I think this is a very powerful statement:

Look, for example, at the great liberation movements that have served humanity so well — in eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Africa, among women, African Americans, and our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. What we see is simple but often ignored: the movements that transform us, our relations, and our world emerge from the lives of people who decided to care for their authentic selfhood.

The social systems in which these people must survive often force them to live in a way untrue to who they are. If you are poor, you are supposed to accept, with gratitude, half a loaf or less; if you are black, you are supposed to accept racism; if you are gay, you are supposed to pretend you are not. You and I may not know, but we can at least imagine, how tempting it would be to mask one’s truth in situations of this sort — because the system threatens punishment if one does not.

But in spite of that threat, or because of it, the people who plant the seeds of movements make a critical decision: they decided to live “divided no more.” They decide no longer to act on the outside in a way that contradicts some truth about themselves that they hold deeply on the inside. The decide to claim their authentic selfhood and act it out — and their decisions ripple out to transform the society in which they live, serving the selfhood of millions of others.

Now I Become Myself
Parker J. Palmer

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 5:06 pm and is filed under philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.