issue 18: Bridging the Rift

How can two opposing sides find common ground? How do we maintain our own integrity when the world around us is falling apart? How do we cultivate peace and foster reconciliation with those who seem committed to a worldview of separation?

In this issue of the Community Garden, you're invited into a shifting of perspective. Through cross-cultural and interdisciplinary lenses of cinema, sculpture, literature, philosophy, activism and neuroscience, this issue considers the main source of hatred and condemnation that not only fuels division but can lead to massive atrocities including human genocide, extinction of species and environmental devastation. We see also how a commitment to forgiveness, at the deepest level, can render us immune to the poison of counter-judgement and resentment no matter how justified those positions may seem. Through the examples and insights of humans just as common and flawed as the rest of us, we see how very possible it is to be liberated from self-inflicted oppression not by conquering anyone or anything, but by transcending our own judgements which keep us locked in prisons of hatred and resentment. As our internal barriers are overcome, real steps towards bridge-building with others may then be taken.

Whether through adopting a “

god‘s eye view” to better appreciate the beautifully intricate landscape of a situation, or "circumambulating”an issue to better know the fullness of it, peering inward rather than outward to identify and overcome our own deeper sources of divisiveness and suffering, or utilizing the power of open-hearted curiosity about another's point of view as a way of transcending the limiting perception of division... always available to us is some shift in perspective that can provide the key to freedom from even the most deeply entrenched sources of pain and strife we experience from systemic rifts at every level—global, organizational, within our local communities and families, between humans and the natural world of which we play an integral part and, ultimately, within ourselves.

This world has seen its fair share of "leaders" declaring they will defeat the enemy and get us from here to there. Even if temporary successes are achieved through a mentality of conquest and dominance, have they ever brought lasting peace? What if the greatest act of leadership is in people like you and I working toward building ever stronger and ever more robust bridges of the heart?

In Truth, Beauty and Goodness,

B. Monique

Enjoy the full issue 18: Bridging the Rift here.