Affirmation of life is the spiritual act by which man ceases to live unreflectively and begins to devote himself to his life with reverence in order to raise it to its true value. To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will to live.
Albert Schweitzer
Out of My Life and Thought
Albert Schweitzer became my hero/mentor at an early age. The United Methodist Church library had a copy of a little book, “All Men Are Brothers” by Charlie May Simon. This is a very special book. Follow the link to purchase one of the remaining copies.
This introduction to Schweitzer seized my imagination. To live by one’s own inner thought and develop a life reflecting values you embrace — this has guided me all through my own Earth walk.
When I was in my early 30s, I read Out of My Life and Thought, which is Schweitzer’s memoir of the major events that informed him in his search for an ethical basis for living.
“The most immediate fact of man’s conscientiousness is the assertion ‘I am life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live.'”
The quote is found on page 156 in Chapter 13 of the 1990 edition of Out of My Life and Time, published by Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
With this assertion, a person can manifest their destiny. It is the basis from which decisions are made and a person manifests in thought, word and deed the realization of it as they may choose to live it.
Today we need to return, each of us and together as a nation, to affirm the values at the core of our actions, words, and dreams. Americans are challenged to find our true compass: what do we affirm as the ethical basis for our government?
We can then turn to the Declaration of Independence to examine its words, the basis on which it is realized: “We hold these truths as self evident that all men are created equal….”
But I would add that its time to embrace all life on earth as living relatives without which humankind cannot live. “I am life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live.”
Susan Feathers 