An Inconvenient Truth

“The call to the margins, led by those we find there, is exhilarating and life-giving and renews our nobility and purpose.  For this, we all long. The time is now, as never before, to put terror and defense to one side and find our human connections on the margins.” ~ Gregory Boyle (Founder of Homeboys Industries)

It isn’t more power, more prosperity, more armaments or closed borders we need. None of these things will give us long-term security.  None of these things will keep us safe. We become more vulnerable to destruction from within when we isolate from ‘the other’ in self-woven cocoons.  Instead, we need to reach out for the hand of those on the margins, those who are broken, and those who understand how interdependent we really are. We go to the marginalized not to make a difference but for them to make us different.

Martin Luther King called us to serve “the last, the least, and the lost.” Jesus instructs us to include not exclude as he invites tax collectors and prostitutes to his table.  He tells us “that which you do to the least of my brothers, so you do unto me.”  Buddha dedicated his entire life for the cause of others, for the uplift of humanity at large. He was the first to revolt against the caste system which was firmly rooted in the soil of India. One of the great reforms that the Prophet Muhammad brought was the rights and treatment of the poor. And so we struggle with an inconvenient truth.  We must drop our moral outrage and pick up compassion in its place. When we do that wonderful things will begin to happen in our lives and in our world.