Choosing to Follow the Example of Jesus

I don’t know why it is, but most of the news we read in the papers, hear on the radio, see on the television or the internet, seems to be bad news. Decent behaviour seems less spectacular and is less often reported. Why is that, do you think? Could it be because we instinctively expect such behaviour, and therefore feel it unnecessary to call attention to it? I think that this would be more the Unitarian view of human nature. I believe it is our job to rise above our petty human limitations and find a better, more inclusive, more compassionate way of living in relationship with the rest of humankind, and with the blue-green planet that is our home.

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I love the writings of Richard Rohr, a Catholic Franciscan monk, who is one of the most open-minded Christians I have ever known. He tells us, “Jesus never said, 'Worship me,'' he said 'Follow me.' He asks us to imitate him in his own journey of full incarnation. To do so, he gives us two great commandments: (1) Love God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength and (2) Love your neighbour as yourself. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus shows us that our 'neighbour' even in cludes our 'enemy'."

It is up to us to follow the example of Jesus, love our neighbours as ourselves, treat them as they would wish to be treated, with lots of compassion, no judgement, and absolute equity and respect, and do our best to make the world a more positive, happier place.

I have long believed that there is a divine spark within each of us, "that of God" as the Quakers would say. As I see it, our job as Unitarians, as human beings, is to be constantly aware of the divine influences around us, in the world, in our fellow human beings, and to recognise that there is that of God in everyone, and that we are all connected to each other, on a very fundamental level. When we are in loving relationship with others, we can form circles of love. Because being in loving relationship with others is the strongest way I know of influencing the world for good.

Which the world desperately needs at the moment. Although our headlines are filled with news of the war in Gaza (not so much about the Ukraine now, although the war there continues), there are many other places in the world where war and famine and hatred are spreading their toll of misery. Many other places which need our attention, our compassion, our action. We human beings are complex creatures. I think we have to accept that the polarity between what we call good and what we call evil is present in every individual, as well as in humankind generally, but that it is up to each one of us to make a conscious effort to choose the good over the evil, and to make of our lives a greater whole.

So what should we do about this? We are all human beings, we are all members of many communities – our families, our friends, our colleagues, our faith and other communities – and we are all members of the human race. What difference can we, as individuals, make to those communities? I think we need to be aware that we are in a living relationship with the rest of the world, and that our words and actions can influence the fate of that world and its inhabitants, our fellow human beings, not to mention all the other living things. Whether our influence is for good or ill is up to us.

There are people whose lives have been shining examples of putting this Golden Rule, which is shared by all the major religions, into practice. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr was one; Nelson Mandela was another; so was Mother Theresa. I could also mention the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. What all these people have in common is that whatever life threw at them, they somehow managed to rise above the natural human instincts for revenge and hate, and continued to live their lives in a spirit of love.

It’s a big wide world, and we are only little people. But we can resolve to make our little corners of the world more loving places.

 

The Devotion of Friends

I have just been re-reading Vera Brittain's two volumes of autobiography - Testament of Youth and Testament of Experience. It has made me reflect on the nature of true friendship.

There is something very special about devoted friendship - the best marriages are based on it, for example. Such loyalty and devotion between two people is rare and precious, whether it occurs between a man and a woman, or between two people of the same sex. The relationship between Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby is a beautiful example of a very strong same-sex devoted friendship. They met at Oxford after the First World War, and after a rocky start, became the best of friends. In her wonderful tribute to Winifred, Testament of Friendship, Vera writes of her time with Winifred in London before her (Vera's) marriage:

"Those years with Winifred taught me that the type of friendship which reaches its apotheosis in the story of David and Jonathan is not a monopoly of the masculine sex ... After a year or two of constant companionship, our response to each other's needs and emotions had become so instinctive that in our correspondence one of us often replied to some statement or request made by the other before the letter which contained it had arrived."

Winifred's love and loyalty to Vera were complete and absolute. After Vera's marriage to George Catlin, the friendship between the two women is as strong as ever; indeed for some years, Winifred shared a house with the Brittain-Catlins. She wrote a typically rueful letter to Vera shortly after the latter's marriage and subsequent removal to America for a year: "I am happy. In a way I suppose I miss you, but that does not make me less happy ... When a person that one loves is in the world and alive and well, and pleased to be in the world, then to miss them is only a new flavour, a salt sharpness in experience." When she died at the tragically early age of 37, Vera was devastated.

Every human being needs at least one deep, true friend, who, in the words of the Arabian proverb "is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away. This is the sort of friendship that can, with luck and care, grow between people of all kinds.

Today is Golden Rule Day, on which we are exhorted to do unto others as we would wish to have done to ourselves, and to refrain from doing to others that which would give us pain. Every time we obey this, we are putting out a small tendril of friendship towards another person - who knows where it might lead?