“How Do We Appreciate?” This past week Rosemary Gillespie died of stroke in Australia at the age of 69. Gillespie was an Australian lawyer, a life-long Quaker, and a woman who put her life on the line for peace. In the early 1990’s Gillespie, whose Aboriginal name was “Waratah,” was trying to obtain refugee status for a man from the island of Bougainville in New Guinea. She repeatedly tried to get information from the island, but nothing came. It was then that she learned that the New Guinea government was blockading the island because the residents were protesting the actions of a huge copper mine that was systematically destroying the island. When Gillespie learned that the main effect of the blockade was to deny the residents needed medical supplies and food; and when she heard of the deaths of numerous children due to the lack of medicine, she ran the blockade with the needed medicine. On Bougainville she learned of mass killings and concentration camps maintained by the New Guinea government. Over the next months she ran the blockade several more times, often coming under fire from Australian and New Guinea helicopters and ships. It was in this way that she was able to bring news of the plight of the Bougainville people to the attention of the world, obtain sworn affidavits that could be used in court, and was able to eventually help the people of Bougainville win their struggle to preserve their homeland. This wasn’t the only time Waratah Rose Gillespie put her life on the line. In 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq, she and a group of international peace activists acted as a human shield to protect a water treatment plant that was the sole source of water for almost three million people. Waratah Gillespie was one of those people in the world whose prime motivation wasn’t ideological, but was rather a deep love and appreciation for life. When she was running the Bougainville blockade, she was consistently quoted as being motivated by the vision of innocent children who were dying because of the lack of medicine. At one point she wrote a manifesto of peace. She wrote: We, the people of the world, appalled by the horror and cruelty of war, are determined to usher in an era of peace, and remove the root causes of war. We share a dream, of a world free of fear, free of violence and war, free of poverty and hunger. I mention rose Gillespie because for me she illustrates the power of appreciation. Gillespie appreciated life. She looked at the land, she looked at people, she looked at the oceans and she felt a deep sense of connection through her appreciation for the blessings that surrounded her. This force of appreciation, of gratitude, is primary in our living. If we look in the dictionary we see that the word “appreciate” means “to grasp the nature, worth, quality, or significance of something.” The core meaning is “to cherish.” Appreciate also means to “increase in value” such as a piece of land appreciating in monetary value over time. It strikes me that when we choose to appreciate and cherish things that they gain in stature and value in our lives. One of the keys to appreciation is to have a breadth of view. The lives we live are built on the efforts of others—none of us stand alone. If we think of reality as a giant pyramid where we are the top, then we can appreciate everything that has come before—and here I mean everything. Every bit of your past makes up your pyramid of reality and brings you to where you are today. All of the people you admired and hated; all those you respected and despised. It includes everything human and not-human. It’s perhaps especially important to appreciate those who came before you that you disagreed with. They sharpened your wits, built your resolve, and developed your strength. Give thanks for religion, even bad religion, because it helped built the platform for gatherings like Koinonia—places where the spirituality is inclusive and where the gathering brings together a diversity of people from different traditions and life experiences. We can drop our judgments about the past and truly appreciate it. Everything within the pyramid on which you stand either inspired you or had lessons to teach you. It all forms the foundation of the reality in which you now live, and breathe, and have your being. The key to appreciating our past is live by the mantra of “include and transcend.” Incorporate what came before because if you exclude and resist it, it will come around and bite you on the butt in terms of a shadow in your character. Embrace the past, include it, forgive it, and appreciate it—hug it into submission until it’s truly an integral part of who you are. It’s when we embrace and include our pasts that we’re able to immediately transcend them and move beyond them. Until we reach that point—those disowned elements control us and dictate the nature and flavor of our living. This is the internal spiritual process of loving our enemies that Jesus spoke about. Our appreciation must be grounded in the present, include and incorporate the past, while at the same time it is directed toward the future. After a monsoon rain an old man went out and dug some holes in his garden. “What are you doing?” asked a friend. “Planting mango trees.” said the old man. “Do you expect to eat mangos from those trees,” inquired the neighbor. “no, I won’t live that long. But others will. In my life, the mangos that I’ve eaten have been planted by others. This is my way of demonstrating my appreciation.” The power of our appreciation can transform the world generations into the future—way beyond our own lifetimes. What would it be like if each of us did one thing each day that we wouldn’t see the benefit from, but which would benefit future generations? Plant a tree—give a micro loan to someone in a third world country—make your appreciation reach around the world. Our acts of appreciation can be reminders of the host of unknown acts that constitute the pyramid of reality on which we stand. It’s through appreciation that we form and remember our connections with one another and with the world. I’m sure you’re aware of the old Hasidic tale about heaven and hell. They both look exactly the same. They have big round tables with a pot of delicious stew in the middle and an assortment of people sitting around them. All of the people have spoons with long handles so they can easily reach into the pot in the middle. The difficulty is that the spoons have long handles that so they can reach the pot, but they’re too long to bring the food to their mouths. So in hell the people suffer and starve because they continually try to feed themselves, whereas in heaven the people have worked it out and while they can’t feed themselves, they can feed each other. They’re in heaven because they know they are connected and they’re able to move beyond their own selfish desires. In heaven, as the appreciation is shared, the connection grows—and as the connection grows the appreciation is shared! In the past weeks I’ve been watching Ken Burn’s documentaries on the establishment of the National Parks. What’s interesting is the number of times that a park has been created because there has been one person who had a deep passion, a deep appreciation for the place. It’s like with John Otto and the establishment of Colorado National Monument here in The glue in an inclusive spiritual community like Koinonia is not beliefs. We know that beliefs come and go with the fads of the age. Each person needs to be on their own journey of developing their beliefs—accepting what makes sense and questioning everything you hear. Traditions also aren’t the mortar that holds us together. If you look around you see people from a plethora of different traditions and none is more important or “right” than another. The mortar in this community is appreciation. Appreciation is the mortar in the bricks of our community. It’s the source of our courage in good times and bad. It helps us stand fearlessly like Rose Gillespie. Appreciation is the power of working in unity; it lets us see God’s manifestation and presence in one another and in all of creation. Appreciation is the yeast in the bread of life, it keeps us believing in miracles and possibilities and surprises. Appreciation directs our attention and actions outward and tells us that life is beautiful and cherished.
|