March 13:

“True knowledge of religion breaks down the barriers between faith and faith.”

—Gandhi (From Yervada Mandir, p. 40)

Religions, while they have their superficial differences, all point to the same reality: the unity of life and its realization. As the wisdom tradition  maintains, “the paths are many but the truth is one.”  Unfortunately, faith is often pitted against faith, and such tension is then deliberately used as a tool of divide and rule, of violent politics. There is a lot to be said for the power of interfaith organizing efforts, when religions, instead of fighting one another, look at the systems of power that are threatened by a more spiritual orientation to the world, and work together to build a better world that works for everyone.

Consider, for example, the women in Liberia, who organized in the early 1990s to bring a nonviolent end to Liberia’s bloody civil war. It began as a movement of Christian women, and immediately, the Muslim women decided that they would join in: their interfaith organizing motto was “a bullet cannot not distinguish between Christian and Muslim.”  In the past, the women said, Muslims and Christians did not work together. Side by side, they waged a courageous nonviolent struggle, and succeeded in not only bringing an end to the civil war, and getting dictator Charles Taylor out of power; they realized their work did not end there.  They went on to get the first woman president in all of Africa, Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, elected in their country — part of a systemic change toward real democracy.

Experiment in Nonviolence:

Consider the good that could happen in the world when faiths team up to challenge oppression.

Daily Metta 2015, a service of the Metta Center for Nonviolence, is a daily reflection on the strategic and spiritual insights of Mahatma Gandhi in thought, word and deed. As Gandhi called his life an “experiment in truth,” we have included an experiment in nonviolence to accompany each Daily Metta. Check in every day for new inspiration. Each year will be dedicated to another wisdom teacher.