Practice

Yesterday I caught up with the 2010 Cannes favorite, "Of Gods and Men", a film by Xavier Beauvois. The story is based on the experience of Benedictine monks during the Islamic uprising in Algeria in the mid-1990s. It is a story of individual practice within a committed community. I highly recommend seeing it. The film addresses the fundamental realities of practice and committed relationships.

The film reminded me that doing good in the real world is never easy or entertaining for very long. In fact, I would suggest that anyone who feels that being a humanist is one big party does not really have a humanist practice. A well-meaning hedonist perhaps, but not a humanist in the true sense of the word. Part of being a mindful and compassionate human being is experiencing suffering as well as happiness. Unless a humanist recognizes the suffering of the basic human condition, his/her efforts at becoming a liberated actor for universal human rights and justice will ring hollow.

This is the plight of the showman-cleric. The pedophile priest is not a humanist. The preacher of the gospel of greed cannot be a humanist. The buyer of status through patronage of 'good causes' is not necessarily a humanist. Humanism, as I practice it, is a state of being, not a hobby, a career path or a religion. Humanism is a way of living that has nothing to do with recognition or money.