The first letter, the first value, in EMERGE stands for empathy.
Empathy is the aspect of love that lets us feel.
Together.
Empathy enables us to discern, share, and understand the pains and joys in the lives of other human beings. In the broader, Earth-focused sense, it enables us to transcend the idea of Earth as a proving ground for human dominion. With empathy, we perceive other living communities and feel an emotional stake in their thriving. No longer do they exist only as a backdrop for human affairs. No longer is nature a spa or a setting for sport and entertainment.
Empathy empowers us to reimagine the place of humans in the world. Rather than humans who traipse into nature as a sort of clumsy or even hostile presence in the natural world, who didn’t ask permission to be there, we tread gently through the homes of other living communities.
Marcus Rediker, author of The Fearless Benjamin Lay (and co-playwright of The Return of Benjamin Lay), shows us how this now-famous abolitionist Quaker’s “one and all” commitment to mutual aid included sentient beings as our whole community. And David Lester, illustrator of Prophet Against Slavery, offers a memorable example of the way Benjamin’s life spoke:
He didn’t ride horses but walked instead, because he didn’t want to use animals as some sort of beasts of burden.
This same, deep respect for all life experiences, says Lester, propelled Lay’s “outrage to go to Quaker meetings and point out who was a slave owner…when most people of European descent considered slavery natural.”
And so, for the first value in EMERGE, we dare to empathize. We dare to apply empathy broadly, to all the planet’s people and its living communities. Like SPICES, EMERGE is not an end in itself; it is a touchstone. It guides inquiry in our own hearts, in each other, and together. It offers some ideas as to how we might become essential workers on the planet. “One and all.” Spirit, all-encompassing!