My creed

MY CREED

Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, “peacemaking” at pepinsky.blogspot.com

October 7, 2016

 

                From secular humanism to all recognized religions, my applied learning in all my relations, in my language, our moral defense of all that any of us does, of how s/he justifies what s/he and others do unto each other, is religious.  The significance of the framing, application and interpretation of all data we collect and apply to our relations to our species and the environment we share rests on the moral assumption of some standard of what, practically speaking, is true or false, right or wrong, trivial or significant rests on some ultimate personal and social authority tells us, an ultimate guiding set of truths we hold to be self-evident.  In a continuing discussion with a Buddhist and a Catholic friend, I found myself expressing my creed this way.  Call it my principle epistemological axiom, or as I feel it, my religious faith as to where and how my god leads my living and learning…thought I’d share—love and peace, hal

 

Here's my interfaith transcendence of sin:  I call "sin" convictions as to right and wrong that the will to transcend that framing of the problem to define it as resting on one's convictions without responding empathically, changing course, in response to the voices whose continuing response that emanate from harm that comes from maintaining a fixed order--security, as in my blessed pension--regardless of the harm it does, to adding take time to give weight--balance of power we hold, ultimately as morally responsible actors, to being swayed/responsive to whose order systematically/habitually holds.

 

That is the understanding Laozi, the attitude toward power, which I have learned to translate into different terms, thinking of likely audience in theirs, a matter of simultaneous translation actually.  And of course you where this light, the academically/publicly subsidized freedom to let my data be the emergent range of voices of those harmed/left out/left aside, you notice where lies, you hear it and are moved to consider its implications--the options and choices it offers you and those with whom you live and learn.  And the devil is the continuing energy/attention we devote to maintaining the norms and practices in terms of which we respond to the harm institutionalized and personal exercise (as in how we relate with and learn with children) we all confront  in all our multiple relations.  The light, the enduring lives of our children over generations, which I consider my sacred enlightenment, and that of others I learn to and from: that is my supreme deity, source of God's wisdom, how I aim to learn and learn from and with others during my lifetime, lies...call it living by learning and loving my way.