The Holy Thursday Revolution, Beatrice Bruteau.

A pioneer in interspirituality and contemplative thinking, Bruteau offered a worldview that features the incomparable value of each person and the community dynamics of mutual respect and care that follows from that view. In her last book, The Holy Thursday Revolution, Bruteau addressed, How can the world evolve from a culture of war and domination to one of friendship and communion? She wrote:

In saying that the domination/submission paradigm lies at the basis of many of our contemporary ills, I do not say that all of our ills can be traced to it, nor do I say that it is productive only of ill.

In fact, I hold that certain versions of it can be useful and appropriate in various limited, specific, functional situations… However, in our culture we have tended to award to the functionally dominant persons and institutions a total value of superiority, privilege, and power that has often led to injustice, damage, and suffering.

I am suggesting that domination is basic to a great many ills from which our culture does suffer and that it may be possible to replace it with an alternative paradigm that would afford some improvement. I think that each of these paradigms lies at a sufficiently deep level in our consciousness to be a unifying principle for a great many particular behaviors, and therefore if we deal with the matter on a deep level, we could thereby effect alterations in the relatively superficial attitudes and actions much more efficiently than by trying to change those feelings and events piecemeal.

Posted in Systemic/Books.