Meditation Australia council member Bishop Philip Huggins is an incredible role model. He is a changemaker at all levels. From a gentle, encouraging conversation with a child to assisting those in dire need on a National and International level. At the same time, he holds a sacred space of worship, meditation and quiet at his parish at Holy Trinity in South Melbourne. His community is diverse and very welcoming.
Meditative and Spiritual principles hold inner and outer peace at their core. Bishop Huggin’s peacebuilding activities are a great example of humble but powerful service.
We are pleased to share his deeply insightful article about the Israeli and Palestinian conflict and a group of brave and deeply honest people, seeking peace. “Two truths, one heart. Two people’s one land.”
FINDING HOPE, GIVING HOPE
BY REMEMBERING OUR ROOTS
On Wednesday 31 July we listened to two people who were speaking to us from near Hebron, where Abraham and Sarah are buried (see link below). We listened as news came through of an even further escalation in the hate, violence and suffering in and around the land called ‘holy’. As it happens,I helped host this immediately after co- leading our Retreat on ‘Inner Peace and Outer Peace’- how to better integrate our meditation and prayer with resilient peacemaking.
Thankfully, we were able to record Wednesday’s conversation between the Roots leaders. One was Rabbi Hanan who is an Israeli Jew. The other was Halid Abu who is a Palestinian Muslim. Listening to how Roots started ten and a half years back is riveting. The establishment of their Dignity Centre tells us what it takes to move from a Hubris of Exclusivity to a Humility of Pluralism.
That is, from where one side alone claims belonging to the land between the river and the sea to a place where it is recognised, not only that both Israelis and Palestinians are deeply connected to the same land, but that the historical borders are the same!
As was said:
“The land between the River and the Sea gave birth to two peoples.
We have to learn to hold this…In Roots, we try to bring people together…
We believe we are doing the groundwork for living well together…”
These two leaders of Roots told how the personal stories, the courage and the grace of those from the other side woke them up to our common humanity and to the deepest truths of our respective faiths. Jews, Muslims and Christians are the obvious focus here, but all major world religions convey that, as Halid said with anguish, “We have no permission to kill…to kill innocent people.” (Watch via link below).
To stop this suffering, we must meet each other.
We must listen, listen and listen again.
We must know each other’s story as well as we know our own.
We must be patient.
We must interpret our sacred texts in a way that leads to peace.
We must give no room for extremism to fester.
Let alone for extreme violence to become the murdering modality of so-called leaders.
But tragically, as we have seen since October 7, this is what has happened.
Extreme violence has become normative and is what defines leadership on both sides.
As a result, and as we were informed, ‘the peace movement has collapsed since October 7…’
Hence the inspiration we felt as we listened to these real leaders. The truth from which they live is hard won. Its genesis is the stories they shared of the innocents, from the other side, who suffered and who died because of a failure to recognise their Roots in the same land and as a matter of our common humanity.
On a personal note, my inspiration for initiating this gathering on Wednesday with my Buddhist friend Ian Roberts was listening, unexpectedly, to the Roots leaders at the Parliament of World Religions last August in Chicago.
Our gathering on Wednesday is an initiative for understanding, non-violence and transformation. With some family, I visited the grave of Abraham and Sarah in Hebron, as it turns out, about the time Roots was beginning.
It is one of the saddest places I have ever been … so tense with the possibility, it felt, of further hate and violence at any moment.
It’s a long road from where we are now to a blessed peacefulness.
But, as we have as our motto:
“Peace is every step…there is no way to peace,
peace is the way.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
Remembering the contemplative wisdom of 4th century St. Anthony in the nearby Egyptian desert,
“Today we begin again.”
We simply must persist.
We must live from the highest we can conceive and from nothing less.
BISHOP PHILIP HUGGINS