Several days ago my wife watched the film version of Cormack McCarthy’s novel The Road. The story line, if you are unfamiliar, is that all life on Earth is dying after a nuclear war. All animal and plant life has ceased and the land is covered in floating ash from a nuclear winter. Civilization has collapsed and the human population is a tiny remnant.
The story follows a man and his young son as they try to make their way South to avoid the approaching winter and because they have heard there is warmth, food and a human community down there. The journey they make is harrowing and a lot of very disturbing things happen along the way.
The part that haunted my wife the most (and having read the novel, I remember this episode) is one where the father and his son are robbed of their possessions which they push in an old shopping cart. In that cart are the only items they have left to fend off death. The father tracks down the man who has stolen their cart and in an act of retribution, steals all of this thief’s clothing and his shoes. But it is the taking of his shoes that is the death blow to this thief who realizes as he is handing them over that he is being consigned to death.
The young boy is horrified by his father’s actions and does not understand why this thief was shown no mercy. I don’t want to tell you what happens because that would spoil the experience of reading the book and seeing the film. But the image of a man being deprived of all he has left in this world and seeing in his visage that he knows this is the end is a haunting experience.
I mention this today because, as I am thinking about peace and love, I am thinking about the truth of all life being inter-related. I have quoted from a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. which I think helps bring my own thoughts closer to the powerful truth of kinship. Allow me to quote further from that sermon:
“I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate myself, and I’ve seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many white citizens’ councilors, and too many Klansmen of the South to want to hate myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you.”
When the father takes from that man his last measure of survival, he has ceased to love and has given himself over to retribution. When this happens, what then for this man’s soul? What burden must he bear?
Loving your enemies or loving another as yourself is not the same thing as liking another or even feeling kinship with another. Dr. King discusses this too, why it is that we are not instructed to “like” one another but to love because love is far more powerful than mere liking. There is an imperative within love which we call “recognition,” or as the mystics and saints would have it, the realization that in another we find ourselves as children of the same creator.
As anyone who has read this blog before knows, I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about animal rights, about the treatment of the natural world and about the problem of finding a path between survival, comfort and exploitation of the animal and plant life of this Earth. When I discussed this episode from The Road with my wife I thought about a recently successful campaign in the United States against shark finning. Just a few days before the New Year, the United States Congress passed a bill outlawing the practice of shark-finning in the coastal waters of the United States. Shark-finning is a horrible practice whereby the fisher catches the shark, removes its fins (which are used for “shark fin soup” which is considered a delicacy) and then the shark is thrown back, bleeding, into the water to die. The shark is literally left defenceless and will die either a slow death or the smell of its blood will lead to a mauling by other sharks.
I thought about this practice because I thought about the realization I have had and feel intensely each day that there is one life in all of us. All of us come from this Earth and are a part of the same creation. We all must navigate our way through this world and procure the means of survival. For many of us, that struggle with survival does not feel primary. I know in my own life that there is food on the table each day, a roof over my head, heating in the winter and cooling in the summer, and I even can afford the kinship of the wonderful animals my wife and I share our lives with. I live comfortably.
But when you are confronted with your own weakness and your own mortality, there is a great leveling that occurs. While the powers of Nature may strip each and every life form on this planet of any pretense of superior power or invulnerability, it is indeed wrong for any one of us to apply violence as a means of depriving another of the ability to cope with the vicissitude of living in time and space. It is indeed wrong to act as a force for death.
If a being can feel pain, can experience suffering, can be left defenceless against the forces of Nature, then surely only the forces of Nature should be allowed that ukase. Not one of us mortals should ever take it upon ourselves to deprive another of the ability to cope with the necessity of existence.
We should not do so for, as Dr. King said, there is a burden we bear in depriving ourselves of our very capacity to love. To do so means we cast ourselves with the impersonal and lethal forces of Nature where we can never find kinship. But there is kinship with life.
We also should not do so because refraining from an act is the basis of justice and a just order. When we exert limits upon ourselves and recognize in other beings the same scramble for survival, we are rising above the immediacy of our needs and are transcending temporality. By refraining from unnecessary violence, by seeking not to do harm, we are sharing in the benevolence of life itself. I call that experience love, for I know of no other word that captures the rapture which binds us to living.
I realize that killing and eating are at the heart of life upon this Earth. But we should not hate that which we kill -I am thinking of wolves here- for if we do, are we not calling back upon ourselves that hate by wearing the pelts of those animals taken with malice? And what about factory farming? While we may kill animals by the millions to put food on tables and sustain our lives, must we do so with such ruthless efficiency and inflict such suffering on those animals who are giving their lives so we might live? Do we not bring their suffering into our bodies when we eat them? Are we not burdened by their suffering because we raise them to die for us? If we take without gratitude and reverence, we once more cast our lot with the impersonal forces in Nature.
When I say that there is one life in all of us what I mean by this is that every being has an impulse to life. Each being acts so that it might live. A mystic might call this very act of living love. If we share this with all of creation, are we not then bound by a common kinship in love? This is the one thing that transcends all our temporal and physical differences.
I have chosen to reflect upon Dr. King’s moving words because when he says that through adversity, through suffering and pain, he will continue to love his fellow human beings I am reminded of the primary challenge of leading a moral life on this Earth: the challenge of meeting necessity with goodness. The burden of hatred is too great a burden to lead a moral life. The moral life, as I see it, is the good life. Living in kinship with all creation is to feel at home in the world. Whether or not you believe that your reward is to come on this Earth or in heaven, can we not agree that love is the transcendent principle that binds us even through our differences? We don’t have to share the same metaphysical beliefs to build a community by this shared bond.
I ask that we extend this principle to all of creation. That we see this impulse to life as the common bond that unites us all. That is my wish for the New Year. That is my great hope for our world.
Jeremy Nathan Marks
