For the last several months and more intensely for the last few weeks I have been wrestling in prayer with the two concepts of unity and suffering. The seeds were sown on internship as 4 churches were wrestling with their own anxiety and suffering while trying to come to terms what it meant to be a 4 church cooperative.More recently the divisiveness of the nation polarized around the recent election cycle and the knowing who ever loses is going to suffer.
Suffering and anxiety can quickly lead to division. Hurt and anger wants to strike out at someone or some thing. My pain needs an outlet and that person, that group or that thing is in the cross-hairs. And yet the mutual consolation of the saints and the unity we have in our mystical union with the crucified Christ are two of the Christians greatest assets. We know these things cognitively but finding ways in trying times to cognate them is difficult. When we are hurting our first instinct isn't to reason our way out. We need an outlet. We need comfort. We need solace. Need overwhelms rational thinking, maybe not blindly but it certainly cast a veil over our higher faculties.
In day to day or in long range thinking and action how do we find the unity that we declare is precious to us? How do we find unity with the other that seems so foreign to us?
FWIW There are many odd bedfellows and matches that at first glance do not make sense. Here is one possibly peculiar such pairing. The Vietnam veteran did their civic duty, they volunteered or answered the call of the draft, they suffered, they endured and they lost loved ones in the jungles of a land they did not understand for reasons they didn't understand. On Nov 8 millions did their civic duty. They went to the polls and voted for a more open, accepting and understanding society; a bloodless battle as the founders intended.
Upon returning from the battlefield many Vietnam vets were met with open hostility and hate, a hate they could not comprehend. They found little compassion in places that were suppose to provide compassion. They found a VA hospital system ill prepared for their return. They did their civic duty and the very nation they fought to defend turned on them.WWI and WWII vets were met with parades. Korean vets were met with silence. They were met with open assault. They thought they were fighting for a better world and they thought they could have one. Like their parents they thought they could come back to a little house, a spouse, some children, a safe neighborhood, coach little league and have a job that paid for it. They didn't expect to have drinks thrown on them, flags torn out of their hands, burials disrupted, or to get spit on. An America that had always been there but one they didn't recognize met them at the airports and the gates. They were rejected and then told to assimilate as if no harm had been done.
The LGTBQ community, the woman's equality community, the communities of ethnicity and color and all their supporters watched in dismay on Nov 8th as their nation turned on them. They had a vision for America not unlike the returning Vietnam vet, a good and simple life, opportunity, a spouse, a family, a safe neighborhood to raise their children, a job with fair wages to support their family. They have been met with triumphalist vitriol by some while many stand silent, again. Their cause, their labor for years rejected. The bloodless battle they fought has not been met with parades but with anger and meanness. Now, the LGTBQ community, the woman's equality community, the communities of ethnicity and color are being told shut up, keep your head down, for the sake of peace assimilate as if no harm has been done.
There is an unrealized as of yet America of MLK jr's vision, it remains a vision, a hope. It is vision many consistently wrap themselves in prematurely. We like to think we have already arrived, it helps us sleep at night. There is an America out our doors that is horribly divided and those division spill out into our streets and our polls in both healthy an unhealthy ways.
We often talk about reaching out across the divide to create unity failing to see we have much in common already, even when it at first glance it seems peculiar. We already have unity in Christ. Our personal suffering is often not as unique as we would like to claim it to be. Our personal suffering can be mutual ground to stand on with the other however diverse they are relative to us.
I hate to sound like a complete pessimist and I think expecting to find unity through intellectual agreement is fools game. But if I can perceive your pain and you can perceive mine we don't have to have a discussion about who is right we can just fall to our knees and pray for the other and possibly side by side with the other.
Take it to the Cross brothers and sister, take it to the Cross.
Thanks for reading my ramblings. May the Peace of Christ find you were you are.
John
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