Spirituality in the Building of Peace

Leonardo Boff

13/06/2010

Opinión

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All factors and practices in the diverse sectors of personal and social life must contribute to the building of peace, which is longed for so deeply these days. The effort would be incomplete if we did not include the perspective of spirituality.

Spirituality is that dimension in us that responds to the ultimate questions that are always present in our quests. Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is the meaning of the universe? What do we have to look forward to beyond this life?

Religions usually answer these concerns, but they do not have a monopoly on spirituality. Spirituality is as basic an anthropologic fact as will, power and libido. It appears when we feel part of a larger Whole. Spirituality is more than reason; it is an all-encompassing feeling that a loving Energy creates and sustains the universe and each and every one of us.

Human consciousness arose one day in the process of evolution from which we come. At one moment this consciousness realized that things are neither thrown at random nor juxtaposed by chance, each alongside the other. Human consciousness intuites that a «Conductor Thread» passes through them all, linking and re-linking them.

The stars that fascinate us in the warm tropical summer nights, the Amazon jungle in her majesty and immensity, the great rivers, such as the Amazon, rightly called the river-sea, the profusion of life in the fields, the symphonic noise of the birds in the virgin jungle, the multiplicity of cultures and of human faces, the mystery of the eyes of a newborn child, the miracle of the love between two people in love, all that reveals to us how diverse and unitary is our world universe.

Human beings have given a thousand names to this «Conductor Thread», Tao, Shiva, Allah, Yahve, Olorum and many more. All are subsumed by the word God. When this name is pronounced with reverence something stirs within the brain and the heart. Neurologists and neurolinguists have identified the «God point» in the brain. It is a point that raises the Hertzian frequency of the neurons as if they had received an impulse. This means that in the process of evolution an internal organ appeared through which the human being recognizes the presence of God within the universe. Evidently God is not only in this point of the brain, but in all life and in the whole universe. We are capable of recognizing God, however, starting from this point. And still more, we are capable of dialoguing with God, of raising up our plights to God, of paying tribute to the divine and expressing our gratitude for the gift of existence. Other times we do not say a thing. Silent and contemplative, we only feel God. And then our heart expands to the dimensions of the universe and we feel as large as God or we perceive that God becomes as small as us. It is an experience of non-duality, of immersion in the nameless mystery, of a fusion of the lover and the Beloved.

Spirituality is not only to know, but above all to be able to feel the radical dimensions of being human. The effect is a profound and soft peace, that comes from the Profound.

Humanity urgently needs this spiritual peace. Spiritual peace is the secret source that nourishes humanity in all its forms. It bursts from within, irradiates in all directions, elevates the quality of relations and touches the heart of persons of good will. That peace is made of reverence, respect, tolerance, benevolent understanding of the limitations of the other, and of the acceptance of the Mystery of the world. Spiritual peace nourishes love, caring, the will to welcome and to be welcome, of understanding and being understood, of forgiving and of being forgiven.

In a world as perturbed as ours, nothing is more sensible and noble than to anchor our search for peace in this spiritual dimension.

Then peace will be able to flourish in Mother Earth, in the immense community of life, in the relationships between cultures and peoples, and it will quiet the human hearth, which is so tired of searching.

- Leonardo Boff, Theologian, Earthcharter Commission

(Free translation from the Spanish by Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org,

Refugio del rio Grande, Texas, EE.UU.

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/142138