(The Nationalist, 12 August 2005)
There is a Jewish story about a rabbi who put a question to his students: ‘How can you tell day from night?’
The first student answered: ‘You can tell it’s day if you can look at a person walking in the distance and say whether it’s a man or a woman’.
The second student said: ‘You know it’s day if you can look at a nearby tree and say whether the fruit on it is an orange or a grapefruit.’
The third student said: ‘It’s when you can look at a string of thread held at arm’s length and say whether it’s black or white’.
Then the students put his own question to the rabbi. He answered, ‘When you can look at someone and recognize that person as a brother or sister, it’s day. But if you can look at a person, and not recognize and respect them as a brother or sister, then it’s night – no matter what hour it is.’
Humanity is often imprisoned in narrow loyalties. We can be narrow in our outlook and fail to recognize and respect the humanity of another.
We impose many distinctions on our fellow-humans – distinctions of race, class, colour, creed, address, social status, how much money you earn, your education, promotion, your style of dress, the car you drive, your accent, whether you use the politically correct clichés, who your friends are, whether you move in approved circles and have made the right contacts, whether you’re gay or straight, friend or foe, and so on and on. We measure each other by these empty categories. They are artificial, unnecessary and divisive. They drive people apart instead of helping us to accept each other on the one basis that matters, which is our common humanity.
And yet that humanity is a threatened species. The four horses of the Apocalypse – war, famine, plague and death – have not left the earth. In the face of those realities, how much do our man-made distinctions matter? Yet we attach much importance to them.
How liberating it is to look beyond that foolishness and instead accept every person with respect. It means that we let go of posturing and pretence and live simply as we are, in truth, at ease with ourselves and with others, not having to worry about who’s up or who’s down, who’s in or who’s out. It means also that we acquire a new family, all of humanity, and that’s no small gain. It means, too, that we recognize our need of each other.
‘Why did God create all people from one set of parents, Adam and Eve?’ asks another Jewish story. And the answer was, ‘So that no one could say, “My people are better than yours”’. Jesus set out to bring together one human family under God.
For those in a hurry: ‘Meditation is a detachment from the things of the world in order to attend to the things of God. Contemplation is a detachment from the things of God in order to attend to God himself’. (Fr. Stanton)