I Learned A Lot From Both, Initially

And Sometimes It's The Very Otherness Of A Stranger, Someone Who Doesn't Belong To Our Ethnic Or Ideological Or Religious Group, An Otherness That Can Repel Us Initially, But Which Can Jerk Us Out Of Our Habitual Selfishness, And Give Us Intonations Of That Sacred Otherness, Which Is God.

Theologians In All The Great Faiths Have Devised All Kinds Of Myths To Show That This Type Of Kenosis, Of Self-emptying, Is Found In The Life Of God Itself. They Do Not Do This Because It Sounds Edifying, But Because This Is The Way That Human Nature Seems To Work. We Are Most Creative And Sense Other Possibilities That Transcend Our Ordinary Experience When We Leave Ourselves Behind.

Beethoven's String Quartets Express Pain Itself; It Is Not My Pain.

If We Don't Manage To Implement The Golden Rule Globally, So That We Treat All Peoples, Wherever And Whoever They May Be, As Though They Were As Important As Ourselves, I Doubt That We'll Have A Viable World To Hand On To The Next Generation.

Alas, All Traditions Lose Their Primal Purity And We All Fail Our Founders.