Saying For Today: I left that hospital in New Orleans more a person, not less, for recognizing the brother was my brother, our brother.
When a part-time student pastor in Mississippi in the 1980s, someone asked me to visit a patient in a New Orleans hospital. I lived in New Orleans, attending seminary there.
I had never met the patient. I did not know she was Catholic - I was Baptist. I went to that hospital with a deplorable prejudice. Not an "I hate." But an anti-Catholicism from my deep South, Protestant upbringing. There were few Catholics in the region of my childhood and youth. I was taught they were not Christians.
I do not recall speaking with the patient about religion. I was present to minister for her, not question her faith or lack thereof. A Catholic brother came into the room to visit, too. He told me he was a brother; he explained a "brother" was a layman who lived with other brothers and served people in the local community. We had a friendly conversation. But the conversation was not what was most important.
The most important thing was what I learned through meeting and talking with this Catholic brother. Learned, not in the sense of more information, but an inward sense that he and I were spiritual brothers, Christian brothers. Decades of one prejudicial belief was dismantled in a matter of minutes.
I say "Christian brothers," for this was one shift, an early one, in the enlarging circle of whom I saw to be a spiritual brother or sister with me. For many of us, transforming our prejudices into inclusion must be one step at a time. It takes time to dismantle those aspects of our false self, whereby who we think we are is based on excluding others apparently unlike us.
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Prejudice toward others is a projection of an erroneous self-image - this is why facing prejudices can be so threatening; it threatens our image of self. Yet, that we are is not an image. As we see more and more how we are not an image - our precious self-image - we see the same of others - they, too, are not another self-image or collective self-image: such as, race, religion, or political party.
The illusory self can be linked with an expected, even demanded, loyalty to the group. Society, culture, religion, or government can collectively propagate an invasive, infectious, and fouling intolerance. Such groups survive by being against others more than for or with others and broadcasting their hate message. Political parties, for example, can be as evangelistic as any religious sect, needing converts to sustain their unjust - often cultish - worldview over time. And for a devotee to include the excluded can be seen as a betrayal, a cause for reprisals, including being shamed or excluded from the group.
The religious worldview I came up with said, "To be Christian is not to be Catholic," and "To be Catholic is not to be Christian." The seminary I attended was founded in New Orleans, a center of Catholicism, in fact, to convert Catholics to Protestantism. Thankfully, that mission was not working well. Now, back to the New Orleans hospital ...
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After visiting with the patient and brother, I returned to the parking lot and stood near my car. I realized I had felt my oneness deeply with the brother and had lived with an unfounded, unjust bias against all Catholics. I closed eyes, bowed head, and offered a prayer of confession, admitting the discrimination.
This sudden awakening to oneness with the brother and other Catholics was not a reasoned out matter. I did not study Catholicism to arrive at an awareness of the prejudice I had carried most of my life. Instead, a sense of oneness arose within when with the brother. Discrimination is more easily sustained by keeping persons apart. When with someone we have discriminated against, we can discover they do not fit the image we were taught of them.
For the sense of oneness to arise, preparation allowed me to recognize it. If I were not prepared, I would have walked out of that hospital with the same bias I had entered it.
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This writing is not for sharing all that went into preparing me to see the brother was my brother - and Catholics my brothers and sisters. Nevertheless, nonverbal, spontaneous recognition of oneness (realization of oneness is always spontaneous; otherwise, it is just a thought of oneness ) does not arise from the mind. Accordingly, preparation to realize shared oneness comes partly from returning there, before all the appearances, thoughts, and labels that train us to see others as less than ourselves.
To grow in appreciation of those who appear different from us, so seen as not equal to us and undeserving of the same respect, we return to a place where we see that is not true. That place is within. Going there, to the inner Light, exposes the injustices and discriminations we were taught, including the illusoriness of the labels used to divide persons. A purpose of spiritual practice is Love's transformation of prejudice by our returning again and again to commune with Love.
We do not merely think ourselves out of hate and prejudice; this is why we cannot argue someone out of discrimination. By being loved and loving, we grow to love those we were told did not deserve the kindness and respect due us. When we are in love with Love, we will, finally, come to love all, for we become the conduit of a beautiful, bountiful Benevolence.
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Including those we before excluded, enriches our lives. We are more, not less, for including those we were socialized to see as unworthy or less worthy. I left that hospital in New Orleans more a person, not less, for recognizing the brother was my brother, our brother.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and title and place of photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
