UNITY IN DIVERSITY: MESSAGE RELEASED FOR AUSTRALIAN HARMONY DAY AND ON THE INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION.
In Victoria we are profoundly grateful for our affectionate level of multifaith understanding and harmony. This has been shaped by our careful and shared responses to the issues of our day.
This video gives a glimpse into these qualities of our civilised living. The context is both the pandemic and the continuing threats to our harmony.
To elaborate, when the pandemic began a year back, we all had to call on our inner resources and our spiritual practice in order to be a non-anxious presence for others.
Life teaches us, as the poets convey, that “we must live the life we are given, which may be different to the life we had planned ”(Wendell Berry).
Faced with the reality of the pandemic, many plans had to and have changed.
In this video, the sustaining wisdom of our faith traditions is conveyed in a very personal way by Victorian faith leaders. Their purpose is to help us to live well the life we are now given.
This includes our continuing response to the pandemic but also includes how we help to eliminate the cruel folly of racial discrimination. (So cruel and so foolish when we look at ourselves from cameras now on Mars: we are one human family on a tiny planet in a vast universe, gifted with life together).
What is vivid is the unity in this message from faith leaders: our one human family is drawn and called to love one another; drawn to be compassionate towards those in need and to live in gratitude for each new day.
Our faith leaders help us to reorientate on solid ground as they convey, with vivid sincerity, the wisdom of these living traditions for a more harmonious life.
In Victoria, we can be grateful that we have such unselfconscious unity in diversity.
This cultural strength has helped us navigate the past year.
We are given courage and confidence that we can build in Victoria a state which conveys our highest human possibility.
Those who have prepared the video hope you find comfort and encouragement for the days ahead.
Reviewed 23 June 2021