Monday, April 2, 2012

When and How Can Serving Others Become Simply Building Up My Spiritual Ego?

In other words, "How Might I Live Simply (Sustainably) So That Others Might Simply Live?"

New Friars Movement

Servant Partners

Word Made Flesh

New Monasticism

Bernie Glassman 1: Not Knowing, Bearing Witness, Loving Action

Dangerous Harvests: Are Bearing Witness Retreats Sugar for the Privile...: Over at one of her blogs, Buddhist blogger Nella Lou writes: There’s a lot of these witnessing retreats going on where the bourgeoisie p...


It's incredibly oxymoronic to think that I and/or we can fully "Bear Witness" to what those who died at Auschwitz experienced during WWII at a "retreat,"  and yet is it not worth my or your while to strive to experience their suffering in some small sense, whether it's reading an auto-biography of a survivor or going to the site and sitting amongst the ashes so to speak?
I DON'T KNOW YOU TELL ME?  I really am interested in ALL of your thoughts and feelings on this so feel free to comment whenever and however. No Condemnation nor Criticism.  ALL Comments are Welcome...???  All I ask is that you read the above articles and/or posts and think about them before commenting.

Peace and Love,
Daniel

1 comment:

  1. So, this leads me to wonder, how does one empathize with "the significant other?" For instance, how does a husband fully empathize with his pregnant wife? How does a heterosexual mother fully empathize with their homosexual son? How does a black CEO fully empathize with a white homeless individual? Or, do they "fully" empathize at all?
    Is this a matter of qualitative versus quantitative priority? From an evolutionary perspective, a parent is generally quantitatively more evolved mentally, physically and spiritually than their children but not qualitatively more more-so. A parent, again generally, does not qualitatively love and care for his older children more than the younger children, although there is a quantitative difference in their ages and IQ's. In addition, this parent may express their love differently for each child depending on the child's needs and personality differences.
    Maybe, truly and fully, expressing empathy means relating to one another as family, as brothers and sisters, in and through and despite our differences, by celebrating, honoring and respecting those differences. Maybe it means treating one another with kindness, gentleness, openness and politeness even when expressing doses of tough love. Maybe it means, being cognizant and caring in the development and expression of our creative strengths and weaknesses.
    Anyway, just some thoughts...

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