We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness by Alice Walker

Author:Alice Walker [Walker, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Collections, Social Science, Religion, Poetry, General, Spirituality, American, Sociology, Essays
ISBN: 9781595585899
Google: dpGq10ilPhEC
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2013-12-13T21:18:35+00:00

Understanding that the world is engaged in ever increasing spirals of violence and suffering, I asked Spirit to give us a peace chant and mudra. I will teach it to you, if you will please stand.

When humankind writes new laws of behavior for the world, in some Time quite different from now, one of the first must be that no one will harm anyone less powerful without first visiting her or him; eating and drinking with her or him, and meeting his or her family. I am deeply disturbed by the long-distance murder of poor and defenseless people that passes for legitimate “war” in our time. It is incredibly cowardly, and I marvel that more people don’t jump up and down in the streets, pointing this out. How much courage does it take to point and shoot a missile at a town you’ve never seen, filled with children whose voices you’ve never heard?

What is religion for if it is not to protect each other? To see and understand each other’s night-mares and fears, worries and heartaches? Our dreams and hopes for ourselves and our offspring? If a religion’s primary meaning becomes the destruction of its enemies, it has ceased to be of use in the healing of the world. It has ceased to be religious.

I am glad that I traveled to our “enemy” the Soviet Union when I was young. Deeply grateful that I have made my own connection to the Cuban people, a connection of solidarity and love I will honor always. I am happy to have met and loved actual Africans, women and men, boys and girls, so that as the world watches Africans die in the millions of IMF- and World Bank-engineered poverty and instability, I know from experience the loss we bear. I do not grieve in the abstract, but in the heart.

Think of revolutionaries and revolutions you have admired. Not just Fidel Castro or Che Guevara, Rosa Luxemburg or Martin Luther King, Jr., or Gandhi. Christ and the Buddha were also revolutionaries. Contemplate what it has meant to many of them to face relentless repression. Consider the loss of new thought, new ways of being for humanity, because of this repression.

Is there a “bogeyman” person (like Fidel Castro) or “Axis-of-Evil” country (like Iran or North Korea) you would like to know more about? Consider a visit. What will be the greatest surprise? That the people remind you very much of folks you know. That they are trying to live their lives the best way they can, just as you are. That there are only fathers and mothers and children and grandparents, like everywhere else. Ask yourself how you will feel if your government harms them.

I believe Americans are predominantly good. That they are generous and warmhearted. Kind and often passionate about freedom and justice. Any struggle for peace, freedom, love or justice I have found myself in has been thick with Americans. This is one reason foreigners have considered Americans “lucky.” It has never been only our materialism they have admired, but also our spirit.

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