You Cannot Forsake Your Mother

“First they laugh at you, then they ignore you, then they fight you, then you win.” ~ Attributed to Mahatmas Gandhi

One day a British cleric well-known for his imperialistic persuasion found himself face to face with Mahatma Gandhi. Wishing to paper over their differences, he is said to have remarked, “Well, we’re both men of God, Mr. Gandhi, aren’t we?”“You are a politician disguised as a man of God,” the Mahatma replied. “I am a man of God disguised as a politician.”

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"When Grandfather confessed to his Christian friends how much he was impressed by the Sermon on the Mount he was asked, “Why don’t you become a Christian?”“When you convince me that all Christians live according to the Sermon on the Mount, I will be the first to change my religion,” he responded. On another occasion he said religion is like a mother. However good your friend’s mother may be, you cannot forsake your own."

-- Arun Gandhi

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"Idiots laugh, Zealots ignore, Elitists war, and Patriots win peace, through peace. The epigraph suggests there are four stages of reaction, and also four types of reactionaries. Gandhi had new ideas which were difficult for people to accept in a feudal world, and I suspect he knew all about how individuals react to new ideas and new information. Gandhi was a Patriot among Idiots, Zealots and Elitists. My definition of a Patriot is more comparable to a peaceful activist or inactivist, like Gandhi, not a nationalist, or jingoist, or uniformed institutional representative as is often the cliché. Perhaps my definition of patriotism would be best expressed as matriotism, of open maternal love for locals, land and liberty, as opposed to the blind loyalty to patriarchal, martial institutions that patriotism is mostly associated with."

-- Ethan Indigo Smith, The Matrix of Four The Philosophy of The Duality of Polarity