I wrote this in 2008 before the election, and it appeared in the newsletter of my former congregation. I feel it expresses better than anything else I have written what I am doing at Tikkun.

I used to think that the left / liberal tradition was all about struggle, anger, and righteous indignation. That was what fueled generations of oppressed and marginalized people to fight the status quo to free the slaves, reform the factories, gain the vote, enforce standards for safe food and medicine, combat racism, sexism and homophobia, and win all the democracy, rights and social safety nets so far gained. But I have realized that, even more than angry struggle, its success has been borne out of empathy. You only get ready to give rights and respect to others if you still the insistent voice of your own ego and self-absorption long enough to put yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling. It’s about imagination and compassion.

And while I thought the key to democracy and rights was empowerment of the powerless, I now wonder more about what the newly empowered use their power for: to be empathic and caring, or to be simply powerful: my group on top? When we are empowered, how do we come to create a sense of family and responsibility for each other — and “each other” means everyone!, including the poor, the gender-different, the people who believe differently, and even the powerful. How do we become responsible for our ecosystems, so we extend empathy and respect even to the creatures who cannot speak in human terms? Those are not only rational things to do — given our interdependence — they are more than that, they’re relational: love comes into it.

What words do we have for this desire to be more empathic, to feel our interdependence with other people and all of life, to be globally responsible and caring? I am no believer in God or supernatural spirits (as an agnostic I find them neither proven nor disproven) but the word I have come to use is “spiritual.” I didn’t like it a few years ago but now I do. I thought it wishy washy, unscientific, woo woo. Now I understand that rationalism is not enough, science is not enough. It pleases me to know that neuroscientists have found that reason is built upon empathy: the mirror neurons enable both. To say we need to be “philosophical” or “ethical” seems too cerebral and dry, when I am talking about glorying in the night sky or the spring leaves, or weeping at the terror we loosed in Iraq in response to terror loosed by others (not Iraqis) on us.

Most people on the Left know that religious and spiritual people were deeply involved in all the progressive movements in America: abolition, trade unions, early feminism, civil rights, peace. I have heard secular progressives say that those peoples’ religion was just the language of their time and we don’t need it now. That is a serious mistake. I don’t myself think we need beliefs about supernatural entities, but we do need to bring the spiritual to the center of our lives — and our politics — and find the language to do it. If that language for you is traditionally belief-based, so be it: we can all work together.

Separation of church and state does not mean separating the state from spiritually-based values. How could it? What other values should run the state? By treating our spiritual lives as private, we liberals have not “kept religion out of politics.” We have just ensured that the only spiritual appeal in the public square is made by the Religious Right. The spiritual basis of our politics has been invisible. We have to talk up the spiritual foundation of our politics if we are to change hearts as well as minds… and win elections.