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Saying: When coming upon someone whose apparent difference from you leads you to discomfort, that is a good place. That is a space to relax with the discomfort. To explore it. To allow yourself to see into what is leading to unease. To open your heart a little more. The answer is, finally, not in the other but in yourself.
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I sit on the porch at the Quaker Meetinghouse for the hour meditation-and-lectio gathering on Zoom. Before leaving, I note the two flags hanging from the porch: Black Lives Matter and Pride. The Pride flag has wrapped around its post. As I am leaving, I walk over and unwrap it.
To most persons this act would seem like an insignificant thing to do. To me, no. Untangling of the flag contrasted with a fundamentalist, evangelical Christian upbringing. Rather than the feeling of condemnation of what I did not understand, this felt like the feeling of loving what I did and do not understand.
Compassion and love do not require a precise understanding of persons who appear different from us. We love others within our differences by loving that which is the same about us.
I would be acting foolishly to say to a gay or a transgender person, or a person of color, "I understand you": that is, in understanding their sexuality, gender, or race. I would not be speaking foolishness to say, in another sense - of sharing a common humanity-and-spirit - "I understand you." In love, there is an understanding more fundamental, therefore all-embracing, than understanding the details of our lives. Oneness sees through what appears to make us different to what we are. If I truly see you, I see myself in that act of seeing.
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Earlier in life, as a youth and young adult, I would not have sat on the porch of the Meetinghouse. This exclusion would have been based on ignorance taught to me. As we grow in insight, we grow in compassion and love, we mature. We grow in acceptance of that we do not understand, for wisdom is an understanding more fundamental to our well-being, all our well-being.
I will not write about how so much of my past faith group, Christianity, has and is betraying Jesus' social message. Yet, there are many Christians, also, who live out the compassion and love Jesus taught. I prefer to celebrate the light than yell into the darkness.
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So, in a sense, my straightening the Pride flag was simply straightening a Pride flag. It is more, also, - I say "is," for what we do remains present tense. What we do reverberates subtly through the whole web of life. There is no private act.
But one could reply, "I do not believe in what the flag represents. I am against it." Unfurling the flag could as well be done regardless of your beliefs about what it represents. We are mistaken to act toward others based on our moral beliefs. We need to be aware of how misled and biased we can be.
Do we want a world where we subordinate love and compassion to our beliefs? So treat others from what we each think is right or wrong? I do not! Augustine of Hippo (354-430) said, "Love and do what you will, " which is not advice to be narcissistic and hedonistic but just the opposite, to act from love. For me to act wisely, love must remain the motive for action, not my beliefs. Beliefs are conditioned by time; love is free of time and, so, unconditioned.
The prejudices of my past were taught to me by well-meaning beings, but I chose to grow out of those teachings. I could only do that through honesty, including a willingness to learn otherwise. In doing that, I lost much, but I gained more. The losses to live with a heart open wide are not a cause for regret but gratitude. I chose to open my heart rather than keep a career. Which is more important - a job or an open heart?
Yes, the untangling of the flag was a small deed, some might say. Yet, is any deed enacted from respecting and appreciating the other a small act? How can one say "I love God" and not love the other, no matter how she or he appears different from oneself? And how can one exclude another without, at the same time, excluding God?
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One unseen, "small" act done in love changes the world, and love is inclusive. We are led by love or fear - which shall it be? What positively changes the world is not so much big acts but small ones kindly done in our everyday lives. Will you focus on spreading the light through thought, word, and deed?
*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.
