REsources for Living
Podcast: Download (4.9MB)
Subscribe: More
What is justice? That seems like a reasonable question for a month when justice is our theme. We know that Unitarian Universalists think that justice is important. After all, our second principle is “justice, equity and compassion in human relations.” Equity pretty clearly means fairness—people being treated equally. Compassion means kindness and caring, from root words that literally mean feeling with someone else. So justice must be something other than fairness or kindness, otherwise there would be no point in listing it along with equity and compassion.
Maybe we can get a hint from one of my favorite bits of the Hebrew Bible, the famous call from the prophet Micah to “Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” Justice, it seems, is something you do. You can love kindness from a distance. You can feel compassion for someone who will never know your caring thoughts. But justice isn’t justice unless you do it.
OK, fine, that’s a start, but what is it that you do when you do justice? After all, you do everything from swimming to grocery shopping, so just knowing that justice is something that you do isn’t much help. What actions are justice-making, as opposed to just being, well, nice? Do you have to be changing laws and influencing the government in order for something to count as justice, or does justice take place in small, person-to-person ways as well?
One way I like to think of justice goes back to another bit from the Jewish tradition, the phrase tikkun olam. In order understand tikkun olam, it helps to know the story behind it, which comes from the Kabbalah, writings of medieval Jewish mystics. According to the kabbalists (or at least my version of the kabbalists), in the beginning of the universe there was only God. But eventually God got bored, or lonely, and decided that an eternity of being the perfect “Everything” was going to get old. And so God drew God’s Self back to create an empty space, and in that empty space God created ten crystal spheres, ten spheres to hold the manifestation of God’s Self in the created world. And so God poured God’s divine essence into these ten shimmering globes to create the world.
But something went wrong. Maybe the balance wasn’t quite right, maybe the power was too great, but somehow all of the ten spheres shattered into tiny bits, making a universe that was far more chaotic than what God originally intended. But here’s the thing. Every living being has a tiny shard of one of those original God-created spheres inside. And the point of our living is to recognize the shard in ourself and in others. When we truly recognize and honor that little divine splinter, then it joins up with the other bits that have been recognized and honored, restoring some piece of the original creation.
That’s what tikkun olam means. Tikkun means to repair. Olam means the world, or the universe, or forever. To practice tikkun olam is to repair the world, or to fix all of eternity. It happens when we honor the bit of perfection, of divinity, inside each of us. But the Jewish tradition is clear that tikkun isn’t something you feel, or a kind of enlightenment. Tikkun olam is something you do, something you create through your actions.
I think that’s as good a way as any to understand justice. Justice is repairing the world by honoring the sacred inside all living beings. We UUs might describe it as actions that affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person and the interdependent web of life. The UUs who were arrested for protesting the XL Pipeline (which would bring toxic oil sands from Canada across the United States ) were engaged in justice work. So were all the folks who took to public square as part of the Occupy movement, declaring that money cannot be allowed to equal power.
But acts of justice, or repairing the world, also take place in much smaller, less public, ways. Perhaps today you have composted your kitchen waste or chosen to walk when you were tempted to drive, choosing small ways to protect the web of life. Maybe you pointed out to someone at work or at school that you don’t like to hear people described as “retarded.” It might be that you called your senator about internet censorship or school funding. One way or another, you may have taken some small step that nudged the arc of the moral universe in the direction of justice.
That’s the other thing I would say about justice. It shapes the future. Bringing soup to your sick neighbor is kindness. It’s important, but it’s a thing of the moment. Visiting a friend in the hospital is an entirely worthy act of compassion. But justice tries to shape the world, to make a future in which a few more pieces of our common destiny are healed. Justice, in the end, is the foundation of hope.
- REsources for Living - December 1, 2020
- A Fond Goodbye - December 1, 2020
- REsources for Living - November 1, 2020
