It is a vision that provides guidance regarding the future of this community and/or this institution. It is when an institution, community (or entire nation) has a clear and compelling image of its own future that this institution, community (nation) is more likely to endure (Polak, 1973). I will have much more to say about charters and planning for the future in my final essay in this series on true freedom. A sacred I-Thou relationship and a culture of agape ultimately expand the social ecology of harmony. The love of something beyond ourselves enables us to love (or at least respect and include) those with whom we affiliate and work. I-Thou resides at the heart of a coherent community.
Other spiritual traditions move us even further toward a sense of transcendence and unity. For instance, many schools of Buddhist philosophy and practice move us (individually and collectively) to a higher transcendent plane. Similar perspectives are to be found in the religious and philosophical traditions of many Asian countries. It is interesting to note that many of these ancient perspectives are complemented by the radical conclusions to be reached by those studying quantum mechanics. All physical life (including human being) is constituted not of individual entities, but rather of a single universal consciousness and flow of energy. Our individual identify is merely (and ultimately) an illusion. Thus, it is essential (and inevitable) that we find common cause and commitment with other human manifestations as we co-create and share this one reality.
What are the implications to be drawn from these diverse spiritual traditions? I propose that these implications lead us to new ways (and back to some very old ways) when considering the nature of harmonious and coherence community. While religions and other sacred traditions in many cultures have helped to produce the spirit of capitalism and individualism (Weber, 1958), they have also provided us with reasons and guidelines for framing, supporting and expanding on the secular civic virtue that Bellah and his colleagues have described. Envisioning a sacred vision, we reference the concept of Grace as it was introduced by the noted theologian, Paul Tillich (1948).
Grace, Love and Collective Memory
Tillich speaks about the structure of grace in the shared history of a society. If we specifically introduce our focus on harmonious and coherent communities, this structure of grace could be considered the history embedded in the collective memory. It is a history that includes not just the community’s successes, but also its suffering and abuse. Tillich believes that Grace only comes with the act of acceptance and reform—such as was found in the Truth and Reconciliation actions taken in South Africa following this country’s release from Apartheid. It has also been represented in the Satyagraha (civic disobedience) enacted by Gandhi in India (and later emulated in the actions taken by Martin Luther King in the United States).
It is in the collective memory of acceptance, forgiveness and reform that we are likely to find Tillich’s grace—as well as the “clean pain” that Resmaa Menakem (2017) identifies. The pain of all members of the community can, in Menakem’s words, be “metabolized” and made clean only in the recognition, understanding, appreciation, commemoration and (finally) search for forgiveness and redemption regarding the full history of a community. We can return to the insights offered by Reinhold Niebuhr who states that forgiveness is the final manifestation of love—and it transcends the search for justice in any society. As Niebuhr (1932, p. 266) notes: “love must strive for something purer than justice if it would attain justice.”
