I hope you'll watch this short video. I hope it is a life-enriching three minutes for you. It was for me.
My family did not participate in any organized religion when I was a child. My father said -- and he told the truth -- that organized religion was responsible for intolerance, hate, suffering, war -- for so much damage and destruction in this world, that he wanted no part of it. Yet, as I've grown up, I've also seen how organized religion -- at its best -- can also be responsible for so much of the tolerance, love, compassion, and peace in this world. Religion is fallible, because humans are fallible.Religion is both evil and good because humans are both evil and good. Wherever you stand on the religious spectrum,it can't be discounted that most humans, for whatever reason, seem hard-wired to want to search. To seek higher meaning, greater purpose, in the world around us. We seek, we strive to know the unknowable, name the unnameable.
Especially in today's confusing, post-modern world, we seek. As the world's conflicts and questions become increasingly convoluted, many have fallen back upon various strict and separate fundamentalist interpretations. They cling to rigid rules, because when everything else is changing at breakneck speed, ANYTHING that seems firmly cast in stone -- even rigid fundamentalist dogma -- can evidently have its certain appeal. Others have given up on religion altogether, feeling that it doesn't provide fulfilling answers in a post-nuclear age.
As in politics, so in religion: I love the middle ground. I love the idea of a charter for compassion, because it seems to me that now, more than ever, we humans on this globe need to look for whatever shreds of commonality we can muster. The basic Golden Rule is common to all the world's religions. It still seems like the brightest, smartest, most optimistic approach possible for humans to take in their seeking, their striving.
This charter for compassion, first proposed by world-famous religious scholar and historian Karen Armstrong, commits to a world vision where compassion and tolerance are encouraged.
A world vision such as this -- especially as we head into the holiday season -- is a joy to behold.
We all can add our voices to it.
For more information, visit http://www.charterforcompassion.com/.
For Karen Armstrong's full speech upon acceptance of the TED award, see: