(Each Saturday, a faith leader offers a personal perspective in this space. To become part of this series, email religion@recorder.com)
The British philosopher and mathematician, Bertrand Russell was being admitted to jail when he was asked by the jailer to name his religion. “Atheist,” Russell replied. The jailer looked askance and said: “Never heard of that one, but I guess we all worship the same God.”
As an interfaith hospice chaplain, I visit people of all religions and many who subscribe to none but who often point to their spirituality as a guiding light. Religion, which comes from the Latin prefix “re,” meaning back, and “ligare,” meaning to bind, is rooted in the act of binding back or binding together. We may understand religion in the classic sense of what binds the human to the divine; or as what holds us together as individuals, especially in hard times; or what brings us together in community, as a people.
One’s religion may be revealed not so much in what we say we believe as what we do routinely. Our morning fiber, stop at Dunkin Donuts or the lottery ticket purchase may be practiced as devotedly as another’s daily prayer or service attendance — according to whatever benefit or meaning we assign to such rituals.
In our civil society where there is no established state religion, there are nonetheless civic rituals which denote American reverence for certain values, the pledge of allegiance being one which points to a free republic based on shared laws; or our quadrennial Presidential inauguration, which signifies the peaceful transition of power.
We have shrines that are held sacred such as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol. It is this unofficial state religion which empowers a President to stand before us and call forth, as Lincoln did, a healing message of “malice toward none and charity for all” or, as others have done, a message of division and retribution. It is this unofficial state religion which can summon our better angels, as the Marshall Plan did following World War Two, seeking to build back countries with whom we had been at war; or it can compel us into a new war, as it has regularly done in the ritual of sending off our young to other lands.
Our United States was founded in part upon a model which Ben Franklin learned from the Grand Council of the six-nation Iroquois confederacy. That model, while recognizing the laws and practices of separate nations, permitted them to live together in peace and defend one another when threatened. To demonstrate such unity, Franklin brought to the founders the Iroquois symbol of a bundle of arrows which, separately, were easily broken but, bound together, stood unbroken.
Whether we are recovering from cancer, alcoholism, COVID or the loss of a job, loved ones or dreams, we are all in some way broken. What we reach for to bind us back together can remind us we are not alone but dependent on the wider community for our healing. The Jewish faith has a beautiful tradition called Tikkun Olam which means to repair (or heal) the world through acts of kindness and justice. The words of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians speak to the healing spirit which Jesus embodied: “For he is our peace who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility.”
We know that our bodies have the healing power, when bones are broken, to heal back stronger. So, too, as history has demonstrated, does this democratic body, our country, have that ability to heal back stronger when hate and injustice divide us. May it be so.
A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Ben Tousley has worked as a hospice chaplain for the past 18 years. For many years, he traveled widely as a folksinger and storyteller, bringing concerts and services to schools, libraries, churches and folk venues while recording seven albums of music. Tousley was an adjunct professor at Springfield College for 23 years. He lives in Greenfield.