I have received several thoughtful comments about Part One. I will post them in the comments section to the website without attribution. Keep them coming. What’s apparent is that we are bothered by the lack of harmony today.
One of our hidden fears is guilt by association. Christ faced similar criticism when he was seen in the company of beggars and sinners. Why would someone who was good consort with people who were bad? Guilt by association has fractured many communities over time, including the Christian community as well as other religious communities. To prove we are right and pure, we practice separation. We settle for the safe bunker of conformity, rather than accepting the reality of conflict and facing it head on, we make it even more real by institutionalizing it.
Can’t we as individuals and within our own religious communities do better? To do what God asks us to do, not what the world expects? There will always be times of turmoil, dissension, and even persecution. It is tempting during such times to retreat where we feel safe. However it is precisely during these times we are called to show our community the love God shows us.
Today explore how you can reach out with love to someone who by reason of their race, sex, religion, or past behavior is outside your safe zone. Don’t let that person become a casualty to guilt by association.
What a wonderful exercise you are leading us through, Webb. In today’s post, you use the word “harmony,” stating there is “a lack of harmony today.” In the Sufi work we have done, the teachers talk about a core trilogy (my term) of “love, harmony, and beauty.” In several Sufi prayers, God is referred to as the “Perfection of Love, Harmony and Beauty.” What’s interesting is that these terms are used in a context, a hierarchy of sorts. Love is seen as the unqualified connection between and among individuals; harmony is what results from a community that practice love, and beauty is defined as “anything that becomes our point of contact with love.” Beauty is also referred to as the larger environment that results from harmony. Kabir Edmund Helminski says, “Our openness, our relatedness, and our engagement are the measure of our love. The more we purify ourselves of our self-centeredness, the more we will feel the benefits [the bonding, relationship, and communion] of love.
As you point out, the challenge is in extending connectedness and love to those we judge as unworthy. At the extreme end, does evil really exist? Or is it a visible embodiment of unexpressed love?
Tom