The elders we met at The Day of Stewardship are leaders of their communities. So we first asked them how they realized they were leaders. But that was a bad question.
One leader answered that she had a deep sense of awe and mystery about life. In the leader’s subconscious, they had something beyond ego. Something as did Buddha liberated them from selfish desire. She called it Nature’s God.
And their stories were not written by themselves.
Sitting in Forest Park, helping the conservation movement on The Day of Stewardship, we asked how man fits into nature.
Another leader answered, “Man follows nature by studying science, the laws of nature. And man is unique among nature. We alone can conceive of things like human rights or selfishly destroy life. In our shared subconscious, people are equal and have rights. These rights subsequently extend to all living things. That is how we became stewards of life.
Hearing the calming sound of elders helps our confidence.
The story of the US was a progressive story of human rights. With their rights protected, the people were left to their pursuits. And they discovered many great things.
These things we learned from our elders. May we pass them down to future generations.