Respect, Tolerance and Love

Reading from Tuesday, January 17, 2012 yoga class

I walk at Clifty Falls State Park every chance I get.  I stopped to talk with Dick Davis, the naturalist at the park, the other day to let him know that on Christmas morning as husband, son and I were taking a walk, we saw an immature bald eagle sitting in a tree.   He told me that he can tell my walk from far away because I have a bounce, a spring to my step... he told me that "I make walking look liberating."  Well... I have taken a daily walk for 25 plus years.  I was telling this story to my friend Bev, and she said to me... anything that you do over a long period of time becomes a part of who you are and people notice that.  It got me thinking... she is right!!  Walking, yoga, etc.  It got me thinking about Muhammad Ali whose birthday it is today and what a humanitarian he is because he has been doing this for so long.  It use to be I thought of him only with boxing, and maybe some still do, but now I think of him as a great man with a big heart.  I dug out an article I clipped from the Louisville Courier Journal, parts of which follow, written by Muhammad Ali, that appeared right before the beginning of the new millennium. 

"As I continue to travel around the world, I am constantly amazed by, and appreciative of, the amount of love and kindness that the people of the world provide to me.  Often my mission brings me to corners of the world experiencing great conflict, hunger, tribal and ethnic animosities and other acts of intolerance and hatred.  I am often faced with the same frustrating question: "Why can't people love each other the way they love me?"  As the century closes, I believe that the new millennium brings renewed hope that people will begin to move from intolerance to tolerance, from conflict to peace, from hate to love.  What is the key to such change?  First and foremost, we need to see each other as individuals, as fellow human beings.  When people embrace me, they are not seeing me as an African American, or as a Muslim, or as someone with particular political views.  They accept me as a human being, and they know that is how I view them... When I travel throughout the world, I often meet people whose language I do not understand.  But I can still communicate with them; in fact, I often can communicate much better, in a more personal way, since we are communicating through our hearts, rather than merely through our voices... While there are, unfortunately, many ethnic and tribal conflicts still raging... we need to treat each other as people---with respect and tolerance and love.  We all have far more in common with each other than we have differences... When I pick up a small child in a village in Africa, we recognize each other's goodness.  When I meet with warring tribal chieftains, we talk as individuals, not as warlords.  When I join people in prayer, whatever religion it might be, we share a common spiritual bond.  In all these instances, when everything else is stripped away, there is love, not hate.  There is peace, not war.  There is serenity, not conflict.  We must show our children, in particular, that this is the right thing to do, that it's OK to love."