"If we really want (but all depends on really wanting) to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo. One might start with forgiving one's husband or wife, or parents or children ... for something they have done or said in the last week." C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

We affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

This is perhaps the easiest and at the same time most difficult principle to live out daily. For me it's an easy affirmation when applied to loved ones, they shine with significance and distinction. It is not too much harder to see it in strangers; to view them as equals and trust they are just as valuable and important in this world as I am. It's a stretch to keep the inherent worth and dignity in mind when that person cuts me off on the freeway driving 90 mph. And next to impossible to hold when I weep and alternately rage at the cruelty and evil that human individuals perpetuate in our world.

So much for the worth and dignity of EVERY person.

For help sorting this out, I turn to the above quote from C.S. Lewis. He too had a spectrum of people, among whom he was trying to understand and live out his beliefs. He chose to hang the outcome of living from forgiveness on the intention of really wanting to learn to forgive. He also began with the easiest, implying that the harder forgiveness would come in time. It was a process of learning and growing and living forgiveness as a spiritual practice.

Similarly this first principle is a spiritual practice. It's not just a world view to agree with when it's easy to do so, but a truth about who and what every person ultimately is. It's about living out of the conviction that every person is a part of the whole of all things, participating in an ongoing dance of relationship and interconnection. It's about the nature of reality, not my perspective of reality.

To live it in this universal context, which means it is true for all people at all times in all places, I have to begin by unlearning the perspective I find most convenient: that I am the most worthy and dignified. This is a mix of survival instinct and ego which leads me to believe that my perspective is the most significant, that I'm the center of the universe, that what I experience to me is of ultimate significance. To overcome this obstacle, to accept a bigger truth about every person, including myself, doesn't mean letting go of my love or disgust of any individual. It's to accept my individual emotions and experiences as only a part of a much bigger story. It's to put myself into that universal ongoing dance of relationship and interconnection.

And it begins with learning this with my family and friends, then with those strangers who I meet, and on to those folks who anger and frustrate me, and eventually, if I really want to learn it and live it, accepting and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of those who strive to cause pain and fear and suffering for others.