Ethical Action & the Spiritual Life

In light of the recent news of young children being forcibly separated from their mothers and fathers at the U.S.-Mexico border I wrote this letter to my Congressmen and women.

Dear Senator,

I am writing to you as a constituent of our state regarding my disgust and outrage about this Draconian Immigration Policy to separate children from their parents at the US-Mexico border.

This policy reeks of institutionalized racism which systematically dismantles and destroys communities of color, and is akin to the same sadistic practices in 18^th and 19^th century America when African American children were taken from their slave mothers and 20^th century policy that removed Native American children from their families on reservations.

What’s more, when U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has the audacity on Thursday, June 14^th, to use a Biblical verse as a means to justify this institutionalized racism against the most precious, most vulnerable, and most innocent among us—our children—I have to ask you, is a government that clearly is operating in a moral vacuum truly a democracy, let alone a civilized society?

Senator, I ask you to use your position of power and authority to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.  To continue to allow a cruel, harmful and ruthless policy against children on U.S. soil is beyond despicable, and I ask you to follow your own moral compass in order to fight against this practice. 

Because if we don’t try, then damn us all.

Yours in faith,

Claire

I decided to share this with you, because there is a beautiful long legacy in several religious and spiritual traditions of taking ethical, charitable or benevolent action as part of our embodied religious or spiritual life.

Examples abound.

+ Quakers and Black Churches in the history of the United States' Abolitionist Movement and Civil Rights Movement,

+ The work of Catholics in poor communities the world over including Mother Teresa's self-founded order The Missionaries of Charity,

+ The groups of South American Catholic priests who engaged in "Liberation Theology" during times of dictatorship,

+ The work of Jewish Rabbis who worked and collaborated with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and other Black Church leaders in 20th century Civil Rights work,

+ The early work of Buddhists like Thich Nhat Hanh and Aung San Suu Kyi who defended their countrymen and women in Vietnam and Burma respectively as part of "Engaged Buddhism,"

+ And in my own denomination, Unitarian Universalism, social justice is for many a critical, if not central, component of the expression of its faith that founded itself on "Deeds not Creeds."

Even in a secularized version of mindfulness, Western teacher and author Joseph Goldstein reminded an audience in 2014 at The Center for Mindfulness at UMASS Medical School in a talk called "Mindfulness: What it is and is Not," that the practice of mindfulness includes an ethical component.

Given this exceptional heritage, I invite you to consider how your own spiritual or religious homes may offer a foundation or stepping off point for ethical action in your own life.

May it be so.