We need to love our own tradition, and know it deeply. Only then can we transform it.
Gleaned from the recent rebroadcast of a Speaking of Faith episode, The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi, this lesson speaks to me.
We live in times of almost awesome universalism. The wisdom paths of the ages are at our fingertips. We are the inheritors of a wealth of knowledge, experimentation and daring. And we are also the inheritors of a colonial legacy of skimming from the cultures of others.
A slight meander… My beloved brought me real milk. Raw, fatty, doesn’t-last-long-in-the-fridge cow milk. We’re warned that such milk carries a risk. But the alternative carries a known weakness. Sure, fat free, homogenized, pasteurized, tetra pak’d milk is safe safe safe. But at what cost? (And safe for who? Not the cows.)
Here’s the link… Without the depth of a tradition we call our own (more so, that calls to us as its own) it can be like drinking that watery, grey flavorless whisper of cow milk. I know that my soul needs the raw stuff.
