After reading this lovely piece in the aftermath of the triumph of hatred and vapidity in the US election, we invited Kay Burch to offer it for this week’s post in Political Straight Talk. After all, sometimes the only thing to do is look for the biggest of big pictures. 

Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilczek has published a book-length meditation on a fascinating concept: Is beauty the driving force of the natural world? Does the world embody beautiful ideas? Is the world a work of art? (A Beautiful Question, 2016).

His question is placed in the context of spiritual cosmology: “If an energetic and powerful Creator made the world, it could be that what moved Him/Her/Them/It to create was to make something beautiful.”

Wilczek offers a detailed treatise and concludes that the universe is indeed driven to embody beautiful and elegant forms. He quotes Keats,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

He also considers opposites and complementarity, quoting Whitman:

    The world is large—
            It contains multitudes.
            I look with all-embracing eyes
            And tell you what I see.
            Do I contradict myself?
            Very well, I contradict myself.
            If you are not bedazzled yet:
            Look differently, and marvel.

Leading to his final closing thought:

  Beautiful and Not Beautiful

• The physical world embodies beauty.
• The physical world is home to squalor, suffering, and strife.

   In neither aspect should we forget the other.

 In thinking of both aspects while absorbing the profundity of today’s election results, my head and heart are also driven back to the “Axial Age” (a pivotal period of ancient history). In The Great Transformation (2006), Karen Armstrong draws persuasive analogies among the great religious traditions—biblical monotheism, Hinduism and Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism and including Greek rationalism—which were all born from periods of huge turmoil, confusion, injustice, violence and economic inequality, between 900 and 200 BC.

Spiritual introspection and innovation were driving forces. “All the traditions that were developed during the Axial Age,” Armstrong writes, “pushed forward the frontiers of human consciousness and discovered a transcendent dimension in the core of their being”—until dark forces pushed it aside.

Is this where we are again in the world? Today, it seems possible. Donald Trump’s negative message has resonated and been realized in the hearts of many. Our beloved nation is analogous in its political surface to that coming forth in major swaths of our globe.

A strong common denominator among the great world religions that emanated from the Axial Age is compassion. From “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” through alternative iterations, the spirit of compassion lies at the core of all our traditions. This must stay with us and guide us as we confront with love the new future now unfolding.

The heart is being able to see things from others’ points of view. There is always room for expanding our personal capacity for compassion. When I went to work for Amnesty International back in the 1990s, I erroneously thought I was well-developed along these lines. Shortly, I learned a new perspective, white privilege. Empathy is not just a matter of appreciating the circumstances of others, but also of seeing ourselves from their countenance.

Currently, I am gathering information and experiences on Black Christs and Black Madonnas, initially wishing for a deeper understanding of devotion to Oaxaca’s versions, El Señor de Esquipulas and the Virgin of Juquila. Their popularity is only partly based on ethnic identification—people of all tones are devotees. These Black Christs and Madonnas open us up to a bigger world—and to reconciling opposites. Their darkness is more receptive and absorbent; it does not push back images like a light tone would. Thus, we can more readily communicate with them, project our own deficiencies and shadows, then bring such to consciousness and resolution.

One journalist (Rod Dreher) is quoted saying that most journalists were blind to their own “bigotry against conservative religion, bigotry against rural folks, and bigotry against working class and poor white people.” Let’s not do this in any form, and let’s help others find the path. Let us all see more clearly.

What else can we do? As much as I would be delighted to have everyone come to Mexico, let’s not run or give up. We stay centered, recharge and expand our work to exemplify love and compassion– looking ahead, not behind. It’s always important to keep our many blessings top of mind.

These things are not new ideas, but they have much value if we can double down, triple down:

• Take advantage of every opportunity to expand the boundaries of our own compassion and to show our compassion, especially toward others who are not singing our song.
• Find the beauty, notice the beauty, spread the beauty. Let beauty be our guide.
• Watch for and create opportunities to proselytize on behalf of peace as well as love and compassion. These days, social media are primary vehicles, but traditional means matter too.
• Organize efforts to bring attention to our blessings, and to ease suffering, as the Canadians have done with their recent ad campaign which told us down here that they are with us and that we are good.
• Teach our children that what they have just witnessed is not the true and good America; teach them how to discern what is beautiful among people, and how to protect themselves from anger and hatred when they confront it.
• Work to protect our democracy. Perhaps realign some of its manifestations, but protect its essence and challenge those who would change it.
• Work at the local level to reinstate laws that make representation equal and fair to all. (After all, all politics is local, and from the states have come major advances in support of the right wing.)
• Support any and all viable efforts to convince the new powers that we must protect our earth from climate change.
• Actively support charities, which now must take on the herculean task of providing for people without health care, protecting the unemployed, immigrants, and Muslims.
• Come visit Mexico with open arms, provide verbal support for her in your communities and thus help to mitigate the ever-increasing damage that will be inflicted there. (“Poor, poor Mexico. So far from God, so close to the United States,” as a former Mexican president once lamented.)

We must know that beauty will be in the driver’s seat and that good will be the ultimate winner. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, had a dream. We were almost there; we will be again. This too shall pass as we continue to work for our dreams. With some good fortune on top of these valuable efforts, a new Axial Age will come to benefit humankind. A transformative, ecumenical spirit can again bring broader understandings and enriching syncretism. This time, for everyone.

Kay Burch
9 November 2016

Kay Burch is a retired nonprofit executive from Washington, DC, whose primary residence is now Oaxaca, Mexico.