Thanks to those who have been on this Pentecost journey with me. I’ve been exploring how Words affect the Story we build about ourselves, about our culture, about our own lives, and about others. I’ve considered ways that we use the Story we were taught by education or by observation to categorize one another as ‘other’ and how our cultural and personal Story impacts our response to the events of life.
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been pondering how to
start reframing the Story of relationships with those who are ‘not the same’. We
are, as this pandemic has highlighted, really closely interrelated. We are more
alike than we are different. That’s true on a genetic level and it’s true on an
inter-personal level. When we can pause and set aside our preconceptions, we
may just learn that our neighbor or the stranger on the corner have very
similar wants, fears, hopes, and desires. I think that deeply listening is the way
to start finding those similarities.
But, what next? What action are we then called to in order
to more fully bring to fruition the Beloved Community, the Kingdom of God, that
we pray for every time we say the Lord’s Prayer. How do we ‘Love our Neighbor’
as we are commanded in the Golden Rule? What steps can help us see past the
differences to the similarities. Eberhard Arnold notes, "It is increditble dishonesty in the human heart to pray daily that this kingdom come, that God's will be done on earth as in heaven, and at the same time to deny that Jesus wants this kingdom to be put into practice on earth. Whoever asks for the rulership of God to come down on earth must believe in it and be wholeheartedly resolved to carry it out." (Salt and Light: Living the Sermon on the Mount)
I don’t have any answers as to how to live this way. I’m groping my way toward
understanding with one step forward and two steps back sometimes. One day I may
smile at the homeless man on the corner and even give him the donut I bought
for myself, or a couple dollars. The next day I may roll up my window and
pretend I don’t see the sad woman and her dog at the intersection hoping for a
handout. I can be enraged by stories of Indigenous children buried in unnamed
graves at boarding schools, but I cannot bring myself to travel to stand in
solidarity. I may believe that ‘Black Lives Matter’, and wonder what that means
to me as a white woman, while at the same time not wanting to lose the
‘privilege’ that comes with being a white woman.
We are probably all struggling similarly. In Boundless Compassion Joyce Rupp quotes Christina
Feldman’s book Compassion.
Feldman states, “Our capacity to be a cause for suffering and our capacity to
end suffering live side by side within us.” Rupp also refers to Marianne Williamson
who says “A little cancer, unchecked, turns into a monstrous killer. So do
small, insidious, seemingly harmless judgmental thought forms become the pervasive
cancers that threaten to destroy a society.” (Illuminata)
I think, I hope, that the effort to see another person, to
hear their story, to relate to the pain and struggle on any level is a start. It’s
a step toward understanding, a step toward fully loving our neighbor, a step
toward Beloved Community.
We all need to drawn near the One who, through Paul, said clothe
yourselves with compassion. (Colossians 3:12). It is true that when we put
away all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together
with malice, and [are] kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one
another, as God in Christ has forgiven (Ephesians 4:31-32) we begin to create
Beloved Community.
What can I do today, tomorrow, this week, to act out of
compassion, to listen, to meet, to be a piece of Beloved Community?
Next week, I’ll offer one last reflection on this theme by
looking to where we need to all start: The Word made Flesh.
