Belonging and Becoming: The Challenges We Face

[dweller]

Remarks by Robert Jensen

St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, Austin, TX, August 14, 2005

'We gather here this afternoon, challenged by Cindy Sheehan's courage. Out of her struggle to come to terms with
the ultimate loss has come a moment for all of us to commit ourselves to peace, and to the actions necessary to
bring peace to the world.

There is another opportunity that arises out of Ms. Sheehan's vigil, a struggle that takes us beyond that ultimate
loss. Though I am not of the church, I will borrow its language: It is the struggle to reconcile that we are spirit living in
flesh.

Because we are flesh, we know best that with which we are familiar. We love most those around us. We yearn for
connections to real people in real places, people we can touch and who can touch us. We love most intensely those
people around us. We hold our children in our arms, and we breathe with them as one, and we love them deeply in
each breath. And that is as it should be. We are flesh that touches and is touched.

But at the same time we are spirit. We know that to live our humanity to its fullest requires moving beyond the flesh.

And so we know there can be no difference between how we treat those we love and those on the other side of the
world who we will never know and never touch. If our lives and the lives of the ones we love have value -- if by virtue of
being human we have a claim to life and dignity in living -- then everyone must have that same claim.

We know that the children we hold in our arms have exactly the same value as those children we will never see, held
in the arms of those we will never know. If our lives in flesh are to make any sense, our spirit must move beyond the
ones we touch, the ones we love.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0815-20.htm

dp

[dweller]

1. ... can't believe i have to do this ...

:kick:


dp

[dweller]

2. one last

:kick:

dp