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<\/a>\nIn 2007 the United Nations designated today, the 2nd of October, as an International Day of Non-Violence.<\/a> They chose Mohandas Gandhi\u2019s birthday, observed in India as Gandhi Jayanti<\/a>. <\/p>\n
Of course it comes a day after the most recent mass shooting here in America, this time at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon.<\/p>\n
We human beings are in some ways quite resilient. We bounce back, and we go forward. Evolution favors large numbers not individuals. And that resilience has put us at the top of the food chain. Well, that resilience and several other traits, a propensity to violence not being least among them.<\/p>\n
I have for sometime now suffered from the thought arising unbidden that as a species the things that put us at the top are now conspiring to kill us off. And the spear tip of that thrust into oblivion is our propensity to violence.<\/p>\n
However, as I was looking through my Facebook feed, when I ran across a couple of comments on the killing spree in Oregon and saw several offer up against calls for gun control the lament that there is nothing that can be done, I felt a visceral recoil. I felt a deep offense at the assertion there is nothing to be done. <\/p>\n
So, I find myself looking at that emotion, and wondering if it is rooted in anything beyond a false optimism. Of course that sense of hope arising in all sorts of conditions is obviously another of those characteristics of our species that has pushed us along. Tomorrow will be better.<\/p>\n
But, is there any justification for that sense of hope? Really?<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s how I find myself thinking, just a little as I recover from a bout of the flu, about this international day of non-violence, and particularly about the person who grounds it in history, Mohandas Gandhi, known to most as the great heart, Mahatma.<\/p>\n
I know no where near everyone thinks of him so fondly. For one concrete example, the rising dalit class in India has little love for the man, and with some justice, particularly those who have turned from Hinduism to Buddhism<\/a>. Recently some of made much of racially charged comments he made when living in Africa. <\/p>\n But, actually the fact that he was complicated, that he was both a religious seeker and a politician whose view of the world did not match my ideal of insight, is in fact where I find the justification for that small seed of hope.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the fact. Gandhi was a human being. He was born into a world of conflict. He lived in a world of conflict. He died in a world of conflict. But, what he did at the same time was to turn on himself, watched as closely as he could, and within the person he found, he saw some strands of possibility. He took them and he wove them together into a rope. He found others, and encouraged those same strands within them, and as a politician, he gathered those together and wove what would become a miracle, a non-violent revolution.<\/p>\n One can look at India today and certainly say it was at best a partial success. And I do continue to think the odds are against us as a species. But, within the great play of life and death and the arc of evolution on this little planet spinning through the great night, I also see we have some choice.<\/p>\n Not a lot. But it is there. We can make conscious decisions. And we can act from those decisions. Here in America, we are not bound inevitably to this vicious cycle of violence fed in great part by an unconstrained access by anyone to pretty much any weapons we want. There are things we can do.<\/p>\n The question only is, do we want to? Or, will we let our various ideologies and that deep propensity rule?<\/p>\n That much is in our hands. Ordinary human hands.<\/p>\n An act of will. Knowing what I am.<\/p>\n An act of love. Knowing what I can be.<\/p>\n An act of hope.<\/p>\n