“I rhapsodize, remembering my birthplace, and I long for the house in which I was raised. But when a vagrant passes by and asks for shelter in that house and for food from its residents, and when he is refused and cast out, than my rhapsodies become dirges and my yearning turns to disregard. Then I say in my essence, ‘The house that is too miserly to share bread with the needy or bedding with the one who asks for t is most deserving of all houses to be torn down and destroyed.’
“I love my birthplace with some of the same love I shower upon my region; I live my region with a part of the love I bestow on my homeland; and I love the whole earth, because it is the place where humanity thrives, and sacred humanity is the spirit of divinity in this world.” ~Kahlil Gibran
Loving the Earth
We can love our homes, our cities, our nations and all the earth, and still be spiritual. It is a matter of priority. I can love ice cream, but love being slim and healthy even more. Therefore, I rarely eat ice cream. I can love some luxuries like taking a Caribbean Cruise, but not enough to be a drug pusher or hit man in order to afford such luxuries. I also know that if I have too much material wealth, it will become an anchor to spiritual growth.
But when Gibran says he loves the earth, he means it more in a spiritual way than in a material one. He loves it as the home of mankind. It is our home on this plane of existence, that is. He loves it because men have souls and that makes it a place for souls. He loves it because, as he puts it, “sacred humanity is the spirit of divinity in this world.”
Sacred Humanity
Humanity is sacred, but with a catch. Our physical bodies are not sacred. Neither is our brain-mind. While they originated in the sacred, they themselves are not sacred. What is sacred in man is his spirit and soul. Only in awakening the spirit and soul does man become a divine being. Sacred humanity is only sacred if it chooses to be so.
Most of us go through our entire life on earth as divided beings, split within ourselves. Our physical and mental self may believe we have a spirit and soul, but never do anything to awaken them. Our spirit and soul remain dormant and unable to unite with the mental self. That is not being sacred. For sacred humanity to truly exist, we must awaken those spiritual faculties and unite with them. We must become a complete being rather than a divided one.
Sharing
Gibran says that the one who will not share his food with another is a miserable person. He further says the home that will not take in a person needing a place to sleep is deserving to be “torn down and destroyed.”
He says that because when we become so attached to material possessions that we wont share them with others, they become anchors holding back our spiritual growth. Sacred Humanity will share, will want to share.
When we value things more than our fellow human beings, those things becomes walls to keep us away from our spiritual destiny.
In recent weeks I have been seeing an ad for a shoe store that I find shocking. The ad features one young woman who brags that she has over two hundred pairs of shoes. A second woman that declares that she has over three hundred. The third then boasts haughtily of having over four hundred pairs of shes! This is apparently how these people judge their worth. They will happily walk over a homeless person to get to a shoe store to buy another pair of shoes, or maybe three pair. They will happily kick a shoeless child off their doorstep while rushing off to buy pair 500. That is not sacred humanity. I’m not sure such being should be considered human at all.
Sacred humanity shares not only possessions, but knowledge. Especially the knowledge of how we need to awaken our spirits and souls to become what God truly wants us to be.
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