{"id":35753,"date":"2025-11-29T22:43:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T22:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/how-to-be-human-kahlil-gibrans-recipe-for-our-spiritual-perfection-as-a-species\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T22:43:00","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T22:43:00","slug":"how-to-be-human-kahlil-gibrans-recipe-for-our-spiritual-perfection-as-a-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/how-to-be-human-kahlil-gibrans-recipe-for-our-spiritual-perfection-as-a-species\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Be Human: Kahlil Gibran\u2019s Recipe for Our Spiritual Perfection as a Species"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

We walk this earth as bewildered animals trying to recover the divinity within \u2014 descendants of the great apes who invented gods to mirror back to us the best in ourselves and bridle the worst, but we are still and always have been our own only shepherds. <\/p>\n

In times of crisis for humanity, amid the genocides and the wars and the burning forests and the firing squads of self-righteousness, the only true remedy is to remember what it means to be human \u2014 the complexity of it, the contradictions, the panoply of capacities from which get to choose in becoming who we are, as persons and as peoples. <\/p>\n

Every crisis of and for humanity is evidence that we have forgotten what we are \u2014 what Kahlil Gibran<\/a> (January 6, 1883\u2013April 10, 1931), writing in the interlude between two world wars, calls a \u201cdivinity which walks among the nations and speaks of love, pointing toward the paths of life, while the people laugh and mock its words and teachings.\u201d In The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 the wonderful collection of meditations, essays, and poems drawn from Gibran\u2019s Arabic writings about the spiritual life \u2014 he writes:<\/p>\n

\n

We were a silent, hidden thought in the folds of oblivion, and we have become a voice that causes the heavens to tremble.<\/p>\n

We were a faint spark buried in the ash, but have become a fire blazing above the sheltered ravine.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
Art by Ariana Fields from What Do You Know?<\/em><\/a> by Aracelis Girmay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An epoch before Maya Angelou reckoned with our multitudes in her breathtaking spaceborne poem<\/a>, insisting that \u201cwe are neither devils nor divines,\u201d Gibran considers what it would take for us, \u201cscions of the apes,\u201d to attain spiritual perfection as a species:<\/p>\n

\n

Humankind will proceed toward perfection when it feels that humanity is: A limitless sky and a shoreless ocean, an ever-blazing flame, an eternally gleaming light, a wind when it gusts and when it is calm, a cloud when it thunders and lightnings and rains, a stream when it sings or roars, a tree when it blossoms in the spring and disrobes in the autumn, a mountain when it towers, a valley when it descends, and a field when it is fertile or barren.<\/p>\n

When humankind has felt all these things, it will have reached the midpoint in its path toward perfection. If it wishes to arrive at the road to perfection, it must, if it perceives its own essence, feel that humanity is: An infant relying on its mother, a mature man responsible for his dependents, a youth lost among his desires and passions, an elderly man whose past and future wrestle with one another, a worshipper in his hermitage, a criminal in his cell, a scholar amidst his books and papers, a fool between the black of night and the dark of his day, a nun among the flowers of her faith and the thorns of her loneliness, a prostitute between the talons of her weakness and the claws of her neediness, the indigent between his bitterness and complaisance, the rich man between his ambitions and his submission, the poet between the fog of his evenings and the rays of his dawns. <\/p>\n

Should humankind prove able to experience and know all these things, it will arrive at perfection and become one shadow among the shadows of Gods.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If you could use some kindling for the fire of your faith in humanity, warm yourself with the story of how humanity saved the ginkgo<\/a> and with E.B. White\u2019s magnificent response to a man who had lost faith in humanity<\/a>, then revisit Gibran on the building blocks of friendship<\/a>, how to raise children<\/a>, and how to weather the uncertainties of love<\/a>. <\/p>\n

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donating = loving<\/h3>\n

For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian<\/em> (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings<\/em><\/a> for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant \u2014 a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation<\/a>. Your support makes all the difference.<\/p>\n

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newsletter<\/h3>\n

The Marginalian<\/em> has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week\u2019s most inspiring reading. Here\u2019s what to expect<\/a>. Like? Sign up.<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We walk this earth as bewildered animals trying to recover the divinity within \u2014 descendants of the great apes who invented gods to mirror back to us the best in ourselves and bridle the worst, but we are still and always have been our own only shepherds. In times of crisis for humanity, amid the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-life"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 15:41:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}