Becoming change
August 21, 2008
At a prayer meeting in the early 1900s, Mahatma Gandhi was confronted with the general consensus amongst those in attendance that they had no power to affect change. It was there that he uttered the now famous saying “we must become the change that we want to see in the world”.
Senator Barack Obama, the self-designated ‘Change Candidate’ in this year’s US Presidential Election once said “I’m asking you to believe not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington…I’m asking you to believe in yours.”
Both men in articulating what I find to be an inconvenient truth, understood what can be done when the populace becomes engaged in their communities by and through the Political Process, by advocating Social Justice and by working to improve the lives of the least regarded.
Jesus’ example, as is seen in the writings of the Holy Bible and Holy Koran, is a great reference point on how this can be done. The Christian faith tradition speaks to that He did not leave affecting change exclusively in the hands of the prophets, He stepped out of His comfort zone and became and affected change Himself.
You and I have the power to affect change in our own communities or in distant lands. For me, this has included sponsoring three children from the Philippines, Ecuador and India and volunteering at a Homeless Shelter in Washington, DC. For you, it could be as simple as getting involved in the electoral process and even volunteering in your local community.
Here’s how you can make a difference…
RESOURCES
Akhenaton
mail@pharaohsprotege.com
I think many of us sit on the sidelines because we haven’t thought through our core values. The change agents that you mentioned -Ghandi, Jesus, and presumably Obama- felt compelled to act because the world as they saw it was at odds with the world as they thought it should be. The process of figuring out what “we want to see in the world” is an important first step that can supply the motivation and the rationale for getting involved.