This is the fifth in a series of interviews with Philippe Kiener. These interviews are accompanied by quotes from my new book ‘To Right Every Wrong’, songs and suggestions for meditation, discussion and action.

I think the Beatitudes is not just for people of all religions, but for people with no religion. In fact, I can remember I was invited by the Skeptic Society in Australia to go to the Red Brick Hotel to … to … and they asked me to talk about something that they thought would be relevant for them. And so I went to talk to them about the Blessed Revolution of Jesus and looked at the Beatitudes as the personal political dynamics of a transformational reform-ation. And they loved it because once you unpack those truths, and you set them free from a very arcane religious context, and people actually reflect on those things – that we are called to identify with the poor in spirit, with all those who struggle; we need to enter into their pain empathically; we need to get angry about the injustice; we need to channel our rage creatively in the struggle for justice; our struggle for justice needs to be freighted with mercy; we need to act with integrity in the midst of the struggle; and then work for peace in the midst of war; and suffer violence rather than inflict it. All of a sudden we’ve got a way of engaging a world of poverty and violence that reaffirms what all human beings, whether religious or not, desperately and deeply want to believe in.

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