Jamie's Column February 2007

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn't make any sense."

Rumi

Bobby Fisher referred me to a very interesting website the other day--www.outbeyondideas.org. It's singer-songwriter David Wilcox and Nancy Pettit's site promoting a new CD of their music drawn from the poetry of the 13^th Century Persian Sufi mystic poet, Jelaluddin Rumi. Music, they believe, can be a force for making peace in a troubled world because it can touch a deep reality within us where we become united with our fellow human brothers and sisters. When we come to that place "beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing" (doctrines, ideologies, creeds, dogmas, philosophies, political platforms), they believe, and leave all those competing interactions behind, seeing each other simply as fellow human beings, it is then we have the chance to experience the unity and peace that so frequently evade our grasp.

I think that's true. I am a Christian. I gladly identify myself as one of the followers of Jesus, however partial my actual discipleship may be. But I also know that the way forward toward peace in a religiously diverse world is to search for commonality with those of other religious traditions. And the most basic of all commonalities is our humanity--all the factors that make us human beings; affections, fears, love, the power of family, the need for friendship. Before we are Christian, or Muslim, or Jewish, or some other religion, we are human beings. When we accidentally cut ourselves, we all bleed. We laugh, we love, we cry. Deep down inside God has created us all alike. "Beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing" there is a place where we can simply live in friendship with one another--a place where, as the Qur'an puts it, the only competition God wants is trying to out do one another with good works. I also happen to believe that's what following Jesus is all about.

I am going to order a copy of that new CD from David Wilcox website. I look forward to listening to some music that will remind me of our common humanity. Ultimately, peace and reconciliation in the human family will only be sustainable when we experience it directly in our hearts. And music certainly is one of God's gifts that can move us in that direction. Thanks for the tip, Bobby!

In God's peace,

Jamie