Day 806 Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Believing is seeing our connection: We are one.

Seeing All the Things

In its truest sense, religion should reconnect human beings—bind them again—to the creation, to one another, to the divine, to love.

Religion should reveal to us how much we need one another to survive and thrive. Religion should be revelatory and revolutionary, helping us see how our biases about color, gender, sexuality, and class cause deep hurt to both body and soul. . . .

The teaching of rabbi Jesus is simple: Love God. Love neighbor. Love self. Love period. . . .

At a lecture in Israel, I heard one of my favorite rabbis, Donniel Hartman, say, “A life of faith isn’t just about walking with God, but how one walks with humanity. The core feature of a moral life is to see. Choosing not to see is immoral.

The goal of religion is to improve our willingness and our ability to see.” A spiritual life is supposed to help us see better. The aim of Love, and any God worth worshipping, is improved sight. . . .

An ethical and moral life is about letting go of indifference and learning how to see. It’s about waking up to love ourselves, love our posse, and love our world. Imagine love as our shared spiritual practice, binding us to one another, enabling us to see our connection—that we are kin. . . .

In order to live a moral life, a good life, an ubuntu life in which we recognize the divinity of every person, we must commit to a life of love that means seeing all the things. See your neighbor suffering and do something about it. See a stranger laboring under a heavy load and help out. See lies spoken and shared in social media and call foul. See a friend soaring, and say, “I see you, beautiful creature!” to build their self-love tank. . . .

Friend, you are the only one standing where you stand, seeing what you see, with your vantage point, your story. You are right there for a reason: to have, as my dear friend Ruby Sales says, “hindsight, insight, and foresight.” I want us to learn to see, with our eyes wide open, how best to be healers and transformers. I want us to really see, to fully awaken, to the hot-mess times we are in and to the incredible power we have to love ourselves into wellness. . . .

I want us open to revelation, not afraid of it, and open to the ways that it will provoke us to believe assiduously in how lovable we each are, and in the love between us and among us because, actually, believing is seeing.

Believing is seeing our connection: We are one.

For Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, religion at its best teaches us how to “see” with greater clarity, which increases our courage and capacity to love ourselves, others, even our enemies.