As we spend what would have been my mother’s ninetieth birthday, I think of her melodious tones speaking about the need for tolerance, understanding, forgiveness and love.  My mother’s perspective was that human beings being social animals are strongest when they are unified. She saw hatred and greed, not only as divisive, but as the forces of evil.  She recognized that unlike positive virtues, neither greed nor hatred has to be taught; they come naturally and have to be untaught in order to free their possessor of their burdensome weight and baggage.  She saw one of our greatest challenges was learning to love ourselves, then having the courage and the wisdom to love others. She often said, “We don’t know how or why love occurs. Truthfully, we don’t know that even gravity isn’t a kind of love.”  She felt that love was one of the most important emotions and was an instrumental key to unlocking the inner doors of our ignorance and fear.

My mother’s principal message was one of inclusiveness; that despite our ethnic, religious and cultural differences, we are more alike than unalike.  She saw all our differences in language, orientation and perspective as an indication of the richness of our imagination and creativity, and as elements of our nature that we should celebrate.  She believed that we are all images of God, no matter how we look or what name we use to call upon the Divine and Sacred Being.

She saw that the world was in need of our attention and effort; from the hunger and poverty that are present in so many countries, to our wars, internecine conflicts and indiscriminate terroristic acts, to the destructive pollution, deforestation and the reduction of the biodiversity of the life forms around us.  Our planet is crying out for help. My mother would say, ‘Don’t just complain about the problems you see and do nothing; roll up your sleeves and get to work finding solutions and remedies. We do a disservice to our children and to the future by not addressing the problems that confront us. Nor should our efforts for change be thwarted or stifled by the obstacles arrayed against us.  We must steel ourselves with courage and perseverance and battle on for what is right.” For my mother the most important virtue was courage, because without courage none of the other virtues can be practiced consistently.

My mother did not herself go to college to pursue a degree. Although, as she rose in stature, as a public figure she was awarded Honorary Doctorates by more than fifty major universities and colleges.  She understood education was extremely important; to that end she was a voracious reader, consuming two to three books a week from the time she was a teenager until her vision failed in her eighties. She used to ask me, “Can you imagine what the world would be like if all children on earth had access to a good education and were allowed to let their inner lights glow?  Oh, we would have the cure to cancer and remedies to most of the major problems that confront us. The knowledge that would be generated by that level of brain power would give us access to the stars, to the universe as well as to our dreams.”

My mother’s assessment of human beings was that we were neither gods nor demons, but that we carried elements of both within ourselves; that the onus was upon each of us to control the demons of anger, jealousy and hate and find the spirit of a caring and forgiving God within our souls.