An unbound book is a collection of individual pages without permanence. Susceptible to change, accidental or intentional, a sheaf of separate thoughts, images, or words that easily displays its vulnerability unless bundled, tied, or somehow joined together. Stacked paper may be disrupted by wind, carelessness, or malevolence. The spine of bound pages unites them as one.
Such ligation can, of course, be broken. Time wears lost glue. Forces that bring ideas together can tear them asunder.
And so it is that we watch with no minor dismay as those who would dismantle the bonds of human social enterprise all too easily find strength, all too quickly rip at the fabric of our past. We are here, today, through the collective writing over millennia of chapter upon chapter of struggle, of perseverance, of questioning, of tentative responses. We have history – even if we have frequently documented it with bias, even if we have averted our collective gaze from its less uplifting aspects. Despite our frequent pit and pratfalls, certain events have indeed occurred. Identifiable people, as individuals or groups, have helped advance a common cause through peace and moderation. Others have sought to dominate, to control, to advance nothing other than their own status, influence, or gain. While there is unarguably much “grey” and more than a healthy dose of imperfection in the reading of human time on earth, there is remarkable clarity as well: some people have lived, and died, on behalf of something collaborative, something ideal, something more than themselves, something beyond individuals, nation-states, and dominion over others. Virtuous and selfless humans have walked the same soil and pavement as ourselves. Their legacies, written or remembered, remain. But what of their human example? What of the imperfections of their paths? What of the blatant and calculated disregard for the decency of their journeys, the sanctity of their transcendence above selfishness, the ultimate humility of their story and sometimes personal sacrifice?
It is often said that we need a new social contract. I would offer that first we need a re-binding.
For many, religion offers an ideal epoxy for our epoch. After all, the very word suggests a re-connection, a rejoining. Perhaps. There is, however, another aspect to religion’s etymological heritage, one related to “re-reading”, which should give us pause. How often has history witnessed destructive radicalism masquerading as divine counsel or intervention? The book of human experience is full of woeful tales of conquest accomplished in the name of a vengeful or sponsoring deity. As a system of beliefs and practices related to morality and spiritual influence, religion has much to offer. As an excuse for conflict and the imposition of one set of answers about the nature of being over others, religion has much to be held to reckon.
Consider the culture wars inflamed once again in America. Founded on principles of secularism and religious freedom, our country risks irreparable strife as a result of one tradition’s expanding control of judicial and political processes. Where is the liberty in a single spiritual tradition’s rule of influence over an entire nation’s rules of law? It is one thing to fundamentally disagree about ethics and our collective moral compass. It is quite another to eliminate personal choice – in beliefs – through the institutionalization of one religious value system over another. And how has the furnace of certain incendiary issues been fueled by the bluster of personal aggrandizement from those who might benefit from riding the latest divisive cause into elected office? I believe in God. But the God of my heart, my soul, may not be same as yours, at least in how we understand who and what such a God is, and how and why any of us should respond to such an understanding. Is this the conversation we are having? Or has a potentially constructive dialogue about such topics been hijacked by the conniving will of those with other agenda?
This past week I watched a TV science show on the beginning of time. The physics of the Big Bang were described and visually depicted, including the revelation of the conditions that preceded the explosion of infinity from the incalculable hyper-density of what actually went bang. Part of me was drawn to learning more. Another part, some core awareness within my being, recognized that fragments of folly lay hidden within the mirrored descent into time’s origins. To increasingly know the Creator is not to become the Creator. Bound together, are we the Creator? No, I think we all would agree that we are not, and that, despite our burning curiosity, we do not intend to be. Because connecting to the universal life force does not make any individual that life force. Neither does a firm, even fervent belief in the nature or meaning of the life force, whether from a scientific or religious perspective, give the holder of that belief the right or authority to foist such a perspective on others with different beliefs. Such is the essence of liberty, of freedom, of the elementary messiness of the human enterprise. We are bound together by our common lack of insight, tethered by our inchoate capacity to explore how we are more similar than different, how our destiny is more collaborative than individualistic.
What adhesive then might help us find new cohesion? Is it science? Is it the arts or the global environment? Is it an unflagging commitment to shared humility and a resolute acceptance of the infinite limits of singular wisdom?
Re-ligare. Re-legere. Re-ality. Soon.