability to choose one's attitude. - Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Others cannot be ultimately responsible for our own feelings or actions. We are able to act and we have a responsibility to do so. We must let our life speak. In the words of Rabbi Sharon Brous, we must be the “Light Force.” Let us lead with the force of love in order to strengthen our beloved community.
When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. - Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix, Mahatma Ghandi, Mitra Sen, Dr. Ambedkar, Robert Kennedy, Thich Nhat Hanh, John Lennon, Indira Ghandi, Anwar Sadat, Mother Theresa, Yitzak Rabin, Benazir Bhutto, Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond TuTu, Coleman McCarthy, and Linda Ryden are a few of our family’s past and present peacebuilders. They’ve continued an eternal ripple of love in action. Let us be inspired by their creative actions and response to our family’s dilemma. Let us learn from them how to concretize peace on earth. Let us let our lives speak.
Our hope for creative living in this world house that we have inherited lies in our ability to reestablish the moral ends of our lives in personal character and social justice. Without this spiritual and moral reawakening we shall destroy ourselves in the misuse of our own instruments. - MLK
May we use our gifts to bring understanding. To practice kindness so that we may build community with each other. So that from here, we can go home to a family that is working together to minimize its separateness, to unite once again.
Peace is our gift to each other. - Elie Wiesel
Love and understanding are also gifts to ourselves. They are instruments with which we can create heaven on Earth. We can continue to create peace for ourselves and gift it to others through mindful behaviors. As an elementary school peace teacher, here are some ways my students model how to do this…
If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. - Lao Tzu
I want to change direction. If you wish to as well, please connect with me. We must increase the peace together; from education to the environment, from consumer packaged goods to investment banking, from the private sector to the public sector. Our World House’s temple of peace has been developing for generations. We inherit a fantastic foundation on which we can continue the efforts of love, peace, and community. There is no end to the construction of our temple of peace. There is no end because the means - peace - is the end. We must keep our Light on and keep it going.
Let us be the Light force, the moral voice, the leader in the family who chooses community over chaos. Let us invest in making living together more wonderful. Let us lead with minds, hearts, and houses full of love. Let us choose community.
Where the Mind is Without Fear
By Rabindranath Tagore
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
