Unity and Comm-unity

"Beneath all our diversity there is a unity that makes us one."

--David Bumbaugh

We are here dedicated to the proposition
That behind all our differences
Beneath all our diversity
There is a unity that makes us one
And binds us forever together
In spite of time and death
And the space between the stars.
We pause in silent witness to that unity.

I confess that there are days when I don't believe it. I confess that when I look around the world these days, what I mostly see is division. What I mostly see is diversity without a whole lot of unity. What I mostly see is polarization, and I confess that it frightens me.

Perhaps our country and our government has been this divided before. If so, I don't remember it, even during the Vietnam War. Perhaps the religious world has always been this divided: in my lowest moments I am afraid that it has. Perhaps the haves and the have-nots have been this divided, always been this divided, and I just wasn't paying attention.

Perhaps I am naive, or misinformed. I had thought that the "global village" meant that people would grow closer together, instead of growing further apart. I had thought that greater proximity, and faster communication, meant that all the old barriers of class and creed and race and nationality were finally about to fall.

Even institutions are divided within themselves: between conservatives and liberals, between supply-siders and whatever it is they are opposed to, between the Hannity's and the Colmes's. The great religious traditions are terribly divided within themselves, too: between fundamentalists and those who believe in a wider view and a freer mode of interpretation, between spiritless literalists and freewheeling mystics, between those who see the world in black and white, and those who see it gray, or, God forbid, in living color.

Everywhere, lines are being drawn: same-gender marriage, the "war" on terrorism, gay bishops in the Episcopal church and gay ministers in the Methodist, abortion, prayer in public venues, belief in God, "born agains" versus the rest of us poor sinners. Within the Catholic Church, lay-people, at least, are deeply divided over the issue of abortion, and, as I learned on the news this week, over end-of-life issues. Most ignore the Church's teaching on birth control.

But the Pope wants everyone to toe the church's unerring theological and ethical line. Doctors in Catholic hospitals are to have no leeway in determining when a feeding tube should be removed, or when the time has come to stop attempting heroic measures. College professors in Catholic colleges are to obey Catholic teaching to the T, irrespective of the ideal of "academic freedom." God forbid that people should question anything. Those who differ with official church teachings even by some leaders are to be denied communion.

Have Republicans and Democrats ever been so absolutely divided on the issues as they seem to be today? Has there ever been so much partisan animosity?

But there is even intra-party division between ideologues of the right or left and those who are not conservative enough or liberal enough. Senator Arlen Specter, an independent-minded Republican (but certainly no Democrat) barely gets re-nominated in Pennsylvania for not following a conservative enough philosophy? He was targeted by more conservative members of his own party because, among other things, he favors a woman's right to choose an abortion? (Though not even in all cases.)

Clearly, the Muslim world is terribly divided. How far does the Islam preached by Osama bin Laden and his followers fall from that gentle and loving variety described and practiced by our member Stan Barrett and his Sufi friends a few weeks ago? Is it possible that it is even the same religion we are talking about?

Yes, I confess, I am brought close to despair when I look around the world today, and even around my own country. I am not as optimistic as I should be when I observe the kind of either/or mentality that seems to dominate so many of our institutions and to characterize so many of our so-called leaders. I wonder where it is all going to take us, and frankly I am not as hopeful as I should be.

Fortunately, however, there has always been a little band of optimists like us Unitarian Universalists who have denied that it is so, who have denied that the world is black and white only, or that there are only two choices, "either" and "or," or that there are ethical absolutes that all must accept all the time, or that agnosticism or even atheism is beyond the pale, or that freedom of choice is a bad thing. When I am close to despair, my religion calls me back from the brink, and offers me a different view of reality. At its best, my religion shows me that there is indeed a unity beneath our diversity, and that people can live together with differing and even opposing points of view. We don't always succeed in actualizing that reality, but at least that is the ideal toward which we strive. To our credit, we actually hold that diversity might be a good thing.

Many years ago, the late Leslie T. Pennington, then minister of the First Parish Unitarian Church in Cambridge, wrote of his church:

Here we enter a familiar place. It is quiet, simple and restful in its beauty. About us are the familiar faces of people we know, or of strangers, who have come in friendly spirit for the same purpose. Many of them have come from the even tenor of their lives. Some of them may carry some secret trouble, some shadow which they would dispel, some burden, some sorrow from which they would find release. Some of them may come in the joy of new opportunities which are just opening to them, their hearts buoyant with good fortune and hope. Some may be filled with joyful or with aching memories. Some may be endeavoring to recover a lost vision, a lost sense of dignity, the beauty or the distinction of life; some the sense of the nearness of moments and people who have been lost to them in the unrelenting stream of time. Some may be thinking of the suffering and the perils, or of the achievement and joy of those who are absent, it may be far away. Some may be probing for the solution of problems and others endeavoring to escape from the pressing problems of the world. In all the variety of experience they come, and as we think of them about us, we are conscious that our lives, too, are touched and shall be touched with all this inexplicable variety of experience. And yet we come in the trust that we shall find light and strength, poise, resource and peace according to our several needs. As it is with us, so it is with all sorts and conditions of [people].

I abhor those who seek to divide us along narrow political or ethical or theological or cultural or ethnic or racial or sexual lines and who ignore all the profound ways in which we are bound together in our common humanity. What is it in human nature that must seek uniformity at the expense of unity, that cries for separation at the expense of real community? What fear is there, what lack of openness, and what rigidity?

John Buehrens, former President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, has written that,

Unity isn't easy to come by. Not among people, not even within a single soul. The world we live in seems to conspire to divide us inwardly.

Psychologists talk about "ego-splitting." My wife, Gwen, puts it more simply: "Sometimes we're full of ourselves, even grandiose. Other times we're full of 'self-ick.'"

Advertising tells us constantly what we really need, what we surely deserve--breeding grandiosity and entitlement, as well as envy and resentment, while competition at work, school, or in relationships can contribute to self-doubt and "self-ick."

If life is "just a chance to grow a soul," the trick is to replace all these ego-fragments with a deeper, more soulful unity. One that is balanced and honest in both self-assessment and self-acceptance.

In a society that often blurs the distinctions between real needs and wants, the soul learns the difference. It can also distinguish between public recognition and honest effort, mere information and true wisdom, superficial status and authentic character.

Feeling fragmented, frantic? asks John. Chances are no solution lies in just more busyness. Rather it may consist in taking time to be one soul, a whole person, a human being. Souls also grow better in comm-unity, where we remind one another of all this.

My colleague Terry Sweetser once wrote,

To have a sense of community in our churches, we must think of church life as something we want to do. Not because we will get something we want from it, but because it is just good of itself to be involved with people who are striving to make a better life for themselves and others. A church's reason for being is in trying to work out ways of being better together. That means moving beyond individual wants to deal with each other in a caring way. Talking about covenanted communities in churches, William Sloane Coffin says, "Caring is what matters, in the end it's all that really counts."

. . .binds us forever together
In spite of time and death
And the space between the stars.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock